2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, May 12

Our regular monthly open mic, since it falls on the 2nd Sunday, each May puts us here on Mothers’ Day — for all you Mothas out there! Nancy Klepsch & I are your tag-team hosts. I had signed up as #4 thinking to leave space to others up front but nobody did, & Kendall Hoeft signed up right after me in #5. Since Kendall, who has been a regular here for the last year, is leaving the area at the end of May for San Francisco Nancy proposed that Kendall read first, a great idea.

Dan Wilcox, Nancy Klepsch & Kendall Hoeft

Kendall began by saying that this was her “favorite open mic” — ahh, shucks! Then she read 2 poems “What Holds Him” & “How to Resurrect the Sky.” I followed with 2 Mothers’ Day pieces, Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 “Mothers Day Proclamation” calling for a general congress of women to work for peace, then my own notebook jotting about a homeless woman in Washington Park “Whose Mom is That?”

Rene McGovern had been here previously late last year, read a poem based on an abstract for a research project with a title much too long to catch, then one simply titled “Mother.” Tim Verhaegen has regaled us many times in the past with outrageous & humorous stories of his family, today it was about his mother, part portrait, part cultural anthropology. Both Nancy & I forgot to cite “the rules,” i.e., 2 poems or 5 minutes of prose at the beginning of the open mic, & while most readers, including folks new to this venue, instinctively followed the pattern set by others, Karen Fabiane who reads here regularly managed to squeeze in 3 poems: “From Her Bed,” “Walking, Easter,” & “Scratching.”

Speaking of new readers, Johnine M. Simpson’s 2 poems were a sonnet about death “The Process,” & one written today for her mother “An Alphabet of Love.” Co-host Nancy Klepsch finished off the afternoon, continuing the informal theme of the day, a one-line “Mothers Day Poem,” then the sexy & funny “My Clit Thinks for Me” (sort of a new take on the Italian saying, “when the little head gets hard, the big head gets soft”).

2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose is at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River St., Troy, NY most months of the year except for July & August & it is Free!