Carolyn Kizer, Diana O'Hehir reading at Mudd's

I'm emceeing at Mudd's Cafe tonight with Carolyn Kizer and Diana O'Hehir. Carolyn arrives dressed to the nines in heels and a mink coat. The audience is almost non-existent so we have a small, intimate reading. I hate the industrial cavernous space of Mudd's, in Santa Rosa, but beggars can't be choosers.

Diana reads about living on the earthquake fault. She said that poems fall into categories: children, parents, relationships. I don't believe in God but I'll try anyway, and then she writes a poem about salvation. Poetry of loss and of separation from the mother.

I said my mother's ashes gather dust on the bureau in my brother's room where the forgotten pieces of the discarded past seek eternal rest. A dog chewed on the crucifix, it's a secret hiding place of Sacrament, amid the tarnished golf clubs. Diana tells me to write of an apple and then relate it to my mother. I think the last known wild aurochs died in Poland in 1627, when did the last wood bison die? Fallen among the apples?

Carolyn Kizer, Napa Poetry Conference