Our first poem-as-play. Colburn's The Lawrence Welk Diaries is a poem in four scenes featuring conversation between Lawrence Welk, Michel Foucault, Eartha Kitt, and Sam Shephard. The poem/play is followed by a "detour through a flaming hoop," or Colburn's poem, The Hallucinogenists.
An excerpt:
LW: In North Dakota I heard a pony
count handclaps through dirty teeth and
I understood, the gayer the lights, the
better the luck; we were all tripping
on that tour. I don't see getting drowned.
I don't see looking unlovely. It's mother's fault.
The hundredth bang, very sore, it makes
me smaller, I'll live on, I'll nude, I'll
swerve notes until the old Greek scales
fall from our eyes. As the pumping organ
cannot speak, I can guarantee you love.
JOHN COLBURN is originally from Mantorville, MN. He is a publisher and editor at Spout Press and teaches writing at the Perpich Center for Arts Education and at Hamline University. His first chapbook, Kissing, was published by Fuori Editions in 2002.
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