J.D. Scrimgeour reading and interview, Donna L. Emerson, Louie Cronin, and W.T. Abernathy.

Thursday, March 22, 2007
6:30 PM – 8:00 PM
Featured Writer: J.D. Scrimgeour
Student Writers: Jessica Marshall and Jeff Metcho

J.D. Scrimgeour is a professor of English and director of creative writing at Salem State College. His most recent collection of poetry, The Last Miles, was published in 2005. Scrimgeour lives in Salem, MA with his wife, fiction writer, Eileen FitzGerald, and their two sons.

CLICK HERE to read an interview with J.D. Scrimgeour.



A House He Can See Out Of - Donna L. Emerson

He collects windows.
Finds doors, white.
Buys two-by-four studs,
two-by-twelve kiln-dried pine.

For five years he pieces them together,
a glass house he can look out of.
He sleeps in a tent on his land,
his grandfather’s land, his mother’s land.

His hand points to where the old logs rot:
“That’s the most fertile soil.
Isn’t it pleasant to look out on?”
By his mother’s grave, his father’s headstone.

A chickadee builds a late mossy nest
when he is not looking, in the corner
where his top beams meet.
She flies off whenever he comes near.

He doesn’t know why she sits
on her nest so long.
She waits on surrounding branches
for him to leave.

He climbs a ladder, sees three fuzzy
balls breathing in and out,
all hearts and feathers.
The nest floor pulsates.

He moves his camp,
half an acre away to give her
night privacy.

She waits on the locust tree by day
for him to finish the big window.



The Problem With Dead People, by Louie Cronin.
"Barbara knew better than to call. She knew that if she dialed any of her friends first, she’d be talked out of it." (more)




Giardini Naxos, by W.T. Abernathy.