At the Inglis House Poetry Workshop non-disabled writers and writers with disabilities met together in readings, workshops and exchanges of ideas. Below a poem by Dana Hirsch inspires by Poet Glenn McLaughlin. A reading of Stuart Sanderson's poetry results in an effort by Michael Northen. In Therése Halscheid's "Trading Places" workshop, Dana Hirsch is moved to write a poem about her mother. The idea for Daniel Simpson's poem "My Mother, Cleans" came during Maria Fama's Workshop on using family tradition in poetry.

Two women Neither I know though I drink both one stares at me over me, beyond me through me from a bottle of wine lilting forward, offering to guide a stare somewhere common but pleading if we but knew and one stares at me from a wheeled chair at me, through me at me lilting backward reaction to action laughing to guide a stare somewhere uncommon, pleading if we but knew the story of rain of conversations with windows and the cries alone for Marilyn Monroe and Dana Hirsch ~ Glenn R. McLaughlin
	Stuart at Work The sounds comes from another’s body but the words are his own: poems elegant in their simplicity like a spider web against the moon or sumac in snow. Though enough in themselves, he sits eye level with the audience low in his wheel chair letting the muscles play over his face a Bosch rhythm, and curl into a wordless smile that lets you know he has sipped the spring, bitten fruit that you would pay an eye for. -Michael Northen
Mom I come to you to straighten your pillow, To help you eat, And just be with you. For you will be gone from this room soon And from my life, physically, But never from my heart or memory. This day is cold, rainy, but sweet. While I’m with you we will share Memories, good and bad, Laugh at stories. But then, I’ll remember your strength and pride, Pushing and grabbing at me, to be me. The hospital room is your only home now. But know that if I do not cry with you, Each time I talk of you, Tears of good will always shine out. -Dana Hirsch
	My Mother, Cleans More exacting than graceful, she does a turn around my kitchen. The satellite radio plays "I'll Never Smile Again," and she thinks of dancing, the way he turned her, the way he turned her head Back then, some sixty years and one death ago. Between my stove and microwave she manages a neat slide, her arm around the neck of a mop. -Daniel Simpson

Poetry from the Workshop Leaders

EXPLORERS

The three-year question asked at last,
the unexpected yes, the second date
first kiss, soft lick of a rose,
were discoveries. Lost in exploration
of a new geography, my gaudy dreams
gold as Coronado’s, marching blindly

on toward El Dorado. Tracking down
the rumors of the heart, I forgot
his failure, forgot the long, slow
death-crawl from invisible Cibola.
A musty August night obscured
the humid stars and wrote its name

no the windows of my father’s car,
parked by Evans Pond; your voice
was dim and far away, your words
like water closing overhead,
Telling me your family was moving,
out to Cleveland, where rivers burned…

we credit Ferdinand Magellen
as the first to cirucmnaigate the globe;
even though he died in battle
somewhere in the Philippines, lost
his way half-way around the world,
we remember his name.

*************