Live from the Living Room, August 12

Our host, Don Levy, invited a prose writer (!) as the featured "poet" tonight, & there were a handful of open mic poets to read & comment.


I first heard Amy Halloran read back in April 1988 at the QE2 on Central Ave. in Albany. This was before the last Monday series had started (the black & white shot). Her first short, short story, fresh from the Port Townsend Writing Workshop, involved a worker releasing butterflies from a lab. The next, & longer, story was a conversation with the narrator's sister, talking about firewood, uneaten food, neighborhood thugs & implied sex, a wonderful, oblique narrative that elicited a round of comments. This is something that happens here in the intimate setting of the living room.


I read my recently revised "Thru the Circle" (here on the Blog) then the very new "Respect." Bob Sharkey read "Summer Styles" about the Woodstock wanna-beens (as we approach the 40th anniversary), and one about the suitcase project, written in "The Yellow Notebook."

Tim Verhaegan's first gay poem, "It's an Omen I Tell You," included copies of a picture of the van on the highway that inspired the poem -- the back of the van proclaimed,"Avoid Hell Trust Christ Repent Obey Bible." "Drive-By Stalker" was a poem of distant erotic longing. Joe Hollander began with James Dickey's "Heaven of Animals," then his own picture of a woman in a kitchen, "Inspired Nape." Don Levy ended the night with his nostalgic poem of the '80s, "Hard at Work on the Tiger Beat" from his 2003 gathering of poems, Super Queer Poet Saves the Day!

A pleasant round of poems, poetic prose & comments, something you can find at the Gay & Lesbian Community Center, Albany, NY, on the 2nd Wednesday of each month, at 7:30PM.