Burroughs, CM 2023

Wednesday, May 17, 2023
Blue Hour Reading Series with CM Burroughs and Eugenia Leigh
Haymarket House

bw+elbow

rustle plastic bags of outside food in
movie theaters/talk out of turn
in the swallow-dark light/believe
trash should be/as confetti/everywhere
in the viaducts’ shadow/souring in gutters’
craw/jaywalk with the urgency of sloth /split
verbs meaningfully

– CM Burroughs, “Our People I”

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Watch CM Burroughs’ 2023 reading with Eugenia Leigh at the Chicago Poetry Center:

CM Burroughs begins at 21:56 minutes.

Everybody is doing trigger warnings now, so
To Whom It May Concern, I hated God
when my sister died. I didn’t know it was
coming, but we were at the hospital in a private
room for family, and our pastor
was there, the one who baptized me, and
he said Let us pray, and I kept my eyes
open to watch everybody, but
listened, and when he said Sometimes
God has to take back his angels,
I was smart enough to know, I was 14, that
he was saying she was gone or going

– CM Burroughs, “God Letter”

Continue reading this poem⇒

Watch CM Burroughs read from her poetry collection Master Suffering:

Read CM Burrough’s interview with Literary Hub:

The Poetics of the Body: An Interview With CM Burroughs

In this next installment of our series of interviews with contemporary poets, Peter Mishler corresponded with CM Burroughs. Burroughs is Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago, a…

More info on CM Burroughs⇒