2nd Tuesday All Genre Open Mic Out of Bennington, March 8

Another great gathering, 11 poets! —  folks dialing in from the Northeast & the Mid-West, why with good reason this open mic remains on Zoom.

I was up first, yet again, with a couple of seasonal poems, 1 in each round; for the 1st round a poem for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kerouac, a poem about Northport, NY “Kerouac.” For the 2nd round a poem for St. Patrick’s Day “Sheila-Na-Gig” (find out what it is here).

Julie Lomoe read only in the 1st round her entry in the International Women’s Day Anthology from Moonstone Press, Philadelphia, “My Womb Dome,” life in NYC in the 1970s.

In his 1st round Kenn Ash read a horror story, “The Virtuoso” about a giant spider & its web; in the 2nd round he read the middle poem of a trilogy of poems, “I Ain’t Got Time to be Dead.”

Sally Rhoades read a poem in the 1st round written last Summer to a prompt, but still timely, “Wars I Have Seen;” for the 2nd round she read one written in 2019, “Even Dancing We Keep Talking,” about a picture of her dancing with poet Ken Hada at the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival in Ada, OK.

Jim Madigan, in Oak Park, IL read in the 1st round “My Grandfather’s Wake” a working class poem about his grandfather & his relationship with black workers; similarly, his 2nd round piece, “Child’s Hand Bend,” was about the poetic names of places & their stories.

Our host Charlie Rossiter gave a nod, in his 1st round poem, to Oak Park where he used to live (& met Jim there) with a portrait of a black woman there, “a bright flower in a patch of weeds…”, the poem titled “Rare & Precious;” he too had a Kerouac-related piece for the 2nd round, “The Ceremony at the 42nd St. Library,” details about getting access to the Kerouac manuscripts there.

Naomi Bindman probably could have driven to this event if it was still being held at the brew pub in Bennington, she read a piece on the beginning of Spring written on March 8 almost 4 decades ago “March Symphony,” then for her round 2 a very new poem, “Touchstones,” about her dog.

Elaina Barrett was “here” last month for the first time & I guess we didn’t scare her away because she came back, she only read in the 1st round, said she was feeling content that she had gotten this poem written, a colorful portrait & memory “Halloween Costume.”

In her 1st round Sheryll Bedingfield read a page from a memoir about their family's fainting goats, & her bother showing their mother a drawing of a lynching; then for the 2nd round read another family poem, this after Marc Chagall’s painting “The Yellow Room.” 

Barbara Sarvis, who is a painter, knew the Chagall painting, she read a poem by Cynthia Good, “I Never Worried About the Police Killing My Son,” from an anthology of women’s poems; the 2nd time around read a children’s book she wrote, “The Traveling Hat,” about a child undergoing chemo who lost her hair.

Tom Nicotera had some internet issues, started, stopped, then came back for the 1st round with a new poem “But I Chose to Write This Poem Instead, or What I Didn’t Do on My Day Off” with the recurring line “but I chose to write this poem instead…;” then in the second round he read “The Road to Enlightenment Takes a Detour”  — I guess the Zoom road has it’s own detours, switchbacks, U-turns, etc.

But you can attend this monthly open mic in the safety & quiet & warmth of your own home each 2nd Tuesday at 7:00PM. If you’re not on Charlies’s short-list (which keeps getting longer), you can send him an email & he will send you the Zoom link, charliemrossiter@gmail.com — shoes (& pants) optional.