The Segue Reading Series Presents:

Thomas Fink and Elizabeth Willis

Saturday, April 26, 2008 ** 4PM SHARP**
at the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery, just north of Houston)
$6 admission goes to support the readers

hosted by erica kaufman & Tim Peterson

Thomas Fink is the author of five books of poetry, including Clarity and Other Poems. He is the author of two books of criticism, most recently A Different Sense of Power, and he is the co-editor of Burning Interiors: David Shapiro's Poetry and Poetics. His paintings hang in various collections. Fink is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia.

from "Deconstricted Sestina 5"

Dialogue will swerve repeatedly before it survives
patriarchy. Thanks for not smoking inside. I
trust you to profit from any experiment
that respects the survival of those not

yet as fit. Reach into my pocket
and husband what's left. My husband assumes
immortality, but one attentive scribe is becoming
my sole access to recommencing dialogue, into

which labors or equalization should
be poured. My thanks are
colored by suspicion of vested

recollection. Lately, many fund Plato's
experiment; mine could take several

millennia to breed a profit.

Elizabeth Willis' most recent book is Meteoric Flowers. Other works include Turneresque, The Human Abstract, and Second Law. Formerly poet-in-residence at Mills College, she now teaches at Wesleyan University and lives in central Massachusetts.

"Her Mossy Couch"

I stain lengthwise all I touch. The world is so touching, seen this
way, in fleshtones, aggrieved, gleaming as the lights go out, look-
ing into the crease of relativity. We've seen this before, why? Tri-
umph arches over us like bad emotion. We were supposed to feel
more connected to it, we were supposed to feel humanly moved
by imaginary strings. All the words in the world are moving pic-
tures to the dizzy ear, fleas, inadequate deceptions of nocturnal
hair, pushing buttons, pushing papers, pushing pedals up the
long hill. Who could get over the blatant radiance of a name like
Doris Day, throwing your finest features into political relief, a
warehouse in the shadow of apples and streams?