On April 14, Kimberly Koga, Jennifer Stockdale and CJ Waterman presented their poetry at Lula’s Café. Kimberly Koga began the reading, and to say the least, her poems were attention grabbing. While her poetry was very graphic and sexually explicit, Kimberly relied more on sound than imagery.

Her poems were highly aural, with many similar vowel noises grouped together. She broke up smoothly flowing lines of similar sound with short, harsh, curse words, saying “fuck” or “cunt”. These words do possess a certain amount of shock value, but they were more effective because their blunt sounds were juxtaposed with the smooth continuity and cohesiveness of the poem. This juxtaposition was further highlighted by her inclusion of moaning, which fit well with the assonance of her poetry. Her poem, which she called “The Beaver Poem”, was particularly graphic in its imagery, describing the fleshy globules with transparent webs of tissue.

Jennifer Stockdale presented her poetry next. Some of her poetry shared Kimberly Koga’s graphic imagery, but other poems had a stronger comedic, or even cynical element. “Psycho-somatic Babies” was one of her first poem, and babies, children, and fetuses became a recurring motif in her poetry. Her images of birth and fetuses were painstakingly detailed, to the point where she seemed almost paranoid about children. While many of her poems revolved around children, my favorite poem of hers was the one where she describes a Notre Dame girl at Confession. How she had “pared down” her “cock tease” into “eight Hail Mary’s”. I thought that the poem was funny and apt, very well suited to the audience.

CJ Waterman’s poems were more narrative than the other two. He read selections from two poems, one described someone retrospectively examining the end of their life and the other described the blowing up a regional airport. Both of his poems had an escalating, intense tone. The tone was particularly appropriate for his description of the last days of someone’s life. It wasn’t melancholy, but frustrated and angry. I would also like to assume that he

was using symbolism when he talked about “fucking the white swan”. In “Blowing up a Regional Airport”, he used the very graphic language, describing the graying, flaking flesh of those on fire. It contrasted with the very ordinary situation of going through airport security he described in the second excerpt from that poem. Ordering the excerpts like that was very effective because it contrasted what we fear, a terrible attack involving airplanes, with what we see as a useless security precaution.

I thought that the poems were interesting, and I was glad to be introduced to Lula’s Café, which had an excellent toasted brie sandwich.