2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, February 12

My co-host, Nancy Klepsch, was back! albeit with a cane — we missed her. & there was a mixed bag of open mic poets from far & near.

First up was Rhonda Rosenheck who explained that she does a Wordle each day & writes a poem using the words, did a series of 7 tankas (was that more than the 2 poem limit?) from the Wordle poems.

I was next on the list with a poem from Earth Day 2022, a challenge by Mark Tremont to write a poem based on the texts in the windows of his I Fill Ink Jets shop in Delmar, my poem titled “2 Dreams,” then my annual Birthday Poem this year titled “Magic in Gloucester.”

Avery Stempel, who each month opens up his shop for the poets (he’s one too!) for this open mic, read 2 “morning poems,” the first titled “Waiting for Coffee,” the next “A Brief Encounter” with crows.

Alexander Perez said that his poem “Breath Bank, or How to Save Moonlight” was based on a video he saw of people taking turns inflating a weather balloon with their own breaths, the poem played on “Moon” & love.

Joel Best’s poem, “July 1967,” set up as a discussion with a friend about Viet Nam (“worries in retrospect”), was a rare foray for him into autobiography.

Kathy Smith said that she hasn’t read out in 3 or 4 years but one wouldn’t know from the poems she read, the first in the persona of Sarah, the wife of Abraham, then her take on “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”

Cheryl Rice read from a collection of her poems that came out just before the pandemic, Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2019), a love poem “Morning Has a Life of Its Own,” & a poem to the late, great poet Donald Lev, “Ponies.”

Our co-host, Nancy Klepsch, was back after a few months hiatus, with a poem she said was coming out in the esteemed Trailer Park Quarterly about one of her students, “Mama I See Your Daughter.”

Laura Ellzey almost didn’t get to read, she had signed up on Avery’s email list rather than the open mic sign-up sheet, but we got her in; she read 2 older poems, the imagistic “Depression,” & what she called “a recording of my inner brain” “Bad Words.”

You can join us each 2nd Sunday @ 2PM here at Collar City Mushrooms, 333 Second Ave., Troy for an open mic for poetry & prose. Maybe even go home with a bag of mushrooms.