Live from the Living Room, July 9

Just managed to avoid being caught in the rain to get to Don Levy’s open mic & reading, & other poets kept joining us.

Steve Minchin was the featured poet; Steve is the Administrative Coordinator here at the Pride Center of the Capital Region. He said he was reading “a few smattering of poems from over the years,” most of the poems short, under a page. He included a couple of poems about the train to New York, “Tear” & “No It’s Just Rails,” & read a couple from a series of “O’Heaney poems,” bar pieces channeling Frank O’Hara. Other notable mentions were the relationship poem “This is a 2-Man Tally Sheet” & a longer piece about hanging out with a friend, “Grand Marshall We’re Lost.” An interesting poem about the ocean & surfing was a still hand-written work-in-progress. His final poem was a tribute to friends in “an alternative relationship” “Introducing a New Ever-After.” Steve has recently started coming to open mics although he has been writing poetry for years, it’s good to have his voice added to the scene.

Don Levy (left), Shannon Shoemaker (center)

There were just a few of us for the open mic & I was first with 2 new poems, “The Sestina Sestina” & the play on dictionary definitions “A Cardinal & a Poet Walk into a Bar.” Julie was new & slipped in late, & began with a complex poem for her Mom, then a rhymed piece on a relationship, “Bridge.” Our host Don Levy brought us back to an earlier era with “ Me & Anita” (Bryant), & a poem on the band The B-52s & Death, “Planet Clare.” Shannon Shoemaker did both of her poems from memory, the short love poem “Frogs” & “I’m My Father’s Daughter.”

“Live from the Living Room” takes place at the Pride Center of the Capital Region, 332 Hudson Ave., Albany, NY on the 2nd Wednesday of each month, at 7:30 PM, with a featured reader & an open mic — always “straight friendly.”