Getting Down to Brass Tacks, February 19

Again — at The Low Beat, & a heady mix of readers & preachers. Thom Francis, el presidente of AlbanyPoets was our host, & Kim was our bartender, we needed them both.

I didn’t have to be the first reader since others had already signed up early on the list when I got there. Arsenal was the first up, with a music background of pop hip-hop, but with way more testosterone than talent, dropping lines I guessed from his (not quite) memorized text. More of the same from Joshua RD Dundas, but more articulate, preaching from his published collection, then, as he is wont to do, he removed his shirt to scream at us in his “dark side” persona "Sin Byron;" if he spent as much time working on his writing as much as he apparently does working on is pecs, he might be a dangerous writer.

Sam Maurice has shown up a few times at open mics here in the past & read again “Symphony 23 in Easy Damage Management” & another titled “Vaudeville Octane Re-Mix,” both using chant-like repetition in a string of automatic writing. Christa DeMarco has established herself in the local open mic scene over the last year & began with an untitled piece of word-play on personal & environmental themes, then a piece filled with graphic images of a client’s horrible medical condition culled from her day-job as a home-health aide. I had picked out a couple of recent poems to read, but giving the night so far opted to read excerpts from my 2017 chapbook Inauguration Raga (A.P.D.).

Alyssa Michelle has become a “regular” here with her relationship poems, tonight a couple of carefully wrought pieces, “Humble” a meditation of weakness, & “The Other Side of the Bed” which is a pile of the clothes she is going to wear tomorrow rather than a lover. The last performer, Teddy Boo Bear (I don't make this shit up), did a chaotic, emotional free-style romp repeating the phrase “I Was There…” through the 1960s, & living among junkies, that also broke down into boozy preaching.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks is at The Low Beat, Central Ave., Albany, NY, on the 1st & 3rd Tuesdays of the month, 7:30PM — it’s not Church but sometimes preachers show up.