Poetic Vibe, March 1

“Traffic is light. It will take 19 min. to arrive,” so said the GPS lady, but it was even faster on Zoom.

D.Colin, our host, warmed us up for the open mic with a poem from a recent workshop intensive, a descriptive piece about her grandmother’s house being cleared out by robbers.

I read 2 related pieces, 1 by me “Believe, Believe” a tribute to Bob Kaufman’s (1925 - 1986) poem, “Believe, Believe,” using his lines & phrases, then read Kaufman’s poem. 

Luis Pabon read 2 poems, the good advice of “How to Let Yourself Be Happy,” & “Struggle Love.”  (Note: Luis has a new book out titled Earth’s Bad Mouth, which you can find on Amazon.)

Adam also read 2 poems, “I Wish” a break-up piece about their last meeting, & “Walls” which he described as a song in progress, for everyone with hurts.

Jessica Rae read 2 from How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions Ltd., 2020). (I have marvelous photos of Lucille Clifton (1936 - 2010) when she read at Sage College in Troy in 2004, you can find them on my Flickr site)

Samuel Maurice’s poem “You Could be Someone Else” was about a stranger he saw through a store window.

D. Colin read her “Happy Poem” written just yesterday, filled with childhood memories.

Marie Kathleen, after re-arranging her desk & walking about her apartment with her tablet, all of which we could see because she left her video on, read 2 short poems “After Dance” (in NYC) & “Study Bliss.” 

D. put the cap on the open mic with her Cento, as she does each week, composed of lines from tonight’s open mic, but minus lines from her own poem.

Elizag, aka Elizabeth K. Gordon, wore her tee shirt from National Poetry Slam in 2012 in which she was a member of the Nitty Gritty Slam Team representing Albany, NY. Her poems often mix humor & politics, which were elements present in what she read tonight. She began with a piece on the “stereotype thread,” a way of thinking that that can be best countered by being yourself, then she too read a poem Lucille Clifton, “Blessing the Boats at St. Mary’s.” In a different vein she read her piece about old folks giving away their stuff, “Lightening the Load,” then a poem written after the “Unite the Right” riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 “To the Mothers of the Neo-Nazi White Supremacists.” Taking on a equally grim topic, but this time with a seasoning of humor was the parody “An Assembly on Gun Violence Grade 4 thru 6,” then on to a few Haiku, & her piece “On Receiving My 1st Social Security Check.” She ended with a poem by Danusha Leméris (a poet whose work I recently stumbled across in American Poetry Review), “Small Kindnesses.” 

Then on to a brief Q&A with D. Colin in which Elizag was asked about her teaching a literature course at Northampton Community College, in Pennsylvania, & her Slam experience. You can get Elizag’s book, Love Cohoes (2014) at Market Block Books in Troy.

It’s not hard to know when Poetic Vibe takes place: it’s every Monday, 7:30PM, find the link on the Poetic Vibe Facebook page.