Ah, the Westchester Poetry Festival. Fifth annual. What a fine way to spend a breezy spring day. In our family we have a tradition called Birthday Extravaganza: if the birthday boy calls Birthday Extravaganza on his birthday, he gets to choose all the activities for that weekend. Even though the Festival happened the weekend before I called Extravaganza, that Saturday felt like one just the same. Hour upon hour of doing things I like: listening to poets, writing down memorable lines, and eating cookies. I laughed, I cried, I got to wear my porkpie hat without breaking dress code.

The audience was a funny mix—grey-haired lovers of literature from the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, middle-aged teachers, and teen-aged Masters students with poems to read and friends to support. Aja Monet, the keynote poet, was amazing. Her poems danced back and forth across the interlacing lines of the personal and the political: a fleet-footed double-Dutch of verse virtuosity. She inspired many in that room to deepen their writing, including me. You can find video productions of some of her poems at her website, http://www.ajamonet.com/videos/.

I also got inspired by another poet, Suzanne Cleary, whose poem I’m posting below, along with her headnote explaining the poem’s catalyst. However, the action this poem inspired was a bit more hands-on. I had to try making a sausage candle myself. (See the attached photo.) Unfortunately, all we had in the house was chicken sausage, the healthier and less tasty cousin of real, fat-filled sausage. The chicken sausage candle burned a while, but finally the flame consumed all the nearby fat and choked on the protein.   Next time, I’ll use a Slim Jim. Who says poetry has no practical use?

Sausage Candle

S

t

i

c

k

a wick in a sausage

and light it, and you’ve got

a candle, its flame fed by fat,

not that you’d burn it

on your birthday cake,

not that you’d light two

and process to an altar,

not that you’d want one,

even a small one, flickering

over your romantic dinner.

But the sausage candle gives light.

The sausage candle gives light.

Think of the books you could read

by the light of that candle,

think of the dark passages it might,

given the chance, illuminate.

It is better to light one sausage

than to curse the darkness.

Imagine, for a moment, you dare

set a sausage candle

atop your cake, and

you close your eyes and you wish.

Think of the wishes you could make

if you weren’t afraid of the ridiculous.

 –Suzanne Cleary

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/04/village-voice-2014-poetry-issue.php?page=all