Poetry off the Shelf: Orlando Ricardo Menes & Dan Vera

Hey Chicago!

Just a reminder:

This Thursday, the Poetry Foundation will host two gifted Latino poets at its HQ for a reading, book signing, and reception: Dan Vera -- author of Speaking Wiri Wiri, which won the inaugural Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press prize -- and Orlando Ricardo Menes, who judged the contest and whose newest collection, Fetish, won last year's Prairie Schooner Book Prize. 

Poetry Off the Shelf: Orlando Ricardo Menes & Dan Vera

Thursday, Oct 24, 7:00PM

Poetry Foundation
61 West Superior Street
Free admission

 

And here's a preview.

 

Windfall Antiques

 

Overdrawn, repoed Grand Prix, workshop in hock

To the dogs, Papá mends houses of refugees

Who niggle over how much grout to squeeze

Into a crack, who bathe in their girdles and socks

To skimp on Fab. Checks bounce, taxmen hound, the truck's

Muffler shot, Papá scouts groomed lawns for settes,

Divans, chaises meant for Goodwill, windfall antiques

To fix with mallet, strainer, needle, twine, & chalk.

"Waste is for gringos," he'd say, tapping brass nails

That wiggle on warped pine or straining buckram

On a crippled carcass, my hands dull as I shear

Chintz for skirts, though Papá, reverent with details,

Irons burlap, measures the tweed sleeves & trim

In metrics, smoothes out horsehairs to cashmere.

 

 --from Fetish (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), by Orlando Ricardo Menes

-- Learn more about the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize here.

-- Visit the Letras Latinas blog here.

--et