2nd Sunday @ 2PM: Poetry + Prose, September 11

It seemed like I just doing this & indeed, close enough, I was yesterday only a few blocks from Collar City Mushrooms poets from this very open mic series read at an event called “River Poems” in a benefit for the Lansingburgh Historical Society at the Herman Melville House. Three of the poets reading in the open mic here today also read at River Poems yesterday. 

I headed off the sign-up sheet with a 9/11 poem, “Another Tuesday,” about the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 & about the US-supported coup of the Chilean government in 1973.

A new poetic voice in town was Anthony, recently arrived from Spokane, WA & read a moving, descriptive piece titled “Char Fishing in America” about a fish he caught & killed & his reaction to having done that.

Bob Sharkey read 2 poems connected thematically, “Altar Boy Stories,” about the things he saw, experience as a young altar boy, then “3 Years Later” during the war in Viet Nam.

Laura Ellzey read from a long memoir written by her father, Will, titled “The Ellzey’s of Sand Hill.”

Desmond Gonzalez brought his guitar & performed 2 songs, the first titled “Archie Marry Me,” on similar themes with the same chord changes that ran seamlessly together.

The proprietor of Collar City Mushrooms, Avery Stempel, arrived back from an event where he had been peddling his wares just in time to be the last reader, & read a poem he had just finished “Puttering Down the Mountain.”

Another 2nd Sunday @ 2PM Open Mic, you might say 2 in a row, except that yesterday was not a Sunday. But we are here each month on — you must have this by now — on the 2nd Sunday @ 2PM, Collar City Mushrooms, 333 Second Ave., Troy, NY, bring a poem to read, & you can buy a variety of mushrooms to bring home.