Editor’s Note: Caleb Beissert, a Western Carolina University junior from Charlotte, recently took part in a North Carolina Poetry Society mentoring program that pairs students of North Carolina with an established poet. Beissert was one of three students in the western North Carolina region chosen to study under Cathy Smith Bowers, an award-winning poet living in Tryon and a longtime professor at Queens University in Charlotte. As part of the celebration honoring National Poetry Month, The Smoky Mountain News is publishing Beissert’s poem from his recent reading at Western Carolina University’s Literary Festival, which concluded a few weeks ago.

All Weird Versions of People You Know Around the Campfire

They’re all there:

There’s Sam with his face

and rat eyes, just elephantized

in the nose – he’d always had

jesterous cheeks – and all

the kids that don’t know how to act, and

there’s uncle Ed and

cousin Billy. Grandpa has extra knobs on his

head. Your third grade teacher is wailing

on a drum, Coltrane in a corner

puffin’ sax. And look at that guy - he’s a cross

between Brian and David, an old woman

in a stump, and there’s an almost perfect Abe

Lincoln, but wearing a baseball

cap, a friend you have not seen

in years, Henry being honest

on rooftops, a guy you’d picture Muhammad

looking like, Rhett with his face a little furrier

and my personal God for the evening,

the Lion King on drums. There’s Mary,

Bobby, Laura, Cathy, Tom, and Jen. They

all turn into different elves after long

enough, bending the air with imaginary

words. And there you are

with long hair taking too long

as usual, your friends, family,

past lovers, anyone, all

dancing around the fire, some

topless, others cross-eyed, familiar

faces distorted in the firelight.

— Caleb Beissert