2nd Sunday @ 2: Poetry + Prose, October 13

Finally back together with my co-host, Nancy Klepsch, as we each had taken 2nd Sundays off for a variety of reasons, back among the mushrooms.

First up on the sign-up sheet was Rachel Baum who read 2 poems from her chapbook How to Rob a Convenience Store (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2014), “Mall massacre, any town,” & “in loving grace, this day.” (Note: each of the poems in this collection are linked by a word, a line, or a phrase in the last line of the poem with the first line of the following poem). David Gonsalves read 2 very short poems, “All’s That’s Left,” & “Ghost Story” -- he's never been know to go over a time limit, he has a special place reserved in Poetry Heaven.

Co-host Nancy Klepsch shared 2 poems she had written for an application for a residency, “General Averill” about the land & air in the country, & one titled appropriately enough “Deep in the Kinderhook Preserve.” Avery Stempel, the Mushroom Man, read from his manuscript in progress “Here to There” the piece titled “The Corner of 5th & Washington,” & one about a stalled car, “Just a Push.”

I was surprised to hear that this was the first time Elizag (the Poet of Cohoes) was here for the open mic & then pleased to hear her performance about a flock of geese, “Looking Up.” My 2 poems were seasonal pieces, “A Ghost” about the gone poet Wendy Battin, & one titled “Yom Kippur.”

Another writer who was here for the first time (but unknown to me) went by the letter Z (was also the last one to read today) & stunned us with a graphic piece of richly imaginative writing that they described as “a prose poem” about an autopsy titled “Of Fish & Woman.”

You too can join us to share your writing on the 2nd Sunday @ 2 at Collar City Mushrooms, 333 2nd Ave., Troy, NY — 2 poems or a short piece of prose no longer than 5 minutes.