Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery (located on 106 Prospect Street in Cambridge) with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On August 24th, our summer of visiting poets continues with Elizabeth Szewczyk, who was rescheduled from the 10th due to illness.
Elizabeth Szewczyk is the award-winning author of the book, This Becoming, (Big Table Publishing Co., 2009). She has published poems in Sanskrit, Crazylit, Chantarelle's Notebook, Shapes, and other poetry journals. She is an English teacher at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield, CT, and the co-editor of the poetry journal, Freshwater. Elizabeth is a recipient of the Connecticut Celebration of Excellence award in writing and also the author of a memoir book, My Bags Were Always Packed. A sample poem follows below.
Migrant
Their parents picked all day---
tobacco, corn, wheat, apples,
until the sun set and their fingers
stained yellow, holes deep in layers of skin.
But the children…
Can you teach me how to write my name?
Show me how to tie my sneaker?
Give me money---you’re rich, you have a home.
And I, at sixteen, ran from them, never
looked back, afraid this disease
would sicken my father, my mother, me.
Afraid I would have to ask
white girls with clean red sneakers
to give me money for bread.
--Elizabeth Szewczyk
Click here for reviews of This Becoming.
