2nd Sunday @ 2, September 12

We (Nancy Klepsch, the open mic poets & I) were back at Collar City Mushrooms, in Troy, for this Sunday open mic that had started out at the Arts Center further downtown.

1st on the open mic list was Kelly who was here for the 1st time last month, I guess we didn’t scare her off, with an untitled confrontational piece complete with a musical soundtrack, then to a lighter piece with funny rhymes titled “Back to School.” Avery Stempel, who as the proprietor of Collar City Mushrooms is our host here, read a couple pieces written, he said last year, “Drifting,” & one from his experience as a landlord, “What Do You Leave Behind?”

Only 1 day off the 20th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, I read a commissioned poem titled “Another Tuesday” that recalled another September 11 — that of 1973 — when the democratically elected government of Chile was violently overthrown by a USA-supported coup, then read a brief piece titled “At EMPAC.”  My co-host, Nancy Klepsch, brought her guitar today & began with a piece about words colliding that channeled the protest songs of Patti Smith, then the lighter piece “Why Is The World So Beautiful?”

John Teevan read for the 1st time in public from what he described as a sequel to his previously published spy thriller Deception, Love and Espionage, a dialogue between the 2 main characters Valentina & Diego, a sequence titled “Revenge.” He was followed by Brenda whose 1st piece began “Just think how…” then a play on words beginning “Cut on the dotted lines…”

Julie Lomoe also debuted a piece reading “Ghazal for the Earth” for the 1st time, then the provocative (& frightening imagined) “Dance Nude in the Backyard.” Our last reader, Rhonda Rosenheck, read for the 1st time at the 2nd Sunday @ 2, the list poem “Things I Used to Have,” another for the New Year, & from a series of “crime poems” a sestina titled “The Woman.”

Our 2nd Sunday @ 2 Open Mic has a pleasant, hospitable new home at Collar City Mushrooms, 333 2nd Ave., Troy, NY, with even some new readers joining us — there’s always room for more.