Poetry/Spoken Word Open Mic, October 9

This series run by Charlie Rossiter at the Tap House in Bennington, VT started one year ago today, & it was sadly poignant that on this particular night our host could not be be here to celebrate (he was recuperating from recent hip surgery). So I drove over to take over the duties — I had been here a year ago, & came over last month as well.

Tonight’s sign-up list & readers were the same as last month, except for Charlie. Laura Ellsby went first with a couple of “pet poems," one was titled “Small Perspective” about her chihuahua. Kenn Ash was very philosophical in his first piece “Self Possession,” & in a fantasy in which the description of “a small giant” on a distant planet becomes a philosophical treatise.

Jason Everett had with him his thick manuscript “Ligthstreet” & read a few from it, quirky poems with surrealistic images of the everyday, often with some sexy woman in it, one set in Montreal “Expo 10” & another he read in honor of a friend, only a few years younger than he, who died recently, becoming emotional as he read. Speaking of deceased friends I read “Reading Dead Poets Listening to Live Jazz” for the recently gone poets Harry Staley & Paul Pines.

A nice surprise was a brief visit from Charlie’s wife Mary Ellen Munley to wish us a happy first anniversary & to say Charlie was doing well — it’s wonderful how a poet's presence can be felt at a reading even when they are sitting at home with pain pills & poetry.

Since there were just a few of us, we went around again reading short poems, Laura doing more dog poems, one in Spanish about a one-eyed dog, then we convinced her to translate for us, another for her dog Ruby, & a prose poem for her 4 pets. Kenn read us his private “Decalogue,” some good advice for anyone. Jason’s second round were poems, like his first round, with seemingly random images thrown together, one piece like a dystopic John Ashbery. & I ended with a poem for the season my own “killer cocktail” a la Alan Catlin “Zombie Gourd.”

Poetry/Spoken Word Open Mic is on the 2nd Tuesday of each month in the back room of the Tap House at Catamount Glass, 309 County St., Bennington, VT — sign up at 7:00PM, reading starts at 7:15. It’s about an hour from Albany, less from Troy & points East. Bring poems.