The Londonberry Salon reads

The Londonberry Salon showed up at the Sacramento Poetry Center on August 23, 2010. The salon was responsible for putting out The Larkfield Review in 20o9 which was edited by husband and wife team Greg Randall and Toni Wilkes and featured four poets: Shawn Pittard, Mary Petrosky, Roy Mash, and Christina Hutchins. These four poets were the featured readers, introduced by Randall and Wilkes, on this night at SPC.

Why I Don't Write Confessional Poetry

So many laws argue so many sins — Milton, Paradise Lost

When I was nineteen, I confessed my sexual indiscretions to an eighty-year-old High Priest — a Latter-Day Apostle — who wrote them all down on a long, yellow pad. He meticulously transcribed each incident, by category, while asking clarifying questions. Was that you on her? Or her on you? His Mont Blanc scribbled furiously.

Below a painting of the blue-eyed Jesus, praying desperately for His own deliverance in Gethsemane, I could taste the contents of that bitter cup.

The old man pushed a box of Kleenex across the cluttered desktop. Sometimes, he said, people show sorrow for their sins. The second hand ticked on the wall clock. Basketballs bounced on the hardwood floor down the hallway — Church League. He nodded toward the white tissue with a thin smile of encouragement. It's a matter of excommunication.

Lot's wife was told do not look back or she would be turned into a pillar of salt. Some days, I can feel the heat of that burning city in the middle of my back — as I walk, and walk, and walk away.

— Shawn Pittard

Alberto's Love Song

When Lena turns,

rises slowly onto her toes

above the other young women,

Alberto is mesmerized

by the arc of her calves

through yellow cotton, by

her stillness, this cactus flower

barely open to the sun amid red

poppies whose flutter and nod

tantalizes the passing Sunday crowds.

Again and again, he watches Lena

glide from her canvas-covered soles

to point. Each time catches

the quiver of her jaw

just as she breaks

pose and slides down

into the bevy of skirts.

He know how small

is the gate to vulnerability.

Knows Lena is a thorn bird,

weaves her nest into a dome

of barbed twigs. He doesn't

mind getting his hand pricked

coaxing her

out, little camastero

he can make fly.

—Mary Petrosky

Pinkie

here's my pinkie finger

weakest of any

I use it

for entering small places

nose holes eye nooks ear mazes

incorrigible pansy

scrupulous peon

immaculate pal o' mine

always at the end of things

like an aisle seat

always coy always

the lilting one

junior partner of the firm

the one who attends to the details

itself a detail

daughter I must leave out

of the boy scout salute

who flirts with my thumb

when I'm nervous

definitive unit of etiquette

meticulous imp

ultimate runt

I've tried to teach it guitar

make it type

play golf

karate

it's useless!

It wants to be insignificant or nothing

to know at the end no one

have no one

know it

unfamous as a thread

ninny of my care

stick without width.

—Roy Mash (first published in miller's pond)

A Way Back To Life

From Russians I learned never to shake hands

across a threshold, but a half-hour after

rising, I return to set my cool hand into the bed

where a river of a dreamheat lingers, the still-warm

flank of our horse's dark gallop.

To make sure it was me they got, my parents

put up all night with a mockingbird

perched aloud in one of three liquid birches

a handspan from their open window. Do you

I'd make that up? Ask me,

and I might tell you the joke that rolls

like a yellow marble from all that I have made.

A cloak of lightning around my shoulders,

I can slip like a drumbeat into the actual world.

If only making love did not

also make loss. If only a curtain call

and the dead lifted their bodies,

lithe. From the surprise taxi emerged a child

beautiful in her buttoned coat, but on the stones

even her small feet sang

the terrible clatter. You have suggested we

take the floating trip, meaning, perhaps, without

formal destination. Will you bury your head

in the softness of my belly where old

yearnings still sleep? Continent

to continent, homeless and without

fixed beliefs, perhaps a large part laughter,

there is nowhere loss will refuse

to take us. I have decided to trust

the late night horse and its riders.

—Christina Hutchins (first published in The Missouri Review)

All poems were published in The Larkfield Review 2009 and were read on August 23, 2010.