John Tipton, Beth Murray, & Brandon Shimoda

Sunday, April 5
7:30 pm

Concordia Coffee House
2909 NE Alberta

$5.00 suggested donation


John Tipton was the founder of the Chicago Poetry Project reading series in 2001. His first full-length collection, Surfaces, was published by Flood Editions in 2004; in 2008 Flood brought out his translation of the Ajax of Sophocles.

Beth Murray lives on the island of Alameda with her dog, Laney. Her new book, The Island, published by Second Story Books, is an invocation of her conversations with the Island and the animals who live there. Her other books include The Night's Night from Noemi Press and Hope Eternity Seen on the Hip of a Rabbit from a+ bend. She works as homeopath for both people and animals, including those at the Oakland Zoo. In her practice she finds poetry.

Brandon Shimoda was born in North America. Texts and images chronicling the intervening years can be found in The Alps (Flim Forum Press, 2008) and The Inland Sea (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2008), as well as in the pages of Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Fence, jubilat, New American Writing, Peaches and Bats, West Wind Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in North America, once again, where he works for Wave Books.


luck

the mendicant ants who plot the sidewalk
pattern their errors with shapes of intent

these chains of creatures t terms long
derive the contour of a message misread

as bare grammar mapped to finite frames
they accrue along paths of abstract mistake

ants riddle in the dirt a cipher
that rumors noiseless channels down occult warrens

the Rev Thomas Bayes models bodily decay
on these ants black & ochre tricked

just as hills erupt so we sicken
cells will track then feed on kin

the greens & brown of Tom's surroundings
remind that joyous accident forms every place

what did this Mandarin of Chance hide
meaning in the I Ching of insects?

there explodes a storm in the atmosphere
at its edge he makes out rain

chaos miraculous like a cloud of starlings
scatters through the rivers of his nerves

clues of order scar this little Earth
Bayes takes as a blemish from Heaven

    for CR & JM

John Tipton


XX. (letter)

                    your noise in the water pains us
   
sea we sleep and shit in
earth cannot comprehend
the part that subtracts and adds cannot know
Island risen up out of
fire water pushed up
sleeps into earth
who has heard it?
who has heard the material?
small snag to fall back on
who took the water and rose up
your literal
self cannot fathom

the whales swam up the channel
wrote a ninety mile letter through California

people drove to the middle of the state to
look

Beth Murray


from The Alps

Revolution
filled with mythology, architecture
    parties, bathing, the Pope
hanging from the window   
           a happy European


very clean        Yes
very clean, we
           said
yes you
are very
clean

We came
   to wash
the people   
        in vinegar

People! The war is
   The war is

Brandon Shimoda