Exiting the Tunnel

Exiting the Lincoln Tunnel on our way to Blue Bell, Pennsylvania: Welcome to New Jersey Embroidery Capital of the World. Finding this unlikely I don't bother to look it up. Unlikely as Welcome to New Jersey the Garden State as we crawl congested industrial polluted HWY 1 as opposite as possible to the West Coast one. Welcome to Hackensack the Hacky Sack Capital. Welcome to Ukiah Home of the Haiku Palindrome Festival. I do look up Blue Bell since our host tells me it's named not for the wildflower but for the bell on the Revolutionary War-era Blue Bell Tavern. That the bell is blue strikes me as odd. Driving through town, the tavern’s intact but the bell is gone; a tavern sign graphic all that remains. The town was once named Pigeontown after the dense flocks of sunblocking passenger pigeons preventing residents from hearing conversation above their din. Blue Bell Tavern was popular not only with George Washington who Slept Here but with decades of hunters whose success annihilated the passenger pigeon. Its eponym extinct, the town renamed itself after the place that sheltered the perps of their theriocide. In Upstate New York, where we lived through Covid, Kingsboro was euphoniously renamed first Stump City then Gloversville after the trees and deer were culled for leather tanning. Terracide/theriocide. Welcome to Gloversville Glove Capital of the World. Until it wasn't. Rustbelt city in a proliferation of rustbelt cities, stumbling to reinvent themselves. Urbicide. Music randomly selected like everything else by an algorithm at this juncture of the journey: Laurie Anderson, The Bardo: "I'm dead. Now what do I do?"

Dale Going

Dale Going’s new books are The Beautiful Language of Our Disaster (Codhill Press) and For the Anniversaries of All Loving Kinds of Meetings (Albion Books). Sonnets of Succor and Sorrow, a manuscript of her collaboration with collage artist Marie Carbone, was a finalist for Fence Books’ 2025 Ottoline Prize. Her work has been supported by the Fund for Poetry, California Arts Council, and Residency Fellowships at Yaddo, Watermill Center, Wedding Cake House, and Djerassi.  Recent journal publications include Annulet, Interim, New American Writing, Posit, VOLT, and others. She lives in New York City. https://linktr.ee/dalegoing

Marie Carbone

Marie Carbone is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her collage art has been exhibited at Berkeley Art Center and other San Francisco Bay Area venues, in literary journals (BlazeVOX, Equinox, Feral, Five Fingers Review, LandLocked, Milk Press, Posit, Rougarou, Sea to Sky Review, VOLT, Wild Roof Journal and others), as book covers, broadsides, artists' books, and projections for poetry readings and theater performances. As a classical pianist, harpsichordist, and music educator, her particular interest is the music of women composers. She has composed and performed soundtracks and soundscapes for film, theater, museum exhibitions, modern dance, and ballet. She lives in Sausalito, CA.