The Holy Local, October 27

Back for our 2nd event here at the High Ethic Stalwarts Gallery, & I was gratified not only to have some repeat readers from last month but also new readers here. Our evening’s Muse was the great, gone poet, Jack Hirschman, as I read his poem “Jack Kerouac: a Meditation” on Poetry! from All That’s Left (City Lights Foundation, 2008). 

First up on the sign-up list was a true “Holy Local,” Sylvia Barnard who lives only a few blocks away, to read 2 poems for her deceased friend, Brian, one she read last month here, then a newer poem seeing a vision of her friend out her window.

A new face/voice not just to this reading but to the area, Kate Crofton, read a poem about going home, mixed with childhood memories of borrowing a cup of sugar, “US Route 6.”

Tom Bonville said he was pleased to be out reading in person again, & read his poems “The Hidden Word,” & one mixing in a childhood memory of his family of immigrants “To Like What I Don’t.” 

Tamara Gray came back again this month, started off with a short, but intricate poem, then another about “auctioning off” her days, also short & trenchant.  The Reverend Nadine Morsch, who had been known to read at the open mic at The Low Beat read an excerpt from a long, multi-part meditative poem, “The Naropa Echo.”

Tim Verhaegen, another habitué of open mics, read a Halloween poem set in1969, “It’s Halloween Everyday at Our House.”  

Christian Ortega read from his 2014 self-published chapbook Red Poems, 2 pieces, “Factotum LTD,” & the longer rant “Red Roses Roman.”

I read an older poem that mashed up Halloween & Election Day, “This is Not Trick or Treat.”  Our last reader signed up as ZaZa, but we knew her when she was a reader at open mics at the Lionheart & the original Fuze Box on Washington Ave., she read a breakup poem, “Nicky,” & one about her mother, “Mom,” from her notebook.

The Holy Local is an open mic for the written & spoken word at the High Ethic Stalwarts Gallery, 345 Myrtle Ave., Albany, NY, each last Wednesday of the month (except this November), sign-up at 7:30PM, 8:00 start, $3.00 donation. Hope to see you in December.