POETRY -
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Wall Mural, 2626 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco - Photo by Mike Lambert
Eating Words
by Alan Brewer
I am eating words,
chewing, squeezing the juice from every syllable. All right, never got fat eating words, but have lived lifetimes on borrowed words. Words in the wind, loved Cynara in my own way, sung of myself, and so on and so forth. I am stealing leftover words, phrases rejected, images dropped, sounds squeezed from someone else’s poems. I’ll grab them, switch a few ingredients, add a pinch of alliteration, a dash of consonance, mix them together, and bake a one-pot meal. Eating words, sounds dribble down my chin, spare consonants fly out like spittle, vowels bleed from my lips and drop to the floor, splattering sounds all over the linoleum. It is messy, I admit, the cleanup is awful, and I am famished. But when I serve the poem it’s all worth it. |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Brewer has lived in San Francisco for 45 years and been an OLLI at SF State member for over a decade. He has a BA from Northwestern University and an MA in Clinical Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. He has had many different jobs, from house painter to alcohol/drug rehab counselor to legal secretary. He has been writing poetry for over 40 years, has written feature articles for The Richmond Review and The Sunset Beacon. For the last 15 years, he has written mostly memoir. He has trekked in Nepal (Annapurna, later Everest), sailed as passenger/crew member on an 18th Century square-rigger in French Polynesia, and has traveled to all continents except Australia and Antarctica.
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.
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