By Doug Cox | bdougcox@gmail.com

Summer is one season that seems to compose its own soundtrack every single year. To help carry us through these dog days and nights of sweltering heat, swimming pools, and righteous music, Sam Pereira takes us back to 1965 and Ratcliffe Stadium to catch the Rolling Stones live in Fresno for the first time. More accurately, he takes audiences imaginatively back to the anniversary (or aftermath) of that famous local concert. Pereira, author of several books of poems, most recently True North and Untrue You, gives readers a backstage pass to the type of antics one might expect from rock stars. At the same time, through his provocative imagery and ominous tone, Pereira anticipates the danger and chaos that marked the end of that violent era. Front-row fans or eyewitnesses? Distance pasts or impending futures? Gimme shelter, indeed.

On the Anniversary of the Stones First Playing Fresno
There’s a storm brewing
On the coast of up your ass
Chimes to tell the tale of your tail
You seem to have been born
Clever enough to rue the sky’s loss
Of hope in ever regaining its rain
And yet when the story turns to you
There’s this avalanche of wit
Rolling down 99 sans GPS
So no one can follow you into Hell
Everyone was delighted at how
You leaned your arm out the window
Of the limo brought to your door
Somberly bereft of anyone’s good nature
The music on the stereo was your own
Invented for this very day let’s say
“Cockroaches on the Back Porch”
With a guest appearance by Jagger
Who spoke some final words
About how you gave him a cigarette
Off Blackstone in the dead of night
When both of you were boys