2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, February 9

2nd Sunday of the 2nd month, back at the Arts Center, still drawing people out on a Sunday afternoon. The hosts are Nancy Klepsch & me.

& I was first on the sign-up sheet, read 2 recent poems from a productive January, “Hanging Over the Edge” about my recent stay in Gloucester, & my annual birthday poem, this on my blessings. Tara Kistler read here last month, was back with a Haiku “The data,” & a villanelle “Wild Things” (“… all things crumble”). Dave DeVries hosts the open mic on the third Tuesday at the Colonie Town Library & read a poem about a word he doesn’t like “Possibly,” & one titled “Unclaimed Baggage” a philosophical metaphor.

Bob Sharkey, Tim Verhaegen, Meg Waldron

Bob Sharkey’s first poem was “When Everything Became a Teacher” the title drawn from Dineen Carta’s book Rumi’s Daughter (2019), then an ever-evolving poem of facts & disasters with the recurring line “They say…” Tim Verhaegen read a long memoir-essay “Falling in Love at First Sight” about how an early infatuation can persist for years. A new voice, in rhyme, was Meg Waldron who characterized her first, stream-of-consciousness piece as “nonsense” but it was fun, her second piece was about finding herself “Orange.” Always colorful Peggy LeGee read one piece from her notebook “I’m Stuck in Peggy’s Prison” a poem of affirmation using the trope of someone with another person of another gender trying to get out, & using the language & images of prisons.

My co-host, Nancy Klepsch, said she was unsure of the title of her piece & so didn’t say it, tapped her foot in time, about lesbians. Karen Fabiane’s first poem, titled “Seems Like Now” was a stream-of-consciousness ramble that began with a bath, then a similar piece that began with a childhood memory of Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey “Karen’s Steak & Chops.” Anne Rokeach read selections from a memoir, the first titled “Sounds of Silence” about a deaf sibling learning words, the second titled “For Her” about her mother-in-law.

A surprise today was the last reader, who is here almost every time we meet but doesn’t read, Lauren Pinsley, who read a wistful/sad piece on waiting “In the Fullness of Time,” then a Haiku on “beautiful chaos” — she should read every time.

& every time is most 2nd Sundays at the Arts Center, River St., Troy, NY, 2PM, poetry & prose, no feature, just us, & it’s Free!