Poetry & Poets

Grace Cavalieri

Grace is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She has 21 books and chapbooks of poetry and 26 produced short-form and full-length plays. Her newest poetry publication is Showboat, 2019. Grace founded and still produces "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, celebrating 43 years on-air in 2019. The show’s recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted via Pacifica Network. She holds two Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (1993 & 2013), A Paterson Poetry Prize, a Pen Fiction Award, the Bordighera Award for Poetry, The CPB Silver Metal and received the Associated Writers' Program George Garrett Award for 2013.

Haberdashery

I wish I hadn't made fun of him that day at Union Station when he walked away from the tie rack with the same green and blue striped tie he had in his closet at home. Green and blue slanted stripes. "You have one" I laughed. He said maybe the stripes are wider on the other one. I proved I was right. They were identical. I proved it. "Why have two exactly alike?" Because I like that tie, he said. I always liked this tie. Then I recalled when I was 17 and his mother took the hat right off my head. She liked it. Actually my father did this when she said isn't that adorable. He took it right off my head and handed it to her. I never found another. None of this is what I want to talk about. This second, I want to show you the way the sun lights up the tree, such a funny slice of light it couldn't be made by design, the way it hits the angle of green. There will never be another moment like it.

Grace Cavalieri