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Alvin M. Laster - Poetry

WNPR Radio Where We Live, episode on poetry.

Audio interview broadcast on WNPR radio's Where We Live January 17, 2008.

Alvin M. Laster is a freelance writer and a published and anthologized poet. His poems have appeared in many literary journals. He has been honored for his poetry by Mattatuck College and received the Board of Trustees Merit Award from Naugatuck Valley Community-Technical College. He has lectured and given readings to literary groups in Connecticut, New York, and California. He is past-president of the Southbury Poetry Society and a member of the Academy of American Poets.

He is a recipient of the Joseph Brodine Memorial Award, given by the Connecticut Poetry Society, Award for Best Writing by the Connecticut Authors & Publishers, and the DeLong Quarterly Poetry Award. A collection of his poems, titled "ARABESQUES, TRUMPETS AND GRACE NOTES", was published in 1988 by Northwoods Press.

Contact Al Laster

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Featured Poetry

Carnival

Like a bird of prey, she waits for you
in every carnival from here to
everywhere... Desirée, Queen of the Gypsies,
mystic of the tea leaves, dressed in the
gaudy banners of Romany, jingling
her cheap bracelets like tambourines.

Standing before the last tent
on the Avenue of Grotesques,
like a beautiful Scylla, keening
over the whirlpools of illusion,
she is ready to lift billfold,
lost hope, and questing heart
in one deft move.

She will draw you into her tent with
incantations and promises of ecstasy,
sell you potions to woo the wind
and amulets against camel straws.
.
She will marvel at the length
of your lines, tell you of riches,
journeys and dark strangers.

When the incense clears and the next
pilgrim shades the entrance,
Desiree will send you into tomorrow
with dreams and expectations that turn
to dross like her worthless bangles
and a vision of paradise that will
fold like her canvas palace, then
vanish like a specter in the night.

Alvin M. Laster

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