Poetry In Beautiful Burbank

Colloquy, Reading, Online Floricanto

Michael Sedano 

Two o’clock on a Friday afternoon makes an ideal hour to start a poetry reading, and with poets Alicia Viguer-Espert in tandem with Nancy Murphy, La Bloga gladly takes a seat in the Buena Vista Branch of Burbank Public Library. 

We enjoy an hour-plus of engaging dialogue and astounding poetry between the poets, then a Q&A with responsive listeners. And we're home before dark. Órale to the planners.

The hour comes as a feature in Reader Engagement Librarian Kyle Moreno’s service to the library’s mission. It’s an active poetry program with longevity; for example, in June 2024, La Bloga attended an early iteration of a conversation/reading, "Writing from Our Immigrant Hearts." (link. The innovative panel reading will be published in book form in the near future, details to follow.)

Viguer-Espert and Murphy’s mutual interview blending poetry performance offers this audience a satisfying listening and learning experience. Hearing superbly written and expressed work is the raison d’être for attending a poetry hour, and the poets not only fulfill but surpass expectations for sublime writing. More, colloquy of two minds into the discovery of subjects, disclosure,  and other vital elements of the poetry writing process, enriches the readings. The poets’ talk informs and sharpens insight into poems of empty places, absence, distance and separation.

The poets granted La Bloga-Tuesday permission to share a poem from the Friday reading to accompany the portraits captured during the readings.

 Alicia Viguer-Espert

She Lifts Her Burka 

By Alicia Viguer-Espert

I wonder how tough this young Kabul woman has it. This woman who shows me her lovely fifteen years old face, polished nails bright red, and the green eyes of a 1985 National Geographic cover. A youth already betrothed to a man three times her age, a friend of her father’s, luckily with only one wife, she whispers. Leaning on the noise of a building’s façade to hide her dismay, or protect herself from viewers, she pushes her chaperone’s hands as they try to pull the burka back. At home family prepares Halwa and praises God for the engagement. Nervous, asks about life in Europe, if I am allowed to dance until sunrise, how often women die in childbirth, whether I am married, and if my husband beats me. With the last question her smile disappears. I survey the snowy ridges circling us like rapacious birds starving for prey in that frigid December morning. He’s a good man, maybe he’ll let me go back to school, she says frowning.

I think about her often, her beauty, youth, pray fate will treat her with enough benevolence to raise healthy, educated children. She wouldn’t have had a chance, untrained as she was, but her daughters did before the Taliban. Now icy clouds of misery engulf the city, women sit around clanky kerosene stoves without kerosene, debate the dangers of defying the jailers to have a life of their own, or else. 

a bright light

fades fast

under the burka

Nancy Murphy

                                                                                   

 

All that Bergamot*

By Nancy Murphy

We are on our way from LA to Zion, 

the one in Utah. We stop in Hemet, 

 

the desert, a Starbucks. I need a midday 

lift. A man sits in a battered wheelchair 

 

by the entrance, no hat. It’s 102 degrees. 

His clothes an assembly of fabrics 

 

the color of an espresso he can’t afford. 

Sunburnt leathered face, patches 

 

of a beard, he was a blonde once. He was 

a lot of things once. I motion Brian 

 

to avoid walking past him. It’s just

a reflex. Not personal. Inside the cool 

 

café I order my usual–tea latte 

with English Breakfast tea, not

 

Earl Grey (all that bergamot!), 

soy milk for its sweet vanilla traces,

 

one Splenda, something I hope 

doesn’t kill me one day if they find

 

it causes cancer. But I’ve tried to quit

and I just can’t. As I wait I notice 

 

how I’m still able to make eye contact 

with strangers even with our masks on.

 

I think, we are all learning to use 

our eyes more. Humans are a wonder. 

 

The man outside the door comes into my mind. 

No one looks him in the eye. Sympathy floods

 

me, and some shame. But what does that buy? 

Even so, I resolve to give him something, 

 

and to ask him something. I say nothing 

as we exit. He turns towards us, the usual pitch 

 

beginning, Hey do you….I lurch forward, 

drop some bills into his lap so I don’t 

 

have to touch his hands, because, well 

covid of course. Then I pause, lean in, take in 

 

his face. I say, What’s your name?

He startles, squints, replies, What’s my name?

 

I turn quickly now with a small wave, 

mumble goodbye, hurry on to the car, 

 

flushed from the heat, the moment. 

Brian stands waiting, holding the door 

 

open for me, a habit he can’t break, 

a habit that makes me impatient. I’m 

 

ungrateful like that.    Then I hear 

a voice calling out behind me.            

 

Floyd.  My name is Floyd.

 

* The characteristic flavor of Earl Grey tea comes from the addition of bergamot.