Poetry Super Highway

Poetry Super Highway

September 26 – October 2, 2011: Taylor Graham and Sam Silva

week of September 26 – October 2, 2011

Taylor Graham and Sam Silva

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Taylor Graham
poetspiper@att.net

Bio (auto)

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler out of Placerville, CA. Her poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. She’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor was awarded the Robert Philips Poetry Chapbook Prize, and she’s a finalist in Poets & Writers’ California Writers Exchange. Her latest book – Walking with Elihu: poems on Elihu Burritt, the Learned Blacksmith – is available on Amazon.

The following work is Copyright © 2011, and owned by Taylor Graham and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.


Styx on the Road to Charleston

     Half-naked negroes, with a bundle of pine splints lighted in their hands,
walked between the outer fires and the passengers down to the boats.
         – Elihu Burritt, 1854

Behold, a scene from Dante or Greek myth:
the sullen river lit with flares, as boats
sit waiting for their burdens. Here, the Great
Pedee runs swift between primeval banks.
Here, silence is the screen dividing North
from South. The fire-lights flit and flicker, glare
and dim by fit of wind. And all is done
in darkness, seen and unseen interchanged.

A devil stokes the forge that sears your sight.
The ferryman, the torch-men – how they quake,
these Negroes black as angels who once fell
from freedom to a fiery gorge. They stand
and wait their token. Now has come your time
to turn your back, or board and take your place.


Sam Silva
samsilva54@nc.rr.com

Bio (auto)

Sam Silva lives in Fayetteville, N.C. He has published at least 150 poems in print magazines, including Sow’s Ear, The ECU Rebel, Pembroke magazine, Samisdat, St. Andrew’s Review, Charlotte Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, and many more. Has published at least 300 poems in online journals including Jack Magazine, Comrades, Megaera, Poetry Super Highway, physik garden, Ken again, -30-, Fairfield Review, Foliate oak, and dozens of others. Three legitmate small presses have published chapbooks of his, three of those presses have nominated work of his for Pushcart a total of 7 times. Bright Spark Creative of Wilimington purchased rights to his first full length book EATING AND DRINKING and put the book out through author house at there expense. He now has many books and chapbooks available at lulu.com and Amazon.com and his spoken word poetry is avaible at the major digital markets such as Apple i tunes.

The following work is Copyright © 2011, and owned by Sam Silva and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Before the Awakening Into Dream

Being alone
without a living word to call to
…nature sings to us
of this dark desperation!, unfolds
her petals, loves with a jungle’s rage,
and dashes a shoreline’s ocean
of waves like all hope!

How can a lonely man give up without dying?
Alcohol and cigarettes on a country porch
gone impoverished to rot! Laudanum! Codeine!
The harrowing junk of the city’s needle!, to distract
that final urge to sleep.

A lonely boy in a manger…counting sheep.

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