Aracelis Girmay

Holland, MI — Don Waters’s fiction has won awards; so has Aracelis Girmay’s poetry. Both writers will speak Monday, Oct. 12, at Knickerbocker Theatre, hosted by the Jack Ridl Visiting Writer Series.

The writers will also answer questions during a workshop at 3 p.m. Monday, in the Herrick Room of the DeWitt Center, 141 E. 12th St. (facing Columbia Avenue at 12th Street). The public is invited to both events. Admission is free.

Waters short-story collection “Desert Gothic,” won the 2009 Great Lakes College Association (GLCA) New Writers Award and the Iowa Short Fiction Award. The Reno, Nev., native received several fellowships and other honors, including the Pushcart Prize and the Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

Girmay, winner of the 2009 GLCA New Writers Award for “Teeth,” a collection of poetry that reflects her Eritrean, Puerto Rican and African American traditions, has also written a children’s book, “Changing, Changing: Story and Collages.” A former Watson fellow and Cave Canem fellow, Girmay has published extensively in journals and literary magazines. Born and raised in Southern California, Girmay now leads community writing workshops throughout California and New York.

The Monday evening reading will be preceded by a Hope College Jazz Ensemble performance at 6:30 p.m. at the Knickerbocker Theatre, located at 86 E. Eighth St. Source: (Holandsentinel)

Poem by Arcelis Girmay

Teeth
for cousin Gedion, who drove us to Massawa

Two sisters ride down with us.

It is liberation day in Massawa.

The older sister is the color of injera; her teeth are big & stuck out.

The younger sister is a cinnamon stick.

Their almond eyes are the same.

Ink black hair falls beautiful down both their backs.

I see that you love one of them & change my mind many times about who I think it is.

Months later, I will show their photographs to my father who will laugh & say he knows.

“It is this one,” he will say, surely, pointing to the woman whose teeth stay, tame, in her mouth.

But what man would choose a woman whose mouth looks stronger than his hands?

Know, Cousin, I pray there is love between you & the older one whose teeth might be bullets of ivory;

I imagine from this mouth:

kites, rain, ax equal to lace, the yellow & lick

of a jar filled with the sweet of stinging bees.

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