2nd Sunday @ 2 — Poetry + Prose Open Mic, May 11

It was a beautiful (Mothers) day outdoors with Tulip Festival in Albany, but just the same the poets showed up for the open mic at the Arts Center in Troy, with your hosts Nancy Klepsch & me.

The reading started off with a virgin, anxious to get it over with, Lann Bell, a soft reader with a poem about beginnings & endings, then started a 2nd poem she couldn’t get through (but came back at the end). I followed with my cynical “Mother’s Day” & a poem for my daughter Madeleine. Peggy LeGee rejoined us & read a poem protesting “they still won’t let me be a woman.” Bob Sharkey had both a poem & a piece of prose, the poem “Cohoes” a memoir about living there & a fiction prose piece “Grand Jury.”

Cathy Abbott returned to the Mother’s Day theme with “Microwave Mother” then on to a poem about keeping the dandelions on your lawn — no pesticides! William Robert Foltin also had poems for his mother, “Someone Called Her Mother” & a poem about trying to be like his mother, introduced with a short lesson on the Slovak language.

Carol Jewell read us one of her many pantoums, “Kidney Stones” & “Cento #1" listing for us the poets she was using lines from. My co-host Nancy Klepsch began with a tornado poem she wrote for a workshop with Bernadette Mayer, then “My Cells” a poem on “big-bad data” that is in the on-line journal Barzakh. Troy poet, Jay Renzi, who scored big on Metroland’s Readers Poll of Best Poets, showed up to read a poem on reverberations & forgiveness “Wasteland” & a poem written yesterday “Edward III.” Lann Bell had calmed down a bit & asked to come back to read 1 more poem, a piece about waitressing at a banquet in Hawaii (which I think explains her tan).

We are at the Arts Center in Troy each 2nd Sunday at 2PM (except July & August) to read poetry &/or prose — join us, it’s free.