WCW – Mark Fogarty

Wednesday, September 2, 2015, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

MARK FOGARTY believes, like Shelley, that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. He is a poet, musician, and journalist from Rutherford, NJ. He is the managing editor of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow and emcees the monthly poetry/music reading at GainVille Café, also in Rutherford. He has read his poetry extensively in New York and New Jersey and has had poetry in more than 20 publications. He is the author of five books of poetry from White Chickens Press: Myshkin’s Blues, Peninsula, Phantom Engineer, Sun Nets, and Continuum: The Jaco Poems.

from In Memory of Thomas Ortiz

This high pueblo is isinglass,
the water in the cistern freezes near the sky.
In the clouded ice you can see down a thousand years,
the padres, conquistadores, spirits of the dead.
The dead stay close, the wind tugs them,
they funnel down through rings
and collect in the kiva
on Catholic holy days.
St. Stephen winces but lets them through.
The bishop won’t like it but he’s not here.
Down a thousand years he remembers
how rain washed out the trail
and the stranded ones on top leapt to their death.