Stangeland's "A Good Day (for a Miracle)" ... Mon., 3/12, 6 p.m. we read at Cornelia St. Cafe

Joannie Stangeland

Right off the bat I want to hear the backstory. It doesn't matter, of course, but "she," in this poem, is so strong and so situated by the female Global Positioning System which zeroes in on body, city, psyche, I am connected.

And then there's the fact I'll be reading with the author, Joannie Stangeland, in a little over a week.  On Monday, March 12, at 6 p.m., Joannie, Margo Berdeshevsky and I will read our poetry at the Cornelia St. Cafe.

(29 Cornelia Street between Bleecker and West 4th in Greenwich Village--Click here for specifics.)

Joannie is coming in from Seattle. Margo in from Paris. Both are former New Yorkers.  

Joannie’s new book, Into the Rumored Spring, is available from Ravenna Press. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks—A Steady Longing for Flight, which won the Floating Bridge Press chapbook award, and Weathered Steps from Rose Alley Press. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and on Seattle-area buses. She has been a Jack Straw Writer; teaches classes at Richard Hugo House in Seattle; and is the poetry editor for the online journal The Smoking Poet.

A Good Day (for a Miracle)

She feels the bodies of water, the bodies inside bodies, the water

inside her.

Sunlight softens the lagoon, the canals, a green glint. Sunlight

warms the mud.

Illness is messy and the body, a swamp. Life is messy,

and sometimes she feels

pain, less or more, like a souvenir, the guidebook with pictures,

narrow passages

on a map. She flexes, extends, her shoulder blades a pair

of bones like wings, her ribs,

and then her false ribs. She breathes the smell of spring. Quando

sogna di Venezia,

she crosses bridges, glides under them. She passes the Piazza

Ducale, the C’a d’Oro, Santa

Maria dei Miracoli. She lifts her arms—first one,

then the other, her arms and the wrists

that feather the oars. When she dreams of Venice, she feels

the spring inside her.

____ 

Joannie Stangeland, 2011