12/25/2017 NO PE
01/01/2018 NO PE -- H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S !
12/25/2017 NO PE
01/01/2018 NO PE -- H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S !
12/18/2017 Michael Caylo-Baradi hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Outer" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
Michael Caylo-Baradi's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Galway Review, Blue Fifth Review, Blue Print Review, The Common (online), Eclectica, elimae, Eunoia Review, FORTH, Galatea Resurrects, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Our Own Voice, poeticdiversity, Philippines Free Press, Poetry Pacific, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere. An alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at The Graduate Center (CUNY), he has also written reviews and essays for New Pages, PopMatters, and The Latin American Review of Books.
http://mcaylo.blogspot.com/p/p
How to purify the air
Re-align the universe in the direction of your gaze. This is
breathing unhinged from dysfunction, clawed with need,
panting for Narcissus.
A bedroom is an occlusion that sharpens visions drooling for its
prey crucified in surrender. The howling beyond the yard
intensifies the season,
feasting on rituals that clarifies the philosophy of fangs. Wings
fluttering by the window are prayers, searching for
maps away from the city,
now submerged in bodies of lights illuminating an aftermath,
of hands intertwined, gasping for morsels of God,
to resuscitate the air.
Poem URL at OTOLITHS 43:
Michael Caylo-Baradi's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Galway Review, Blue Fifth Review, Blue Print Review, The Common (online), Eclectica, elimae, Eunoia Review, FORTH, Galatea Resurrects, Ink Sweat & Tears, Local Nomad, MiPOesias, Otoliths, Our Own Voice, poeticdiversity, Philippines Free Press, Poetry Pacific, Prick of the Spindle, and elsewhere. An alumnus of The Writers’ Institute at The Graduate Center (CUNY), he has also written reviews and essays for New Pages, PopMatters, and The Latin American Review of Books.
http://mcaylo.blogspot.com/p/p
Re-align the universe in the direction of your gaze. This is
breathing unhinged from dysfunction, clawed with need,
panting for Narcissus.
A bedroom is an occlusion that sharpens visions drooling for its
prey crucified in surrender. The howling beyond the yard
intensifies the season,
feasting on rituals that clarifies the philosophy of fangs. Wings
fluttering by the window are prayers, searching for
maps away from the city,
now submerged in bodies of lights illuminating an aftermath,
of hands intertwined, gasping for morsels of God,
to resuscitate the air.
Poem URL at OTOLITHS 43:
12/4/2017 Clark Kent hosted by Jan 12/11/2017
(Need a prompt?Is Superman a Golem? A golem is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud). -- you don't have to use those words.)
(Need a prompt?Is Superman a Golem? A golem is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter (specifically clay or mud). -- you don't have to use those words.)
Clark Kent claims to have been forever maligned by the myth of Superman when in fact he has just been another bat in the belfry of life, seeking justice and peace in this troubled world. The comics who rule have long gotten Clark wrong, presuming Kryptonite to be his Achilles heel when in fact that radiant mineral is found within every person he meets. That singular force travels the short divide from them to him, dispelling the dark forces of narcissism, rendering Clark human, vulnerable, and capable of poetic expression.
Longing For Kryptonite
Zarathustra hides in a polar ice castle,
flies to the moon, leers at women with his X-ray eyes.
He is stuck in a rut waiting for earthquakes, sinking ships,
meteors on course to destroy the woman he avoids.
Each wood-pulped, flattened day he is summoned,
pulls phone booths out of thin air,
strips to pectoral splendor.
His speedo modestly bulges
as he rescues Lois Lane yet again,
again, again, again.
Old pages yellow and crack
until he longs to be a real Clark Kent,
Kryptonated, unbound,
a nakedly human man.
12/11/2017 Mary Mackey hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Fame" or for that matter, "defame"-- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
(Need a prompt? "Fame" or for that matter, "defame"-- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
Kin
We were related to everybody in Crittenden County
We were related to everybody in Crittenden County
literally everybody
judges and lawyers and county clerks
and barbers and druggists and soda jerks
and moonshiners and farmers and ferry boat captains
and the rich people in the big white houses
and the poor people down by the slough
Total strangers would come up
Total strangers would come up
as soon as they saw you on the street
throw their arms around you and say
my great grandma is buried next to your great grandma
or I'm your cousin 17 times removed on your third uncle’s side
or
my my my you look just like your daddy
has he ever got out of prison?
Mary Mackey
from The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams (coming in 2018 from Marsh Hawk Press)Elizabeth Alford Features Nov 27
11/27/2017 Elizabeth Alford hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? "The light in the basement" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
A longtime fan of short poetry, Elizabeth Alford (Hayward, CA) usually writes on her laptop, but in its absence will settle for her cell phone. Her work has recently appeared in print in POETALK, and various online venues such as brass bell: a haiku journal, haikuniverse, and the cherita: your storybook journal. Please visit her author page @ Facebook.com/
Heaven is My Mother’s Apple Pie
by Elizabeth Alford
Once a year
(and only under the best
possible circumstances)
my mother makes
her apple pie, and that first
bite—oh! how buttery
and crumbly the crust, how
spicy the forbidden fruit
filling still warm from the oven
and swirls of cinnamon,
sweet and tang waltzing to flavor
on the ballroom floor
of my tongue—is almost enough
to make me sing praise
to a god I don’t believe in,
even though I know
deep in my heart
and in my stomach
that if there is an afterlife,
it is after Thanksgiving dinner
and that my mother
is a god of gods
who can bake the whole
of the universe
into a pie.
11/20/2017 Phyllis Meshulam, hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Capture" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
Phyllis Meshulam first went to Italy, where her father had been stationed during World War II, at not quite five. Threads of those journeys are woven into her newly-released book of poems, Land of My Father’s War, from Cherry Grove Collections. Joy Harjo, winner of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, said of Meshulam’s book, an “urgency of spirit has emerged eloquently here in these poems of perception and even prophecy….” Meshulam is also the author of Doll, Moon (Finishing Line Press), Doors (War and Peace Press) and Valley of Moon (d-Press). She is a veteran teacher for California Poets in the Schools and coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, and has been a presenter at the nation-wide writing conferences, AWP and Split this Rock. Her work has appeared in magazines from Earth’s Daughters and Phoebe to Teachers & Writers and Tikkun. Meshulam has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For CPitS’s 50th anniversary, she edited, Poetry Crossing, which Poetry Flash called “a truly joyful collection of lessons, inspirations, and children's poems.”
The breathing space within the gallery
is sliced by fifty-eight thousand fine strands,
(not the usual chains). Each current
makes pendant metal tags glint,
ringing each other like a wind harp,
or sun-scattered rain on the roof
of a Quonset hut. What’s
in a dog tag? Name, blood type. A small mirror.
Each is labeled. B positive,
or be excluded or dead. O for negative,
or zero. O for other. Each belief
system reduced to one of a few
graced faiths. P for protestor. C,
for catharsis. J for jungle. An identity –
forgotten tiger, lamb, or forest fire.
11/13/2017 Yuyutsu Sharma hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? How do you explain your position on the planet? -- you don't have to use those words.)
Yuyutsu R D Sharma has published nine poetry collections including, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016). He has translated Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh and Hebrew poet Ronny Someck into Nepali. Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty-Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma is his most recent publication. Yuyutsu’s work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from China where he had gone to read at Beijing International Book Fair.
Mules by Yuyutsu Sharma
On the great Tibetan
salt route they meet me again
old forsaken friends ...
On their faces
fatigue of a drunken sleep
their lives worn out,
their legs twisted, shaking
from carrying
illustrious flags of bleeding ascents.
Age long bells clinging
to them like festering wounds
beating notes
of a slavery modernism brings:
cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,
solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards
sacks of rice
and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai.
Butterflies of
the terraced fields know their names.
Singing brooks tempests
of their breathless climbs.
Traffic alert
and time-tested, they climb
carrying
dreams of posh peacocks
pamphlets
of a secret religious war
filth
of an ecologist's sterile semen
entire kitchen
for a cocktail party at the base camp
defunct development
agenda of guilty donors
the West's weird visions
lusting for an instant purge.
Stone steps
of the mountains embossed
on their drugged brains,
like lines of aborted love
scratched
on the historic rocks of waterspouts.
Starry skies
of the dozing valleys know
the ache
of their secret sweat.
Sunny days
along the crystal rivers
taste
of their bleeding eyes.
Greatest fiction
of the struggling lives lost,
like real mules
clattering their hooves on the flagstones,
in circling
the cruel grandeur
of blood thirsty
mule paths around the glaciers of Annapurnas.
11/6/2017 Charlie McCauley hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Heavy upon" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
C O McCauley is a retired naval aviator, has fronted a rockabilly band and performed in community theater. His songs and poetry about growing up southern, the Viet Nam War, and Native American culture have appeared in The Tule Review, California Quarterly, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, and Soundzine. He resides in Martinez, California.
10/30/2017 Maverick Night Epiphany, Destruction & recreation
-- Poets bring poems.
They are drawn out of a hat by other poets.
As quickly as possible the receiving poet writes an alternate conclusion/epiphany within the format of the poem; endings can be one or more lines.
The person who altered the poem then reads the poem with either the original ending or the altered ending, and then reads the other ending.
The audience, excluding the original poet, guesses which ending was the original ending and which was the altered ending.
Objective -- try to fool us! Is your revision accepted as the original? hosted by Bruce
10/23/2017 Melinda Clemmons hosted by J.D
(Need a prompt? "fish cry" -- you don't have to use those words. Comes from Thoreau -- "Who hears the fishes when they cry")
Melinda Clemmons lives in Oakland. Her stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cimarron Review, Kindred, Daphne Magazine, West Trestle Review, Eclipse, 300 Days of Sun, Cavalier, and The Monthly. She worked for over twenty years in programs serving children and youth in foster care, and is now a freelance writer and editor in the child welfare field. She is a frequent contributor to the online child welfare and juvenile justice news site, The Chronicle of Social Change.
Walking Out
This is how you greet a field of corn: quietly,
tilting your head to listen before stepping in between the rows,
lightly brushing against the silks as you pass.
You’ll want to head toward the center
where the corn grows tall and strong,
much taller than you, crazily taller than it looks from the road.
Even if it’s your first time standing in a cornfield,
you’ll feel at home. Beneath you, soil; above you, sky.
Perhaps you’ve brought a grocery sack your grandfather
(back at the car, having a smoke) handed you at the edge of the field.
Twist off however much you came for, plus a few extras.
Maybe someone’s got a pot of water set to boil back at home,
a pinch of sugar, a dish of butter beginning to melt.
Take what you need. Remember to breathe deeply
because this is the best air there is.
You can learn a lot from a field of corn so take your time.
Here’s something: the stalks in the center are the ones that thrive,
fed by pollen drifting from those around them. Those on the edges
don’t amount to much.
Besides each other, all corn stalks need is: sun, soil, water, and time.
Now turn around carefully and walk out the way you came in,
being sure to listen as you go because they say you can hear corn grow,
and it’s true.
First published in the Spring/Summer 2015 issue of Kindred from Anchor & Plume Press
10/16/2017 Alan Harris hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Man handle " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Alan Harris has been an actor and a stand-up comedian, which might explain why his "poetry" sounds like it does. He has lived in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and would someday like to live in Cranky Corner, Louisiana.
COSMIC ORPHAN
I dreamed that I stood naked before Fred and Ethel Mertz
Every second of the day
10/09/2017 Britt Peter hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? What do you pretend not to know?-- you don't have to use those words.)
Britt Peter lives in Richmond, Ca. He has been around artists, musicians, painters and political activists most of his adult life and continues to take delight in poetry, movies, nonviolent resistance, good food and impromptu community. He and his son have put fifty poems of his on You Tube (under the handle: Britt Peter, poet). He has published in The Intransient Voice, Poetalk, Jerry Jazz Musician, The Richmond Anthology, and the Blue Collar Review.
A Visit
Li Bai rushes to meet me
1300 years
A toppling through
Various dimensions
Entrance stage right
To greet the rising moon
Still luminous
Over the eastern hills
Published in Poetalk (2016—Summer 2017)
10/2/2017 Larry Ruth hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? Think about the worst thing that didn't happen to you-- you don't have to use those words.)
Larry Ruth was born in Berkeley. In the third grade, in celebration of a certain winter holiday, he wrote a play about elves on strike, which was performed by his class.
Larry is a consultant in environmental and natural resources policy, and enjoys the remnants of the wild. He lives in Berkeley.
(Need a prompt? "Outer limits" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Dave Holt, relocated to the Bay Area from Toronto, Canada, his place of birth, to follow his dream of becoming a successful songwriter. He is English/Irish and Anishinaabe/Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indian from his mother’s side and he volunteered to serve the American Indian community in California for several years. Dave graduated from S.F. State University’s Creative Writing program (M.A., 1995). He is a winner of several poetry prizes including the Thomas Merton Foundation’s Poetry of the Sacred prize and a Literary/Cultural Arts award for his book Voyages to Ancestral Islands. In 2016, he was published in Red Indian Road West, an anthology of Native American Poetry from California.
Straddling the High Beams of Anderson Bridge
Looking into the moral chasm I escaped,
drugs, drinking, and nights of cruelty,
staring down into murky water,
run, River, run past the damage done,
with you, Rob, my too easy-going friend,
eaten alive by the emptiness.
Someone had to cut your wasted body down,
devoured by the void while I escaped.
Got away by following my angels,
just as I’d done since childhood,
out of the trash-filled alleyways,
where one forgotten flower bloomed.
Partnering with someone, Rob,
loving, being loved, that’s what saved me
from the end of the rope.
I walked through this abyss with you, remember?
You dared me to cross over the unfinished bridge
across Oakville’s river, to walk the concrete beams
and steel bars, looking down between our feet
from that height to fast water below,
nothing between us and the moving current
but our nerve and our quick-beating hearts.
I’d be afraid to do it now.
Back then we were practicing courage.
I used it to break away from there,
but you, who dared me traverse
the half-completed span,
you didn’t make the crossing.
9/11/2017 Tureeda Mikell hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Lower Case " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Tureeda Mikell Aka Toreadah, Story Medicine Woman, is an award winning poet, called activist for Holism, by Native Palestinian. South African Professor at Cal State Long Beach called her a Woman Of Truths. Ngugi wa Thiongo renown author and professor called her the Word Magician. Published nationally and internationally, audience member said “ Tureeda is hell bent on asserting life!”
Excerpts from poem
Poly Tics
Spell a word cast a spel, in the tic toc
By Tureeda aka ToReadah,
Lenore Weiss is enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts Program at San Francisco State University. Her poetry has been published in many journals including WovenTales, Midwood Press, Maple Leaf Review, Kindred, San Francisco Peace and Hope, Cactus Heart, Ghost Town, Poetica, Carbon Culture, BlinkInk, The Portland Review, La Más Tequila Review, Digital Americana, The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Nimrod International Journal, Copper Nickel, The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Feminist Studies in Religion, and Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. Her books include Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012) and Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014). Her blog resides at www.lenoreweiss.com.
9/4/17 WAS: NO PE, Bay Area Poets Coalition Picnic
http://www.bayareapoetscoalition.org/
8/21/2017 WAS: Cassandra Dallett hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Skin" -- you don't have to use that word.)
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a two-time Pushcart nominee and Literary Death Match winner. She has been published online and in many print magazines, such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Chiron Review, Stone Boat Review, and Great Weather For Media and reads often around the San Francisco Bay Area. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless was released on Manic D Press May 2014. In 2015 she authored Bad Sandy (Lucky Bastard Press), Pearl Tongue (Be About It Press), The Water Wars (Pedestrian Poets Series), On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press) which was nominated for a California Book Award, and most recently Armadillo Heart (Paper Press) with MK Chavez.
8/28/2017 WAS: Georgette Howington hosted by J.D.
(Need a prompt? "Long Hair " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Georgette Howington is a closet poet and short story writer who came out three years ago. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet and Poeming Pigeons, among others. Several poems won Honorable Mentions at the North American Women’s Music Festival and Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contest in 2016. As a naturalist and horticulturist, her niche is Backyard Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters. She is a County Coordinator and Assistant State Program Director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program and an activist in the conservation community in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years. Georgette is also a published garden and environmental writer.
If a Homing Pigeon Were My Lover
Fluffed and preened on the shelf
**** Published in Poeming Pigeons, “Poems about Birds”, 2015
8/14/2017 WAS: Avotcja hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Walk around your block " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe, and in more Anthologies than she remembers. She is an award winning Poet & multi-instrumentalist who has opened for Betty Carter in New York City, Peru's Susana Baca at San Francisco’s Encuentro Popular & Cuba’s Gema y Pável, played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bobi & Luis Cespedes, John Handy, Sonido Afro Latina, Dimensions Dance Theater, Black Poets With Attitudes, Bombarengue, Nikki Giovanni, Los Angeles' Build An Ark, Dwight Trible, Diamano Coura West African Dance Co., Terry Garthwaite, Big Black, The Bay Area Blues Society & Caribeana Etc. Shared stages with Sonia Sanchez, Piri Thomas, Janice Mirikitani, Diane DiPrima, Michael Franti, Jayne Cortez, & with Jose Montoya's Royal Chicano Air Force & is a Bay Area icon with her group Avotcja & Modúpue. Avotcja was the opening act for the legendary Poet Pat Parker the last three years of her life. She both composed & performed the film score for the Danish documentary MuNu. Her Poetry &/or music has been recorded by Piri Thomas, Famoudou Don Moyé (of The Art Ensemble Of Chicago), Bobby Matos Latin Jazz Ensemble, & performed by The Purple Moon Dance Project, and was the 1st Poetry performed by New York's Dance Mobile. She's appeared at The Lorraine Hansberry Theater in S. F., The Asian-American Jazz Festival in Chicago, as well as The Asian-American Jazz Festival in San Francisco. She's been featured 5 times at Afro-Solo, twice at San Francisco's Carnival, The Scottish Rite Temple & Yoshi's in Oakland & San Francisco, Jose Castellar's play "Man From San Juan", Club Le Monmartre in Copenhagen Denmark, Stanford University, at San Francisco’s Brava Theater For The Arts with Cine Acción, New York's Henry Street Settlement Theater and The Women On The Way Festival in San Francisco. Avotcja a is popular Bay Area DeeJay & Radio Personality, and the founder/Director of "The Clean Scene Theater Project (AKA) Proyecto Teatral De La Escena Sobria". She continues to teach Creative Writing, Storytelling & Drama in Public Schools & thanks to the California Arts Council she was also an Artist in Residence at the Milestones Project & San Francisco Penal System. Avotcja is a proud member of DAMO (Disability Advocates Of Minorities Organization), PEN Oakland, California Poets In The Schools, IWWG & is an ASCAP recording artist.
8/7/2017 WAS: David Alpaugh hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Spiral or Gyre " -- you don't have to use those words.)
David Alpaugh has been a booster of Bay Area poetry for many years as a publisher, poetry reading host, and publications director for the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Circle. He is a popular performer, noted for his with and humor and has been featured at northern California venues more than 150 times. His first collection, Counterpoint, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry prize from Story Line Press. Journals that have published his poetry include Able Muse, American Journal of Poetry, Berkeley Poetry Review, Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Light, Mudlark, Poetry, Rattle, Runes, Spillway, Wisconsin Review, and Zyzzyva. His controversial essays on “Po-Biz” have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Poets & Writers, Rattle, and Scene4. He is one of the 50 contemporary poets included by Dana Gioia in the Heyday Press anthology California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present and he has been a finalist for Poet Laureate of California. He teaches literature and writing at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and for the UCB Extension.
7/31/2017 WAS: Maverick Night hosted by Jan
OPPS (Other People's PoemS)
Bring 2 of your poems, we mix all up in a bag, grab one blind, everyone tries to guess whose it is. Always fun.
7/24/2017 WAS: Elaine Brown hosted by J.D
(Need a prompt? "Key" -- you don't have to use that word.)
11/27/2017 Elizabeth Alford hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? "The light in the basement" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
A longtime fan of short poetry, Elizabeth Alford (Hayward, CA) usually writes on her laptop, but in its absence will settle for her cell phone. Her work has recently appeared in print in POETALK, and various online venues such as brass bell: a haiku journal, haikuniverse, and the cherita: your storybook journal. Please visit her author page @ Facebook.com/
(Need a prompt? "The light in the basement" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
A longtime fan of short poetry, Elizabeth Alford (Hayward, CA) usually writes on her laptop, but in its absence will settle for her cell phone. Her work has recently appeared in print in POETALK, and various online venues such as brass bell: a haiku journal, haikuniverse, and the cherita: your storybook journal. Please visit her author page @ Facebook.com/
Heaven is My Mother’s Apple Pie
by Elizabeth Alford
Once a year
(and only under the best
possible circumstances)
my mother makes
her apple pie, and that first
bite—oh! how buttery
and crumbly the crust, how
spicy the forbidden fruit
filling still warm from the oven
and swirls of cinnamon,
sweet and tang waltzing to flavor
on the ballroom floor
of my tongue—is almost enough
to make me sing praise
to a god I don’t believe in,
even though I know
deep in my heart
and in my stomach
that if there is an afterlife,
it is after Thanksgiving dinner
and that my mother
is a god of gods
who can bake the whole
of the universe
into a pie.
11/20/2017 Phyllis Meshulam, hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Capture" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
Phyllis Meshulam first went to Italy, where her father had been stationed during World War II, at not quite five. Threads of those journeys are woven into her newly-released book of poems, Land of My Father’s War, from Cherry Grove Collections. Joy Harjo, winner of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, said of Meshulam’s book, an “urgency of spirit has emerged eloquently here in these poems of perception and even prophecy….” Meshulam is also the author of Doll, Moon (Finishing Line Press), Doors (War and Peace Press) and Valley of Moon (d-Press). She is a veteran teacher for California Poets in the Schools and coordinator for Poetry Out Loud, and has been a presenter at the nation-wide writing conferences, AWP and Split this Rock. Her work has appeared in magazines from Earth’s Daughters and Phoebe to Teachers & Writers and Tikkun. Meshulam has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. For CPitS’s 50th anniversary, she edited, Poetry Crossing, which Poetry Flash called “a truly joyful collection of lessons, inspirations, and children's poems.”
The breathing space within the gallery
is sliced by fifty-eight thousand fine strands,
(not the usual chains). Each current
makes pendant metal tags glint,
ringing each other like a wind harp,
or sun-scattered rain on the roof
of a Quonset hut. What’s
in a dog tag? Name, blood type. A small mirror.
Each is labeled. B positive,
or be excluded or dead. O for negative,
or zero. O for other. Each belief
system reduced to one of a few
graced faiths. P for protestor. C,
for catharsis. J for jungle. An identity –
forgotten tiger, lamb, or forest fire.
11/13/2017 Yuyutsu Sharma hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? How do you explain your position on the planet? -- you don't have to use those words.)
Yuyutsu R D Sharma has published nine poetry collections including, A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems (Nirala, 2016). He has translated Irish poet Cathal O’ Searcaigh and Hebrew poet Ronny Someck into Nepali. Eternal Snow: A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Twenty-Five Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma is his most recent publication. Yuyutsu’s work has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Spanish and Dutch. Yuyutsu is the Visiting Poet at Columbia University, New York and has just returned from China where he had gone to read at Beijing International Book Fair.
Mules by Yuyutsu Sharma
On the great Tibetan
salt route they meet me again
old forsaken friends ...
On their faces
fatigue of a drunken sleep
their lives worn out,
their legs twisted, shaking
from carrying
illustrious flags of bleeding ascents.
Age long bells clinging
to them like festering wounds
beating notes
of a slavery modernism brings:
cartons of Iceberg, mineral water bottles,
solar heaters, Chinese tiles, tin cans, carom boards
sacks of rice
and iodized salt from the plains of Nepal Terai.
Butterflies of
the terraced fields know their names.
Singing brooks tempests
of their breathless climbs.
Traffic alert
and time-tested, they climb
carrying
dreams of posh peacocks
pamphlets
of a secret religious war
filth
of an ecologist's sterile semen
entire kitchen
for a cocktail party at the base camp
defunct development
agenda of guilty donors
the West's weird visions
lusting for an instant purge.
Stone steps
of the mountains embossed
on their drugged brains,
like lines of aborted love
scratched
on the historic rocks of waterspouts.
Starry skies
of the dozing valleys know
the ache
of their secret sweat.
Sunny days
along the crystal rivers
taste
of their bleeding eyes.
Greatest fiction
of the struggling lives lost,
like real mules
clattering their hooves on the flagstones,
in circling
the cruel grandeur
of blood thirsty
mule paths around the glaciers of Annapurnas.11/6/2017 Charlie McCauley hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Heavy upon" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
10/30/2017 Maverick Night Epiphany, Destruction & recreation 
C O McCauley is a retired naval aviator, has fronted a rockabilly band and performed in community theater. His songs and poetry about growing up southern, the Viet Nam War, and Native American culture have appeared in The Tule Review, California Quarterly, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, and Soundzine. He resides in Martinez, California.
-- Poets bring poems.
They are drawn out of a hat by other poets.
As quickly as possible the receiving poet writes an alternate conclusion/epiphany within the format of the poem; endings can be one or more lines.
The person who altered the poem then reads the poem with either the original ending or the altered ending, and then reads the other ending.
The audience, excluding the original poet, guesses which ending was the original ending and which was the altered ending.
Objective -- try to fool us! Is your revision accepted as the original? hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "fish cry" -- you don't have to use those words. Comes from Thoreau -- "Who hears the fishes when they cry")
Melinda Clemmons lives in Oakland. Her stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cimarron Review, Kindred, Daphne Magazine, West Trestle Review, Eclipse, 300 Days of Sun, Cavalier, and The Monthly. She worked for over twenty years in programs serving children and youth in foster care, and is now a freelance writer and editor in the child welfare field. She is a frequent contributor to the online child welfare and juvenile justice news site, The Chronicle of Social Change.
Walking Out
This is how you greet a field of corn: quietly,
tilting your head to listen before stepping in between the rows,
lightly brushing against the silks as you pass.
You’ll want to head toward the center
where the corn grows tall and strong,
much taller than you, crazily taller than it looks from the road.
Even if it’s your first time standing in a cornfield,
you’ll feel at home. Beneath you, soil; above you, sky.
Perhaps you’ve brought a grocery sack your grandfather
(back at the car, having a smoke) handed you at the edge of the field.
Twist off however much you came for, plus a few extras.
Maybe someone’s got a pot of water set to boil back at home,
a pinch of sugar, a dish of butter beginning to melt.
Take what you need. Remember to breathe deeply
because this is the best air there is.
You can learn a lot from a field of corn so take your time.
Here’s something: the stalks in the center are the ones that thrive,
fed by pollen drifting from those around them. Those on the edges
don’t amount to much.
Besides each other, all corn stalks need is: sun, soil, water, and time.
Now turn around carefully and walk out the way you came in,
being sure to listen as you go because they say you can hear corn grow,
and it’s true.
10/16/2017 Alan Harris hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Man handle " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Alan Harris has been an actor and a stand-up comedian, which might explain why his "poetry" sounds like it does. He has lived in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and would someday like to live in Cranky Corner, Louisiana.
Alan Harris has been an actor and a stand-up comedian, which might explain why his "poetry" sounds like it does. He has lived in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and would someday like to live in Cranky Corner, Louisiana.
COSMIC ORPHAN
I dreamed that I stood naked before Fred and Ethel Mertz
Who told me to stop watching so much TV
And listen more to the noise of the holiday methadone-addled poor
And see if I can catch a glimpse of a glimmer of a glint of a shard of a fragment of a sliver of
hope
Amidst the jostling for position of Jesus wannabes dipping their fingers in bowls of digital holy
water
While their collective flickering morality intermittently illuminates the compulsive saluting of
Napoleonic beat cops who are just doing the job they were hired to do
Which apparently includes hassling the ever-multiplying numbers of cosmic orphans
Who can only stare blankly at the overrated reality of mega-mall fascism and masturbatory
politeness
Their ears ringing with the hipster lingo of the day-glo soccer mom
And the demands of infants to be taken off speakerphone
Their to-do lists awash in reminders to update their self-destruction
Before returning to their refrigerated apartments
Where Fred and Ethel Mertz await
Somewhere in the world
Every second of the day
10/09/2017 Britt Peter hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? What do you pretend not to know?-- you don't have to use those words.)
10/2/2017 Larry Ruth hosted by Jan(Need a prompt? What do you pretend not to know?-- you don't have to use those words.)
Britt Peter lives in Richmond, Ca. He has been around artists, musicians, painters and political activists most of his adult life and continues to take delight in poetry, movies, nonviolent resistance, good food and impromptu community. He and his son have put fifty poems of his on You Tube (under the handle: Britt Peter, poet). He has published in The Intransient Voice, Poetalk, Jerry Jazz Musician, The Richmond Anthology, and the Blue Collar Review.
A VisitLi Bai rushes to meet me1300 yearsA toppling throughVarious dimensionsEntrance stage rightTo greet the rising moonStill luminousOver the eastern hillsPublished in Poetalk (2016—Summer 2017)
(Need a prompt? Think about the worst thing that didn't happen to you-- you don't have to use those words.)
Larry Ruth was born in Berkeley. In the third grade, in celebration of a certain winter holiday, he wrote a play about elves on strike, which was performed by his class.
He later earned several degrees at the University of California, Berkeley, taught environmental policy, and worked on campus for many years. Publications include articles on federal wildland fire policy, ecosystem sustainability, forest policy in the Sierra Nevada, and adaptive management. Research and professional interests include ecologically sensitive approaches to resource management, climate change adaptation, fire policy, and regulatory effectiveness.
Larry is a consultant in environmental and natural resources policy, and enjoys the remnants of the wild. He lives in Berkeley.
(Need a prompt? "Outer limits" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Dave Holt, relocated to the Bay Area from Toronto, Canada, his place of birth, to follow his dream of becoming a successful songwriter. He is English/Irish and Anishinaabe/Ojibwe (Chippewa) Indian from his mother’s side and he volunteered to serve the American Indian community in California for several years. Dave graduated from S.F. State University’s Creative Writing program (M.A., 1995). He is a winner of several poetry prizes including the Thomas Merton Foundation’s Poetry of the Sacred prize and a Literary/Cultural Arts award for his book Voyages to Ancestral Islands. In 2016, he was published in Red Indian Road West, an anthology of Native American Poetry from California.
Straddling the High Beams of Anderson Bridge
Looking into the moral chasm I escaped,
drugs, drinking, and nights of cruelty,
staring down into murky water,
run, River, run past the damage done,
with you, Rob, my too easy-going friend,
eaten alive by the emptiness.
Someone had to cut your wasted body down,
devoured by the void while I escaped.
Got away by following my angels,
just as I’d done since childhood,
out of the trash-filled alleyways,
where one forgotten flower bloomed.
Partnering with someone, Rob,
loving, being loved, that’s what saved me
from the end of the rope.
I walked through this abyss with you, remember?
You dared me to cross over the unfinished bridge
across Oakville’s river, to walk the concrete beams
and steel bars, looking down between our feet
from that height to fast water below,
nothing between us and the moving current
but our nerve and our quick-beating hearts.
I’d be afraid to do it now.
Back then we were practicing courage.
I used it to break away from there,
but you, who dared me traverse
the half-completed span,
you didn’t make the crossing.
9/11/2017 Tureeda Mikell hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Lower Case " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Tureeda Mikell Aka Toreadah, Story Medicine Woman, is an award winning poet, called activist for Holism, by Native Palestinian. South African Professor at Cal State Long Beach called her a Woman Of Truths. Ngugi wa Thiongo renown author and professor called her the Word Magician. Published nationally and internationally, audience member said “ Tureeda is hell bent on asserting life!”
Excerpts from poem
Poly Tics
Spell a word cast a spel, in the tic toc
Know the roots begin to pursue
The meaning of the lock
Know and see a lustful deed
Of a language and its plots
Begin to understand
What the language commands
In the poly tics against the tokos!!
By Tureeda aka ToReadah,
9/18/2017 Lenore Weiss hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Use some English words that are not common anymore, examples "jargogles," "apricity, "monsterful," or look up some of your own -- you don't have to use those words.)
Lenore Weiss is enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts Program at San Francisco State University. Her poetry has been published in many journals including WovenTales, Midwood Press, Maple Leaf Review, Kindred, San Francisco Peace and Hope, Cactus Heart, Ghost Town, Poetica, Carbon Culture, BlinkInk, The Portland Review, La Más Tequila Review, Digital Americana, The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Nimrod International Journal, Copper Nickel, The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Feminist Studies in Religion, and Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. Her books include Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012) and Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014). Her blog resides at www.lenoreweiss.com.
9/4/17 WAS: NO PE, Bay Area Poets Coalition Picnic
http://www.bayareapoetscoalition.org/
8/21/2017 WAS: Cassandra Dallett hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Skin" -- you don't have to use that word.)
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a two-time Pushcart nominee and Literary Death Match winner. She has been published online and in many print magazines, such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Chiron Review, Stone Boat Review, and Great Weather For Media and reads often around the San Francisco Bay Area. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless was released on Manic D Press May 2014. In 2015 she authored Bad Sandy (Lucky Bastard Press), Pearl Tongue (Be About It Press), The Water Wars (Pedestrian Poets Series), On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press) which was nominated for a California Book Award, and most recently Armadillo Heart (Paper Press) with MK Chavez.
8/28/2017 WAS: Georgette Howington hosted by J.D.
If a Homing Pigeon Were My Lover
8/14/2017 WAS: Avotcja hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Long Hair " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Georgette Howington is a closet poet and short story writer who came out three years ago. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet and Poeming Pigeons, among others. Several poems won Honorable Mentions at the North American Women’s Music Festival and Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contest in 2016. As a naturalist and horticulturist, her niche is Backyard Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters. She is a County Coordinator and Assistant State Program Director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program and an activist in the conservation community in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years. Georgette is also a published garden and environmental writer.
If a Homing Pigeon Were My Lover
Fluffed and preened on the shelf
I could not help but notice
your bobbing head and piercing eyes
twisting and turning to see if I was
looking at you the way you looked at
me in that wanting way as if my
human form was a pigeon too.
How unlike me it would be to take
off into the sky, fly across the expanse
in circles feeling the wind, gliding on
our wings, not arguing about who did
not fold the laundry, or if I am too tired
to have sex tonight or being pressed
to spend time with family I don’t like
and living from moment to moment
dining on seed offerings from the keeper
moving aside to let him do all the
cleaning and arranging of our coop
while all you and I do is fly, eat, and
think about making baby pigeons…
**** Published in Poeming Pigeons, “Poems about Birds”, 2015
(Need a prompt? "Walk around your block " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe, and in more Anthologies than she remembers. She is an award winning Poet & multi-instrumentalist who has opened for Betty Carter in New York City, Peru's Susana Baca at San Francisco’s Encuentro Popular & Cuba’s Gema y Pável, played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bobi & Luis Cespedes, John Handy, Sonido Afro Latina, Dimensions Dance Theater, Black Poets With Attitudes, Bombarengue, Nikki Giovanni, Los Angeles' Build An Ark, Dwight Trible, Diamano Coura West African Dance Co., Terry Garthwaite, Big Black, The Bay Area Blues Society & Caribeana Etc. Shared stages with Sonia Sanchez, Piri Thomas, Janice Mirikitani, Diane DiPrima, Michael Franti, Jayne Cortez, & with Jose Montoya's Royal Chicano Air Force & is a Bay Area icon with her group Avotcja & Modúpue. Avotcja was the opening act for the legendary Poet Pat Parker the last three years of her life. She both composed & performed the film score for the Danish documentary MuNu. Her Poetry &/or music has been recorded by Piri Thomas, Famoudou Don Moyé (of The Art Ensemble Of Chicago), Bobby Matos Latin Jazz Ensemble, & performed by The Purple Moon Dance Project, and was the 1st Poetry performed by New York's Dance Mobile. She's appeared at The Lorraine Hansberry Theater in S. F., The Asian-American Jazz Festival in Chicago, as well as The Asian-American Jazz Festival in San Francisco. She's been featured 5 times at Afro-Solo, twice at San Francisco's Carnival, The Scottish Rite Temple & Yoshi's in Oakland & San Francisco, Jose Castellar's play "Man From San Juan", Club Le Monmartre in Copenhagen Denmark, Stanford University, at San Francisco’s Brava Theater For The Arts with Cine Acción, New York's Henry Street Settlement Theater and The Women On The Way Festival in San Francisco. Avotcja a is popular Bay Area DeeJay & Radio Personality, and the founder/Director of "The Clean Scene Theater Project (AKA) Proyecto Teatral De La Escena Sobria". She continues to teach Creative Writing, Storytelling & Drama in Public Schools & thanks to the California Arts Council she was also an Artist in Residence at the Milestones Project & San Francisco Penal System. Avotcja is a proud member of DAMO (Disability Advocates Of Minorities Organization), PEN Oakland, California Poets In The Schools, IWWG & is an ASCAP recording artist.
8/7/2017 WAS: David Alpaugh hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Spiral or Gyre " -- you don't have to use those words.)
David Alpaugh has been a booster of Bay Area poetry for many years as a publisher, poetry reading host, and publications director for the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Circle. He is a popular performer, noted for his with and humor and has been featured at northern California venues more than 150 times. His first collection, Counterpoint, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry prize from Story Line Press. Journals that have published his poetry include Able Muse, American Journal of Poetry, Berkeley Poetry Review, Evergreen Review, Exquisite Corpse, Light, Mudlark, Poetry, Rattle, Runes, Spillway, Wisconsin Review, and Zyzzyva. His controversial essays on “Po-Biz” have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Poets & Writers, Rattle, and Scene4. He is one of the 50 contemporary poets included by Dana Gioia in the Heyday Press anthology California Poetry from the Gold Rush to the Present and he has been a finalist for Poet Laureate of California. He teaches literature and writing at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and for the UCB Extension.
7/31/2017 WAS: Maverick Night hosted by Jan OPPS (Other People's PoemS)
Bring 2 of your poems, we mix all up in a bag, grab one blind, everyone tries to guess whose it is. Always fun.
7/24/2017 WAS: Elaine Brown hosted by J.D
(Need a prompt? "Key" -- you don't have to use that word.)
Elaine Brown – “E Spoken”
I have been writing ever since my Mother and siblings taught me how to hold a pen. I grew up listening to the stories my Grandmother and Mother would tell me about my family and their struggles wondering how I could change things. So, history and writing became my passion. I have been writing Free Style Poetry for almost 30 years combining past and present issues that affect our daily lives; motivating people to change their mindsets.
GOING FISHING
I feel like it’s Easter Sunday
The way we have gathered here today
So Please allow me to take you to Church
I mean I do believe that one day
Black lives will matter
But the fact of the matter
When the word Nigger
Has more status then God
Then we need to do more than just march
Concerned with all the negative
Allowing media to raise our kids
And hate has become the foundation of our lives
The truth is the farthest thing from our minds
We’re so quick to defend the lies
And our future is hooked on these lines
That we have cast out!
So I’m Going Fishing!
7/17/2017 WAS: Rose Mark hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Explore how the sunset farts -- you don't have to use those words.)
Rose Mark’s curiosity has led her into many worlds. Food, travel, behavioral shaping, interior design and erotica are just some of topics she has explored in her writing. In her book “Tasting Life”, published by Redhead Press, readers can enter into her love life with food through stories, poems and recipes. Her poems have been included in “Oakland Neighborhoods” and “Dirty Old Women”. Her latest book, “Interior Design for Small Dwellings” published by Routledge is slated to be on the shelf in 2018.
7/10/2017 Was: Nadine Lockhart hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Steep Drive " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Nadine Lockhart received her MA and MFA from Arizona State University. She is currently working toward her PhD; for which she received the Lattie and Elva Coor Fellowship for Building Communities toward her research on the ability of poetry to transform into continued relevancy through hybridity and cultural relativism. This is serious stuff. Lockhart is an editorial assistant for Poetry Flash, a Berkeley-based literary review and calendar.
Self-Portrait with Shakespeare
When you come for me I’m at the bottom
of a steep drive that I will climb each day
7/3/2017 WAS: Connie Post hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Cold Mountain" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California (2005 to 2009). Her work has appeared dozens of journals, including Calyx, Comstock Review,Cold Mountain Review Slipstream,Spillway Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verse Daily. She has written seven books of poetry. Her first full length Book “Floodwater” (Glass Lyre Press 2014) won the Lyrebird Award. Her other awards include the Caesura Award and the 2016 Crab Creek Review Poetry Award.
6/26/2017 WAS: Johanna Ely hosted by hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? "The Lower" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Johanna Ely is a retired teacher who has been published in several anthologies and online journals including,
After the Storm
Sunlight,
wind,
children’s voices
in the alley.
Everything outside is
sharp and clear again,
a new lens with which to
look through and view
the silent green mountain
as close as my hand.
All the swollen grey clouds
blown off the surface of sky,
the wind’s breath really
a giant sigh of relief
to see blue again,
the promise that nothing
lasts forever-
not the rain,
not sorrow.
Johanna Ely
6/19/2017 WAS: Jeanne Lupton hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Write Tanka)
6/12/2017 WAS: Penelope Thompson hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Barrel " -- you don't have to use that word.)
Penelope Barnes Thompson hails from New York by way of a 39 year stint in Los Angeles and has recently relocated to Oakland. She is a retired clinical psychologist, now a Buddhist chaplain . She has published a book of poetry, Deconstructing the Nest and Other Poems and is finishing a manuscript for her second book. Her poems have been published in several journals and she has been a featured poet in Tiger's Eye Journal. One of her favorite activities is learning new words and checking our their origins. She is known to have been lost for days.
If I Waited
For Ariadne
So many times I have opened this door
to kiss her sleep sweet cheek
and pull her reluctant from the dream wet place.
Perhaps I should have let her rest in this inner world
a longer while,
until she had garnered all she needed
from the soil of sleep,
so when she woke at last,
she could bring with her the gathered fruits
from the garden of herself.
Penelope Thompson
6/5/2017 WAS: Jan Steckel hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? Use a license plate or bumper sticker on a car to start your thoughs -- you don't have to use those words.)
Why They Got Deported
Because he had a tattoo of a heart
with the name of his birthplace in Mexico.
Because she used a Social Security number
she had made up. Because he had one DUI
ten years ago. Because she overstayed
her visa when she was seven. Because
he didn’t sound like he’d been born in Lansing.
Because it took her an extra three months to save
the $495 to renew her work permit.
Because 20 years ago he bought a car
that had expired registration. Because she gave
a hand job to an undercover cop. Because she
took food stamps to feed her three kids
while she worked cleaning hotel rooms.
Because he had a joint on him twelve years ago.
Because fire is hungry and famine
walks the land. Because the night is dark
and full of terrors. Because we don’t want
you to play with us. Because it’s ours.
Because we can.
Jan Steckel
First appeared in Poets Reading the News (poetsreadingthenews.com)
5/22/2017 Jeremy Cantor hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? Read Jeremy's poem below and riff on it..)
Jeremy Cantor began writing shortly before retiring from a career in laboratory chemistry. He has made and tested engine oil additives, detergents and pharmaceuticals, driven a forklift, worked in a full-body acid-proof hazmat suit, tried to keep his fingers working in a walk-in freezer at -40°F and worked behind radiation shielding. He prefers writing.
His debut collection, Wisteria From Seed, with a foreword by former Boston Globe Arts/Classical Music correspondent Michael Manning, was published in 2015 by Kelsey Books. He is currently working on his second volume of poetry.
Jeremy's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, published in conjunction with Oxford University Press), The Naugatuck River Review, Glassworks, The Bicycle Review, Pirene's Fountain, Poetalk, and other journals. His poem "The Nietzsche Contrapositive," was awarded first prize in the Grey Sparrow Journal's 2014 Poetry and Flash Competition and appeared in Grey Sparrow's annual, Snow Jewel. He was a semi-finalist in the competition for the 2016 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire.
Wisteria from Seed
"Almost no one grows wisteria from seed,"
I told my sons.
"This one has a healthy set of leaves
so it ought to flower
in about ten years."
I'm sixty now.
A botany professor showed our class
a bamboo plant. He said,
"This flowers every forty years.
I won't be here to finish the experiments
I might start now.
If any of you are planning graduate studies,
please see me after class.
I've got some ideas I'd like to try."
I never thought myself a man of faith
yet I grow wisteria from seed
while others study bamboo,
plant vineyards,
grow olives,
raise children.
© 2013 by Jeremy Cantor
All rights reserved
5/15/2017 Joyce E. Young hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? Convey a meaning without saying it; use imagry instead -- you don't have to use those words.)
Joyce E. Young currently lives and writes in Berkeley, California. She has read at venues as diverse as The M.H. de Young Museum, Intersection for the Arts, La Peña Cultural Center, Art & Soul Oakland, and Smith College, just to name a few. She has taught with California Poets in the Schools, The Museum of Children’s Art, The Oakland Museum of California, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Youth Speaks. She was also an English teacher for the Mills College Upward Bound Program for 3 years. She is the founder and facilitator of Write in Peace. She has received grants from the California Arts Council and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. She was awarded a Writers on Site residency through Poets & Writers, Inc. and has also been awarded writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Soapstone and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has most recently appeared in riverbabble, New Voices of the American West, and Temba Tupu! (Walking Naked): The Africana Woman’s Self-Portrait. She works privately as a writing consultant and with student writers at John F. Kennedy University. She is currently writing Parallel Journey, a novel, essays and poetry with her muse, President Cindy.
President Cindy’s Counter-offer 2017 (Excerpt)
Why worry my spleen, my mad?
Fire has a purpose, but
I love to hold a torch,
My mind swirls orange, red,
Fire’s wake requires tearing down
Drink it slowly as you consider
Let me help you.
5/8/2017 WAS: Juan Sequeira & Son Juan Carlos Sequeira hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Over Troubled Waters" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Juan R. Sequeira M.D. was born in Nicaragua. He was raised in the Mission District of San Francisco. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of San Francisco and obtained a Medical degree from the University of California at San Francisco. He is a practicing Physician. He has a lifelong interest in poetry. His work appeared in Alive, Black Bear Review, Blue Unicorn,
California Poets, Carquinez Poetry, Mobius, Poet Talk, San Fernando Poetry, ZYZZYVA among others. Two collections, Marimba Dreams 1999, and Jaguar Footsteps 2006. 2017 1st place BAPC contest 2nd place Poets Dinner.
A Memory
My mother worked
her thorn pierced hands
lullaby nights by candlelight
rocked me to the rosebud of sleep
Juan Carlos Sequeira is a 13 year old boy who has been writing poetry for 3 years. He is a resident of Pleasant Hill and attends Christ the King Catholic School where he currently stands as a 7th grade student. He has been influenced to write poetry by his father and has been taught by him ever since he heard his first poem. He says he goes outside, inhales, and feels the breeze enter and escape his lungs. After that, he sits down, and looks around for a few minutes to absorb and observe the world’s beauty. Then will he be able to write poetry to express the world and his great love for it. Poetry has always seemed simple for him, as long as he is exposed to the great outdoors, in the presence of God’s creation.
My Night Light
Your light dances around my shelter room
my heart feels protected under your cotton shade
happiness fills me as I look up
to glistening mirrors shining on my star
your metallic structured light
spilling on my barrier windows
I look to see the moon past my shudders
and I realize it is safe to close my eyes
5/1/2017 WAS: Selene Steese hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "My Last Ten Passwords" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Selene Steese started writing poetry from the moment she learned to write. The first piece she penned was a short poem containing the line "Sorry sir, sorry sir." To this day she listens for the music of alliteration and onomatopoeia whenever she embarks on a journey across a blank page. She invites you to listen for the music in the words.
4/24/2017 WAS: REMEMBERING LARRY CHRISPYN hosted by J. D.
Larry Chrispyn passed away Feb 19, 2017 We will salute the Poet and honor his memory with readings from his works. Dedicate a poem, share a memory, tell a Larry story, say farewell.... Remember Larry Chrispyn.
I started writing poetry in graduate school, the same hour that I started Zen meditation. I am fanatic about fitness and have been exercising daily for over 31 years. I have studied the healing uses of herbs for 43 years and taught private classes in Maui and San Diego.
Two of my poems were translated into Ukrainian and twice into Russian. This is not a big deal as it might sound.
I taught Humanistic and Existential Psychology at a university in New Jersey for two years. I am very happy to have taken early retirement from the US Post Service where I worked with computers and as a General Expediter. Now I am a full time poet.
My themes include: humor, animals, my dad, growing up in Indiana, nature, runners, infatuations and lost love.
I have traveled: four continents, 31 countries, 49 states and crossed the USA 61 times.
Christina Hutchins is my mentor and she has influenced my poetry more than any poet, living or dead.
This poem was translated into Ukrainian, and into Russian twice. The first translation was part of a University project in Ukraine.
Your Mona Lisa Smile
I have seen the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre
I have viewed the Sistine chapel and El Prado too
and I know for certain
no work of art compares
to the work of art of God
to the loveliness of you
Larry A Chrispyn
4/17/2017 Was: Tom Odegard hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "On an Island" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Tom Odegard (aka Tom/Ms.G) arrived in the Bay Area from Portland when he was eight, in 1948. When he was 12 he set about writing a science book but soon discovered that he only knew enough to write the introduction at
which point he switched to poetry. Since then he’s lived in many places in multiple states of mind, and written too many pages of words some of which he’s read at venues around the Bay or put into chapbooks. He’s published two books: Friends Well Met – a collection of poems - and Past Lives Led – a poetic memoir both from Beatitude Press in Berkeley. He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools. In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
“nothing but a deck of cards, you’re”
We were just 21 in a casino in Tahoe
knew everything and nothing as one does.
Long, long time later, truncated journals
would abbreviate echoes of the known world
city strife, foreign interventions, fanatic idealism
boiled down to twitter feed and sound bites;
but right there, at the black jack table,
in 1961 a drunk playing keno taught us how
to play if not win at black jack. He said,
“you gotta be drunk enough not to care”
at which point he won another keno jackpot
and opined, “See what I mean?”
Indigenous
We were all indigenous in Africa way back when
and the next chapter took us on long walk abouts
as drought set in
and we spread out and spread out and the meats
were sweet like lamb and we filled up the land
with bones we wouldn’t see again.
We were few on the ground, particular as well,
claimed some territory ours, and sent visitors to hell,
cause now we were indigenous.
The land was ours; we spread out, we spread out,
ran buffalo over cliffs, counted coup on walk abouts,
bones to the brim, yes,yes, bones to the rim…
The land was ours ‘til strangers came on horseback
the Aryan horde, the Spaniard horde, on horseback
on sailing ships, again, again, again and again…
for land, slaves, treasure, and proof of might, proof of right
a place to waste, a place to destroy, keeping inflation down,
turning the middle into the poor while the wealth rode up.
Now the winds increase, oceans rise, tornados blast,
earth quakes, bones pile up, the hunting is done
the fish are gone… ‘cause now we are indigenous
everywhere indigenous...
4/10/2017 WAS: Victor James Smith hosted by Jim
Victor Smith is [a poet and artist] newly transplanted to Oakland. [He] spent the past several years living amid sagebrush and dust devils. [His] work [is seeming] to reproduce that elemental sparseness and turbulence. [He] invites [you] to see what [you] think.
POEM (No title, call it AN INTERIOR DESERT if you want to)
An interior desert, a desert inside, the land, the border, an alien, a wind blowing in dust storm, blowing in cold, absent, no, presence of mind, mind on fire, no, mind empty blowing in dust storm, absorbent sieve adsorbent sorbet a mouthful of sand coarse grit grief anger in dessert. A huge sky cerebral, an open land trying to understand dormant cactus waking into bloom a wind overturning your soft shape inspiring travel setting down to take new root to grow anew to seed again to birth to decay to become elemental maybe rock maybe air space maybe me or you or the space between.
4/3/2017 WAS Founders Night – Mark States returned to feature! Chris Chandler Co-featured. Please contribute to his airfare with a donation during any of our sessions. This session was held at Monkey House so as to accommodate more people.
3/27/2017 WAS: All Poets published in January 2017 PoetryExpressed.com Magazine read as co-features. hosted by J.D.
(Need a prompt? "There May Not Be Time" -- you don't have to use those words.)
3/20/17 Leila Rae hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Hot Water" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Leila Rae is the editor/publisher at Pandemonium Press, located in Berkeley, CA. She edits and publishes three (3) online journals: riverbabble, Doorknobs & BodyPaint , and Day w/o Art . She also publish poetry small editions of monographs, chapbooks, and anthologies. Forthcoming this summer Lulu & Ramón, her latest poetry collection. Leila received her MA in English and Creative Writing from CSUEB. She has lived in Berkeley, CA since 1956.
3/13/2017 WAS: G. Macias Gusman hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt?"Spandex" -- you don't have to use that exact word.)
G. Macias Gusman is a factory dog, a backhoe for the sun, a champion for splinters and blisters looking for homes on working hands: A Poet growing organically. G. Macias belongs to Davenport Iowa but as given his soul over to Oakland Ca. G Macias Gusman has been a feature reader at Bay Area Generations, Get Lit, Passages on the Lake, Saturday Night Special an east bay open mic, Write from the Gut, and read in the first leg of 2016 Beast Crawl Lit Festival (let’s be truthful if there’s an open mic you’ll find G. Macias) and has been publish in The Borfski Press Magazine, Red Fez, BayAreaGenerations.
Cost of living
The last thing I got me was an Aqualung before I quit my day job.
It only cost 23 hours under the sun at a landscapers pay rate. The
screen that’s holding in my atmosphere last 3 days before a red
dwarf star tittering on super nova implodes in my right writing
hand, burning bigger holes completely through it. I use a left palm
readers’ influence every other odd day turning into S, but like a
leap year birthday I rarely break even. Reminiscent of a hole in the
heart, screens don't burn evenly; they will smolder away entirely;
eventually. A brass screen is a necessary obsidian evil like sea
green cash and, existing ain’t cheap when you’re not cheapening
your existence. I wish things we needed came for free but the stuff
that's free, costs a great living; still, I sold my soul to the words on
credit. You see I like being broke but unbroken, untethered and
free to roam around like a good life recorder should; record-play
are we rolling?
Life yielded a pink slip, hand-job, a little bit of dough, and told me
good luck out there. We parted ways on friendly terms. We’re both
wild cards unable to work together. Sometimes though I hate to
admit, I miss that 12.50 an hour my bad back and simple sweat
brought in when “A Living” sends the red wolf to the black door
and I don’t have that umber rake or tuscan sun shovel to save me
no more as I try to write these poems to the cost of life.
3/6/2017 WAS: Rose Black hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Drink Coupon" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Rose Black lives and works by the railroad tracks in East Oakland. With their mountain dogs,
Basho and Dante, she and her husband operate Renaissance Stone, a studio and supply source
for stone sculptors. Rose's poetry has been widely published, and she is the author of three books,
Clearing, Winter Light, and Green Field. Her first two books, Clearing and Winter
Light, are included in Yale's Beinecke Library for the Yale Collection of American Literature.
Rose currently teaches poetry at Salinas Valley State Prison. Her extensive article about the poetry
workshop there, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, is featured in Red Wheelbarrow, 2015, literary
magazine.
Silver Spring
When the rains come in early spring, water seeps up through the basement floor, murky and foul. It creeps into corners, flows under the washing machine, under the old gas stove, across the mud sill into the plant room, and under the crooked door that leads outside.
The old woman hobbles down to the basement with a long-handled mop. She mops the floor, wrings the water into buckets, then pours it all down the cast iron sink.
She cannot keep up. Soon the water is to her ankles. Outside, the water swells into little rivers. At its lowest point, the yard itself begins to fill, and a pond appears, then slowly spreads across the grass.
Underneath it all, the silver spring, for which her neighborhood is named, will continue to wind its way under everyone's floors and basements, rising and falling like the breath of the earth and its oceans.
Her neighbors try to divert the unwanted water this way and that, away from themselves. The old woman rests her mop against the wall, opens her arms, says, Come.
2/27/17 WAS: Camille Miller hosted by J.D.
(Need a prompt? Look at Camille's poem and riff off it)
Camille Miller is a poet who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been active in the open mic scene for three years. Her favorite poets are Maya Angelo and Langston Hughes. She enjoys entertaining a crowd with lyrical and thought provoking verse . She is an active part of the Valona Poetry community in Crockett.
I lost my toenail
Running a marathon
But it was worth it
'Cause it will grow back
But I lost my youth
Worrying about the future
And that is part of my life
I'll never see again
(Except in my memories)
So attack each day
With a sense of passion
'Cause age will come
And it will crash in
So keep on living
Until you die
And try
Not to lose a toenail.
2/20/2017 WAS: Hollie Hardy hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Look at Hollie's poem and riff off it)
Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Annual Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute, SFSU, and Berkeley City College. She hosts Saturday Night Special, An East Bay Open Mic, curates Litquake’s Flight of Poets, and is a founder and core producer of Oakland’s Beast Crawl Literary Festival. Her website is www.holliehardy.com
HOW TO FEND OFF A SHARK
Wet fists in your eyes. The thump of undrumming
Here is the rind of night. Facing off on a rock of ice
Because silence is an expression of fear
This jazz song does not belong to you
Because police are at the door again
Blue, the function of smoke. Rumpled
There are things that vanish unexpectedly
Because our experiences overlap. Bodies at rest
HOW TO SURVIVE IF YOU ARE BURIED ALIVE
Sit down by the window’s heartbeat
to listen for rain
fingertips brush the body as Braille
seeking cracks in the façade
or an egress
from this book of wind
breath recurs often
brazen as the north star
a test of endurance
through layers of weather
how many stones are required
to collapse a lung
or a desire
2/13/2017 WAS: Richard Loranger hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? Try "Fresh Out Of Luck" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, visual artist, and all around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. His recent book of flash prose, Sudden Windows (Zeitgeist Press, 2016), has been warmly received. He is also the author of the Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and nine chapbooks. Other recent work can be found in Oakland Review #2, Overthrowing Capitalism vol. 2 (Revolutionary Poets Brigade), and the new anthology The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker (great weather for MEDIA). You can find more about his work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.
And clouds roll in and I am glad, for autumn rain smells like the start of everything. And darksome days are time for all the dust to settle, sweet sweet the air and safe to open chest to amity. When trees drink clouds and dry ground soaks and we can sense effulgence down the road, how can we not enjoy the dropping of all things and the sleek sweep of pungent breeze? I’d like to lie down in the street and shine.
* * *
Early plum is bitter, early rose is tart, April light roves from sharp to glow as the month matures. Fleeting rain pelts the windows, then lifts infused with jasmine and fresh grass. Bougainvillea stuns. Clouds break, and the softest breeze strokes the arms and face. All the air sublime. Sometimes we need profundity, and sometimes just a lavender day.
* * *
I take myself to task, and find a tisane in the tin shack mine. The method to divine adumbra of the swale’s lost path is simply one of sniffing rasped grass. We are never truly lost until we find ourselves bereft of cause – no green, under air, dry as dirty docks. And even then the thirst might eek us out, the rancid grain slake need for friction so the loose shoot may flail. May tendril on. We soar on tin lid sleds and take the dawn. And in the meantime, watching from our table the adept bright rain, we take to task, wrap hands around sweet steam.
2/6/2017 WAS: Deborah Lee Fruchey hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? Look at Deborah's bio and riff off it)
PHOTO BY RONNA LEON
Deborah Fruchey was born. It wasn't her idea. After that she spent too much time in churches, mental hospitals, and 12 Step Groups, in that order. Finally she graduated to poetry readings, where she lurks to this day. She also writes books once in a while, and one of them even won an award, but let's not mention that. Deborah is hiding out in suburbia, but she only hangs out with writers and musicians, so any hopes of reform are obviously misguided. She studies Shamanism, and daydreams of a cult following and a flat stomach, but is considered unarmed and mostly harmless.
1/30/2017 WAS: Leah Steinberg hosted by Jan
Leah Steinberg has been writing poetry for decades and recently published a non-fiction book, Raised in the Shadow of the Bomb: Children of the Manhattan Project. She is the daughter and niece of scientists that worked at the University of Chicago Metallurgical (Met) Lab a branch of the Manhattan Project during WWII, the secret project that researched and developed the first atomic weapons. The book is part memoir, interviews, history, with some poetry as well. She will read from her new book. Leah is a published poet, a nature photographer, and music lover.
1/23/2017 WAS: Lori Lynne Armstrong hosted by J.D.
(Need a prompt? Look at Lori's poem and riff off it)
Lori Lynne Armstrong has been a scientist, a counselor, a drug addict, a singer, a home teacher, and a mental patient. Her passions include promoting integrative treatment options for the dual diagnosis community. She began writing Not This Song, a blog on the subject, to reach out and encourage others. A few years ago, an important essay got stuck in her throat and would not budge until she coughed it out in the form of the first poem she’d written in twenty years. There was no going back. Her thoughts on poetry and creativity can be found at her writing site, Not My Last Words.
The Mirror
I was not born naked
It took long years to know
I was not born naked
I was clothed within the womb
Clothed in expectation
Adorned with brute conception
Afloat in some past toxin
I was supposed to bear
Now my mirror shows
The beaded fear designs
Stitched into my skin
By some experienced hand
Now my mirror shows
My cheeks are smeared with red
Red tribal paint with meanings
I must break rules to see.
1/16/2017 WAS: MK Chavez hosted by Bruce
MK Chavez is the author of several chapbooks, including Mothermorphosis, her full-length collection, Dear Animal, will be released by Nomadic Press in October 2016. Her writing has been published in many online and print journals. Her most recent publications can be found in Story Magazine, Jam Tarts Literary Journal and Rivet. Chavez is co-founder of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, and co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and recipient of a 2016 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award.
1/2/2017 No meeting H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S !
1/9/2017 WAS: Sharon Elliot hosted by Jim
Sharon Elliott has been a poet activist over several decades in national and international social justice concerns, especially the rights of women and girls. Her activism began in the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 70s, and she spent four years working with women and teenage girls in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador, especially in multicultural women’s issues. She is a Moderator of Poets Responding to SB1070, and has featured in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work has been published in several anthologies and her poem “Border Crossing” appears in the anthology entitled Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodriguez, eds. She has read it in Los Angeles at AWP and La Pachanga 2016 book launch, in San Francisco and at the Féis Seattle Céiliedh in Port Townsend, WA. Her chapbook, Jaguar Unfinished, was published by Prickly Pear Press, 2012. She was an awardee of Best Poem of 2012 by La Bloga, for The Day of Little Comfort. She loves to mentor young poets and assist them in spreading their creative wings. She is studying indigenous traditions of Scotland and Norway and is searching for the home of her heart with the guidance of her ancestors. She is fluent in Spanish and is learning her traditional language of Scots Gaelic. A true child of the north, she loves cats, stormy blustery days by the sea, and blueberries.
her morning coffee
Copyright © 2016 Sharon Elliott. All Rights Reserved.
GOING FISHING
I feel like it’s Easter Sunday
The way we have gathered here today
So Please allow me to take you to Church
I mean I do believe that one day
Black lives will matter
But the fact of the matter
When the word Nigger
Has more status then God
Then we need to do more than just march
Concerned with all the negative
Allowing media to raise our kids
And hate has become the foundation of our lives
The truth is the farthest thing from our minds
We’re so quick to defend the lies
And our future is hooked on these lines
That we have cast out!
So I’m Going Fishing!
7/17/2017 WAS: Rose Mark hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Explore how the sunset farts -- you don't have to use those words.)
Rose Mark’s curiosity has led her into many worlds. Food, travel, behavioral shaping, interior design and erotica are just some of topics she has explored in her writing. In her book “Tasting Life”, published by Redhead Press, readers can enter into her love life with food through stories, poems and recipes. Her poems have been included in “Oakland Neighborhoods” and “Dirty Old Women”. Her latest book, “Interior Design for Small Dwellings” published by Routledge is slated to be on the shelf in 2018.
7/10/2017 Was: Nadine Lockhart hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Steep Drive " -- you don't have to use those words.)
Nadine Lockhart received her MA and MFA from Arizona State University. She is currently working toward her PhD; for which she received the Lattie and Elva Coor Fellowship for Building Communities toward her research on the ability of poetry to transform into continued relevancy through hybridity and cultural relativism. This is serious stuff. Lockhart is an editorial assistant for Poetry Flash, a Berkeley-based literary review and calendar.
Self-Portrait with Shakespeare
When you come for me I’m at the bottom
of a steep drive that I will climb each day
for the next year. And I’m mouthing your name
because I can’t hold it. You don’t want me
to hold it, don’t know it’s somewhere inside
like a pattern, a template from which you
rise—your voice, you love to hear how your sound
cuts across the air, pushes all other
conversation from the room, bench-presses
my world, throws it over the balcony
where I stand in heels tossing rotten food
onto treetops while reciting Shakespeare’s
better lines, “He who steals my purse, steals trash.”
--Nadine Lockhart
(Need a prompt? "Cold Mountain" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Connie Post served as Poet Laureate of Livermore, California (2005 to 2009). Her work has appeared dozens of journals, including Calyx, Comstock Review,Cold Mountain Review Slipstream,Spillway Spoon River Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review and Verse Daily. She has written seven books of poetry. Her first full length Book “Floodwater” (Glass Lyre Press 2014) won the Lyrebird Award. Her other awards include the Caesura Award and the 2016 Crab Creek Review Poetry Award.
6/26/2017 WAS: Johanna Ely hosted by hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? "The Lower" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Johanna Ely is a retired teacher who has been published in several anthologies and online journals including,
After the Storm
Sunlight,
wind,
children’s voices
in the alley.
Everything outside is
sharp and clear again,
a new lens with which to
look through and view
the silent green mountain
as close as my hand.
All the swollen grey clouds
blown off the surface of sky,
the wind’s breath really
a giant sigh of relief
to see blue again,
the promise that nothing
lasts forever-
not the rain,
not sorrow.
Johanna Ely
6/19/2017 WAS: Jeanne Lupton hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Write Tanka)
(Need a prompt? "Barrel " -- you don't have to use that word.)
Penelope Barnes Thompson hails from New York by way of a 39 year stint in Los Angeles and has recently relocated to Oakland. She is a retired clinical psychologist, now a Buddhist chaplain . She has published a book of poetry, Deconstructing the Nest and Other Poems and is finishing a manuscript for her second book. Her poems have been published in several journals and she has been a featured poet in Tiger's Eye Journal. One of her favorite activities is learning new words and checking our their origins. She is known to have been lost for days.
If I Waited
For Ariadne
So many times I have opened this door
to kiss her sleep sweet cheek
and pull her reluctant from the dream wet place.
Perhaps I should have let her rest in this inner world
a longer while,
until she had garnered all she needed
from the soil of sleep,
so when she woke at last,
she could bring with her the gathered fruits
from the garden of herself.
Penelope Thompson
6/5/2017 WAS: Jan Steckel hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? Use a license plate or bumper sticker on a car to start your thoughs -- you don't have to use those words.)
Why They Got Deported
Because he had a tattoo of a heart
with the name of his birthplace in Mexico.
Because she used a Social Security number
she had made up. Because he had one DUI
ten years ago. Because she overstayed
her visa when she was seven. Because
he didn’t sound like he’d been born in Lansing.
Because it took her an extra three months to save
the $495 to renew her work permit.
Because 20 years ago he bought a car
that had expired registration. Because she gave
a hand job to an undercover cop. Because she
took food stamps to feed her three kids
while she worked cleaning hotel rooms.
Because he had a joint on him twelve years ago.
Because fire is hungry and famine
walks the land. Because the night is dark
and full of terrors. Because we don’t want
you to play with us. Because it’s ours.
Because we can.
Jan Steckel
First appeared in Poets Reading the News (poetsreadingthenews.com)
5/22/2017 Jeremy Cantor hosted by J. D.
(Need a prompt? Read Jeremy's poem below and riff on it..)
Jeremy Cantor began writing shortly before retiring from a career in laboratory chemistry. He has made and tested engine oil additives, detergents and pharmaceuticals, driven a forklift, worked in a full-body acid-proof hazmat suit, tried to keep his fingers working in a walk-in freezer at -40°F and worked behind radiation shielding. He prefers writing.
His debut collection, Wisteria From Seed, with a foreword by former Boston Globe Arts/Classical Music correspondent Michael Manning, was published in 2015 by Kelsey Books. He is currently working on his second volume of poetry.
Jeremy's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, published in conjunction with Oxford University Press), The Naugatuck River Review, Glassworks, The Bicycle Review, Pirene's Fountain, Poetalk, and other journals. His poem "The Nietzsche Contrapositive," was awarded first prize in the Grey Sparrow Journal's 2014 Poetry and Flash Competition and appeared in Grey Sparrow's annual, Snow Jewel. He was a semi-finalist in the competition for the 2016 Dartmouth Poet in Residence at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire.
Wisteria from Seed
"Almost no one grows wisteria from seed,"
I told my sons.
"This one has a healthy set of leaves
so it ought to flower
in about ten years."
I'm sixty now.
A botany professor showed our class
a bamboo plant. He said,
"This flowers every forty years.
I won't be here to finish the experiments
I might start now.
If any of you are planning graduate studies,
please see me after class.
I've got some ideas I'd like to try."
I never thought myself a man of faith
yet I grow wisteria from seed
while others study bamboo,
plant vineyards,
grow olives,
raise children.
© 2013 by Jeremy Cantor
All rights reserved
5/15/2017 Joyce E. Young hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? Convey a meaning without saying it; use imagry instead -- you don't have to use those words.)
Joyce E. Young currently lives and writes in Berkeley, California. She has read at venues as diverse as The M.H. de Young Museum, Intersection for the Arts, La Peña Cultural Center, Art & Soul Oakland, and Smith College, just to name a few. She has taught with California Poets in the Schools, The Museum of Children’s Art, The Oakland Museum of California, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Youth Speaks. She was also an English teacher for the Mills College Upward Bound Program for 3 years. She is the founder and facilitator of Write in Peace. She has received grants from the California Arts Council and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation. She was awarded a Writers on Site residency through Poets & Writers, Inc. and has also been awarded writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Soapstone and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has most recently appeared in riverbabble, New Voices of the American West, and Temba Tupu! (Walking Naked): The Africana Woman’s Self-Portrait. She works privately as a writing consultant and with student writers at John F. Kennedy University. She is currently writing Parallel Journey, a novel, essays and poetry with her muse, President Cindy.
President Cindy’s Counter-offer 2017 (Excerpt)
Why worry my spleen, my mad?
I deserve a better gig
than holding these cinders
Fire has a purpose, but
not one I am always
able to understand.
I love to hold a torch,
which is not the same
as carrying a torch.
My mind swirls orange, red,
yellow, flame-like.
30 mph winds sweep through.
Fire’s wake requires tearing down
or rebuilding. Your choice.
I’ll wait; hold a cup of water.
Drink it slowly as you consider
my offer. Your hair is gray,
You don’t have much time.
Let me help you.
5/8/2017 WAS: Juan Sequeira & Son Juan Carlos Sequeira hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? "Over Troubled Waters" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Juan R. Sequeira M.D. was born in Nicaragua. He was raised in the Mission District of San Francisco. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of San Francisco and obtained a Medical degree from the University of California at San Francisco. He is a practicing Physician. He has a lifelong interest in poetry. His work appeared in Alive, Black Bear Review, Blue Unicorn,
California Poets, Carquinez Poetry, Mobius, Poet Talk, San Fernando Poetry, ZYZZYVA among others. Two collections, Marimba Dreams 1999, and Jaguar Footsteps 2006. 2017 1st place BAPC contest 2nd place Poets Dinner.
A MemoryMy mother workedbehind a splintered counterunder the volcano breathof the gold brushed sunher thorn pierced handspoured water into glassesshaved melting ice blocksserved tropic fruit drinksto sweat painted shopperslullaby nights by candlelightraised me from crib playgroundto the spring nest of her armskissed the leaves of my feet and
rocked me to the rosebud of sleep
Juan Carlos Sequeira is a 13 year old boy who has been writing poetry for 3 years. He is a resident of Pleasant Hill and attends Christ the King Catholic School where he currently stands as a 7th grade student. He has been influenced to write poetry by his father and has been taught by him ever since he heard his first poem. He says he goes outside, inhales, and feels the breeze enter and escape his lungs. After that, he sits down, and looks around for a few minutes to absorb and observe the world’s beauty. Then will he be able to write poetry to express the world and his great love for it. Poetry has always seemed simple for him, as long as he is exposed to the great outdoors, in the presence of God’s creation.
My Night Light
Your light dances around my shelter room
my heart feels protected under your cotton shade
happiness fills me as I look up
to glistening mirrors shining on my star
your metallic structured light
spilling on my barrier windows
I look to see the moon past my shudders
and I realize it is safe to close my eyes
5/1/2017 WAS: Selene Steese hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "My Last Ten Passwords" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Selene Steese started writing poetry from the moment she learned to write. The first piece she penned was a short poem containing the line "Sorry sir, sorry sir." To this day she listens for the music of alliteration and onomatopoeia whenever she embarks on a journey across a blank page. She invites you to listen for the music in the words.
4/24/2017 WAS: REMEMBERING LARRY CHRISPYN hosted by J. D.
Larry Chrispyn passed away Feb 19, 2017 We will salute the Poet and honor his memory with readings from his works. Dedicate a poem, share a memory, tell a Larry story, say farewell.... Remember Larry Chrispyn.
I started writing poetry in graduate school, the same hour that I started Zen meditation. I am fanatic about fitness and have been exercising daily for over 31 years. I have studied the healing uses of herbs for 43 years and taught private classes in Maui and San Diego.
Two of my poems were translated into Ukrainian and twice into Russian. This is not a big deal as it might sound.
I taught Humanistic and Existential Psychology at a university in New Jersey for two years. I am very happy to have taken early retirement from the US Post Service where I worked with computers and as a General Expediter. Now I am a full time poet.
My themes include: humor, animals, my dad, growing up in Indiana, nature, runners, infatuations and lost love.
I have traveled: four continents, 31 countries, 49 states and crossed the USA 61 times.
Christina Hutchins is my mentor and she has influenced my poetry more than any poet, living or dead.
This poem was translated into Ukrainian, and into Russian twice. The first translation was part of a University project in Ukraine.
Your Mona Lisa Smile
I have seen the Mona Lisa hanging in the Louvre
I have viewed the Sistine chapel and El Prado too
and I know for certain
no work of art compares
to the work of art of God
to the loveliness of you
Larry A Chrispyn
(Need a prompt? "On an Island" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Tom Odegard (aka Tom/Ms.G) arrived in the Bay Area from Portland when he was eight, in 1948. When he was 12 he set about writing a science book but soon discovered that he only knew enough to write the introduction at
which point he switched to poetry. Since then he’s lived in many places in multiple states of mind, and written too many pages of words some of which he’s read at venues around the Bay or put into chapbooks. He’s published two books: Friends Well Met – a collection of poems - and Past Lives Led – a poetic memoir both from Beatitude Press in Berkeley. He shuttles back and forth between Friday Harbor Washington and Oakland spending four months in California where he reads and writes and polishes his nest eggs. His poems have been published in a number of collections including, Spasso’s, Sacred Grounds, and Living in the Land of the Dead a production of Faithful Fools. In 2005 he discovered he was intersex and came out as a “Two Spirit”, Tom/Ms.G. He takes great delight in sharing his double gendered points of view with anyone who’ll listen. Mark States favorably compared his poetry to e.e. cummings, to which accolade he remarked, “Yikes!”
“nothing but a deck of cards, you’re”
We were just 21 in a casino in Tahoe
knew everything and nothing as one does.
Long, long time later, truncated journals
would abbreviate echoes of the known world
city strife, foreign interventions, fanatic idealism
boiled down to twitter feed and sound bites;
but right there, at the black jack table,
in 1961 a drunk playing keno taught us how
to play if not win at black jack. He said,
“you gotta be drunk enough not to care”
at which point he won another keno jackpot
and opined, “See what I mean?”
Indigenous
We were all indigenous in Africa way back when
and the next chapter took us on long walk abouts
as drought set in
and we spread out and spread out and the meats
were sweet like lamb and we filled up the land
with bones we wouldn’t see again.
We were few on the ground, particular as well,
claimed some territory ours, and sent visitors to hell,
cause now we were indigenous.
The land was ours; we spread out, we spread out,
ran buffalo over cliffs, counted coup on walk abouts,
bones to the brim, yes,yes, bones to the rim…
The land was ours ‘til strangers came on horseback
the Aryan horde, the Spaniard horde, on horseback
on sailing ships, again, again, again and again…
for land, slaves, treasure, and proof of might, proof of right
a place to waste, a place to destroy, keeping inflation down,
turning the middle into the poor while the wealth rode up.
Now the winds increase, oceans rise, tornados blast,
earth quakes, bones pile up, the hunting is done
the fish are gone… ‘cause now we are indigenous
everywhere indigenous...
POEM (No title, call it AN INTERIOR DESERT if you want to)Victor Smith is [a poet and artist] newly transplanted to Oakland. [He] spent the past several years living amid sagebrush and dust devils. [His] work [is seeming] to reproduce that elemental sparseness and turbulence. [He] invites [you] to see what [you] think.
An interior desert, a desert inside, the land, the border, an alien, a wind blowing in dust storm, blowing in cold, absent, no, presence of mind, mind on fire, no, mind empty blowing in dust storm, absorbent sieve adsorbent sorbet a mouthful of sand coarse grit grief anger in dessert. A huge sky cerebral, an open land trying to understand dormant cactus waking into bloom a wind overturning your soft shape inspiring travel setting down to take new root to grow anew to seed again to birth to decay to become elemental maybe rock maybe air space maybe me or you or the space between.
3/27/2017 WAS: All Poets published in January 2017 PoetryExpressed.com Magazine read as co-features. hosted by J.D.
(Need a prompt? "There May Not Be Time" -- you don't have to use those words.)
3/20/17 Leila Rae hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "Hot Water" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Leila Rae is the editor/publisher at Pandemonium Press, located in Berkeley, CA. She edits and publishes three (3) online journals: riverbabble, Doorknobs & BodyPaint , and Day w/o Art . She also publish poetry small editions of monographs, chapbooks, and anthologies. Forthcoming this summer Lulu & Ramón, her latest poetry collection. Leila received her MA in English and Creative Writing from CSUEB. She has lived in Berkeley, CA since 1956.
3/13/2017 WAS: G. Macias Gusman hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt?"Spandex" -- you don't have to use that exact word.)
G. Macias Gusman is a factory dog, a backhoe for the sun, a champion for splinters and blisters looking for homes on working hands: A Poet growing organically. G. Macias belongs to Davenport Iowa but as given his soul over to Oakland Ca. G Macias Gusman has been a feature reader at Bay Area Generations, Get Lit, Passages on the Lake, Saturday Night Special an east bay open mic, Write from the Gut, and read in the first leg of 2016 Beast Crawl Lit Festival (let’s be truthful if there’s an open mic you’ll find G. Macias) and has been publish in The Borfski Press Magazine, Red Fez, BayAreaGenerations.
Cost of living
The last thing I got me was an Aqualung before I quit my day job.
It only cost 23 hours under the sun at a landscapers pay rate. The
screen that’s holding in my atmosphere last 3 days before a red
dwarf star tittering on super nova implodes in my right writing
hand, burning bigger holes completely through it. I use a left palm
readers’ influence every other odd day turning into S, but like a
leap year birthday I rarely break even. Reminiscent of a hole in the
heart, screens don't burn evenly; they will smolder away entirely;
eventually. A brass screen is a necessary obsidian evil like sea
green cash and, existing ain’t cheap when you’re not cheapening
your existence. I wish things we needed came for free but the stuff
that's free, costs a great living; still, I sold my soul to the words on
credit. You see I like being broke but unbroken, untethered and
free to roam around like a good life recorder should; record-play
are we rolling?
Life yielded a pink slip, hand-job, a little bit of dough, and told me
good luck out there. We parted ways on friendly terms. We’re both
wild cards unable to work together. Sometimes though I hate to
admit, I miss that 12.50 an hour my bad back and simple sweat
brought in when “A Living” sends the red wolf to the black door
and I don’t have that umber rake or tuscan sun shovel to save me
no more as I try to write these poems to the cost of life.
3/6/2017 WAS: Rose Black hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? "Drink Coupon" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Rose Black lives and works by the railroad tracks in East Oakland. With their mountain dogs,
Basho and Dante, she and her husband operate Renaissance Stone, a studio and supply source
for stone sculptors. Rose's poetry has been widely published, and she is the author of three books,
Clearing, Winter Light, and Green Field. Her first two books, Clearing and Winter
Light, are included in Yale's Beinecke Library for the Yale Collection of American Literature.
Rose currently teaches poetry at Salinas Valley State Prison. Her extensive article about the poetry
workshop there, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, is featured in Red Wheelbarrow, 2015, literary
magazine.
Silver Spring
When the rains come in early spring, water seeps up through the basement floor, murky and foul. It creeps into corners, flows under the washing machine, under the old gas stove, across the mud sill into the plant room, and under the crooked door that leads outside.
The old woman hobbles down to the basement with a long-handled mop. She mops the floor, wrings the water into buckets, then pours it all down the cast iron sink.
She cannot keep up. Soon the water is to her ankles. Outside, the water swells into little rivers. At its lowest point, the yard itself begins to fill, and a pond appears, then slowly spreads across the grass.
Underneath it all, the silver spring, for which her neighborhood is named, will continue to wind its way under everyone's floors and basements, rising and falling like the breath of the earth and its oceans.
Her neighbors try to divert the unwanted water this way and that, away from themselves. The old woman rests her mop against the wall, opens her arms, says, Come.
Rose Black
2/27/17 WAS: Camille Miller hosted by J.D.
Camille Miller is a poet who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been active in the open mic scene for three years. Her favorite poets are Maya Angelo and Langston Hughes. She enjoys entertaining a crowd with lyrical and thought provoking verse . She is an active part of the Valona Poetry community in Crockett.
2/20/2017 WAS: Hollie Hardy hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? Look at Camille's poem and riff off it)
Camille Miller is a poet who resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has been active in the open mic scene for three years. Her favorite poets are Maya Angelo and Langston Hughes. She enjoys entertaining a crowd with lyrical and thought provoking verse . She is an active part of the Valona Poetry community in Crockett.
I lost my toenail
Running a marathon
But it was worth it
'Cause it will grow back
But I lost my youth
Worrying about the future
And that is part of my life
I'll never see again
(Except in my memories)
So attack each day
With a sense of passion
'Cause age will come
And it will crash in
So keep on living
Until you die
And try
Not to lose a toenail.
(Need a prompt? Look at Hollie's poem and riff off it)
Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems (Punk Hostage Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Annual Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute, SFSU, and Berkeley City College. She hosts Saturday Night Special, An East Bay Open Mic, curates Litquake’s Flight of Poets, and is a founder and core producer of Oakland’s Beast Crawl Literary Festival. Her website is www.holliehardy.com
HOW TO FEND OFF A SHARK
Wet fists in your eyes. The thump of undrumming
A figure in your peripheral vision
Here is the rind of night. Facing off on a rock of ice
Nightgown whipping, ragged around your thighs
Because silence is an expression of fear
Unwave that flag, unsmoke that cigarette
Unfuck that friend
These desperate little fistfuls of defiance
This jazz song does not belong to you
Warm, the sensation of sleep. Threadbare
The quality of wishing
Because police are at the door again
This wrecking ball in your bedroom
This fresh fountain of silver in your hair
Blue, the function of smoke. Rumpled
The flavor of resistance
There are things that vanish unexpectedly
The stone talisman you carried for luck
Photographs burned in a fire
Bewildered, the pillow of regret
Because our experiences overlap. Bodies at rest
Hoarding dreams like stolen rainwater
HOW TO SURVIVE IF YOU ARE BURIED ALIVE
Sit down by the window’s heartbeat
to listen for rain
fingertips brush the body as Braille
seeking cracks in the façade
or an egress
from this book of wind
breath recurs often
brazen as the north star
a test of endurance
through layers of weather
how many stones are required
to collapse a lung
or a desire
2/13/2017 WAS: Richard Loranger hosted by Jim
(Need a prompt? Try "Fresh Out Of Luck" -- you don't have to use those words.)
Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, visual artist, and all around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. His recent book of flash prose, Sudden Windows (Zeitgeist Press, 2016), has been warmly received. He is also the author of the Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and nine chapbooks. Other recent work can be found in Oakland Review #2, Overthrowing Capitalism vol. 2 (Revolutionary Poets Brigade), and the new anthology The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker (great weather for MEDIA). You can find more about his work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.
Excerpts from Sudden Windows
And clouds roll in and I am glad, for autumn rain smells like the start of everything. And darksome days are time for all the dust to settle, sweet sweet the air and safe to open chest to amity. When trees drink clouds and dry ground soaks and we can sense effulgence down the road, how can we not enjoy the dropping of all things and the sleek sweep of pungent breeze? I’d like to lie down in the street and shine.
* * *
Early plum is bitter, early rose is tart, April light roves from sharp to glow as the month matures. Fleeting rain pelts the windows, then lifts infused with jasmine and fresh grass. Bougainvillea stuns. Clouds break, and the softest breeze strokes the arms and face. All the air sublime. Sometimes we need profundity, and sometimes just a lavender day.
* * *
I take myself to task, and find a tisane in the tin shack mine. The method to divine adumbra of the swale’s lost path is simply one of sniffing rasped grass. We are never truly lost until we find ourselves bereft of cause – no green, under air, dry as dirty docks. And even then the thirst might eek us out, the rancid grain slake need for friction so the loose shoot may flail. May tendril on. We soar on tin lid sleds and take the dawn. And in the meantime, watching from our table the adept bright rain, we take to task, wrap hands around sweet steam.
2/6/2017 WAS: Deborah Lee Fruchey hosted by Jan
(Need a prompt? Look at Deborah's bio and riff off it)
PHOTO BY RONNA LEON
Deborah Fruchey was born. It wasn't her idea. After that she spent too much time in churches, mental hospitals, and 12 Step Groups, in that order. Finally she graduated to poetry readings, where she lurks to this day. She also writes books once in a while, and one of them even won an award, but let's not mention that. Deborah is hiding out in suburbia, but she only hangs out with writers and musicians, so any hopes of reform are obviously misguided. She studies Shamanism, and daydreams of a cult following and a flat stomach, but is considered unarmed and mostly harmless.
1/30/2017 WAS: Leah Steinberg hosted by Jan
Leah Steinberg has been writing poetry for decades and recently published a non-fiction book, Raised in the Shadow of the Bomb: Children of the Manhattan Project. She is the daughter and niece of scientists that worked at the University of Chicago Metallurgical (Met) Lab a branch of the Manhattan Project during WWII, the secret project that researched and developed the first atomic weapons. The book is part memoir, interviews, history, with some poetry as well. She will read from her new book. Leah is a published poet, a nature photographer, and music lover.
1/23/2017 WAS: Lori Lynne Armstrong hosted by J.D.
(Need a prompt? Look at Lori's poem and riff off it)
Lori Lynne Armstrong has been a scientist, a counselor, a drug addict, a singer, a home teacher, and a mental patient. Her passions include promoting integrative treatment options for the dual diagnosis community. She began writing Not This Song, a blog on the subject, to reach out and encourage others. A few years ago, an important essay got stuck in her throat and would not budge until she coughed it out in the form of the first poem she’d written in twenty years. There was no going back. Her thoughts on poetry and creativity can be found at her writing site, Not My Last Words.
The Mirror
I was not born naked
It took long years to know
I was not born naked
I was clothed within the womb
Clothed in expectation
Adorned with brute conception
Afloat in some past toxin
I was supposed to bear
Now my mirror shows
The beaded fear designs
Stitched into my skin
By some experienced hand
Now my mirror shows
My cheeks are smeared with red
Red tribal paint with meanings
I must break rules to see.
My cheeks are smeared with red
Red tribal paint with meanings
I must break rules to see.
1/16/2017 WAS: MK Chavez hosted by Bruce
MK Chavez is the author of several chapbooks, including Mothermorphosis, her full-length collection, Dear Animal, will be released by Nomadic Press in October 2016. Her writing has been published in many online and print journals. Her most recent publications can be found in Story Magazine, Jam Tarts Literary Journal and Rivet. Chavez is co-founder of the reading series Lyrics & Dirges, and co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival, and recipient of a 2016 Alameda County Arts Leadership Award.
12/26 Holiday, No meeting. H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S !
1/2/2017 No meeting H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S !
1/9/2017 WAS: Sharon Elliot hosted by Jim
Sharon Elliott has been a poet activist over several decades in national and international social justice concerns, especially the rights of women and girls. Her activism began in the anti-war and civil rights movements in the 1960s and 70s, and she spent four years working with women and teenage girls in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador, especially in multicultural women’s issues. She is a Moderator of Poets Responding to SB1070, and has featured in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area. Her work has been published in several anthologies and her poem “Border Crossing” appears in the anthology entitled Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodriguez, eds. She has read it in Los Angeles at AWP and La Pachanga 2016 book launch, in San Francisco and at the Féis Seattle Céiliedh in Port Townsend, WA. Her chapbook, Jaguar Unfinished, was published by Prickly Pear Press, 2012. She was an awardee of Best Poem of 2012 by La Bloga, for The Day of Little Comfort. She loves to mentor young poets and assist them in spreading their creative wings. She is studying indigenous traditions of Scotland and Norway and is searching for the home of her heart with the guidance of her ancestors. She is fluent in Spanish and is learning her traditional language of Scots Gaelic. A true child of the north, she loves cats, stormy blustery days by the sea, and blueberries.
her morning coffee
like
a tea stained dress
warm
audacious
chimera
fond of peaches
and dark chocolate
Copyright © 2016 Sharon Elliott. All Rights Reserved.
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