POEMS

Saturday, SEPTEMBER 30, 2023: 5:50-6:20pm GREEN MOUNTAIN BOOK FESTIVAL: I’m reading some poems with Flynndog Poets at The Lampshop at Radio Bean, Burlington, Vermont. Many poets are featured throughout the evening. I hope to see you!

Sunday, OCTOBER 29, 2023: Noon-8pm READING MY POEMS AS PART OF THE FOMITE FESTIVAL. Main Street Landing, Battery Street, Burlington, Vermont.

O SONG, my new collection of poems, will be published by Salmon Press in Ireland in 2024! It has been evolving for a long time and I’m thrilled that it will be published by Salmon and distributed in the US + in Ireland. The book sings about the ordinary that’s not ordinary, love, loss + the surprising music of stillness and experience. I’m excited that it will see the light of day. Mixed media art by me below.

Click here to hear me read POEMS FROM MY BOOK, EVERYONE LIVES HERE, WITH DAVE CAVANAGH AND STEVEN RAY SMITH AT MALVERN BOOKS IN AUSTIN, TX   

March, 2020

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with Steven Smith and David Cavanagh at MALVERN BOOKS in Austin, Texas.

613 W. 29th St
Austin, TX 78705
512-322-2097

Click HERE to hear Ross Cagenello interview me as part of the Fomite Author Spotlight series. We talk about my history as an artist-poet studying in Canada, the connection between pierogies and cabaret, and poetry as loaded code & shorthand Thank you, Ross! It was fun.

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BUY Everyone Lives Here HERE



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Poems on the theme of hands in Five:2:One HERE

Nov. 9, 2016

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   AT THE STUDIO

   She decided that when she got there

   she would be okay. Like a place

   could do that:  Like

   a place could rearrange her

   for her. She

   came for the time.

   She came for the backdrop, the backtrack, the endrun, the redress,

   the sideways.

   And she came to watch. She came for the time to watch.

      ~

   I’m down here

   where nothing is lonely. I’m down

   here where

   all is forgiven. I’m down here

   where everything is given

   a theme-

   song and a rhythm,

   a lean

   letter-

   opener, a narrow

   blade of licorice

   a choice.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

   IN THE DREAM

   I.

   In the dream it was a totem pole.

   In the dream there was more than one.

   In the dream we were working together.    

   II.

   In the dream it was stubborn. 

   In the dream it resisted

   completion; it wanted to be a clothes rack

   or a croquet mallet.

   In the dream it would not be built.

   III.

   In the dream it was a penis.

   In the dream it was strapped to my waist

   or surgically attached.

   n the dream it was a soft nozzle,

   a nose.  In the dream

   it could smell me.

   IV.

   In the dream it was a dance.

   It was a dance I invented

   and it moved both ways.

   In the dream I leaned

   into them both

   and fell.

   In the dream I filled.

   In the dream I was a pattern.

   I repeated and grew.

   V.

   In the dream I was walking

   toward the totem, the penis,

   the dance.  In the dream

   I was carrying it off.

_______________________________________________________________

            WHAT DIRT SMELLS LIKE:         

                       deep thunder, layers

                       of mink

                       stole, chocolate

                       cake, crumbled

                       trees, human

                       blood, one-third

                       of your life, the opposite

                       of sky, sleep’s

                       thirsty floor,

                       silver and

                       worms

                       working it under,

                       under and in-

                       side and out, a bed.

_________________________________________

L'EAU

It was the way I could hear her

even when I couldn't hear her.

It was her voice in the water, so

cold that it stung. It was the snowball

bush in the front yard, drunk

on its own gooey sweetness. It

was her arm over her head like

she was reaching for something.

It was moving like that. It was

the center of the earth in each

of her foot soles. It was finally

warm enough. It was her breath

growing mothlike and furred in the

mirror. It was her hair, period. It was

something about salt.

It was moving.

_______________________________________

Click on "Weeping in the Kmart, Premenstrual" reprinted from the Fall/Winter, 2011 issue of Green Mountains Review. Hear Who Will Save Your Soul by Jewell

All work copyrighted www.sharonwebster.com

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