Of
They come like excited voices in a foreign language:
emergencies on the other side of town
drawing streaming sirens down the boulevards
waking various tots and dogs.
It’s one of the ways things fit,
yet writing it is no better
than speaking into one’s beard
as Lawrence said about breathing—
extraordinary—though no one’s disposed
to state the fact.
Several car horns—corny, weak—
simply want to get the old man
going, who was already on his way
from a fruit stall and headed
to a place I don’t know
but know of, bags hanging low
from either hand.
Q: Where is your favorite place to write?
A: In the English garden in my back yard.
Q: Do you remember the first poem you read that really blew your mind?
A: Louise Bogan, “Kept”
Q: What is the most interesting thing that has happened to you in the last 12 months?
A: I drove a rented Jeep Commander from Seattle to San Francisco and back, by way of mystic Mt. Shasta, snowy Crater Lake, the forbidding deserts of eastern Oregon, then across the majestic Palouse and the pointy, severe Cascades.
David Rigsbee is the author of 20 books and chapbooks, most recently The Red Tower: New and Selected Poems (NewSouth Books, 2010) and The Pilot House (Black Lawrence 2011) winner of the 2009 Black River Poetry Chapbook competition. His new book, School of the Americas, will be published by Black Lawrence next year.
