Robert Nazarene To Read at Duff's in the C.W.E. on Monday, May 23

Robert Nazarene will be one of three featured readers at the Monday, May 23, reading at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, in the Central West End.

The other readers will be Susan Spit-Fire Lively and Eileen G'Sell.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is $3.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Robert Nazarene was founding editor of Margie/The American Journal of Poetry and in 2006 received a National Book Critics Circle award as publisher of Tom Thomson in Purgatory by Troy Jollimore.

Church is his first collection of poems and a second book is nearing completion. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Salmagundi, Stand, the London Times, the Oxford American, and elsewhere.

Dolor

I have known the ineluctable grief of waiting,
the desolation of fluorescence and its quiet
accompanist: the low drone of vending machinery.

The sadness of the silent switchboard;
of sleeping pushcarts, empty reception areas;
the unending
tunnelry of immaculate public spaces; the odor
of antiseptic, the pale standard face of nightshift
workers; the grey duplication of mornings;
the quiet

clatter and clink of the cafeteria -- slowly
regaining consciousness.

Out the window,
on the street below, the clamor of children
filling the crosswalk, crowding the playground.

The baby got sick.
The baby
never woke up.

My baby: wrapped in linen,
stiff, still--
perfect,
in her box.

-- Robert Nazarene

Note: Originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.