2007.04.09: April 9, 2007: Headlines: COS - Niger: Writing - Niger: Poetry: Seattle Times: Niger RPCV Susan Rich writes "Cures Include Travel"
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2007.04.09: April 9, 2007: Headlines: COS - Niger: Writing - Niger: Poetry: Seattle Times: Niger RPCV Susan Rich writes "Cures Include Travel"
Niger RPCV Susan Rich writes "Cures Include Travel"
Susan Rich has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia and a teacher at the University of Cape Town. She now lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline Community College. Her recent book, "Cures Include Travel" (White Pine Press, 99 pp., $14), from which "Mr. Saturday Night" is taken, draws on her itinerant experience.
Niger RPCV Susan Rich writes "Cures Include Travel"
Information on the poets and their books
[Excerpt]
Susan Rich has been a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia and a teacher at the University of Cape Town. She now lives in Seattle and teaches at Highline Community College. Her recent book, "Cures Include Travel" (White Pine Press, 99 pp., $14), from which "Mr. Saturday Night" is taken, draws on her itinerant experience.
Mr. Saturday Night
For my student, Khalid
This could be an American story: drugs, discos, even
the Somali nickname that clings to you like an out-of-date
aphrodisiac. Living by chance in a Kenyan city, a mother’s
rules flung across the lost luggage of border crossings,
her final dollars follow you: sixteen, exiled, on the ledge
of sanity. You slip through an open window
riding a breath of mixed fortune. Money lighting on
hands with a warlord’s stratagem until no one remains
rich enough to refuse you. Yes, American history.
Your daily regime of qaat dreams, as good a win as any.
Who will tell of the deep pleasure in tragedy? This
no waiting for tomorrow to bathe in the forbidden.
Yes—our red, white, and blue story. Now worlds
away, sponging up new nouns in a new country –
it’s undercut by the stench of an abandoned body
you try not to step on in the creosoled street.
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| Warren Wiggins: Architect of the Peace Corps Warren Wiggins, who died at 84 on April 13, became one of the architects of the Peace Corps in 1961 when his paper, "A Towering Task," landed in the lap of Sargent Shriver, just as Shriver was trying to figure out how to turn the Peace Corps into a working federal department. Shriver was electrified by the treatise, which urged the agency to act boldly. Read Mr. Wiggins' obituary and biography, take an opportunity to read the original document that shaped the Peace Corps' mission, and read John Coyne's special issue commemorating "A Towering Task." |
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Story Source: Seattle Times
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Niger; Writing - Niger; Poetry
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