Poetry

LITERATURE The New Room by Lamplight

for Mike Plosick and Steve Barrett

Anne Dueweke

Oct. 11 Richland Community Library

The author of a book that examines the role American colonialism, racial history and attitudes toward race have played in the history of Kalamazoo College will speak at 6 p.m. at the library, 8951 Park St. Dueweke's 2022 book, Reckoning: Kalamazoo College Uncovers Its Racial and Colonial Past, looks at the college's history through a socialjustice lens. Its subject matter ranges from the Native American displacement and the founding of the college by Baptist missionaries to the racial climate at the college during its struggles and progress toward equity.

Registration is required to attend. To register or for more information, visit richlandlibrary.org. So far nothing has been allowed to enter that is not either beautiful or plain. There remains room for softness — a small sofa, an armchair, some bad habits, dust. But first

they stripped it down to shiplap and bead-board ceiling, to dangerous squirrel-frayed wires, ants, rust and rot. They learned all our secrets, like priests, like doctors, like God. We let shame go and they still loved us. When they built it back, each layer was better than they had promised — ingenious wiring, plump insulation tucked into every gap. Brilliant windows that actually open, generous frames. It was like growing young or becoming good. Nothing to hide. They built us absolution.

Now this. First time this fall, the furnace whispers and through pristine vents the warm air pours across the floor to my corner, its breath on my feet a big dog at peace, asleep, and dreaming of fields.

— Susan Blackwell Ramsey

Ramsey is a Kalamazoo poet whose collection A Mind Like This (2012) won the University of Nebraska’s Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. The men to whom she dedicated this poem are area residents who do home repairs and construction and are particularly fond of writers. They like to call themselves the Barrett Brothers, since they are brothers-in-law.