As director of the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College, Sandy Hook resident Charles Rafferty has contributed poetry to The New Yorker, Doubletake, the Southern Quarterly and the Connecticut Review. Read the sample below to see why Ian Morris of TriQuarterly regards him a creator of “marvels of certainty and dread, of form and lyric, of--in the words of the poet himself—‘pith and essence’.”APPETITES
When he gets home she
is drinking
from the aquarium, and as she brushes the hair back
to give him her face hello, he swears
he can see the ragged fin of a damselfish
sucked in. What kind of woman is this--
who eats his fish in secret, whose salty kiss
he's starting to understand? There was a time
when he found her pockets full of soil.
Days later he discovered the scoop marks
where her fingers had been in the dirt
of his potted palms. Another time her mouth
had tasted like dimes, and he regretted
the coin collection--the little gods
and Indians that lived underneath his socks.
Suddenly he has an explanation for his missing
keys, the remote control, the photos
in the album removed like words
in a steady redaction of his past.
Could she really have been swallowing his life
while he kissed her hard and paid the bills?
He remembers her penchant for negligees
and dirty stories, the arch of her body
above him. And there it is. His breath held fast
and devoured, without effort or malice,
as if it were the plaything of a woman bored
who hasn't come round to cruelty.
from the aquarium, and as she brushes the hair back
to give him her face hello, he swears
he can see the ragged fin of a damselfish
sucked in. What kind of woman is this--
who eats his fish in secret, whose salty kiss
he's starting to understand? There was a time
when he found her pockets full of soil.
Days later he discovered the scoop marks
where her fingers had been in the dirt
of his potted palms. Another time her mouth
had tasted like dimes, and he regretted
the coin collection--the little gods
and Indians that lived underneath his socks.
Suddenly he has an explanation for his missing
keys, the remote control, the photos
in the album removed like words
in a steady redaction of his past.
Could she really have been swallowing his life
while he kissed her hard and paid the bills?
He remembers her penchant for negligees
and dirty stories, the arch of her body
above him. And there it is. His breath held fast
and devoured, without effort or malice,
as if it were the plaything of a woman bored
who hasn't come round to cruelty.
Rafferty will be reading tonight at the Poetry Institute selections from
Unleashable Dog, his tenth collection forthcoming from Steel Toe Books. A grant
recipient from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut
Commission on Culture & Tourism, Rafferty’s other collections include The Man On the Tower (University of Arkansas Press, 1995), Where the Glories of April Lead (Mitki/Mitki Press, 2001) and A Less Fabulous Infinity (Louisiana Literature Press, 2006). Saturday Night at
Magellan's, a short story collection, is due for release from
Fomite Press.
An eclectic celebration of the form, the Poetry Institute’s Open
Mic Poetry program is hosted by Alice-Anne
Harwood, Elizabeth Cleary and Mark McGuire-Schwartz and meets the third Thursday of each month in the warm setting
of the New Haven-based Young Men’s Institute Library reading room on the second
floor, beginning at 7:00 pm (please arrive early to sign up to read). Refreshments
are served.
For more information, contact pi-New Haven at:
The Institute Library
847 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT
847 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT
Email: PoetryInstitute@gmail.com
Homepage: http://thepoetryinstitute.com
