Michael Gessner Verse-Virtual 2017 January

January 2017

I live in Tucson with my wife Jane, a watercolorist, and with our dog, Irish. Our son Chris, writes for screen in L.A. My more recent work has appeared in The North American Review, The French Literary Review, Verse Daily, and others. My most recent collections are Transversales (BlazeVOX, 2013,) and Selected Poems (FutureCycle, 2016).

Winter Reading

The historic church packed, the poet,
famous, congenial, mythic & singular,
the atmosphere warmed by adulation
& after the last applause
faded into the dome of the nave,
& the spectacle
& spectators disappeared,
out on the cold pavement
in the parking lot
a crippled girl
who had put on lipstick
& rouge for the occasion,
in a wheel chair
surrounded by other students,
the teacher who brought her,
before she was lifted
into the van,
said, "Yes, I can do that.
Now I know what I want
to be," holding her manuscript
up to the moon.

--first published in Paterson Literary Review

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