Introducing the April 2008 Readers - 2. Elizabeth Gold

Second up in this introduction to those reading at the Great Grog Bar on 13th April is Elizabeth Gold. Below is a brief bio and poem:

Elizabeth Gold is the author of Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity, which was published by Penguin USA. Her poems have appeared in many American literary journals and her essays and reviews in papers ranging from The New York Times to The Glasgow Herald. She was born in New York City, and lives in Edinburgh.


MUSIC OF CHOPIN
Our food is as good, as music of Chopin.
-menu from Polish coffee shop

Mazurka, little fragment
of the dance, press
of the palm upon the waist,

a lock of hair slipped
in an envelope.
The food we serve is as good

as this. Can you hear it, or aren't you
listening? The doors pried
apart, crackle

of crinolines, all those girls
whispering as the music starts.
It’s got to go somewhere,

it can’t just vanish, leaving
no aftertaste. Say
this is a ballroom,

and the waiters like lovesick
swains are whirling round
the bigos, kielbasa,

borscht, blush dark as
violets. It’s in you now:
the first vibrato of

the piano, the curtsey,
the bow, shiver
of a bow upon the strings.