Sherry Chandler

Bloggers like to talk about the strange search phrases that lead readers to their sites. Mine are usually very mundane – people searching the names of poets I’ve featured or some innocent words like “Kentucky” or “poetry” or something like that. But this morning, I had to laugh when I found that some one had been referred to my site from AOL on this search phrase:

HOT SPOTS FOR WOMEN IN PARIS KY.FOR SEX

Searcher, you have my deepest sympathies, and if I were you, I’d count on having to drive to Lexington.

George Eklund teaches at Morehead State University. He has, in fact, taught my son, which is how I learned about him. He works with Morehead’s literary magazine, Inscape, and the Morehead reading series. He’s published in many magazines and anthologies, but as far as I know, does not have a book out.

I started this 30 days of poets and poetry with an Ars Poetica – a type of poem I’ve never been able to write – and so it seemed appropriate to post this poem as a sort of bookend. It was first published in Crazyhorse Issue 65 and can also be found on Web del Sol.

Essay on Ars Poetica

Damn the art of my seeing,
how it makes the stomach suffer
in the cleave of the moon,
in the dark waters of dawn
that hold us all in every breath.
There was a cup of tea at my wrist;
where did it go?
God damn the art in the blue haze of the bare trees.
Acids repeated in my misshapen head,
in the small events of the cigarettes,
in the Caspian dream of yellow sand
and the broken fingers that bloodied the chain.
The yard lights burn in the dreams of cows
a mile off the highway.
Something twisted shapes the tree.
A fever of light throbs up the hill.
I have destroyed everything.
I have touched nothing.