Rooftop Poetry Club - Lisa Forrest

Lisa Forrest
forresla@buffalostate.edu

Bio:
Born in the small town of Cottonwood, MN, Lisa Forrest has made many stops along the way to her current home of Buffalo, NY. After a hitch in the Army studying Counter Intelligence and eight years as an Occupational Therapist, Lisa found she was much more interested in deciphering verse and rehabilitating her own sentences than anything else. She's currently a Senior Assistant Librarian for SUNY College at Buffalo and the founding member of the school's Rooftop Poetry Club. A 2007 Pushcart prize nominee, Lisa's poetry has appeared in a variety of local and national publications, including Artvoice, Buffalo News, eco-poetics, foursquare, Lake Affect, Not Just Air Literary eJournal, and WordWrights. Lisa's scholarly work has been published in American Libraries magazine and Urban Library Journal, and her essays have been featured on WBFO, Buffalo's local National Public Radio station. Lisa's first collection of poems, To the Eaves, is available now from BlazeVox Books.

Poems:

Wintering

Lend me your compass
find the tree naked limbs
where black birds dance,

Where black birds dance wings wide
February light
frozen and silent,

Frozen and silent firmament
arrow spins, wings arched dive
can’t stop

Can’t stop shivering
return to you a comet
compass in hand

Compass in hand touch mimics pulse
round world new world
center shifts

Center shifts as you
fade from view
a place

A place and all this
burst wintered stars
a broad field

A broad field of perfect snow
watch your footprints
footprints rhythmically appear.