2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, May 14

This Mothers Day edition of the open mic at the Arts Center in Troy was held upstairs in the conference room, Karen Fabiane helped shed more natural light on us by moving the curtains. The co-hosts were, per usual, Nancy Klepsch & me, Dan Wilcox.

Diane Sefcik has been making it out to more open mics of late, she read a couple of animal poems, “Baboon” & “Elephant” & one from on the road in Iowa, “Rain.” Howard Kogan read once again the richly multi-cultural description of “Kitsilano Beach” in Vancouver, B.C., then the equally richly imagined “On the Eve of My Birth.”

Dave DeVries read a couple long poems celebrating the past, “American Made” contrasting the 1951 Chevy with his current 2013 Mini Cooper, then “1961” & baseball. Bob Sharkey also started off with a memoir piece “Ten Pounds,” & another of his variations on fortune cookies “Must Have Cost a Fortune.” I began with a new poem “Today’s Typo” based on a poem in American Poetry Review then, as a tribute to my mother, read “Going Postal.” Nancy Dunlop read a piece she had read at the Readings Against the End of the World, what she said was “an anti-Mothers Day poem,” “Persephone & Demeter,” then a poem on grieving & dying “Sisters.” Peggy LeGee read from the pad she had written the poem on, twisting & turning it like a performance piece “My Mothers Day Dedication.”

My co-host Nancy Klepsch read a poem that came out of Bernadette’s workshop, based on a conversation with Jil about an old Girl Scout manual, “Head Scout.” Karen Fabiane read 2 poems from a 30/30 poetry project, the first about a chance sighting on Cooper Square in NYC “Pepper,” the 2nd “The Tarts” basically a free-flowing description of what she was doing at the time: baking. Jil Hanifan read the mash-up “Departmental Politics/‘Commute’” then the 2-part piece remembering her prior life as a concert musician “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” Mike Conner brought it all home with 2 poems about voices, one not by him about a mother’s voice, & then his own rhetorical introspection “Whose Voice?”

One more open mic for this season at the Arts Center in Troy, next month on the 2nd Sunday @ 2PM, than a brief break for the Summer. We will be back in the Fall.