By which I mean "easy enough to get there." Especially from anywhere in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This Friday, 18 July, at 7:30 p.m., a stellar line-up of poets will be reading in San Francisco to benefit the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

The Squaw Valley Community of Writers Annual Benefit Poetry Reading features Lucille Clifton, Robert Hass, Sharon Olds, C.D. Wright, and Dean Young. Books by each of the poets will be available for purchase and signing after the reading.

Location: First Unitarian Church of San Francisco, 1187 Franklin Street, at Geary, SF, premium seating $30/general admission $20/students $15, wheelchair accessible, group discounts available, doors open 6:30, reading at 7:30 (www.squawvalleywriters.org)

Lucille Clifton

to my last period

well girl, goodbye,
after thirty-eight years.
thirty-eight years and you
never arrived
splendid in your red dress
without trouble for me
somewhere, somehow.

now it is done,
and i feel just like
the grandmothers who,
after the hussy has gone,
sit holding her photograph
and sighing, wasn’t she
beautiful? wasn’t she beautiful?