Second Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, March 8

My co-host Nancy Klepsch & were pleased with the turnout of writers today, both regulars & some new faces.

I read first to promote my new chapbook Coyote: poems of suburban living (A.P.D.) & even sold one later. Tim Verhaegen read another of his wonderful cranky pieces, this on the noticing of differences among people & not being able to talk about them. Peggy LeGee’s piece “A Convenient Life” was about all the poisons & addictions (e.g., cigarettes, alcohol, lottery tickets) available a convenient stores.

Michael Avella was the first of the afternoon’s new faces/voices, read Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire,” then a piece of his own about doing the laundry & about loss. Bob Sharkey read “a prosy piece” he said, about a shooting in Troy, “The Incident.” then the recently-gone Philip Levine’s poem “Snow.”

This was Jessica Rae’s first time here, although she has frequented open mics in Albany & Voorheesville; she read an amusing prose memoir about competing in a talent show at age 14 lip-syncing to Cyndi Lauper’s pop tune “She Bop” then finding out years later that the song was about masturbation. Cathy Abbott was back here again with a poem to Winter in which she wished “will you please die…,” then a piece to “Ireland,” ending by talking about some books she has read. Kate Laity read a couple pieces by international women poets, such as Chloe Yates & her piece “The Moon Would Sing a Sad Song,” both connected it seems to Kate’s new anthology Drag Noir, etc. Howard Kogan said he was reading poems on “neglected topics,” the first on littering & our common ability to bio-degrade, then a poem on the various words for “poop,” for lack of a better word. Nancy Klepsch read the latest version of her poem “The Complication of Biggy” about the rapper Biggy Small, which I thought I saw on her FB page a while back.

Karen Fabiane’s poem “Seeing You Again” is the title poem of her second chapbook, then on to a morning poem of sorts, stringing together rich, detailed images as she is wont to do. Joe Krausman read a poem on death titled “Spring Cleaning” (it’s all the same, right?), then a take on Andrew Marvel’s famous poem “This Coy Mistress Spins a Web.” William Robert Foltin followed with 2 poems each with long rambling introductions, the first poem to his mother “A Very Capable Woman” then another on dreams. The last reader of the afternoon slipped in late, another new voice, Opal Ingraham, with a poem on pride & being homeless “Where I Slept” & a piece like heading out “Towards the East.”

We are at the Arts Center in Troy each 2nd Sunday at 2PM for an open mic for writers of either poetry or prose, it’s free.