Christian Kiefer—July 24 7:30 PM at SPC

Christian Kiefer, the practitioner of gothic folk songs and back-alley ambient music from Davis will be reading at Sacramento Poetry Center at 7:30 PM on July 24 at HQ for the Arts.

Kiefer's latest book of poems is Feeding into the Winter from March Street Press, but other more work more representative of his current output can be found here (also see below).

He is finishing up his Ph.D. in Ameican Literature at UC Davis, and he keeps a blog to record his musings about the music and recording business, including his lively Crowtown podcast.

He has released two albums this year "The Black Dove" with Sharon Kraus and a solo project "Czar Nicholas is Dead". Both have MP3 tracks available at his Christian Kiefer website.

Later this year he plans to release a psychedelic-folk guitar freak out with Tom Carter called "A Rather Solemn Promise", and he expects several other projects to be released next year.

Come out to see Christian Kiefer and see exactly where poetry and song convene in the open air.

Gravity Well


I would like to note first

that the law governing

the slow stones' circles

is the same law governing

the way in which

a wide-awake man falls

from an open window

to the street below.



Of course, the distance of the sun

is also ruled by the same law.

As are falling apples,

avalanches, landslides,

rollercoasters, and the tides.

The motion of entire galaxies.

The universe itself constantly

crashing together

and blowing apart.



Everything spindles

to a tight atomic swirl.

Even these words

held together in orbit:

always falling

and never touching down.



(Perhaps it could be the same

for the wide-awake man

falling from an open window.

The earth spun over

and a small figure suspended

over towns and villages:

an absence in blue sky,

a faint moving star in the night.


(originally published in The Sierra Nevada College Review, Vol. XIII, Spring 2002)


Winter


A strange silence could fall

over the things of the world.

If it happened

it would come like winter.



From inside the night

you cough out your sickness

three times and fall silent again.

I already know that tonight

I will dream of suffocation.



Outside, the snow is audible.

Each time it startles.

And winter comes as always:

secreted in snow.

Now I know I am finally

dead or dreaming.

For only the silence

remains as it was.

Even in my nightmares

it is identical to itself.



This winter never ends.

Until all hearts

are cold and silent.

And together we will sit

in the frozen yard by the

propane tank and we will

say nothing and our eyes

will freeze, open at last.

And it will never cover us.

Even if we sit here forever.

And it will never stop snowing.