Eileen G'Sell Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 30

Eileen G'Sell will be one of three featured readers at the debut •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, September 30.

Also featured will be Matt Freeman and Catherine Rankovic.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Open-mic will follow the featured readers.

Eileen G'Sell teaches at Washington University in St. Louis and is cofounder of The Hinge, an art gallery and event space. Recent and forthcoming work can be found in Conduit, Ninth Letter, and the Boston Review.  She is the winner of the American Literary Review's 2012 prize for poetry, and her chapbook will be available through Dancing Girl Press in spring 2013.

I Love You Like a Good Game of Skee-Ball

First of all, I never said that.
Second, if I drove a stick
I sure didn’t do it for Jesus.

The manuscripts are warm and the salary
depressing. Behind the stars are blue
and bold, hearts we steer toward bluer skies.

No one knows the speed of joy, and no one
speaks of sinking. I lived the way
a sailor lives, and I’ve seen swallows

starve. For I smell of love
and Suavitel, for I love the way
the sailor loves. For every second

past, a silver captain listens. If this
is the gift, and this, the giver,
then this is the sea you were meant

to receive. This is the rain
you were meant to forget,
this, the star that will not forsake you.

My handmade hypotheses are legions
on, yet no one speaks of drowning.
If I have drowned, then let it be

with you, for you, and fallen birds.
First of all, I never said
that it wasn’t something worth saying.

You were the game
I was meant to lose. But the game
was sweet, and soft, my friend,

and my hand still warm from the weight of it.

-- Eileen G'Sell

Thanks to Ink Node.