Chico Poet Heather Altfeld Featured October 21 At Virtual Third Thursday. Plus Open Mic Follows.

By Blake More

     Point Arena Third Thursday Poetry presents a virtual Third Thursday Zoom Poetry reading at 7:00pm on Thursday, October 16. This month features Chico poet Heather Altfeld, with open mic to follow.

     Heather Altfeld is a poet and essayist.  Her two books of poetry are “Post-Mortem” (Orison Books, April 2021) and “The Disappearing Theatre” (Poets at Work, 2016).  Her work is featured in the 2019 Best American Essays, Orion Magazine, Aeon Magazine, Narrative Magazine, and others. She was the 2017 recipient of the Robert H. Winner Award with the Poetry Society of America and the 2015 recipient of the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She teaches in the Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities and the Honors Program at CSU Chico.

     To watch or participate as an open mic reader, please email blake@snakelyone.com.

“APOPTOSIS” by Heather Altfeld

Don’t be confused.

You’re not dead yet.

The hollow gong has not yet been rung

in your ears by a withered Tibetan monk

who will chant you’re dead, you’re dead

when it’s time for you to depart.

The trees are not confused—

they gossip all night long in a network of unintelligible fungi. The finch is not confused, he prattles

outside your window before dawn.

The heron you saw at sunrise

is not confused, he bursts the still water

at the bottom of the marsh, interrupting

a racket of minnows with his beak.

The elephants are not confused, they bellow

for days next to their children’s graves

until they lumber down into the next world.

The human dead are bewildered;

they thought we wanted them gone

and now here we are with spades and tears.

The woman at the doctor’s office

last week was confused—her arm bandaged,

a plastic rhizome poking from the tape,

seeking an infusion of longing.

She wept to the waiting room

where you read House Beautiful.

I don’t want to go back to the hospital again.

She closed her wet eyes and then

her ears opened. The gong

never errs and she could hear it clearly

ringing in every single cell.

You tried to open your mouth

to say something but you were mute

to the racket of her dying.

Even as you waited with your polyps

and your cysts, your cells were not yet perplexed. They are pre-programmed

little sprinkler timers that fizzle and pop

with Swiss precision. So don’t mistake

silence for disappearance,

it is only a lullaby that finds you in the dark. Sleep is a language you can’t yet speak

but it translates to ten thousand doorways,

only one of which will forget

to return you. Crying is not a burial spoon

but a sign you might need to plant sweet peas. Listen, little ghost. Don’t be confused.

You aren’t haunting anyone yet

with the gong of those golden bells. 

Third Thursday Poetry Zoom made possible by the Arena Theater and continues to be supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.