FINAL THURSDAY READING SERIES

Thursday, January 30 @ 7:30

Featured Reader: Jonathan Stull

Cedar Falls' monthly open mic returns to Vibe for another year! Come to hear the readers or to take the stage yourself.  Read your best five minutes or so of poetry, fiction, or creative non-fiction.  Singer-songwriters are also welcome.  Open mic signup begins @ 7 p.m. on a first come, first served basis.  Limited slots are available, so readers are encouraged to sign up early.  The open mic begins at 7:30 p.m. and runs up to one hour.  During the breaks, we are also proud to feature the classical guitar of Bill Koch.

This month’s featured reader is Jonathan Stull, author of the poetry collection, Singing the Lake’s Desire, published in 1999 and now in its second printing.  His poetry has appeared in journals including the North American Review, the Kansas Quarterly, the Wascana Review, Artword Quarterly, Poem and the Briar Cliff Review.  Stull, who has an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Iowa, teaches English concurrently at Waterloo Expo High School and at the University of Northern Iowa, where he is a member of the Graduate Faculty in Creative Writing.  For the last nine years, he has been a “Poet in the Schools” for the Des Moines National Poetry Festival.

Vibe is located at 909 W. 23rd St. in Cedar Falls on the second floor of Bought again Books.  Persons needing access accommodation should call 266-7115 by the day before the event.  For more information, contact Jim O'Loughlin.

Now Available from 

Final Thursday Press

Laugh.  Damnit.

Poetry by Ahkos

Feeling pretentious?  Walk away now.  The poems in this collection target poetic self-importance with humor and a bit of an edge.  Formed in (and in response to) Boston's open mic scene, "Laugh.  Damnit." will make you smile, or else. 

$1.00   16 pgs.

Bad Men

Microfiction by Jim O'Loughlin

Four short short stories that made their debut at the Final Thursday Reading Series.  They weren't originally intended to be part of a collection; it just happened that way.  Find out what happens to the lounge lizard, the ex-con, the slacker student, and the serial monogamist. 

$2.00   18 pgs. 

Ask for them at 

Bought again Books!

Read Work by Some of

Our Past Featured Readers

Ray A. Young Bear

Vince Gotera

Paul Hedeen

Susan Rochette-Crawley

Kathleen Kelly

Scott Cawelti

December 21

by Jonathan Stull

It is completely winter now

By any calendar of the sun or heart

Down the darkening country road we live.

The distant spring has long

Given up the scent of lilac, lasting

Longer in the easy mornings of promise

Than the turnings of weather could know.

And too, the fragile iris saw more

Clearly by calling us each to whiteness

And unwintered joy, than the

Secret hopes of the once heavy fruit

Now wasted in the waiting beneath the snow.

Beauty is the bloom of brevity.

All that is found and lost becomes

Two spheres in one orbit, two poles of

Change on a tilted axis,

Two different angles of sky

Streaked yellow and orange behind the bared

Branches of a night fallen grove.

Where the leafless trees, naked and solitary,

Stand without compromise or regret

Between the shortest day

And the longest night of the year.

Without Poetry

by Jonathan Stull

There are no deaths or entrances

To stalk the absent self, only a conception

Of nerves breathing in a nameless lung.

Between two sides of the truth

A drowning man has no name on water or shore

Until the dark stare of nightfall comes

To catch his fears from sliding

Into the deep and silent waters of his face.

Without poetry there is no pain,

Only marriage without love in the grave’s

Entryway holding no lime for lovers.

Four elements, four sirens

Of forgetfulness fill the

Ears with words unable to save the sinking man

Sucked down in the silent depths of dying.

Without poetry, the dead stay dead,

And the roiled reflections above the waves

Are washed faceless without a cry.

Upcoming Readers

Grant Tracey

James P. Roberts