October 9

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Poet Sebastian Lockwood’s new collection, Written in Granite, has fourteen poems and four stories. Folded in with the text are a series of paintings and photographs that reflect the themes of the poems and stories. Many of the poems are woven into the short stories. The stories are set in 1862 in the Fox Tavern at Hancock Inn, New Hampshire. Three of the stories feature three famous women, two of whom knew each other. Emily Dickinson, as The Woman in White in Rooks & Indian Pudding and Helen Hunt Jackson in The Woman with an Owl On Her Head knew each other well and were powerful friends. Fly Rod Crosby was an extraordinary sportswoman and fellow sharpshooter with Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane. Here are some excerpts:

DUENDE

Sebastian Lockwood

Tell me to dance on the rim of the well
To chance with Death on the lip of the source
To ask that Spirit to come out and play
So we dance to a slow chicanery
We danced the Bull’s slow death to cape and sword
Then how the Muse sang in me, the words came
A bestiary, a menagerie
Words torn like salt on a wound, words torn
From a soul on fire, as the spirit says
Duende comes from the heart of your heart
And so we slow danced till the end of time
Told tall tales and sang the long sad sagas
Listened to the heckling call of Crows
Kissed heaven and thanked Duende for this!

Calypso’s Craft

Now you hand me the double-headed axe
So sharp it can whisper hair from your cheek
And its haft of Olive wood and that smell
Home, hearth, sweet bed and Penelope
You take me to you grove of special trees
Pine, tall and straight as truth, Myrtle and Oak
Soon I find the rhythm of my swing
When I pause there are twenty trees at my feet
And you there with adze and auger saying
Build it, build the craft of your spirit
Go and fly on the broad back of the sea
Run from me and this immortality
You need the spark of your mortality
She laughed and blew a great wind in my sails

— Sebastian Lockwood

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