Split This Rock Presents: Sunday Kind of Love featuring Melanie Henderson

Split This Rock Presents:
Sunday Kind of Love

featuring

Melanie Henderson

launching her prize-winning collection:

Elegies for New York Avenue

Sunday January 15, 2012

5:00-7:00pm

Busboys & Poets
2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Hosted by Sarah Browning & Katy Richey

Suggested Donation: $5

As always, open mic follows!

Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets & Split This Rock

For more information:
www.BusboysandPoets.com

www.SplitThisRock.org
info@splitthisrock.org

202-387-POET

"Delicious in their sheer sonic energy, the poems in Elegies for New York Avenue take us on a headlong, heady rush through story and memory, portrait and lyric, lament and celebration, every line sounding the way for another, linking again and again to a surprising intimacy and reality. The mosaic of neighborhood and family that Henderson creates is spellbinding. Each piece, each person, each emotion is emblazoned in these poems by precise words and honored by an attention both tender and fierce. These poems throw off sparks. Catch them!"

--Joan Houlihan

BORN HOME

To begin at the beginning

& we are not from this place

We know the snow

doesn't fall in January,

the gum of July doesn't stick to the blood in our skin

& we are not from this place

We know the rows of dependent houses

liberated by separating hues of a president,

my alarm clock's muteness, temporary

it's arteries, a blazing blue; it's 7:59

& we are not from this place

We know how to begin at the beginning

when a high school is just a high school

& our rhythm is not smart

and we are not from this place

We know the vacant eyes of our streets,

pots in the pavement sing

from this place we are from--

We know.

Melanie Henderson was born, raised and lives in Washington, DC. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and studied poetry at the Voices Summer Writing Workshops (VONA). Her paintings, photography and poems have appeared in Drumvoices Revue, Fingernails across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora, jubilat, and Southern Women's Review among others. She was selected as a featured reader for the 2009 Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series and as a recipient of the Larry Neal Writers' Award (DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities). She is the Managing Editor of Tidal Basin Review and the mother of a charming little boy.