Monday, September 25, 2017

a poetry reading at studio b on sunday, october 8 at 1 p.m. to introduce volume three officially.

studio b in boyertown is hosting a poetry reading for this project and its final book's release.

the poetry reading is set for sunday, october 8 at 1 p.m., and studio b's address is 39a east philadelphia avenue, boyertown, pa 19512. it is near the long-lived grill shop (which is in a poem this year, by the way) and neighbors with spirit holistic center, the local united way office, modellbahn ott hobbies, inc., and the peppermint stick candy store.

please send your RSVPs to thelaborsofourfingertips at yahoo dot com. invite friends and the famfam, if you like. we'll have some refreshments, too.
 

the bulk of copies of volume three will be available for purchase by the time this poetry reading rolls on around.

betty seifrit (she wasn't able to attend during a july poetry reading) and tom mauger will be special featured guests from the third and final volume in this project, as will gary and doris williams. the opportunity to ask the poem-sources questions about their lives after their poems are read is the always-there perk of these events so that you can learn more about them through genuine connections in conversation.

here are eye-scenes of them and a teaser poem about one of them, in the order in which they were mentioned above.





 *

gary williams, rockland township | born: 1948

sam hartline told me, you’re a natural at welding, once he
trained me but acted like i hardly needed the lessons. walter
delong had shown me the heat-firing ropes any time a free
minute or two cropped into our shifts at boyertown auto
body works. before sam’s nodding of final approval, i only
assembled the trucks, starting maybe in the late 1960s or

early 1970s. when contracts were slow to absorb inked

signatures in agreement, they laid me off, so reading
truck body hired me to work on dual-wheeled utility
vehicles. they paid more, but my heart functioned its
best back in boyertown. i welded shelves on the trucks,
crafted the sides of those dual-wheels from scratch.
when boyertown auto body works had some openings

again, i returned. in winter, sometimes walter and i

stole a few moments to throw snow into a cardboard
box outside of building 11. we were up on the balcony,
a perfect location for aiming snowballs down at guys
below, a way to add a laugh or two into a morning.
welding—with it, i felt like i accomplished more than
just putting in rivets and screws as an assembler. few

men there could fashion aluminum just right, its soft

and difficult tendencies always swimming easily close
to failure, botched jobs, but the flame, the sparks and
i got along well enough. stainless or galvanized steel,
too. i’m pretty sure i once glimpsed one of our emblems
on a box truck in a dirty harry movie, maybe magnum
force from 1973. to think our work made it to california,

that what we touched traveled so far and made it onto

the big screen—i like that memory, that little reminder,
to know what we did started in a small town, reached
so far beyond pennsylvania, beyond the blasting flashes
of what the steadied control of my arms made happen.

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