Ahoy, Poets!

When a ship is launched, we christen the vessel with a bottle of champagne. But how do we christen a book when it is launched?

Today at 2 pm, I have the book launch for my second poetry collection, From the Fever-World. So, if you're in the DC area and need something to keep you occupied, feel free to stop by the Bethesda Writers' Center for a few hours of entertainment. Along with novelist William Littlejohn (winner of the 2009 Washington Writers' Publishing House Prize in fiction), I'll be reading from my new book. To give you a taste, here's one of Ida Lewin lost Yiddish fragments:

the body is a curse
that tastes of fruit
and the body is a fruit
that splits apart
and the parts are rope
to strangulate the tree
and the tree has stretched itself
to reach the stone
and the marble has a face
which cannot smile,
the smile never warms,
and the mouth is animal
forgotten how to eat,
and the hunger
is divided by a dirty knife

[version three]