2nd Wednesday Poetry, July 8

Good to be “back” in Schenectady, even better that I could do it from my home in Albany, even better to see that Jackie Craven is continuing this community open mic using Zoom. This was actually the 2nd Zoom event I was on this day, earlier I had attended a Zoom shiva for the mother of my friend Dina.

Here tonight, Alan Catlin was the first reader, beginning with a poem from The Secret Garden, “How We Live Now After Georgia O’Keefe,” then from Lessons of Darkness a couple of the very noir poems based on very noir films, including the “Murdered by the Numbers.”

Susan Jewell read from her on-going project of ekphrastic poems rejected by Rattle magazine “The Crossing,” & another submitted to another ekphrastic magazine “Odysseus Arrives from the Land of the Phoenicians.”

I began with a poem written at a workshop led by Therese Broderick on the art of Ruby Silvious “The Tone of Ruby’s Image,” then a pandemic-themed piece “Easter Sunday,” & one inspired by my granddaughter Jane “A Prayer for Super Heroes.”

Scott Morehouse lead us on an hysterical a-historic trip in 1953 with Eleanor Roosevelt giving Mr. Peanut a ride in her car, smoking & sharing a root beer at Woolworth’s, with Scott even doing a passable imitation of Mrs. Roosevelt’s unforgettable voice.

Sarah Giragosian, who will be reading in Poets in the Park on July 25 read from her new book The Death Spiral “Thumbnails of America” where the country is addressed as a person as in Allen Ginsberg’s “America,” then an eco-poem on climate justice “To the Source.”

Jackie Craven read what she described as “an old dog from 2012 … a complete flop,” a poem titled “Disgeographica” but recently published in Chautauqua — just keep sending those poems out, someone someday will want them.

Kathleen McCoy dialed in a little late, was not going to read, but fortunately was convinced that we wanted to hear her work, so read “Kindred Spirits” about a sculpture in Cork, Ireland honoring the native people of the USA for their support of the Irish during the Famine, then a descriptive piece “Back in Ohio.”

This open mic, now on Zoom, continues the 2nd Wednesday open mic formerly at C.R.E.A.T.E. community space on State St. in Schenectady, & maybe someday we’ll be back there. In the meantime find them on Facebook in a group called WritersMic.