Hearst Center for the Arts
Cedar Falls, Iowa
Featured Reader
Patrick Irelan
Patrick Irelan is the author of two family memoirs: A Firefly in the Night and Central Standard: A Time, a Place, a Family. His short stories and essays have appeared in a variety of journals and magazines. The short story “Reruns” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Irelan is the father of two daughters. He lives in Iowa.
by Patrick Irelan
I reach the safety of the guest house, where Yes-Yes awaits me. She massages my neck and shoulders to calm my spirit. She removes my shirt and smoothes my skin with coconut oil and guar gum. I fall asleep. In my dream Tex Beneke Yutter and Artie Shaw Yutter are dueling with rolled copies of USA Today.
When I awake, dinner is ready. Yes-Yes has prepared a meal of squid, Hamburger Helper, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. After dinner we share a bottle of bulk-process champagne. I stare at Yes-Yes. She is beautiful in her colorful native garb. She removes her clothes, and I remove mine. Her skin is the color of ivory. Mine is the color of peeled bananas.
We hurry to bed, and I tell her I love her. I tell her I will always love her. I tell her I have never loved anyone else. At a crucial moment, a loud noise interrupts our progress. The interpreter has fallen off his chair.
Poetry by Kimberly Groninga
$7.95
Kimberly
Groninga makes a splendid debut in her new chapbook of poetry Other Things that Grow. In this work,
we learn to perceive the world with a more care and with a more precise lens.
Groninga views common objects--the barrel of a flute—common experiences—falling
asleep—and common places—a tree in her backyard-- with unusual detail and
insight. Groninga approaches her world from the angle of a fine sculptor to
reveal the true essence of what we take for granted in the environment around
us.
--Mary Swander,
Poet Laureate of the State of Iowa, author of The Girls on the Roof.
Kimberly Groninga’s debut collection, Other Things that
Grow, is like a constellation of stars, winking bright and hard in a winter
sky. Her scintillating poems often orbit around the organic, the natural and
quick: aphids riding “tiny helicopters” from a cottonwood tree, a lover like a
beetle “grasping you with appendages,” a “whodunit ladybug red / like zooming
copper,” a child “who waves like a pennant, ripples and snaps / like a flag.”
Groninga looks our bright and hard lives dead in the eye and comes away with
sharply observed truths to help us all understand deeply our own worlds. Brava,
Kim.
-- Vince Gotera, author of Fighting Kite and Ghost Wars
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