Earthly Delights

The End of an Era

Our resolutions this year have included such things as go to the Farmer's Market every Sunday, and eat less at restaurants and more at home, and organic, organic, organic. We're still trying to make these resolutions part of everyday life, but circumstances make it challenging: I run Sunday mornings, sometimes past the point it's worthwhile to head out to the farmer's market. Sometimes it's way easier for me to pick up a salad than to buy all the ingredients and hope I will have time and energy to chop it all up and take it to work with me. Sometimes our budget doesn't allow for all organic.

Last night we had what we decided would be our last late night meal--it was 10pm when we started in on it, and it was absolutely what we both craved: a medium Raffalo's pizza with fresh garlic and pepperoni.

Just last weekend, we had a most amazing meal at Pappy & Harriet's (all meals are amazing there, actually). We split a plate of steak, mashed potatoes, and steamed carrots that accompanied our numerous Stella beers we'd been putting away since 6pm. The late evening meal awoke us at 3am with slight indigestion, and we both read magazines and books until 4am. Our guts are not young anymore and we can expect less tolerance from them. We'll do right by them, we've decided. No more late night feasts. Last night was the finale.

Come Have a Drink this Sunday...

Rhapsodomancy Presents:

ASHAKI JACKSON LARRY COLKER LUCIA GALLOWAY KATE GALE

Sunday, February 12, 2006
Doors open at 7:00 - Reading begins at 7:15pm

The Good Luck Bar, 1514 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles (east Hollywood/Silver Lake: corner of Hollywood & Hillhurst)

Email for directions/info: rhapsodomancyla@yahoo.com
RSVP at rhapsodomancyla@yahoo.com
$3 suggested donation
There will be a cash bar.
Questions or more info: rhapsodomancyla@yahoo.com or http://rhapsodomancy.typepad.com

About the writers:

Kate Gale received her Ph.D. in American Literature at Claremont Graduate University. She currently serves as the President of PEN USA and the Managing Editor of Red Hen Press.She is the author of seven books and the editor of four anthologies. Her five collections of poetry include: Blue Air, Where Crows and Men Collide, Selling the Hammock, Fishers of Men and the most recent Mating Season (Tupelo). Ms. Gale has had poems and short stories published in literary magazines including Arshile, Portland Review, and The Connecticut Review and has read at numerous venues including the Library of Congress, the University of London, Columbia University, Cody’s in Berkeley and Book Soup in Los Angeles. She is the editor of The Los Angeles Review. She was the first place winner of the 1998 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. Her current projects include a novel, Dead Chickens, and Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera by Don Davis, which was conducted by Grant Gershon and presented on November 6, 2005 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Lucia Galloway, who lives in Claremont, Califonia, earned her M.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She taught literature and writing in both high schools and colleges and currently teaches writing on line for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth distance education program. Lucia has published poems in a number of print and on-line journals, including Columbia Poetry Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Flyway, Full Circle, Gertrude, The Lyric, Poetry Midwest, Sierra Nevada Review, and Spillway. She was awarded the Robert Haiduke Poetry Prize (1997) and was twice a finalist in the Robert Penn Warren Poetry Competition. She won a first-place award in the 2005 Dancing Poetry Festival Competition (Artists Embassy International), where she appeared in San Francisco as a featured reader. Recently, she also featured at other West Coast venues in the Bay Area and in Washington State as well as in Pasadena and her hometown of Claremont. A chapbook of Lucia’s poems, Playing Outside, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2005.

Larry Colker co-hosts the weekly Redondo Poets reading at Coffee Cartel in Redondo Beach, CA. He taught at USC before switching to technical writing for the software industry. Larry's poems have appeared in print and online journals that include Spillway, RATTLE, Solo, The Los Angeles Review, The Cortland Review, Cider Press Review, Pearl, 51%, and in anthologies from Beyond the Valley of the Contemporary Poets, Tebot Bach and Poeticdiversity.com. He was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2003 he published a collection titled What the Lizard Knows: New and Selected Poems. Larry hails from West Virginia and now resides in San Pedro, CA.

Ashaki Jackson is a poet from Clovis, California by way of Houston, Texas. Her aesthetic has been described as a Duende-like yet sensual sociospective. Her poems are often snapshots of a cityscape, current or past. Ashaki has been featured in The Griot, Coloring Book: An Eclectic Anthology of Fiction and Poetry by Multicultural Writers, and on several spoken word CDs (with Nostalgic Progression in 2002, and The Awakening in 2001). Ashaki is an MFA candidate in poetry at Antioch University, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. candidate in Social Psychology at Claremont Graduate University.