Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
The Poet Laureate of Davis has been meeting the expectations of his office with great gusto! In the last week I have lectured on sonnets at the high school English class of Pub Quiz regular and frequent champion Dianna Huculak, hosted a reading by Davis poets Henry 7 Reneau, Jr. and Allegra Silberstein, given my own reading atthe Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis with the poet James Lee Jobe, read a global warming poem at the People’s Climate Action Day at Farmers Market Park, and finally I was publicly interviewed for an hour-long podcast with the former Poet Laureate of Sacramento, Bob Stanley. I also wrote a half-dozen poems, at least a few of which will appear in much improved form in my next book, Tentacle, to be published in 2015.
The global warming poem that I will share here, “Gecko at Noon,” was also published in the Davis poetry anthology Entering (edited by the aforementioned Allegra Silberstein). I wrote it a year or two after watching Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth at the Varsity Theatre.
Gecko at Noon
I
When it is hot,
when the ground sparks like the thought of lightning
and the air is so thin that the birds just wait it out,
that’s when I emerge.
Hot hot hot hot hot
I sample the stunned insects,
big black beetles that scramble in my mouth,
green katydids that jumped too late,
the complacent moth.
My neck twists like a rope;
my eyes are little suns.
Driven by absence, by lack, by
The sun, it is crushing, crushing
We are small and becoming smaller,
bug-eyed in the bush;
we are like mercury underfoot,
just as toxic.
II
Once it was cancer, the slow crab at the end.
Now we are becoming hormonal misfits,
each generation afraid of the next.
We dare not look into their faces
The land is like the original bush,
still burning after three thousand years,
still giving orders,
still blanching the locals.
They are stuck in the book,
but they ache for a cycle.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on books and more books, but too little poetry. Expect also questions on famous boats, articles from today’s Wall Street Journal, dogs, Stanley Tucci and other even more famous actors who appear in movies with him, the bay area, license plates, radish cousins, California cities, London, Rand Paul, virtuosos, “the most powerful man in BLANK,” increasing bitterness, red cups, obesity, Jane Goodall, crime dramas, roaring anthems, Madame’s complaints, beloved notebooks, California prisons, Ireland, happiness, big cities, Sacramento notables, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join us this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!
Your Quizmaster
Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. According to the advertising slogan, “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s WHAT?”
- Internet Culture. What company confirmed it’ll acquire the studio that created the hit “sandbox” game Minecraft for $2.5 billion?
- French Words. The most common French word for “bread shop” or “bakery” start with what letter?
- Four for Four. Which of the following were parents to three children? Hamlet Sr., King Lear, Prospero, Shakespeare himself.
- Pop Culture – Music. The biggest hit for American dance duo Reel 2 Real was a 1993 reggae fusion Eurodance number that became the theme song for the Madagascar animated films. In the song, the speaker repeatedly proclaims that he likes to do something. According to the song’s title, what does he like to do?
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