National Poetry Month, CA Conrad at Avid Books, Athens

from The Book of Frank

CA Conrad

Frank’s sister grew long blue feathers

she said it was worse than cutting teeth

she spent a month screaming in the cave

pushing them out

Frank would lie in bed at night

touching his own back

crying

praying it wouldn’t

come to him

but the day his sister flew to the house

he stood by the window in awe

giant blue spread coming in across the lake

he heard the hunter’s shot before she did

...

Frank remembers

shirts of buried generals

flying in formation

over schoolyards

blowing wasps from sleeves

...

Frank knows a

butterfly

who wonders

about her old

caterpillar

friends

...

she was exotic company

her mouth

full of mouse

Frank never heard a word

his gaze

steady on the mouse

disappearing to reappear

with every syllable

devoted

he prayed

to God she’d

marry him

but late in the night

she touched his hand

Frank recoiled

and realized

it was really

the mouse

in her mouth

he loved

CA CONRAD will be reading today at Avid Books in Athens, GA. He is currently on a Southern tour that takes him from North Carolina to New Orleans. From a review by Mary Wilson at Make: A Chicago Literary Magazine: The Book of Frank (Wave Books, second edition 2010) collects sixteen years worth of CA Conrad's semi-autobiographical “Frank” poems into one volume, which includes previously unpublished poems and a new afterword by Eileen Myles. Frank is Conrad’s alter ego in the vein of John Berryman’s “Huffy Henry” of The Dream Songs, a third person embodiment of Conrad’s psychic unease. Conrad was raised in rural Pennsylvania and “escaped” to Philadelphia in 1986, where he met a number of artists and writers, including writer and publisher Gil Ott, who soon became something of a mentor to him. Ott was at that time publishing writers like Charles Bernstein and Bob Perelman in his magazine Paper Air, and through him Conrad quickly found his contemporaries. He is now hosting poetry readings, designing and leading “(Soma)tic poetry” workshops, giving tarot readings (he’s interested in the occult) and writing with and about fellow poets in the group blog PhillySound.