Poets Speak Loud!, March 25

I’d missed this event last month so had to be back tonight for beer, burgers & poetry. Mary Panza, as usual, was the host & keeper of the sign-up sheet.

First up on the first half of the open mic was D. Alexander Holiday, who stated that the themes of what he was about to read were “women & guns;” first from Poems from the Women’s Movement Susan Griffin’s “I Like to Think of Harriet Tubman” (who was known to carry a gun), then from Sapphire “Strange Fruit” in the persona a young woman killed by a shop keeper. Sylvia Barnard’s poems looked back to where she grew up in Western Massachusetts, “Rachel” (the name of her grandmother’s horse), then one about the foundations of former homes “House Spots.” Joe Krausman began with Derek Walcott’s “Love After Love,” then read his own poem “Ode to My Arthritis.”

Brett Petersen was the night’s featured poet. From what I’ve heard of his work at open mics his poems are characteristically rambling stream- of-consciousness, piles of outrageous images with long titles that are often poems in themselves, such as the one titled “When Barak Obama Rises from the Grave only to Die Again,” or the cartoon images of a dystopia childhood in “The Infinite Hands of Unos” which he said was the first of his work to be published, & his most recent poem “How to Get Un-inebriated.” His tour-de-force was a poem with a title so long that I missed half of it, something like “My Clit Aches to Spoon with a Spoon-Sized Pizza…” which was a line in this over-the-top piece that piled outrageous, Dada-inspired images, to the ceiling that then dripped down the wall. He ended with the surprisingly tame “The Burger Song.” Phew!

Back to the open mic I followed that with a tame old poem of longing “Blue,” then my new piece “Reading Mary Oliver while Masturbating.” Julie Lomoe talked about her work-in-progress “Subdural,” then read a couple poems about her mother & her mother’s stroke & death, “My Mother & Senator Joe,” & “My Mother’s Head.” Don Levy has taken to reading his poems from his phone, tonight read one about missing recent open mics due to his arthritis & the weather “Remember Me?” Christa DeMarco read a couple of untitled short poems, one about seeing ants in the shower that made her ponder whether life matters, another on depression.

Matt Mirenberg was here for the first time, said it was only the 2nd reading he’s done & read an invocative piece beginning “luscious lips...” A good start.

Poets Speak Loud! is at McGeary’s on Sheridan Square in Albany, NY each last Monday of most months, starts no sooner than 7:30PM, usually around 8:00PM, with a feature (usually) & an open mic. Join us.