3/9/2020 Laura Schulkind hosted by Jim
Her published work and reviews can also be found at: www.lauraschulkind.com, along with musings on why “lawyer-poet” isn’t an oxymoron.
HAWK ABOVE MAIN STREET
Up on the twentieth floor,
and see the red-tailed hawk
He moves in slow circles
To see this world as he must.
3 /16/2020 Lynne Barnes Was Canceled. Will reschedule later.
Lynne Barnes was born in Georgia and moved to New York City in 1968 with a front row ticket to HAIR, before migrating to San Francisco in 1969, two years after the Summer of Love. She was part of a commune that thrived for twenty years in the Haight Ashbury. She is a former psych nurse and librarian. Her beloved partner, Carole, created the cover art for her book.
FALLING INTO FLOWERS was the recipient of the 2017 Rainbow Award for Best Gay and Lesbian Poetry, a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award, and received Honorable Mention in both the "Gay" and the "Poetry" categories for the 2018 San Francisco Book Festival.
Sunday in the Temple of Democracy
The public library has always been a powerful force against inequality.
—Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, June 2, 2014
Saturday we see 12 Years a Slave,
movie made from a memoir
of a citizen of New York
kidnapped into the miasma
of one race subjugating another.
After the lights are up
and the theater is emptying,
we struggle like swimmers in trouble
to come up to this century’s air.
After we rise from this rendering
of an American Holocaust,
we walk out into the evening light
that is just leaving us.
Sunday, back at work, I help
a stooped African American grandmother
who struggles to schedule an appointment online
for a visit with her grandson in prison.
She frets in a lather of self-effacement
over her troubles with usernames and passwords.
She apologizes for taking up
too much of my librarian time.
Swimming in yesterday’s waters,
I touch her arm, catch her eye.
I watch her shoulders loosen,
her texture go from burlap to velour,
her face lift and smile, as I tell her
You are my boss; I work for you.
2/24/2020 Scott Caputo hosted by Gary
Originally from Salem, Oregon, Scott Caputo has had a life-long love affair with writing poetry and creating games. His work has appeared in Red Rock Review, Ruah, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and Saranac Review. Blue Light Press published his second book of poems, The Bridge Under Construction, in 2019, and his first book, Holy Trinity of Chiles, in 2010. "Memories of a Preemie" was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize. He also has five published board games, including Völuspá, based on the Nordic epic poem of the same name. He currently resides in Newark, California, with his wife and two sons.
Memories of a Preemie
First memories
are newborn hairs
trailing off
soft infant heads.
So I hoped for my son
who lived his first weeks
in a heated box
hooked to heart monitors
a feeding tube
threaded up his nose
down to his tiny
walnut-sized stomach
all day a slumber
under bright blue
bleaching yellow
from his fresh skin
eyes closed
to the world.
Evenings after work
I scrubbed my hands orange
before entering the NICU
a room punctuated
by heart and breath
monitors beeping
suddenly screaming
before settling again.
Nurses rowed between
shuttered pods
cheerful blankets
hiding the one inside.
I held my son to my bare chest
let him feel my body heat
before putting him back
inside his incubator
for night after night.
My wife and I
hoped his first weeks
of solitude
would barely smudge
the mirror of his mind.
But months later
well after he came home to us
well after he learned to smile
we brought him back
to be with his former
roommates and nurses
a party with balloons and cake.
I did not expect how strongly
my son would embrace
his daytime nurse.
He last saw her when he was only
a few weeks old.
He gripped her with everything
a six-month old could give.
Somewhere deep inside
he was being held again
outside his glass box
human touch
timeless and warm.
3/02/2020 Ashia Ajani host Elaine
Ashia Ajani is an emerging Black storyteller hailing from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains. She is a graduate of Yale University. She is an Environmental Studies major with a specialization in environmental justice and food rights. Her work confronts Black environments and imaginaries, exploring the legacies of trauma and resistance in diasporic communities. She has been published in Atlas&Alice Magazine, The Journal, Pilgrimage Press, Sage Magazine, Brushfire Literature & Arts, and The Hopper Magazine, among others. She released her first chapbook, We Bleed Like Mango, in October of 2017. Follow her on Instagram: @ashiainbloom and on her website https://ashiaajani22.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUjsnvmh9S8&t=37s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUahI1IvVjM
2/17/2020 Dennis J. Bernstein hosted by Bruce
Dennis J Bernstein lives in San Francisco. He is the award-winning host/producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on public and community radio stations across the United States. Bernstein is the recipient of many awards for his work, including the 2015 Pillar Award in Broadcast Journalism. In 2009, Pulse Media named him one of the “20 Top Global Media Figures.” Bernstein’s articles and essays have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Denver Post, Philadelphia Enquirer, Newsday, The Nation, Dallas Times Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Mother Jones, Village Voice, The Progressive, Vibe Magazine, Spin Magazine, Toronto Globe, Kyoto Journal, Der Spiegel, and many more. Bernstein is the author of Henry Hyde’s Moral Universe, and the co-author of two decks of political trading cards, Friendly Dictators and The S&L Scandal Trading Cards. He founded The Muriel Rukeyser Reading Series in Park Slope Brooklyn, and broadcast it over public and community radio in New York City; the series was named after his friend and mentor, the late poet and biographer, Muriel Rukeyser. Bernstein also produced the first complete live, 35 hour broadcast of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the U.S. at New York’s Bloomsday Bookstore. He is author of the poetry collection Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, which won the 2012 Artists Embassy International Literary Cultural Award. His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Chimaera, Bat City Review, The Progressive, Texas Observer, ZYZZYVA, Red River Review, and numerous other journals. Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, writes that Special Ed “is art turned to us through the eyes of love.” Carol Smaldino says in The Huffington Post that the poems remind us how “we are all connected to the sorrows as well as to the grandness of being human.” Bernstein’s earliest poems appeared as a chapbook, Particles of Light, with woodcuts by Stan Kaplan. His artists’ books/plays French Fries and GRRRHHHH: a study of social patterns, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are considered seminal works in the genre, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, and other museums around the world
3/9/2020 Laura Schulkind hosted by Jim
Laura Schulkind, an attorney by day, is entrusted with others’ stories. Through poetry and fiction, she tells her own. She has two poetry chapbooks, both published by Finishing Line Press, The Long Arc of Grief (2019) and Lost in Tall Grass (2014). Her writing has also appeared in numerous literary journals including The Dallas Review, Caveat Lector, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Evening Street Press, The MacGuffin, and Reed Magazine.
Her published work and reviews can also be found at: www.lauraschulkind.com, along with musings on why “lawyer-poet” isn’t an oxymoron.
HAWK ABOVE MAIN STREET
(Origins, 10/2018)
Up on the twentieth floor,
needing to stir,
to flex and stretch,
I rise and pace along the glass wall,
and see the red-tailed hawk
that has suddenly soared into view,
catching an updraft with the barest tilt of his wings,
feathers splayed and radiant.
He moves in slow circles
above the pigeons, the people,
light, shadow, light, shadow,
his tail one moment fiery red,
the next burnt umber.
To see this world as he must.
All canyons and cliffs,
earth and sky,
friend and foe,
and no confusion over which is which.
3 /16/2020 Lynne Barnes Was Canceled. Will reschedule later.
Lynne Barnes was born in Georgia and moved to New York City in 1968 with a front row ticket to HAIR, before migrating to San Francisco in 1969, two years after the Summer of Love. She was part of a commune that thrived for twenty years in the Haight Ashbury. She is a former psych nurse and librarian. Her beloved partner, Carole, created the cover art for her book.
FALLING INTO FLOWERS was the recipient of the 2017 Rainbow Award for Best Gay and Lesbian Poetry, a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award, and received Honorable Mention in both the "Gay" and the "Poetry" categories for the 2018 San Francisco Book Festival.
Sunday in the Temple of Democracy
The public library has always been a powerful force against inequality.
—Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, June 2, 2014
Saturday we see 12 Years a Slave,
movie made from a memoir
of a citizen of New York
kidnapped into the miasma
of one race subjugating another.
After the lights are up
and the theater is emptying,
we struggle like swimmers in trouble
to come up to this century’s air.
After we rise from this rendering
of an American Holocaust,
we walk out into the evening light
that is just leaving us.
Sunday, back at work, I help
a stooped African American grandmother
who struggles to schedule an appointment online
for a visit with her grandson in prison.
She frets in a lather of self-effacement
over her troubles with usernames and passwords.
She apologizes for taking up
too much of my librarian time.
Swimming in yesterday’s waters,
I touch her arm, catch her eye.
I watch her shoulders loosen,
her texture go from burlap to velour,
her face lift and smile, as I tell her
You are my boss; I work for you.
2/24/2020 Scott Caputo hosted by Gary
First memories
are newborn hairs
trailing off
soft infant heads.
So I hoped for my son
who lived his first weeks
in a heated box
hooked to heart monitors
a feeding tube
threaded up his nose
down to his tiny
walnut-sized stomach
all day a slumber
under bright blue
bleaching yellow
from his fresh skin
eyes closed
to the world.
Evenings after work
I scrubbed my hands orange
before entering the NICU
a room punctuated
by heart and breath
monitors beeping
suddenly screaming
before settling again.
Nurses rowed between
shuttered pods
cheerful blankets
hiding the one inside.
I held my son to my bare chest
let him feel my body heat
before putting him back
inside his incubator
for night after night.
My wife and I
hoped his first weeks
of solitude
would barely smudge
the mirror of his mind.
But months later
well after he came home to us
well after he learned to smile
we brought him back
to be with his former
roommates and nurses
a party with balloons and cake.
I did not expect how strongly
my son would embrace
his daytime nurse.
He last saw her when he was only
a few weeks old.
He gripped her with everything
a six-month old could give.
Somewhere deep inside
he was being held again
outside his glass box
human touch
timeless and warm.
3/02/2020 Ashia Ajani host Elaine
Originally from Salem, Oregon, Scott Caputo has had a life-long love affair with writing poetry and creating games. His work has appeared in Red Rock Review, Ruah, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and Saranac Review. Blue Light Press published his second book of poems, The Bridge Under Construction, in 2019, and his first book, Holy Trinity of Chiles, in 2010. "Memories of a Preemie" was nominated for the 2019 Pushcart Prize. He also has five published board games, including Völuspá, based on the Nordic epic poem of the same name. He currently resides in Newark, California, with his wife and two sons.
Memories of a Preemie
First memories
are newborn hairs
trailing off
soft infant heads.
So I hoped for my son
who lived his first weeks
in a heated box
hooked to heart monitors
a feeding tube
threaded up his nose
down to his tiny
walnut-sized stomach
all day a slumber
under bright blue
bleaching yellow
from his fresh skin
eyes closed
to the world.
Evenings after work
I scrubbed my hands orange
before entering the NICU
a room punctuated
by heart and breath
monitors beeping
suddenly screaming
before settling again.
Nurses rowed between
shuttered pods
cheerful blankets
hiding the one inside.
I held my son to my bare chest
let him feel my body heat
before putting him back
inside his incubator
for night after night.
My wife and I
hoped his first weeks
of solitude
would barely smudge
the mirror of his mind.
But months later
well after he came home to us
well after he learned to smile
we brought him back
to be with his former
roommates and nurses
a party with balloons and cake.
I did not expect how strongly
my son would embrace
his daytime nurse.
He last saw her when he was only
a few weeks old.
He gripped her with everything
a six-month old could give.
Somewhere deep inside
he was being held again
outside his glass box
human touch
timeless and warm.
3/02/2020 Ashia Ajani host Elaine
Ashia Ajani is an emerging Black storyteller hailing from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains. She is a graduate of Yale University. She is an Environmental Studies major with a specialization in environmental justice and food rights. Her work confronts Black environments and imaginaries, exploring the legacies of trauma and resistance in diasporic communities. She has been published in Atlas&Alice Magazine, The Journal, Pilgrimage Press, Sage Magazine, Brushfire Literature & Arts, and The Hopper Magazine, among others. She released her first chapbook, We Bleed Like Mango, in October of 2017. Follow her on Instagram: @ashiainbloom and on her website https://ashiaajani22.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUjsnvmh9S8&t=37s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUahI1IvVjM
2/17/2020 Dennis J. Bernstein hosted by Bruce
Dennis J Bernstein lives in San Francisco. He is the award-winning host/producer of Flashpoints, syndicated on public and community radio stations across the United States. Bernstein is the recipient of many awards for his work, including the 2015 Pillar Award in Broadcast Journalism. In 2009, Pulse Media named him one of the “20 Top Global Media Figures.” Bernstein’s articles and essays have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, Denver Post, Philadelphia Enquirer, Newsday, The Nation, Dallas Times Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Mother Jones, Village Voice, The Progressive, Vibe Magazine, Spin Magazine, Toronto Globe, Kyoto Journal, Der Spiegel, and many more. Bernstein is the author of Henry Hyde’s Moral Universe, and the co-author of two decks of political trading cards, Friendly Dictators and The S&L Scandal Trading Cards. He founded The Muriel Rukeyser Reading Series in Park Slope Brooklyn, and broadcast it over public and community radio in New York City; the series was named after his friend and mentor, the late poet and biographer, Muriel Rukeyser. Bernstein also produced the first complete live, 35 hour broadcast of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the U.S. at New York’s Bloomsday Bookstore. He is author of the poetry collection Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom, which won the 2012 Artists Embassy International Literary Cultural Award. His poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Chimaera, Bat City Review, The Progressive, Texas Observer, ZYZZYVA, Red River Review, and numerous other journals. Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple, writes that Special Ed “is art turned to us through the eyes of love.” Carol Smaldino says in The Huffington Post that the poems remind us how “we are all connected to the sorrows as well as to the grandness of being human.” Bernstein’s earliest poems appeared as a chapbook, Particles of Light, with woodcuts by Stan Kaplan. His artists’ books/plays French Fries and GRRRHHHH: a study of social patterns, co-authored with Warren Lehrer, are considered seminal works in the genre, and are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Georges Pompidou Centre, and other museums around the world
Lenore Weiss Features Feb 10, 7pm
Lenore's poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hadassa Word Press, 2017). Her most recent poetry chapbook is From Malls to Museums (Ethelzine, 2020), and her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love, was published by Alexandria Quarterly Press. Lenore tutors middle-school and high-school students in reading and writing and volunteers at Chapter510 in Oakland, California.
Lenore's poetry collections form a trilogy about love, loss, and being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Kelsay Books, 2014), and The Golem (Hadassa Word Press, 2017). Her most recent poetry chapbook is From Malls to Museums (Ethelzine, 2020), and her prize-winning flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love, was published by Alexandria Quarterly Press. Lenore tutors middle-school and high-school students in reading and writing and volunteers at Chapter510 in Oakland, California.
Get Your Dervish On
The call to prayer resounds five ties a day. The calligraphic signatures of ancient architects appear on ebony doors encrusted with mother-of-pearl. Turkish is related to Hungarian, the same Ugric-Altaic language stem akin to Finnish, also possibly, Korean and Japanese. Think Mongolian. According to guides, the city is built upon layers of who did not like whom. Green and blue chariot teams once faced off along political lines. Ethnic groups fill out the corners of the city. Think Kurds, Greeks, Armenians. Scratch a civilization. Find a welt. We visited a Whirling Dervish ceremony. Ten dervishes appeared in black gospel-like robes, hands tucked across chests to signify the unity of God. One leader sat on a red sheepskin and kissed each hat as dervishes bowed. Save for black robes, everything else was white. Off with the black, spin toward the white. The fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve like atoms, something I heard from a yoga teacher. White skirts billowed into human planets of love. The ceremony ended with a prayer for peace. Fade to black.
2/3/2020 Dee Allen & Heather Scott hosted by Elaine.
Session will start PROMPTLY AT 7PM to allow time for both features.
Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early1990s. Author of 4 books [ Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press ] and 24 anthology appearances [ including Poets 11: 2014, Feather Floating On The Water, Rise, Your Golden Sun Still Shines, What Is Love, The City Is Already Speaking, The Land Lives Forever, Extreme and Civil
Liberties United, edited by Shizué Seigel ] under his figurative belt so far. Allen’s fifth book, Elohi Unitsi, will be released Earth Day 2020
from Conviction 2 Change Publishing.
Heather Scott is a teacher in Oakland and sometimes writer. She writes about love and relationships. She received her MA in Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire.
1/27/2020 Dan Linehan hosted by Gary
A longtime professional writer, author, and award-winning poet, Dan Linehan often interweaves nature, current events, and far-flung lands. His poetry has been published widely in books, newspapers, and literary journals, including in The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets. He is passionate about helping to solve environmental crises through creativity. Dan’s new multimedia serial novel The Princess of the Bottom of the World includes poetry inspired by his travels to Antarctica and Argentina. For more, visit: www.dslinehan.com
THE BEAGLE CHANNEL
by Dan Linehan
Sandra told me about her silver ring.
Her mother had said
silver has healing powers.
I showed her my silver earring.
I feel like a pirate now.
She has a telescope back in Chile.
This is her last cruise.
She knows magic tricks.
We watched the comet,
sharing a pair of binoculars.
1/20/2020 Caroline Goodwin host Bruce
Caroline Goodwin's books are Trapline (2013), Peregrine (2015), The Paper Tree (2017) and Custody of the Eyes (2019). Her recent poem, "Snaketime III", was runner-up in The Sewanee Review 2019 poetry contest, judged by Carl Phillips. She teaches at CCA, Stanford Continuing Studies and UC Berkeley Extension (in the summer). In 1999 she moved from Sitka, Alaska to California to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow; from 2014-16 she served as San Mateo County's first Poet Laureate.
SNAKETIME III
If you show up
today I will open
the door, put on
the kettle. Familiar
as the net-vein willow,
catkin fur
we use for
wicks. At night
I can hear
the roots
beneath the floor. Girl
who sits humming
on the back porch,
tapping her hands
into fins.
If under
the lichens the weevils
are moving,
if under my
palms the water
spreads.
A faraway flapping.
A trap door,
wind. The ways
in which the river
speaks. Open it up,
you’ll see. You’ll let it in.
1/13/2020Paul Jolly hosted by Jim
Paul Jolly was raised in Oakland, and, after a thirty year detour on the East Coast, returned to Berkeley in the summer of 2019. His poems have appeared in Permafrost, the Columbia Review, and Straylight. His first book, Why Ice Cream Trucks Play Christmas Songs, was published by Fernwood Press in December of 2018.
Miracle drugs
Sunlight through clouds, taa-daa! Trumpet
charts with angels. The apothecary
many shelves hold baskets and baskets,
trials. The mucks want crutches
requires reams of forms. Check
post-flatline. And randomized
Did all the docs carry the same tracts
Was there a between-shifts non sectual
Hallmark prayer cards, patches, inhalers,
faithish? Does a buried urn in the arid
that proves placebo as helpful as drug?
12/30/19 No PE, Happy Holidays host S Clause
1/6/2020 Kelliane Parker hosted by Elaine Brown
Kelliane Parker is a Bay Area poet and co host of My Word Open Mic. Her work has been featured in local anthologies and she has performed around the Bay Area and. Her work gives voice to survivors of sexual abuse and other violent trauma to heal and break the cycle.
While the world sleeps
By Kelliane Parker
While the world sleeps, I negotiate and wrestle
I let go and become. The night person, sleepless.
Untamed and improper, irreverent and unmanageable,
Unpredictable and uncooperative. I unearth secrets
And deconstruct stories, stories carefully crafted and rehearsed
By the entire cast in the role of a lifetime
For a lifetime…a life sentence, really.
And I nurture and embrace The Survivor
The one who faced down monsters from untold fairy tales
Where the outside world finds most of us unworthy
Of be saved or believed. So again we save ourselves,
Unless we don’t. And then the body count is uncounted,
By the unspeakable cancer called shame.
And another is lost
And, another…is… lost
So, tell me your secrets, the ones you don’t even tell yourself
What could you lose to tell another unworthy, the familiar tale.
Only the cast member names are different, but the story is the same
So we share the secret handshake, to acknowledge our membership
Only this time, it is different, we are the majority
And the light no longer stings our eyes, or maybe it just makes us feel alive
To feel something, anything even pain is beautifully real
You, my sisters, count
I see you, I hear you
I will remember your name
And I, I believe you
12/23/19 Aileen Cassinetto hosted by Gary
Aileen Cassinetto is the first Asian-American appointed to the post of Poet Laureate of San Mateo County. Having grown up in the Philippines during Martial Law, she seeks not only to make poetry more accessible to people in their everyday lives, but to advocate for social justice and diversity. Widely anthologized, she is the author of the poetry collections, Traje de Boda andThe Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems, as well as three chapbooks through Moria Books’ acclaimed Locofo series. Aileen is also the publisher of Paloma Press, an independent literary press established in 2016 which has released 17 books to date.
Hate is lead-wrapped
follows a corkscrew path
all 1/25th of a human heart
to tear apart skin, sinew
bone, prized tissue
rips as it leaves
a bleeding vessel that is
the weight of someone’s love.
12/16/19 Andrena Zawinski hosted by Bruce
Photo Credit: Don Dutra
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection, Landings, is from Kelsay Books (Hemet, CA). She has published two previous full collections of poetry: Something About (Blue Light Press, San Francisco, CA), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient, and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, O), a Kenneth Patchen competition winner. She has also authored four chapbooks and is editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, Oakland, CA). Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
In Landings, Zawinski presents poems that embrace, in original ways and with deep-rooted emotional power, the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside an abiding reverence for the natural world. Of this work, Jan Beatty says Zawinski is the necessary voice of the truth teller, speaking trouble among the beauty. Rebecca Foust lauds the collection as a book that offers wisdom and solace and one you will take comfort in reading again and again. Carolyne Wright goes on to say in these Landings, she embraces the richness of human experience and praises the courage of those who go on ‘living as if they could do anything.’
Links to work: poetrymagazine.com/zawinski amazon.com/author/
Andrena Zawinski:
Rafts
Sun spills silver stars of light along rippling summer waves.
A string of pelicans wing the horizon,
light in flight for all their heft.
Children squeal and squirm inside their plastic inflatable.
One slips over the side, feigns drowning, splashing and kicking,
holding onto his crying sister, jumps back in to tickle her side––
all of them then swimming in giggles and smiles in frolic and fun,
family picnicking at the shore, waving from bright beach towels.
Other children, roped onto rafts in flimsy life jackets, float in
from Aleppo across the Aegean away from bombs and bullets
to find a way out, forge a way in, whole families cattled
by smugglers, squeezed in dozens deep. But those who slip
into this dark sea cannot be rescued with innocent teasing and mirth.
A three-year-old washes up onto the beach face down on the sand,
limp body leaden in his father’s arms,
water lapping the wounded shore.
Publication Credit:
Reunion Dallas Review, Vol 6, 2017. Univ. of Texas, Dallas, TX
12/9/19 Becky Bishop White hosted by Jim
The east coast, the SF Bay Area, and Lake Tahoe are threaded throughout the poetry of Becky Bishop White. An emerging poet, Becky won the 2019 First Prize in the Benicia Love Poetry Contest for her poem, Flying Start, and was Second Place winner for an unpublished poem, Ghost Fleet, at the 2019 Solano County Fair. Becky lives in Benicia with her husband, author James W. White, who is her very best friend.
ALIGNMENT
To try to set a problem right
requires courage. Some might
think to leave or just pout
in silence, but to talk it out
or try for a hug is huge.
You are no longer fugitive
from your best self.
You have broken the spell
that makes you think ‘other.’
But it’s not really another
who aligns with you.
Here is what is true:
The soul who makes peace is nearer
to the person in the mirror.
© Becky Bishop White
12/2/19 Jeanne Lupton host Elaine
Jeanne Lupton hosted Second Saturday Poetry and Prose at Frank Bette Center for the Arts for 13 years until this month. She writes poems and memoir and her tanka are published internationally. She's happy to feature again at Poetry Express. She gets great material from living at Strawberry Creek Lodge, senior housing in Berkeley.
11/25/19 Dave Holt hosted by Gary
Dave Holt, born in Toronto of Irish/English and Ojibwe Indian ancestry, moved to California as an aspiring songwriter, then graduated from SF State University’s Creative Writing program (B.A. ‘93, M.A. ‘95). He’s won several poetry prizes, including a Literary/Cultural Arts award for his book Voyages to Ancestral Islands, and is included in several anthologies, most notably, Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California; Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California; The Wild, Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2019, and Descansos: Words from the Wayside, where his poem received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Also a musician & composer, he sometimes performs his poetry with Ojibwe drum or keyboard.
Bering Strait, Dakota Pipeline Straitjacket
I come from ice and snow, winter memories
carry me, crossing tundra to a new land.
Fleets of dugout canoes floated us through kelp forest.
Bass, crabs, otters fed us,
this history etched in our hearts like petroglyphs
pecked in stone by our native artists.
This new Turtle Island formed by Skywoman
and before then, he who descended to Earth
as if by a rope dropped through Bugonagiizhig,
“Hole in the Sky,” the seven sisters, the Pleiades.
A different people followed Giiwedin’anung,
North Pole star, brought trade goods from the south,
taught us their friendship songs,
gave us the three sisters: corn, beans, squash,
traded for gifts of the north, obsidian, copper, beaver furs.
They shared their strange stories of origin and creation,
here on this land, where they emerged like ants
from an anthill, from an underground world
into the fourth world of pueblos and mesas,
and Spanish soldiers offering Bibles.
We nodded, knowing that what we were hearing was sacred.
Like us, they came from the Star People
who gave us seven sacred laws, affirmed our place
in the sacred hoop, and another non-heavenly origin
in the land across the water, beyond snows and ice flows,
back in time where we were given stewardship of the earth.
Of the four races, the white race became guardians
of the fire, the spark at the center of things.
Carried here across the Bering Strait, to where our fight
for protection of the water has earned us pepper spray,
guard dog attacks, jail cells, federal prison sentences.
Of what crime, against who, have we been accused?
11/18/2019 Joyce Young hosted by Bruce
Joyce E. Young is the author of How it Happens, published by Nomadic Press. Her writing has been nominated for both a Pushcart and a California Book Award
and has appeared in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, WORDPEACE, riverbabble, The New Poets of the American West, and elsewhere. She has received grants from the California Arts Council, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and Writers on Site residency program at the Oakland Museum and Oakland Public Library through
Poets & Writers, Inc. Joyce has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Soapstone and Vermont Studio Center. She works as a Writing Consultant at John F. Kennedy University, teaches writing privately, and is currently at work writing poetry, essays, and Parallel Journey, a novel.
Joyce maintains regular Yoga and Chi Gung practice and is a semi-retired Afro
Cuban folkloric and modern dancer. She keeps lots of music in her life,
particularly Jazz, Salsa, Reggae, Samba, and combinations of notes that defy
category. In reality, though, she really doesn’t like to assign categories for music.
Because
Like angels are supposed to
You don’t do it because
you want to be good,
get candy, or ice cream
You do it because you love
And forgetting all else
You tend to her or him,
watching, waiting, praying
for life, health, the best
for that person or persons
you love
11/11/19 Bruce Fessenden hosted by Jim
Bruce lives in Berkeley and is co-owner of Fessenden Firewood with his partner Christine. He has been deeply immersed in the natural world his entire life through the activities of backpacking, climbing and skiing. A book of his poems —“Crimson Coat” — was published in 2014 by Goldenstone Press. Pieces of Bruce’s writings have appeared in a MoonShine Star Co. anthology called “What is Love”, and also in Richard Grossinger’s book “2013”. A second volume of poems, titled “Bones” will be published shortly.
Frieda
My Mothers’ Mother was a gentle woman
I remember her deep set, brown eyes.
She had a hearing aid, like a little microphone
all that was available in the 50s.
She had her hearing aid as long as I can remember
her hearing impaired by typhoid fever
is the story I was told.
An uneducated woman living in a rooming house
as a boy I felt we were connected close.
Two quiet souls, filled with empty time
and the occasional unfriendly ghost.
When in high school, I’d drive
her to her solitary room
in my fathers’ forest green sports car.
He never gave her a single penny
he was blind in so many ways.
Often I wonder why a few rise up
while the others struggle and fall.
Hands of the clock easily seen
but the inner gears remain hidden.
I’ve heard it said
broken ones of this world sacrifice themselves
discarded fruit enriching the soil.
She liked menthol cigarretes and dime store crime novels.
Who was the kindly elementary school teacher
who taught her how to read?
Welfare checks and food stamps, TV in the lobby
Bathroom and showers at the end of the hall.
The last forty years of her life
spent in that solitary room
with her paperbacks, her cigarretes, her silence.
For the forgotten ones, its almost a blessing
to be so broken, and disassociated from their grief.
She lived her life a little bit stunned
in that way we are so much alike.
There was not a single instance her entire life
where my father realized
that she actually existed.
Its october now, my favorite time of year
angle of the sun so sublime.
I don’t even have a photo of her
my memory of her face grows hazy in my mind.
Too many people never find their place
punch the clock, ground up for fodder.
A choir sings sweetly
from the other side of the horizon
I stand tall and take the next step.
11/4/19 K.R Morrison
Black & White Photographs by Michelle Kilfeather
When she’s not drumming in two feminist rock bands, K.R. Morrison teaches English Literature and Creative Writing to high school students at Galileo in San Francisco, CA.
Morrison recently featured on Bay Area’s podcast, Storied: San Francisco about being an educator, musician, and writer in a city that’s rapidly changing. She has featured for many curations throughout the Bay Area, most recently Bay Area Generations, Naked Bulb, and Red Light Lit. Apart from reading her poetry at art events in Los Angeles and New Orleans last summer, Morrison featured for curations in New York in June, 2019. Published by Switchback and Quiet Lightning, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal as well as New York’s Gasconade Review selected Morrison as their feature for their most recent publications. She’s currently searching for a publisher for her chapbook, “Cauldrons,” while working on a larger poetry collection entitled, “From Her Wrist.” Once the manuscript is finished, she hopes to have it published by a press that reflects the priorities she voices in her writing.
10/28/19 Grace Grafton hosted by Gary
Grace Marie Grafton's most recent book is LENS from Unsolicited Press. It features poems inspired by California artists, 1853-2010. She is the author of six previous collections of poetry. Zero won the 2000 Poetic Matrix Chapbook contest. Visiting Sisters is a collection inspired by the artwork of contemporary women. Other Clues consists of experimental prose poems. A chapbook, Chrysanthemum Oratorio, plays with language and concept. Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, also from Poetic Matrix, explores the sonnet form. Jester, from Hip Pocket Press, features surreal persona poems.
Ms. Grafton taught for many years in the California Poets In The Schools program, for which she was awarded twelve California Arts Council grants. She was named Teacher of the Year by the River Of Words annual student poetry contest co-sponsored by Robert Hass, United States Poet Laureate.
10/21/2019 Georgette Howington hosted by Bruce
Georgette Howington is a UC Davis California Naturalist of the Mt. Diablo Region. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet, Poeming Pigeons, Sacred Grounds, among others. Her poems placed at the North American Women’s Music Festival, Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contests and the Benicia Love Poem Contest 2018. As a horticulturist, her niche is Backyard Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters. She is a County Coordinator and the Assistant State Program Director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program (www.cbrp.org) 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.
“It Bears Noting the Wolf Moon”
When the ancient tongue of sage,
January exhales.
And the Wolf Moon yawns in a white
(Sacred Grounds Anthology, 2019)
Sunday, 10/20, at 2pm,
Zeigeist Press will hold a Julia Vinogad Book Release Party
at Himalayan Flavors.
Zeitgeist Press is very excited to present two new Julia Vinograd books with a celebration at Himalayan Flavors. Publisher Bruce Isaacson has put together "A Symphony for Broken Instruments", a seminal collection of selected works along with a big section of previously unpublished poems. Never before has such a tour de force of Vinograd’s work been together in one volume, which is 384 pages in total, including art by Deborah Vinograd and Chris Trian. At the same event, editor Deborah Fruchey presents "Our Lady of Telegraph Avenue", the new tribute anthology of poems to, for, and about Julia Vinograd by a slew of friends and local writers.
Please join us for a festive afternoon celebrating the life and work of this remarkable woman who energized and shaped the poetry of the SF Bay Area for over fifty years.
Zeitgeist Press Presents:
Julia Vinograd Release Party – New Book and Tribute Anthology with Bruce Isaacson presenting "A Symphony for Broken Instruments: Selected and New Works by Julia Vinograd" and
Deborah Fruchey presenting the Julia Vinograd tribute anthology "Our Lady of Telegraph Avenue"
with readings from both volumes
Hosted by Bruce Isaacson, event is free of charge and books for sale at a one-time discount
ABOUT JULIA VINOGRAD
Julia Vinograd, the popular poet identified with the streets of Berkeley, California, published 70 books during her life (1943-2018). She was raised in Pasadena and Berkeley, where her mother was a poet and English Professor. Her father was announced to win a Nobel Prize in Biochemistry but passed away before the award. Julia earned a B.A. at U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. at the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. She won an American Book award from the Before Columbus Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and a “Lifetime Achievement Award as Berkeley’s unofficial Poet Laureate.” She was also famed as the Bubble Lady for her love of blowing soap bubbles for children on Telegraph Avenue. This book represents a life’s work of Street Poems that are accessible, charming, and deeply human.
10/14/19 Lucy Lang Day and Diane Frank hosted by bruce
Fire & Rain book reading
Lucille Lang Day’s latest book is Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, an anthology she coedited. She is also the author of ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recentlyBecoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems; the coeditor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California; and the author of two children’s books, Chain Letter and The Rainbow Zoo, and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and her many honors include the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature, the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Awards, and nine Pushcart nominations. She is the founder and director of Scarlet Tanager Books. http://lucillelangday.com
MUIR WOODS AT NIGHT
Rust-colored ladybugs, clustered like grapes,
mate on horsetails that wave by a creek,
where silvery salmon spawn and leap
when the sandbar breaks at the gate to the sea.
The ladybugs have come hundreds of miles,
from valley to coast, for this singles bash.
The females are choosy: they twiddle the males,
seeking appendages padded with fat.
And all around—high in redwood burls,
on elk-clover leaves, and in the rich soil—
the meaning of life is to stroke and prod
under a humpbacked moon, dissolving in fog.
From Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018)
Diane Frank is author of seven books of poems, two novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas, Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place (Nirala Publishing, 2018). Her new book of poems, Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2018.Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Diane lives in SanFrancisco, where she dances, plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony, and creates her life as an art form. She teaches at San Francisco State University and Dominican University. www.dianefrank.net
A poem from Fire and Rain:
In the Mendocino Woodlands
He walks into the forest
where trees are burning
finding his path in the silence.
Woodpecker, memory, larkspur
in the night of burning.
His eyes ask me to wait,
to keep the connection inside
the silent place where I find
pebbles of intuition, rose quartz.
In the morning, lupines on the trail
to the cliff where the giant trillium blooms,
kelp and seals swimming beyond
the tide pools below.
I run through Indian paintbrush,
milk maids, cinquefoil,
climbing the path where he finds me.
And what is love?
A fire walk initiation
from the ocean through a cathedral of trees,
fuchsia, wild grape, sudden
blue streaks on the wing of a moth
stellar jay wanting to fly free.
Diane Frank
10/7/19 Tom Stanton host Elaine
Thomas Eric Stanton [American, 1947– ]). Is primarily known as a California Surrealist. His works engage many mediums, and often emphasizes the aspects of 'Performance'. He has produced books of poetry, and his Paintings are included in many public, private, and museum collections. He lives and works in Benicia, California. He is the current Poet Laureate of Benicia, California
9/30/19 Maverick Night : STORY TELLING hosted by Gary
Bring your stories in any format -- Poems -- Prose -- Ad libitum -- Pictures & Dialogue
--??
9/23/19 Sandra Anfang hosted by Gary
Sandra Anfang is a poet, teacher, and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including San Francisco Peace and Hope, Unbroken Literary Journal, Rattle, and Spillway. Her chapbook, Looking Glass Heart, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape (Finishing Line Press, 2018) followed. A full-length collection, Xylem Highway, was released in March, 2019 from Main Street Rag. Sandra was nominated for a Best Short Fictions award and a Pushcart Prize. She is founder of the monthly series, Rivertown Poets, in Petaluma, California, and a California Poet/Teacher in the Schools.
Core Samples
At the Nevada mining museum
our seven-year old has a chokehold on my arm
timid at first, his tentative eyes—
as if searching for rattlers—
sweep the iron-incensed bunker
before they lock on the rows of core samples.
He pronounces the name
which doesn’t quite fit in his mouth
carves new grooves on his tongue.
The desiccated docent
voice bald as his quarry explains
how cylindrical drills drone deep into stone
probe Earth's mantle
yielding smooth columns, pygmy pillars
relics of a place where dinosaurs
once cut their terrible teeth.
Drawn in, my child dons a scholar’s mask.
This is proof of something real
a piece of the fossil record
truer than anything I can give him
a staff to wrap his brain’s heart around
a bed of rock his feet can trust
no ephemera in this metamorphic floor.
I flash on the day I could finally read most anything
the skeleton key of my brain cracking the code
translating the thatch of storefront signs
the irony of the missing “i” in “realty”
my hopeful eyes pleading with my mother:
can we bring some home?
At five I knew we were already fresh out.
Sandra Anfang
9/16/2019 Juanita J. Martin hosted by Bruce
Juanita J. Martin is Fairfield’s first poet laureate, 2010-2012. She’s also a freelance writer, and
performance artist. Her poetry book, The Lighthouse Beckons, was accepted into the Solano
County Library. Martin’s next volume of poems, Quiet Intensity, is due out in 2019. She’s
published in Blue Collar Review, SoMa Literary Review, and others. Juanita is active in Ina
Coolbrith Circle, and Benicia First Tuesday Poets. Juanita was also a longtime member of
Redwood Writers from 2007-2017. Juanita is listed with Poets & Writers Directory of Poets. She has read at the Frank Bette Cultural Center for the Alameda Poets in the Annual Black History event. She often reads for the Beat Poetry Festival and 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Juanita has been a featured reader with Healdsburg Literary Guild, Petaluma Poetry Walk 2007 & 2016, as well as Berkeley Poetry Festival. She has also contributed to Sonoma Discoveries Magazine, a tourist magazine covering North & West Sonoma County, and the Coast. www.jmartinpoetwriter.com
A Bittern Wades in Lonely Water
—Juanita J. Martin
Foggy blanket hovers piney timbers
The brave who cavort with darkness
A mind judges himself along the waters’ edge
Against dilapidated death
Against the briny stench
Of a burg
A shale-colored moon spotlights
A bittern at one end
The lonely end,
Where the wine of antipathy
Pours into a tall glass
Ripples of water are soothing
a mind massages the longing
finds solace there
A break in the mundane silence of living
(Third Place Ribbon-Solano County Fair 2016)
9/9/19 Tureeda Mikell hosted by Jim
Tureeda Mikell, Bay Area Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Story Medicine Woman, published poet and writer, Qigong Healer, storyteller, lyricist, astrologer and performance artist, has published 72 CA Poets in the Schools student anthologies since 1989. Has performed at Lawrence Hall and Golden Gate Academy of Sciences, MoAD, Randell, Oakland, and The DeYoung Museums, and has been featured storyteller for National Association of Black Storytellers. Her book, Synchronicity, Oracles of Story Medicine, soon to be published.
excerpts from
Why alter the altar?
Why did the son of the sun worship with warship?
Governments profit
Will joules perish in parish of jewels?
By Tureeda
9/2/19 NO PE, BAPC Picnic.
8/26/19 Jerry Ratch hosted by Gary
Jerry Ratch published 18 books of poetry, and 7 books of prose including the novel: Wild Dreams of Reality, and the Memoir: A Body Divided, the story of a one-armed boy growing up in a two-fisted world. His work can be purchased through the author’s website: www.jerryratch.com . and as kindle books on amazon.com.
The Fly on Our Pickle
I think I know that fly
Followed us on the subway to Times Square
Then down to Juniors in the food court below
“Oh, don’t worry,” we told her
The waitress eyed us suspiciously
“Come on!” we said.
8/19/19 Laura Schulkind hosted by Bruce
Laura’s new collection, The Log Arc of Grief (Finishing Line Press), tells stories of grief—inspired and impelled by the loss of her parents, Herb and Rima. But just as they were her models for friendship, loyalty, and resilience, these poems move beyond her own grief to consider how we understand and support those we love in their grief, and ultimately how we all not merely carry on, but live.
Laura Schulkind's work radiates intelligence, compassion and a nuanced understanding of what it means to be a daughter, a mother and a friend. She's a fearless truth-teller, shining the light of her poetic language on details we well might have missed otherwise--the small, miraculous moments of discovery, heartbreak and redemption. Barbara Quick (Vivaldi's Virgins)
Laura Schulkind’s new book, The Long Arc of Grief addresses the sorrow of loss … But also present in these well-crafted and touching poems is great affection and devotion, and a wonderful generosity of spirit which lift the poems and the reader up. Rafaella Del Bourgo (I Am Not Kissing You, and Inexplicable Business: Poems Domestic and Wild.)
Laura’s chapbook, Lost in Tall Grass (Finishing Line Press), was released in May 2014. Her work has also appeared, or is forth coming, in numerous journals including Caveat Lector, The Dos Passos Review, The MacGuffin, Minetta Review, Reed Magazine, and Reunion—The Dallas Review.
8/12/19 Lori Lynne Armstrong hosted by Jim
Lori Lynne Armstrong has been a scientist, a counselor, a mental health patient, and a painkiller addict. Her poetry spans these and many other realms with a style sometimes psychological, sometimes irreverent, but always searingly authentic. Her passions include promoting creative treatment options for the mental health and substance abuse recovery communities and promoting poetry availability for all communities. Her work appears in Poetry Expressed, The Abrams Claghorn exhibit "Have You Heard Us Yet?" and her first chapbook, Queen of Cups. She writes about her life and ongoing projects at notmylastwords.com.
Woman
these opaque walls will never lighten to clear quartz crystal (never again)
8/5/19 LeeLee Aint Msbehavin host Elaine
If you don't know LeeLee, you should and trust you are in for a treat. Three-time National Poetry Award nominee. Published author of "Untamed Pen", as well as an erotic cd titled "Freaky Tales". She's been featured on stages across the country and her voice has been heard around the world on several online radio shows. Her writings cover a variety of topics from the brutal reality of racism, to more adult content of a sexual nature. Prepare to go on the poetic ride of your life with the talented, the tantalizing LeeLee Ain't Msbehavin'
Photographs (Of You)
I chased you in my dreams…
Down hollow halls with walls covered with pictures of you
From my birth to your death
My heart wept because you’re no longer here
It’s been twelve years…
Twelve long lonely years of not having you near
There was movement in each photograph that I passed
Snapshots from my childhood
Where you stood
A constant fixture
In my life
I wipe the tears from my eyes
That blinded my view of you
All I could see were those pictures on the wall…
Each was a happy memory replayed as I grew up with my siblings
That loving feeling I felt when you hugged me
Your presence when I gave birth to my sons
Your smile beamed like the sun
Which always made my heart dance
I glance down the hall only to see you turn the corner
Further away from my grasp
This was my last chance to reach out and grab your hand
I know that God reserved a spot for you in the promise land
But I still need you…
You were the super glue that held my heart together
It shattered as I watched you go upstairs to Heaven
You turned facing me
Embraced me and stayed just long enough to sweep up the broken pieces
Mending them back whole
You hugged me one last time
Telling me it was time to go home
You said I won’t be alone because you inserted a piece of yourself within the valves that keeps me alive
Inside of those picture frames are moments that will never die
So for now its goodbye
Don’t cry my love
Because up above
Beyond those stairs
Is where I need to be
You said to me as you walked away
As I retreat down hollow halls with walls covered with pictures of you
The sun shined brighter than it ever had
Was momentarily sad
But then I realized that all your years on this earth
You prepared to be with Jesus
You didn’t leave us
Because your spirit will always be with us…
I still dream of you though
7/29/19 Avotcja Birthday Celebration host JIm
Poet/Playwright/Multi-Percussionist/Photographer/Teacher
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.
On May 10th 2014 the 12th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival honored AVOTCJA with its Lifetime Achievement Award for the truly valuable creative and community work that she has accomplished.
Website: www.Avotcja.org
Email: LaVerdadMusical@yahoo.com
7/22/19 John Argue hosted by Gary
John Argue taught acting for many years, and in the ‘80s started doing drama therapy with children and with hospitalized adults. He shifted over completely to working with Parkinson’s people in 1985 and continued for 32 years. He retired two years ago and returned to his first love, poetry.
Foregiveness is not
some words you say
to the one who wronged you
Forgiveness is
giving up
your revenge.
7/8/19
Barbara Atkinson hosted by Jim
Barbara Atkinson identifies as a bicoastal writer and performer, transplanted a few times
between Bucks County PA and Berkeley CA. She is also a scientist,
social organizer, and dance enthusiast. After teaching herself to read,
she earned a Bachelor of Rhymes degree from kindergarten, her most prized
diploma. In the many intervening years, she has written numerous poems
(rhyming, metered, both, and neither), short stories, cartoons, songs &
song lyrics, tributes in verse, and paraphrases of popular classics. Sometimes
this erupts into spoken word, with venues ranging from summer camps to PTA
benefits to soccer team family picnics to holiday parties at her workplace and
more.
Fishes
As the majestic icebergs melt
We look upward to the sun
Lunches are never
free still
7/15/19 Robert
Coats hosted by
Bruce
Robert Coats has been
writing poetry for 40 years. His work as an environmental scientist takes
him outdoors and sometimes provides inspiration and material. He is drawn
to poetry rooted in the West and reflecting a strong sense of place. A native
Californian by birth (his great-grandparents having come by covered wagon in
1859), he spent part of his youth in the deciduous forests of Maryland, and the
mountains of northeastern Nevada. His poems have appeared in Orion, Windfall, Canary, Song
of the San Joaquin, the Pudding House anthology Fresh Water and
a full-length book—The Harsh Green World—published in 2015 by Sugartown
Publishing. Awards include first and third prizes in Menlo College’s
“Wallace Stevens Where Are You” contest (1998), first prize in the 1994 contest
of the American Society on Aging, and first prize in Word Worth’s 2010 poetry
contest. Details of his professional work can be found at
www.hydroikos.com.
WHAT TO DO ON AUGUST 26TH
Now turn east, look up
In the moment before
Then the orb’s leading edge
--Robert Coats
7/1/19 D.L Lange hosted by Elaine
We are back at Himalayan Flavors back room, 1585 University Ave.
D.L. Lang is Poet Laureate of Vallejo, California. She has authored eleven books, one spoken word album, and is the editor of Verses, Voices & Visions of Vallejo.
Lang has been a featured act at numerous events in Vallejo and poetry shows around the bay area. Her writings are a blend of memory, history, imagination, reality, politics, and spirituality. Her poems have been transformed into songs, liturgy, and used as a means to advocate for causes. Her website is: www.poetryebook.com
6/24 We will be at 1800 University ave, berkeley,
NATIONS GIANT HAMBURGERS Side room.
Due to remodeling at Himalayan Flavors.
Doors to side room slide apart, do not swing open.
6/24/19 Kitty Costello hosted by Gary
Kitty Costello's recent poetry collection, Upon Waking, is gathered from writing done during the 40 years she has lived in the Bay Area. She's a tai chi teacher and psychotherapist, and she worked for decades for the public library. She has served for nearly 30 years on the editorial board of Freedom Voices, whose mission is to publish works that speak to and from communities on the margins. She is currently coediting a collection called Muslim American Writers at Home.
THE CURE
If we can meet
and find our own dark treasure,
heal our own dark scars,
our hearts will be mending
cracks in the world.
06/17/2019 OPEN MIC NIGHT
Fire & Rain book reading by Lucille Lang Day & Diane Frank . Feature to be rescheduled
6/10/19 Lydia Hirsch hosted by Jim
The call to prayer resounds five ties a day. The calligraphic signatures of ancient architects appear on ebony doors encrusted with mother-of-pearl. Turkish is related to Hungarian, the same Ugric-Altaic language stem akin to Finnish, also possibly, Korean and Japanese. Think Mongolian. According to guides, the city is built upon layers of who did not like whom. Green and blue chariot teams once faced off along political lines. Ethnic groups fill out the corners of the city. Think Kurds, Greeks, Armenians. Scratch a civilization. Find a welt. We visited a Whirling Dervish ceremony. Ten dervishes appeared in black gospel-like robes, hands tucked across chests to signify the unity of God. One leader sat on a red sheepskin and kissed each hat as dervishes bowed. Save for black robes, everything else was white. Off with the black, spin toward the white. The fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve like atoms, something I heard from a yoga teacher. White skirts billowed into human planets of love. The ceremony ended with a prayer for peace. Fade to black.
2/3/2020 Dee Allen & Heather Scott hosted by Elaine.
Session will start PROMPTLY AT 7PM to allow time for both features.
Dee Allen is an African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early1990s. Author of 4 books [ Boneyard, Unwritten Law, Stormwater and Skeletal Black, all from POOR Press ] and 24 anthology appearances [ including Poets 11: 2014, Feather Floating On The Water, Rise, Your Golden Sun Still Shines, What Is Love, The City Is Already Speaking, The Land Lives Forever, Extreme and Civil
Liberties United, edited by Shizué Seigel ] under his figurative belt so far. Allen’s fifth book, Elohi Unitsi, will be released Earth Day 2020
from Conviction 2 Change Publishing.
Heather Scott is a teacher in Oakland and sometimes writer. She writes about love and relationships. She received her MA in Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire.
1/27/2020 Dan Linehan hosted by Gary
A longtime professional writer, author, and award-winning poet, Dan Linehan often interweaves nature, current events, and far-flung lands. His poetry has been published widely in books, newspapers, and literary journals, including in The Anthology of Monterey Bay Poets. He is passionate about helping to solve environmental crises through creativity. Dan’s new multimedia serial novel The Princess of the Bottom of the World includes poetry inspired by his travels to Antarctica and Argentina. For more, visit: www.dslinehan.com
THE BEAGLE CHANNEL
by Dan Linehan
Sandra told me about her silver ring.
Her mother had said
silver has healing powers.
I showed her my silver earring.
I feel like a pirate now.
She has a telescope back in Chile.
This is her last cruise.
She knows magic tricks.
We watched the comet,
sharing a pair of binoculars.
1/20/2020 Caroline Goodwin host Bruce
Caroline Goodwin's books are Trapline (2013), Peregrine (2015), The Paper Tree (2017) and Custody of the Eyes (2019). Her recent poem, "Snaketime III", was runner-up in The Sewanee Review 2019 poetry contest, judged by Carl Phillips. She teaches at CCA, Stanford Continuing Studies and UC Berkeley Extension (in the summer). In 1999 she moved from Sitka, Alaska to California to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow; from 2014-16 she served as San Mateo County's first Poet Laureate.
SNAKETIME III
If you show up
today I will open
the door, put on
the kettle. Familiar
as the net-vein willow,
catkin fur
we use for
wicks. At night
I can hear
the roots
beneath the floor. Girl
who sits humming
on the back porch,
tapping her hands
into fins.
If under
the lichens the weevils
are moving,
if under my
palms the water
spreads.
A faraway flapping.
A trap door,
wind. The ways
in which the river
speaks. Open it up,
you’ll see. You’ll let it in.
1/13/2020Paul Jolly hosted by Jim
Paul Jolly was raised in Oakland, and, after a thirty year detour on the East Coast, returned to Berkeley in the summer of 2019. His poems have appeared in Permafrost, the Columbia Review, and Straylight. His first book, Why Ice Cream Trucks Play Christmas Songs, was published by Fernwood Press in December of 2018.
Miracle drugs
Sunlight through clouds, taa-daa! Trumpet
fanfares in the lab window, refracts
on beakers and test tubes. Lab
drudges halt their rote to compare
charts with angels. The apothecary
cleric’s shelf recently held a smatter
of cures: saints’ relics, holy
water, tinctures, unguent. Now
many shelves hold baskets and baskets,
loaf baskets, fish baskets.
High church muckety mucks
(mucks at least) preside at drug
trials. The mucks want crutches
heaved by healed cripples, billion
dollar profits, Nobel prize, handicapped
stickers discarded from cars. Proof
requires reams of forms. Check
miracle type: blindness cure,
hemorrhage plug, cripples walk,
or the Lalapalooza: Lazarus alive
post-flatline. And randomized
samples! No chocolate sampler
was ever so random. Did placebo
-takers get prayed at same as druggies?
Did all the docs carry the same tracts
in their grand round lab coat
pockets? Did prayer warriors spout
glossolalia in the same dead language?
Was there a between-shifts non sectual
moment of silence at the nurses station
in each clinic? Identical hymns, time
-release capsules, scriptures, syringes,
Hallmark prayer cards, patches, inhalers,
beads, inhibitors, enzymes, chants,
implants? Double-blinders want to know:
Was the philanthropist who endowed each hospital
faithish? Does a buried urn in the arid
land of Genesis hold test results that went
wrong for pharma, papyrus
that proves placebo as helpful as drug?
12/30/19 No PE, Happy Holidays host S Clause
1/6/2020 Kelliane Parker hosted by Elaine Brown
Kelliane Parker is a Bay Area poet and co host of My Word Open Mic. Her work has been featured in local anthologies and she has performed around the Bay Area and. Her work gives voice to survivors of sexual abuse and other violent trauma to heal and break the cycle.
While the world sleeps
By Kelliane Parker
While the world sleeps, I negotiate and wrestle
I let go and become. The night person, sleepless.
Untamed and improper, irreverent and unmanageable,
Unpredictable and uncooperative. I unearth secrets
And deconstruct stories, stories carefully crafted and rehearsed
By the entire cast in the role of a lifetime
For a lifetime…a life sentence, really.
And I nurture and embrace The Survivor
The one who faced down monsters from untold fairy tales
Where the outside world finds most of us unworthy
Of be saved or believed. So again we save ourselves,
Unless we don’t. And then the body count is uncounted,
By the unspeakable cancer called shame.
And another is lost
And, another…is… lost
So, tell me your secrets, the ones you don’t even tell yourself
What could you lose to tell another unworthy, the familiar tale.
Only the cast member names are different, but the story is the same
So we share the secret handshake, to acknowledge our membership
Only this time, it is different, we are the majority
And the light no longer stings our eyes, or maybe it just makes us feel alive
To feel something, anything even pain is beautifully real
You, my sisters, count
I see you, I hear you
I will remember your name
And I, I believe you
12/23/19 Aileen Cassinetto hosted by Gary
Aileen Cassinetto is the first Asian-American appointed to the post of Poet Laureate of San Mateo County. Having grown up in the Philippines during Martial Law, she seeks not only to make poetry more accessible to people in their everyday lives, but to advocate for social justice and diversity. Widely anthologized, she is the author of the poetry collections, Traje de Boda andThe Pink House of Purple Yam Preserves & Other Poems, as well as three chapbooks through Moria Books’ acclaimed Locofo series. Aileen is also the publisher of Paloma Press, an independent literary press established in 2016 which has released 17 books to date.
Hate is lead-wrapped
follows a corkscrew path
all 1/25th of a human heart
to tear apart skin, sinew
bone, prized tissue
rips as it leaves
a bleeding vessel that is
the weight of someone’s love.
12/16/19 Andrena Zawinski hosted by Bruce
Photo Credit: Don Dutra
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection, Landings, is from Kelsay Books (Hemet, CA). She has published two previous full collections of poetry: Something About (Blue Light Press, San Francisco, CA), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient, and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, O), a Kenneth Patchen competition winner. She has also authored four chapbooks and is editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, Oakland, CA). Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
In Landings, Zawinski presents poems that embrace, in original ways and with deep-rooted emotional power, the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside an abiding reverence for the natural world. Of this work, Jan Beatty says Zawinski is the necessary voice of the truth teller, speaking trouble among the beauty. Rebecca Foust lauds the collection as a book that offers wisdom and solace and one you will take comfort in reading again and again. Carolyne Wright goes on to say in these Landings, she embraces the richness of human experience and praises the courage of those who go on ‘living as if they could do anything.’
Links to work: poetrymagazine.com/zawinski amazon.com/author/
poem recited with images:
Andrena Zawinski:
Rafts
Sun spills silver stars of light along rippling summer waves.
A string of pelicans wing the horizon,
light in flight for all their heft.
Children squeal and squirm inside their plastic inflatable.
One slips over the side, feigns drowning, splashing and kicking,
holding onto his crying sister, jumps back in to tickle her side––
all of them then swimming in giggles and smiles in frolic and fun,
family picnicking at the shore, waving from bright beach towels.
Other children, roped onto rafts in flimsy life jackets, float in
from Aleppo across the Aegean away from bombs and bullets
to find a way out, forge a way in, whole families cattled
by smugglers, squeezed in dozens deep. But those who slip
into this dark sea cannot be rescued with innocent teasing and mirth.
A three-year-old washes up onto the beach face down on the sand,
limp body leaden in his father’s arms,
water lapping the wounded shore.
Publication Credit:
Reunion Dallas Review, Vol 6, 2017. Univ. of Texas, Dallas, TX
12/9/19 Becky Bishop White hosted by Jim
The east coast, the SF Bay Area, and Lake Tahoe are threaded throughout the poetry of Becky Bishop White. An emerging poet, Becky won the 2019 First Prize in the Benicia Love Poetry Contest for her poem, Flying Start, and was Second Place winner for an unpublished poem, Ghost Fleet, at the 2019 Solano County Fair. Becky lives in Benicia with her husband, author James W. White, who is her very best friend.
ALIGNMENTTo try to set a problem rightrequires courage. Some mightthink to leave or just poutin silence, but to talk it outor try for a hug is huge.You are no longer fugitivefrom your best self.You have broken the spellthat makes you think ‘other.’But it’s not really anotherwho aligns with you.Here is what is true:The soul who makes peace is nearerto the person in the mirror.© Becky Bishop White
12/2/19 Jeanne Lupton host Elaine
Jeanne Lupton hosted Second Saturday Poetry and Prose at Frank Bette Center for the Arts for 13 years until this month. She writes poems and memoir and her tanka are published internationally. She's happy to feature again at Poetry Express. She gets great material from living at Strawberry Creek Lodge, senior housing in Berkeley.
11/25/19 Dave Holt hosted by Gary
Dave Holt, born in Toronto of Irish/English and Ojibwe Indian ancestry, moved to California as an aspiring songwriter, then graduated from SF State University’s Creative Writing program (B.A. ‘93, M.A. ‘95). He’s won several poetry prizes, including a Literary/Cultural Arts award for his book Voyages to Ancestral Islands, and is included in several anthologies, most notably, Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California; Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California; The Wild, Marin Poetry Center Anthology 2019, and Descansos: Words from the Wayside, where his poem received a Pushcart Prize nomination. Also a musician & composer, he sometimes performs his poetry with Ojibwe drum or keyboard.
Bering Strait, Dakota Pipeline Straitjacket
I come from ice and snow, winter memories
carry me, crossing tundra to a new land.
Fleets of dugout canoes floated us through kelp forest.
Bass, crabs, otters fed us,
this history etched in our hearts like petroglyphs
pecked in stone by our native artists.
This new Turtle Island formed by Skywoman
and before then, he who descended to Earth
as if by a rope dropped through Bugonagiizhig,
“Hole in the Sky,” the seven sisters, the Pleiades.
A different people followed Giiwedin’anung,
North Pole star, brought trade goods from the south,
taught us their friendship songs,
gave us the three sisters: corn, beans, squash,
traded for gifts of the north, obsidian, copper, beaver furs.
They shared their strange stories of origin and creation,
here on this land, where they emerged like ants
from an anthill, from an underground world
into the fourth world of pueblos and mesas,
and Spanish soldiers offering Bibles.
We nodded, knowing that what we were hearing was sacred.
Like us, they came from the Star People
who gave us seven sacred laws, affirmed our place
in the sacred hoop, and another non-heavenly origin
in the land across the water, beyond snows and ice flows,
back in time where we were given stewardship of the earth.
Of the four races, the white race became guardians
of the fire, the spark at the center of things.
Carried here across the Bering Strait, to where our fight
for protection of the water has earned us pepper spray,
guard dog attacks, jail cells, federal prison sentences.
Of what crime, against who, have we been accused?
11/18/2019 Joyce Young hosted by Bruce
Joyce E. Young is the author of How it Happens, published by Nomadic Press. Her writing has been nominated for both a Pushcart and a California Book Award
and has appeared in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, WORDPEACE, riverbabble, The New Poets of the American West, and elsewhere. She has received grants from the California Arts Council, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and Writers on Site residency program at the Oakland Museum and Oakland Public Library through
Poets & Writers, Inc. Joyce has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Soapstone and Vermont Studio Center. She works as a Writing Consultant at John F. Kennedy University, teaches writing privately, and is currently at work writing poetry, essays, and Parallel Journey, a novel.
Joyce maintains regular Yoga and Chi Gung practice and is a semi-retired Afro
Cuban folkloric and modern dancer. She keeps lots of music in her life,
particularly Jazz, Salsa, Reggae, Samba, and combinations of notes that defy
category. In reality, though, she really doesn’t like to assign categories for music.
Joyce E. Young is the author of How it Happens, published by Nomadic Press. Her writing has been nominated for both a Pushcart and a California Book Award
and has appeared in Smith Alumnae Quarterly, WORDPEACE, riverbabble, The New Poets of the American West, and elsewhere. She has received grants from the California Arts Council, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and Writers on Site residency program at the Oakland Museum and Oakland Public Library through
Poets & Writers, Inc. Joyce has been awarded residencies at Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts, Hedgebrook, Soapstone and Vermont Studio Center. She works as a Writing Consultant at John F. Kennedy University, teaches writing privately, and is currently at work writing poetry, essays, and Parallel Journey, a novel.
Joyce maintains regular Yoga and Chi Gung practice and is a semi-retired Afro
Cuban folkloric and modern dancer. She keeps lots of music in her life,
particularly Jazz, Salsa, Reggae, Samba, and combinations of notes that defy
category. In reality, though, she really doesn’t like to assign categories for music.
Because
Like angels are supposed to
You don’t do it because
you want to be good,
get candy, or ice cream
You do it because you love
And forgetting all else
You tend to her or him,
watching, waiting, praying
for life, health, the best
for that person or persons
you love
11/11/19 Bruce Fessenden hosted by Jim
Bruce lives in Berkeley and is co-owner of Fessenden Firewood with his partner Christine. He has been deeply immersed in the natural world his entire life through the activities of backpacking, climbing and skiing. A book of his poems —“Crimson Coat” — was published in 2014 by Goldenstone Press. Pieces of Bruce’s writings have appeared in a MoonShine Star Co. anthology called “What is Love”, and also in Richard Grossinger’s book “2013”. A second volume of poems, titled “Bones” will be published shortly.
Frieda
My Mothers’ Mother was a gentle woman
I remember her deep set, brown eyes.
She had a hearing aid, like a little microphone
all that was available in the 50s.
She had her hearing aid as long as I can remember
her hearing impaired by typhoid fever
is the story I was told.
An uneducated woman living in a rooming house
as a boy I felt we were connected close.
Two quiet souls, filled with empty time
and the occasional unfriendly ghost.
When in high school, I’d drive
her to her solitary room
in my fathers’ forest green sports car.
He never gave her a single penny
he was blind in so many ways.
Often I wonder why a few rise up
while the others struggle and fall.
Hands of the clock easily seen
but the inner gears remain hidden.
I’ve heard it said
broken ones of this world sacrifice themselves
discarded fruit enriching the soil.
She liked menthol cigarretes and dime store crime novels.
Who was the kindly elementary school teacher
who taught her how to read?
Welfare checks and food stamps, TV in the lobby
Bathroom and showers at the end of the hall.
The last forty years of her life
spent in that solitary room
with her paperbacks, her cigarretes, her silence.
For the forgotten ones, its almost a blessing
to be so broken, and disassociated from their grief.
She lived her life a little bit stunned
in that way we are so much alike.
There was not a single instance her entire life
where my father realized
that she actually existed.
Its october now, my favorite time of year
angle of the sun so sublime.
I don’t even have a photo of her
my memory of her face grows hazy in my mind.
Too many people never find their place
punch the clock, ground up for fodder.
A choir sings sweetly
from the other side of the horizon
I stand tall and take the next step.
11/4/19 K.R Morrison
Black & White Photographs by Michelle Kilfeather
When she’s not drumming in two feminist rock bands, K.R. Morrison teaches English Literature and Creative Writing to high school students at Galileo in San Francisco, CA.
Morrison recently featured on Bay Area’s podcast, Storied: San Francisco about being an educator, musician, and writer in a city that’s rapidly changing. She has featured for many curations throughout the Bay Area, most recently Bay Area Generations, Naked Bulb, and Red Light Lit. Apart from reading her poetry at art events in Los Angeles and New Orleans last summer, Morrison featured for curations in New York in June, 2019. Published by Switchback and Quiet Lightning, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal as well as New York’s Gasconade Review selected Morrison as their feature for their most recent publications. She’s currently searching for a publisher for her chapbook, “Cauldrons,” while working on a larger poetry collection entitled, “From Her Wrist.” Once the manuscript is finished, she hopes to have it published by a press that reflects the priorities she voices in her writing.
10/28/19 Grace Grafton hosted by Gary
10/21/2019 Georgette Howington hosted by Bruce
Grace Marie Grafton's most recent book is LENS from Unsolicited Press. It features poems inspired by California artists, 1853-2010. She is the author of six previous collections of poetry. Zero won the 2000 Poetic Matrix Chapbook contest. Visiting Sisters is a collection inspired by the artwork of contemporary women. Other Clues consists of experimental prose poems. A chapbook, Chrysanthemum Oratorio, plays with language and concept. Whimsy, Reticence & Laud, also from Poetic Matrix, explores the sonnet form. Jester, from Hip Pocket Press, features surreal persona poems.
Ms. Grafton taught for many years in the California Poets In The Schools program, for which she was awarded twelve California Arts Council grants. She was named Teacher of the Year by the River Of Words annual student poetry contest co-sponsored by Robert Hass, United States Poet Laureate.
Georgette Howington is a UC Davis California Naturalist of the Mt. Diablo Region. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet, Poeming Pigeons, Sacred Grounds, among others. Her poems placed at the North American Women’s Music Festival, Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contests and the Benicia Love Poem Contest 2018. As a horticulturist, her niche is Backyard Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters. She is a County Coordinator and the Assistant State Program Director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program (www.cbrp.org) 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.
“It Bears Noting the Wolf Moon”
By Georgette Howington
When the ancient tongue of sage,
wormwood and rosemary drops
below whispers, we can trust them
to tend us. The dry deep-rooted tangle
of cosmos and sunflowers stretches
the attention offering an unobstructed
view of the blue and vast winter world.
January exhales.
And the Wolf Moon yawns in a white
glow of a frost biting night, while the
garden leaps into the season with a
shiver. How soft the earth is after
a first rain and how nothing listens
better than a quiet moment when
tendrils of silence leave room for
reverie.
(Sacred Grounds Anthology, 2019)
Sunday, 10/20, at 2pm,Zeigeist Press will hold a Julia Vinogad Book Release Party
at Himalayan Flavors.
Zeitgeist Press is very excited to present two new Julia Vinograd books with a celebration at Himalayan Flavors. Publisher Bruce Isaacson has put together "A Symphony for Broken Instruments", a seminal collection of selected works along with a big section of previously unpublished poems. Never before has such a tour de force of Vinograd’s work been together in one volume, which is 384 pages in total, including art by Deborah Vinograd and Chris Trian. At the same event, editor Deborah Fruchey presents "Our Lady of Telegraph Avenue", the new tribute anthology of poems to, for, and about Julia Vinograd by a slew of friends and local writers.
Please join us for a festive afternoon celebrating the life and work of this remarkable woman who energized and shaped the poetry of the SF Bay Area for over fifty years.
Zeitgeist Press Presents:
Julia Vinograd Release Party – New Book and Tribute Anthology with Bruce Isaacson presenting "A Symphony for Broken Instruments: Selected and New Works by Julia Vinograd" and
Deborah Fruchey presenting the Julia Vinograd tribute anthology "Our Lady of Telegraph Avenue"
with readings from both volumes
Hosted by Bruce Isaacson, event is free of charge and books for sale at a one-time discount
ABOUT JULIA VINOGRAD
Julia Vinograd, the popular poet identified with the streets of Berkeley, California, published 70 books during her life (1943-2018). She was raised in Pasadena and Berkeley, where her mother was a poet and English Professor. Her father was announced to win a Nobel Prize in Biochemistry but passed away before the award. Julia earned a B.A. at U.C. Berkeley and an M.F.A. at the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. She won an American Book award from the Before Columbus Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and a “Lifetime Achievement Award as Berkeley’s unofficial Poet Laureate.” She was also famed as the Bubble Lady for her love of blowing soap bubbles for children on Telegraph Avenue. This book represents a life’s work of Street Poems that are accessible, charming, and deeply human.
10/14/19 Lucy Lang Day and Diane Frank hosted by bruce
Fire & Rain book reading
Diane Frank is author of seven books of poems, two novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas, Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place (Nirala Publishing, 2018). Her new book of poems, Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2018.Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Diane lives in SanFrancisco, where she dances, plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony, and creates her life as an art form. She teaches at San Francisco State University and Dominican University. www.dianefrank.net
A poem from Fire and Rain:
In the Mendocino Woodlands
He walks into the forest
where trees are burning
finding his path in the silence.
Woodpecker, memory, larkspur
in the night of burning.
His eyes ask me to wait,
to keep the connection inside
the silent place where I find
pebbles of intuition, rose quartz.
In the morning, lupines on the trail
to the cliff where the giant trillium blooms,
kelp and seals swimming beyond
the tide pools below.
I run through Indian paintbrush,
milk maids, cinquefoil,
climbing the path where he finds me.
And what is love?
A fire walk initiation
from the ocean through a cathedral of trees,
fuchsia, wild grape, sudden
blue streaks on the wing of a moth
stellar jay wanting to fly free.
Diane Frank
Fire & Rain book reading
Lucille Lang Day’s latest book is Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, an anthology she coedited. She is also the author of ten poetry collections and chapbooks, most recentlyBecoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems; the coeditor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California; and the author of two children’s books, Chain Letter and The Rainbow Zoo, and a memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, and her many honors include the Joseph Henry Jackson Award in Literature, the Blue Light Poetry Prize, two PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Awards, and nine Pushcart nominations. She is the founder and director of Scarlet Tanager Books. http://lucillelangday.com
MUIR WOODS AT NIGHT
Rust-colored ladybugs, clustered like grapes,
mate on horsetails that wave by a creek,
where silvery salmon spawn and leap
when the sandbar breaks at the gate to the sea.
The ladybugs have come hundreds of miles,
from valley to coast, for this singles bash.
The females are choosy: they twiddle the males,
seeking appendages padded with fat.
And all around—high in redwood burls,
on elk-clover leaves, and in the rich soil—
the meaning of life is to stroke and prod
under a humpbacked moon, dissolving in fog.
mate on horsetails that wave by a creek,
where silvery salmon spawn and leap
when the sandbar breaks at the gate to the sea.
The ladybugs have come hundreds of miles,
from valley to coast, for this singles bash.
The females are choosy: they twiddle the males,
seeking appendages padded with fat.
And all around—high in redwood burls,
on elk-clover leaves, and in the rich soil—
the meaning of life is to stroke and prod
under a humpbacked moon, dissolving in fog.
From Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2018)
Diane Frank is author of seven books of poems, two novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas, Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place (Nirala Publishing, 2018). Her new book of poems, Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines, was published by Glass Lyre Press in 2018.Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Diane lives in SanFrancisco, where she dances, plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony, and creates her life as an art form. She teaches at San Francisco State University and Dominican University. www.dianefrank.net
A poem from Fire and Rain:
In the Mendocino Woodlands
He walks into the forest
where trees are burning
finding his path in the silence.
Woodpecker, memory, larkspur
in the night of burning.
His eyes ask me to wait,
to keep the connection inside
the silent place where I find
pebbles of intuition, rose quartz.
In the morning, lupines on the trail
to the cliff where the giant trillium blooms,
kelp and seals swimming beyond
the tide pools below.
I run through Indian paintbrush,
milk maids, cinquefoil,
climbing the path where he finds me.
And what is love?
A fire walk initiation
from the ocean through a cathedral of trees,
fuchsia, wild grape, sudden
blue streaks on the wing of a moth
stellar jay wanting to fly free.
Diane Frank
10/7/19 Tom Stanton host Elaine
Thomas Eric Stanton [American, 1947– ]). Is primarily known as a California Surrealist. His works engage many mediums, and often emphasizes the aspects of 'Performance'. He has produced books of poetry, and his Paintings are included in many public, private, and museum collections. He lives and works in Benicia, California. He is the current Poet Laureate of Benicia, California
9/30/19 Maverick Night : STORY TELLING hosted by Gary
Bring your stories in any format -- Poems -- Prose -- Ad libitum -- Pictures & Dialogue
--??
9/23/19 Sandra Anfang hosted by Gary
Sandra Anfang is a poet, teacher, and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including San Francisco Peace and Hope, Unbroken Literary Journal, Rattle, and Spillway. Her chapbook, Looking Glass Heart, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape (Finishing Line Press, 2018) followed. A full-length collection, Xylem Highway, was released in March, 2019 from Main Street Rag. Sandra was nominated for a Best Short Fictions award and a Pushcart Prize. She is founder of the monthly series, Rivertown Poets, in Petaluma, California, and a California Poet/Teacher in the Schools.
Core Samples
At the Nevada mining museum
our seven-year old has a chokehold on my arm
timid at first, his tentative eyes—
as if searching for rattlers—
sweep the iron-incensed bunker
before they lock on the rows of core samples.
He pronounces the name
which doesn’t quite fit in his mouth
carves new grooves on his tongue.
The desiccated docent
voice bald as his quarry explains
how cylindrical drills drone deep into stone
probe Earth's mantle
yielding smooth columns, pygmy pillars
relics of a place where dinosaurs
once cut their terrible teeth.
Drawn in, my child dons a scholar’s mask.
This is proof of something real
a piece of the fossil record
truer than anything I can give him
a staff to wrap his brain’s heart around
a bed of rock his feet can trust
no ephemera in this metamorphic floor.
I flash on the day I could finally read most anything
the skeleton key of my brain cracking the code
translating the thatch of storefront signs
the irony of the missing “i” in “realty”
my hopeful eyes pleading with my mother:
can we bring some home?
At five I knew we were already fresh out.
Sandra Anfang
9/16/2019 Juanita J. Martin hosted by Bruce
Juanita J. Martin is Fairfield’s first poet laureate, 2010-2012. She’s also a freelance writer, and
performance artist. Her poetry book, The Lighthouse Beckons, was accepted into the Solano
County Library. Martin’s next volume of poems, Quiet Intensity, is due out in 2019. She’s
published in Blue Collar Review, SoMa Literary Review, and others. Juanita is active in Ina
Coolbrith Circle, and Benicia First Tuesday Poets. Juanita was also a longtime member of
Redwood Writers from 2007-2017. Juanita is listed with Poets & Writers Directory of Poets. She has read at the Frank Bette Cultural Center for the Alameda Poets in the Annual Black History event. She often reads for the Beat Poetry Festival and 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Juanita has been a featured reader with Healdsburg Literary Guild, Petaluma Poetry Walk 2007 & 2016, as well as Berkeley Poetry Festival. She has also contributed to Sonoma Discoveries Magazine, a tourist magazine covering North & West Sonoma County, and the Coast. www.jmartinpoetwriter.com
A Bittern Wades in Lonely Water
—Juanita J. Martin
Foggy blanket hovers piney timbers
The brave who cavort with darkness
A mind judges himself along the waters’ edge
Against dilapidated death
Against the briny stench
Of a burg
A shale-colored moon spotlights
A bittern at one end
The lonely end,
Where the wine of antipathy
Pours into a tall glass
Ripples of water are soothing
a mind massages the longing
finds solace there
A break in the mundane silence of living
(Third Place Ribbon-Solano County Fair 2016)
9/9/19 Tureeda Mikell hosted by Jim
Tureeda Mikell, Bay Area Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Story Medicine Woman, published poet and writer, Qigong Healer, storyteller, lyricist, astrologer and performance artist, has published 72 CA Poets in the Schools student anthologies since 1989. Has performed at Lawrence Hall and Golden Gate Academy of Sciences, MoAD, Randell, Oakland, and The DeYoung Museums, and has been featured storyteller for National Association of Black Storytellers. Her book, Synchronicity, Oracles of Story Medicine, soon to be published.
excerpts from
Spell’s Labyrinth
Why alter the altar?
Silence the Arc for an Ark?
Why douse sacred fire of every kind?
Who enters prize for this enterprise?
Why did the son of the sun worship with warship?
Prey on those who pray for peace,
Set sail for sale of piece,
With pair-of-dice for paradise?
Governments profit
Gamble with prophets
Covenant of light
Will joules perish in parish of jewels?
Who’s good is sacrificed for concepts of god?
By Tureeda
9/2/19 NO PE, BAPC Picnic.
8/26/19 Jerry Ratch hosted by Gary
Jerry Ratch published 18 books of poetry, and 7 books of prose including the novel: Wild Dreams of Reality, and the Memoir: A Body Divided, the story of a one-armed boy growing up in a two-fisted world. His work can be purchased through the author’s website: www.jerryratch.com . and as kindle books on amazon.com.
The Fly on Our Pickle
I think I know that fly
That fly followed us from our apartment
On W. 11th St
When I opened the door he flew right in
And when we left, he flew right out again
Followed us on the subway to Times Square
Took the Shuttle apparently
Followed us all the way through the tunnels
Up the escalator and into Grand Central Station
Then down to Juniors in the food court below
Where he joined us for lunch
The best Chicken Caesar Salad on the planet
So famous, even the flies know about it
We asked the waitress for an additional chair
But he took a seat on our pickle instead
“Oh, don’t worry,” we told her
“We know him. He normally lives
“Down in the Village”
The waitress eyed us suspiciously
“East Village or West?” she asked
“Come on!” we said.
“As if that really matters!”
8/19/19 Laura Schulkind hosted by Bruce
By day, Laura Schulkind is a school law attorney, privileged to represent public schools, community colleges, and creative educational institutions throughout California. And, as unlikely as it may seem, lawyers (good ones at least) are by nature frustrated poets. They believe in the power of language, and think people’s stories are worth telling. However, they are constrained to tell the stories of others; their own require another outlet. Laura finds hers in poetry.
Laura’s new collection, The Log Arc of Grief (Finishing Line Press), tells stories of grief—inspired and impelled by the loss of her parents, Herb and Rima. But just as they were her models for friendship, loyalty, and resilience, these poems move beyond her own grief to consider how we understand and support those we love in their grief, and ultimately how we all not merely carry on, but live.
Early reviews include:
Laura Schulkind's work radiates intelligence, compassion and a nuanced understanding of what it means to be a daughter, a mother and a friend. She's a fearless truth-teller, shining the light of her poetic language on details we well might have missed otherwise--the small, miraculous moments of discovery, heartbreak and redemption. Barbara Quick (Vivaldi's Virgins)
Laura Schulkind’s new book, The Long Arc of Grief addresses the sorrow of loss … But also present in these well-crafted and touching poems is great affection and devotion, and a wonderful generosity of spirit which lift the poems and the reader up. Rafaella Del Bourgo (I Am Not Kissing You, and Inexplicable Business: Poems Domestic and Wild.)
Laura’s chapbook, Lost in Tall Grass (Finishing Line Press), was released in May 2014. Her work has also appeared, or is forth coming, in numerous journals including Caveat Lector, The Dos Passos Review, The MacGuffin, Minetta Review, Reed Magazine, and Reunion—The Dallas Review.
Her published work, and more musings on why “lawyer/poet” is not an oxymoron can be found on her website: www.lauraschulkind.com.
8/12/19 Lori Lynne Armstrong hosted by Jim
Lori Lynne Armstrong has been a scientist, a counselor, a mental health patient, and a painkiller addict. Her poetry spans these and many other realms with a style sometimes psychological, sometimes irreverent, but always searingly authentic. Her passions include promoting creative treatment options for the mental health and substance abuse recovery communities and promoting poetry availability for all communities. Her work appears in Poetry Expressed, The Abrams Claghorn exhibit "Have You Heard Us Yet?" and her first chapbook, Queen of Cups. She writes about her life and ongoing projects at notmylastwords.com.
Woman
She is not what centuries of men expected to find, when they looked, if they looked, beyond softness, curve, survival smile
lines and planes, unrepentant, edged boundaries mark where she begins and ends. Colors of bruised plums, old blood, rich and dark
spots and patterns tell a story in a language no one but her can read— why these markings? why here? why this slanting angle, not one degree more, not one less, what does it mean, the men
wonder as they stand, lamps uplifted, and she does not speak to tell them, nothing, everything, I am not your puzzle to solve
these opaque walls will never lighten to clear quartz crystal (never again)
8/5/19 LeeLee Aint Msbehavin host Elaine
If you don't know LeeLee, you should and trust you are in for a treat. Three-time National Poetry Award nominee. Published author of "Untamed Pen", as well as an erotic cd titled "Freaky Tales". She's been featured on stages across the country and her voice has been heard around the world on several online radio shows. Her writings cover a variety of topics from the brutal reality of racism, to more adult content of a sexual nature. Prepare to go on the poetic ride of your life with the talented, the tantalizing LeeLee Ain't Msbehavin'
Photographs (Of You) I chased you in my dreams… Down hollow halls with walls covered with pictures of you From my birth to your death My heart wept because you’re no longer here It’s been twelve years… Twelve long lonely years of not having you near There was movement in each photograph that I passed Snapshots from my childhood Where you stood A constant fixture In my life I wipe the tears from my eyes That blinded my view of you All I could see were those pictures on the wall… Each was a happy memory replayed as I grew up with my siblings That loving feeling I felt when you hugged me Your presence when I gave birth to my sons Your smile beamed like the sun Which always made my heart dance I glance down the hall only to see you turn the corner Further away from my grasp This was my last chance to reach out and grab your hand I know that God reserved a spot for you in the promise land But I still need you… You were the super glue that held my heart together It shattered as I watched you go upstairs to Heaven You turned facing me Embraced me and stayed just long enough to sweep up the broken pieces Mending them back whole You hugged me one last time Telling me it was time to go home You said I won’t be alone because you inserted a piece of yourself within the valves that keeps me alive Inside of those picture frames are moments that will never die So for now its goodbye Don’t cry my love Because up above Beyond those stairs Is where I need to be You said to me as you walked away As I retreat down hollow halls with walls covered with pictures of you The sun shined brighter than it ever had Was momentarily sad But then I realized that all your years on this earth You prepared to be with Jesus You didn’t leave us Because your spirit will always be with us… I still dream of you though
7/29/19 Avotcja Birthday Celebration host JIm
Poet/Playwright/Multi-Percussionist/Photographer/Teacher
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.
On May 10th 2014 the 12th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival honored AVOTCJA with its Lifetime Achievement Award for the truly valuable creative and community work that she has accomplished.
Website: www.Avotcja.org
Email: LaVerdadMusical@yahoo.com
7/22/19 John Argue hosted by Gary
John Argue taught acting for many years, and in the ‘80s started doing drama therapy with children and with hospitalized adults. He shifted over completely to working with Parkinson’s people in 1985 and continued for 32 years. He retired two years ago and returned to his first love, poetry.
Foregiveness is not
some words you say
to the one who wronged you
Forgiveness is
giving up
your revenge.
7/8/19
Barbara Atkinson hosted by Jim
Barbara Atkinson identifies as a bicoastal writer and performer, transplanted a few times
between Bucks County PA and Berkeley CA. She is also a scientist,
social organizer, and dance enthusiast. After teaching herself to read,
she earned a Bachelor of Rhymes degree from kindergarten, her most prized
diploma. In the many intervening years, she has written numerous poems
(rhyming, metered, both, and neither), short stories, cartoons, songs &
song lyrics, tributes in verse, and paraphrases of popular classics. Sometimes
this erupts into spoken word, with venues ranging from summer camps to PTA
benefits to soccer team family picnics to holiday parties at her workplace and
more.
Barbara's poetry has been occasionally
published, beginning with the Nutshell literary magazine of Moorestown Senior
High School in New Jersey, then the Penn Women's Literary Magazine in
Philadelphia, and a chapbook entitled
"Poets in the Pews" by the First Unitarian Church of Oakland,
and most recently in Turning Point Journal, Elders Action Network Spring Issue
on Earth Relations. Ms. Atkinson
volunteered in Nicaragua from the 1980s through 2000s on solar energy projects,
traveled and worked in Central and South America, and composed a few of her
poems in Spanish. Her current labor of love is being full-time mom of
a teenage daughter, some of whose multiple talents are writing and
drama. "Poetry is when the family reunion in your head stops and
it's just you talking..."
Solar Benediction
Fishes
we
are
gasping for comfort
of warmth and motion
familiar
we have burned our ancestors
spilled poisons in the waters
cracked earthquakes underground
squeezed the last drops from the sands
As the majestic icebergs melt
and tempests violently toss the air
roaring
louder
We look upward to the sun
burning out more slowly than any
body
generating winds
and tides
and green food
Lunches are never
free still
humble
desperate
we raise our
arms
trying to catch
the loaves and the fishes
7/15/19 Robert
Coats hosted by
Bruce
Robert Coats has been
writing poetry for 40 years. His work as an environmental scientist takes
him outdoors and sometimes provides inspiration and material. He is drawn
to poetry rooted in the West and reflecting a strong sense of place. A native
Californian by birth (his great-grandparents having come by covered wagon in
1859), he spent part of his youth in the deciduous forests of Maryland, and the
mountains of northeastern Nevada. His poems have appeared in Orion, Windfall, Canary, Song
of the San Joaquin, the Pudding House anthology Fresh Water and
a full-length book—The Harsh Green World—published in 2015 by Sugartown
Publishing. Awards include first and third prizes in Menlo College’s
“Wallace Stevens Where Are You” contest (1998), first prize in the 1994 contest
of the American Society on Aging, and first prize in Word Worth’s 2010 poetry
contest. Details of his professional work can be found at
www.hydroikos.com.
WHAT TO DO ON AUGUST 26TH
Go to Rock Lake, Plumas country.
Before sunrise, stand
on the slate ledge that juts the lake.
Look to the western shore,
watch sunlight creep down
the red bank of schist.
Now turn east, look up
to the canyon rim
where Jacob’s ladders converge
at a dark hemlock
silhouetted
against the bright sky.
In the moment before
the sun crests the wall
the entire tree--bole,
branches, foliage--
will flash
into silver filigree.
Then the orb’s leading edge
will clear the jagged ridge, shooting
gold deep into liquid indigo
warming your face
flooding you
with light.
--Robert Coats
7/1/19 D.L Lange hosted by Elaine
We are back at Himalayan Flavors back room, 1585 University Ave.
We are back at Himalayan Flavors back room, 1585 University Ave.
D.L. Lang is Poet Laureate of Vallejo, California. She has authored eleven books, one spoken word album, and is the editor of Verses, Voices & Visions of Vallejo.
Lang has been a featured act at numerous events in Vallejo and poetry shows around the bay area. Her writings are a blend of memory, history, imagination, reality, politics, and spirituality. Her poems have been transformed into songs, liturgy, and used as a means to advocate for causes. Her website is: www.poetryebook.com
6/24 We will be at 1800 University ave, berkeley,
NATIONS GIANT HAMBURGERS Side room.
Due to remodeling at Himalayan Flavors.
Doors to side room slide apart, do not swing open.
6/24/19 Kitty Costello hosted by Gary
THE CURE
If we can meet
and find our own dark treasure,
heal our own dark scars,
our hearts will be mending
cracks in the world.
06/17/2019 OPEN MIC NIGHT
6/10/19 Lydia Hirsch hosted by Jim
6/10/19 VENUE MOVED TO NATIONS GIANT HAMBURGERS 1800 University Ave, right side room, due to remodeling at Himalayan Flavors. Hirsch 6/10
Lydia Hirsch is a poet and writer who lives in LA and the Bay Area. She has published journalism, self-published two books of poetry, and is working on a collection of short stories.
The Sea in Brighton
In anguish I loved you-- but today I love you
The color of the sea,
The color
Of the sky an hour before sunrise.
The sea in Brighton
On a day in November, seeming almost spring. I miss you
With the sweetness we miss childhood with, Remembering with longing but not pain.
6/3/19 Bruce Isaacson Plus Julia Vinograd Retrospective host Elaine
PLEASE BRING YOUR FAV JULIA POEM OR A POEM ABOUT HER
Bruce Isaacson met Julia Vinograd in 1985 during SF’s open reading / spoken word resurgence. He earned degrees from Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth and Brooklyn College, where he submitted a thesis to noted American poet Allen Ginsberg. Julia first introduced him to Ginsberg’s work. Together with Julia and the poet David Lerner, Bruce co-founded Zeitgeist Press, which started as the house press for the infamous Cafe Babar readings, as David Lerner called it, Gladiator School for Poets. Today, Bruce serves as publisher for Zeitgeist, with over 100 poetry titles to date. He has lived in Michoacán, Mexico, New York City, Los Angeles, Berkeley-San Francisco, and Leningrad, Russia. He lives today in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada, a community of two million souls encompassing the City of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Strip. His latest book is Crossing Over, which includes stories of Julia, Lerner, and the poet David Gollub.
Here is a one page poem from the book:
My Heart When It’s a Whale
after David Gollub
Mostly roaming silent in dark waters
It is as a thing put steaming
To cool in a tub darker
Than time, times to come, that is
Not times past which are placed
In the afternoon light of memory like
Family photos framed on a
Shelf no one looks at, or a
Cup of wrong coffee, you look
Knowing it’s yours while saying aloud
To no one ‘that’s not mine’ that’s my
Heart holding its breath in the
Deep, lost, with nowhere to go, looking up at
Desire like the sun seen through
Three miles of water, remembering how
Fabulous it was to be young, now that
Murder’s at the border of your
Eyebrows like overgrown bushes
Trimming them’s like trying to walk a cat, like
“Trying” to save a marriage, like trying to
Raise a child when you
Already raised a monster, Dreamzilla’s
Little brother playing with
Firetrucks with an x, t-r-u-
Ex-wives and ex-lovers, ex-
Communicado’d saints, shining hopefully at
History while lost in language, like
A whale, who comes to the surface and
Blows, grateful to breathe, but still
Lost in the wallows and wonders
of the deep.
We are celebrating the poetry life of Julia Vinograd.
Here is a poem appropriate to the moment by Julia:
IN THESE DARK TIMES
You must feel loved when you read this.
Lean against the hand
stroking the back of your neck. Relax.
In the pocket where you once kept marbles
is a small bag full of kisses.
Open it. Let it go.
Someone's humming in the next room
with a throaty laugh at every missed note
because mistakes don't matter.
No, don't go see.
You don't even have to listen.
You are loved.
There's a warm smell coming from the kitchen
and the puppy's nibbling your slippers
but you're too comfortable to get angry.
There are so many people who want this.
Just this.
Believe me, they are not your enemies.
5/27/19 Zephir O'Meara hosted by Gary
WE found the restaurant closed and thus Zephir will be rescheduled. We did hold a small 13 person session at a nearby house.
Zephir O'Meara is a bay area page poet with many children and pets in his care. His ongoing quest to disrupt and subvert bio blurbs has thus far worked for him. So he's probably gonna keep doing it. It's almost a thing at this point.
________________
Email
I opened up this email to send you a poem
I was going to copy and paste something
short and sweet nice and neat
Something with some rhythmic grace
some outer space retro vibe
Glimpsing the infinite
but still staying intimate
Here and now you and me our eyes lock briefly
Flicker away in the breeze
We cinder
We smoke
All our lives could matter in one kind passionate word
I lay at your feet a red carpet
dyed in my blood my heart's blood my soul
my word my bond
But I didn't really know how to finish it so I never sent that email
I guess it's saved as a draft somewhere
5/20/19 hosted by Bruce
Carla Williams-Namboodiri is a humanities teacher and former journalist. Carla's manuscript novel, South Side Blues, set in her hometown of Chicago in the 1970's,was recently named a semi-finalist in Hidden River Arts inaugural Tuscarora Award for Historical Fiction. She will be reading from new work, On Bus Line No. 6, a play in three acts, as well as poems (see below)
Tell Me Again
By Carla Williams-Namboodiri
What did you say?
Say what?
Tell me again what you mean
When you say
Make America great again
Do you mean great
Like the buffalo that roamed
the prairies of my heart
Or the once crystal clear
Great Lakes?
Or great like the voice
Of Tecumseh, who warned,
“Brothers, the white men came among us feeble, and now we have made them strong”
No, that doesn't really sound like who or what you mean
Tell me again what you mean,
When you say you want to build a wall
To keep our lives from coming in
Against the laws those great forefathers
Wrote to steal land Fair and Square
Can you explain, in polite terms,
Where and how you made
America
Was it before the Civil War or after it?
Was it when the Constitution
Settled on counting Africa’s children
As the three-fifths human
Or after blood and terror
Set us free?
Do tell, just once more,
Is your great America lily white,
With small apartheid “black spots”
Reserved for first nations,
“Hispanic-Latinos” and “inner-city blacks”
Or is it a modest version
Of a whitewashed college campus
After rolling back affirmative action
Rolling back to them good old days, ain’t it?
Down at the country club
Or was it the golf club,
With that private spa,
With the black attendant
How fun it was!
How he had to hold the towel,
while you jiggled your pecker,
And how you all called him Charlie Brown, laughing together
Though his name was Charles Brownstone,
After his father the master mason,
Like his fathers before him,
Who worked to buy freedom
Tell me once more,
What you really mean
About “Make America Great Again”
Do you mean like,
The Beach Boys
Or Chuck Berry singing,
“Rock and Roll Music,”
Crisscrossing color lines
When you say America,
It does not sound
Like me saying it
When you say
make it great
It sounds like
screams
Of nuclear bombs
On Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Nothing at all like the greatness
Promised
By the truths we hold
To be self-evident
That we are all equally
Endowed with
Certain liberties
The America of which you speak
Was discovered
By Christopher Columbus
Who got lost
Because he thought
The world was flat
Carla Williams-Namboodiri is a writer and humanities teacher working on surviving the next four years.
5/6/19 Jan Dederick host tba
Jan came out of the poetry closet at Poetry Express just a few years ago. Well, maybe more than a few by now…Since then she has found many voices she had no idea she had. Her work varies from rant to rave, from ode to lyric, from sacred to profane, from humorous to brainiac science-headed.
Her work is inspired by nature, both human and the rest, healing, science, the Big Questions, the usual suspects.
She’s earned a number of prizes in local contests, but doesn’t seem too interested in ‘getting her work out there’, i.e. the publishing thing. Or maybe just not organized enough.
She has self- published 2 chapbooks, Ear to the Rail and Between a Rock and a Soft Place, and a full length memoir in poetry, Hammer It Into Horseshoes. She is incubating another book,The Anatomy Poetry Book.
Jan was for several years a co-host of Poetry Express, and is on the editorial board of Poetalk, journal of the Bay Area Poets’ Coalition.
Cinquaine series:
my breath
the in the out
I sit to notice it
cool coming in, warm going out.
changing
to sit
to watch and wait
how long will this itch last?
nothing lasts forever, nor this.
dharma.
between
the high and low
there lies the middle road
Buddha recommended this route:.
Good luck!
5/13/19 John Garry hosted by Jim
John R. Garry has made his way across 9 countries by train, plane, automobile and by foot. His poetry is informed by his travels and his work as a licensed clinical psychologist in the community, with our military and in our prison system.
His published works include: 2009’s “Regalos de la Isla: Gifts from the island”, and 2015’s “Lean In: Live from Everywhere”.
His performances are a melodic blend of emotion and deep reflection that will make you think, feel and leave you wanting more.
——
THINGS/
I literally have a jar marked golf money filled with the wishbones of rotisserie chickens going back to 2015. I carried these from apartment to apartment, across state lines. They sat in storage for 10 months while I traveled the globe. It's a jar full of unused wishes, bones for conjuring new ways to fight off patterns that are ever present.
There is a 4-by-2 bin full of poems next to my bed; a pile of notebooks that, boiled down, are just ink and papyrus, emotional hand cramp manifestos. It's a tupperware bucket of unicorn ideas, flightless thoughts tied down with time and self-deprecation.
There are #revolutionarystew mind dumps on Instagram. It's an exercise in public masturbation that we have allowed as normal – all in the internet ether, the globe's electronic closet – full of porn, socks without matches and shit that no longer fits, but isn't thrown away.
I have 82 bowties in my closet and still my wardrobe is repetitive. I have maintained my weight only so that I do not have to buy more pants. All my sweaters from high school remain with me and, like them, I too go in and out of fashion regularly.
I am a pile of skin and bones, bowties, poetry and unused wishes. I spend more time thinking about what I have yet to let go of than using what I already have, and wondering who will throw out my things when I die.
All the things.
4/29/19 Maverick Night: host Gary 
Bring 2 poems printed out with out your name on them. We will put in a bag or box or hat and other people will draw out, read. Then we will attempt to identify the poet who wrote the poem. We have been doing this once a year for years and it is great fun.
4/22/19 Judy Wells hosted by Gary
JUDY WELLS was born in San Francisco and raised in Martinez, California. She received her B.A. from Stanford and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Judy has 12 poetry books to her credit. Her latest collection, Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West is a memoir/novella in poetry and prose about her New England-to-California Dickinson ancestors in the 1860s. She was thrilled to have access to real letters her Dickinson ancestors sent each other.
Her eleventh poetry collection, The Glass Ship, completes her trilogy of Irish-themed works, including Everything Irish and Call Home. Other works includeLittle Lulu Talks with Vincent Van Gogh and I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle.
Judy taught creative writing, women’s poetry, composition, and literature at various Bay Area colleges, before a career as an academic counselor and faculty member at Saint Mary’s College of California, working with adults returning to school. Now a full-time poet, she lives with her husband, avant-garde poet Dale Jensen, in Berkeley. Her website is www.judywellspoet.com.
SUPERMARKET LOVE
Last week at Whole Foods
as I was reaching
into the refrigerated shelves
for the coldest tofu
with the most future
expiration date
a yellow gloved hand
from the other side
laid itself on mine.
I nearly jumped a mile.
"Oh sorry!" said a woman's voice
from the other side.
A man behind me laughed.
This week as I walked by
the same tofu
section
I heard a disembodied voice
from the other side say,
"I needed you,
and you have never
been there
for me once."
“Yes, I have,”
I wanted to protest.
“Last week!”
From I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle
Beatitude Press
4/15/19 Diane L. Moomey hosted by Bruce
Diane has lived and wandered around the US and Canada, and now dips her
gardener’s hands in California dirt. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay
Area poetry venues, Diane has published prose and poetry, most recently in
Mezzo Cammin, The Sand Hill Review, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura
and Red Wheelbarrow, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In
2016, 2017 and 2018, she won prizes and Honorable Mentions in the Sonnet
and Creative Non-Fiction categories of the Soul Making Keats Literary
Contest. Her most recent poetry book, Nothing But Itself, is available now.
To know more, please visit https://www.pw.org/content/diane_moomey
Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both
seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. To view her artwork, please visit
www.dianeleemoomeyart.com
4/8/19 Reginald Edmonds hosted by Jim
Reginald Edmonds is a poet, activist, and educator based out of Richmond, CA. Reggie was a member of the 2018 Berkeley Poetry Slam team and runs both the Rich Oak Alchemy Slam and the Oakland Poetry Slam and wide open mic. In their free time, they enjoy long walks through quiet graveyards, Hennessy with limes, and listening to trap music. They have two self published chapbooks, I’m Too Black For This Shxt (2017) and Sad Boi(2018). Their poetry is map of intersections that illustrates the complexity of the human experience. Through their work, they hope you will come to understand how much we all contribute to the degradation of humanity, as well as what we can all do to turn this back around.
All of My Fish Die In the Middle of the Night and I Imagine Myself Alongside Them.
I awaken to twelve glimmering bodies bobbing on the surface. Their eyes
4/1/19 PoetryExpressed magazine release reading hosts Gary & Bruce
All poets who are within are invited to read their poem at this session. Open mic, if any, will be limited to any time remaining after all of our Poetry Expressed Magazine published poets have read. This should be a well attended evening, come early if you are dining so that you can find a table seat.
The work with is excellent!
Poets include: Adele Mendelson, Andrena Zawinski, Barbara Saunders 2019, Britt Peter, Bruce Fessenden, Bruce Isaacson, Carol Criss, Cathy Cade, Chris Chandler, Chris Dupuy, Chris Warren Smith, Clive Matson, D. Jayne McPherson, D. Leah Steinberg, Dale Jensen, Dan O’Connell, David Zeltzer, Deborah Fruchey, Dee Allen, Dorty Nowak, elana levy, Florence Elon, Garrett Murphy, Gary Turchin, Grace Marie Grafton, Gray Rosado, Indunil Madhusankha, Jack O’Neill, Jan Dederick, Jan Steckel, Jean Biegun, Jeannette DesBoine, Jim Barnard, John (Jake) Cosmos, John Rowe, Juan Sequeira, Judy Wells, Kelliane Parker, Larry Beresford, leoroarbig , Lori Lynne Armstrong, Marilyn Flower, Marty Williams, Melissa Hobbs, Mimi Gonzalez-Barillas, Richard Loranger, Riss Rosado,
Saswati Das, Sharon Metzler-Dow, Tureeda Mikell Story Medicine Woman, Yarko Sochynsky,
Zephir O'Meara
3/25/19 Mary Mackey hosted by Gary
In The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, Mary Mackey writes of life, death, love, and passion with intensity and grace. Her poems are hugely imaginative and multi-layered. Part One contains forty-eight new poems including twenty-one set in Western Kentucky from 1742 to 1975; and twenty-six unified by an exploration of the tropical jungle outside and within us, plus a surreal and sometimes hallucinatory appreciation of the visionary power of fever. Part Two offers the reader seventy-eight poems drawn from Mackey’s seven previous collections including Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 Oakland PEN Award for Literary Excellence.
I have a lot of good news. It's been a wild ride since September when Marsh Hawk Press published my new collection of poetry The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018.
First, Jaguars sold out the day it was published. Then it made the Small Press Distribution bestseller list. A few weeks later it won a California Institute of Integral Studies Women's Spirituality Book Award.
Since then, I've been on public radio three times, done 36 events, and given talks on everything from creativity and craft to Mirabai, army ants, and Goddess worship in Prehistoric Europe.
Jaguars is now into its 4th printing. On May 9th, I'll be in New York where Harpers Magazine is sponsoring a reading and interview with me at Book Culture on Columbus. But my favorite event title is the one the librarians at California State University Sacramento came up with for an event I'm doing for them on April 10th: "Jaguars in the Library: Poetry, Passion, and Archives." Librarians you rock! It just doesn't get better than that.
"Fever and Jungles: On Becoming a Poet": I describe the strange things I see when my fever rises above 106 degrees and how these visions, combined with the jungles of Costa Rica and Brazil, turned me into a poet.
Listen to me read 27 poems from The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams at voetica.com, and check out Chaucer and Emily Dickinson while you're there.
3/18/19 Lenore Weiss hosted by Bruce
Lenore recently won first prize in the Alexandria Quarterly Press small stories series for her flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love. Lenore has read in different cities across the country and performed on the radio. Her three poetry collections form a trilogy about being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Aldrich Press, 2014), and The Golem (Hadassa Word Press, 2017). In reviewing Two Places, Nina Serrano wrote, “Weiss’ mind travels like the speed of light from the real, to the symbolic and the surreal.” Lenore tutors middle-school students and volunteers at Oakland’s writing center, Chapter510.
Black is the Color
Black is the color of my true love's hair
and Marlon Brando's motorcycle jacket,
each tooth a silver zipper.
Black is the color of roadies
drinking beer down the street
at the Big Dipper.
Black is the color of Johnny Cash
who kept praying for 'Nam
to be over in a flicker.
Black is the color of T-shirts
of high-tech workers
designing glass slippers.
Black is the color of a woman
stoned on a red carpet
because a veil didn't fit her.
Black is the color of people who fade
behind the sidelines of center stage.
Black is the color of our grueling age.
Chorus:
And sorry, I drive a Ferrari.
Bob Dylan (or insert another name)
didn't wear black to the Grammys.
He wore gold.
3/4/19 D. R. Goodman & Judy Bebelaar hosted by The Last Word Reading Series
D. R. Goodman and Judy Bebelaar will read at 7 pm on Monday, March 4th, at Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Avenue, cross street California, in Berkeley, as part of the Last Word Reading Series, with thanks to Poetry Express and Himalayan Flavors for their hospitality. Cafe phone is 510-704-0174. There is also an open reading.
D. R. Goodman, author of Greed: A Confession (Able Muse Press), is a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and two-time winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her work has appeared in many journals across the U.S., and has been selected for inclusion in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and in the anthology, Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, William Baer, editor. A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, she now lives in Oakland, California, where she is founder and senior instructor at a martial arts school. She is also the author of The Kids’ Karate Workbook: A Take-Home Training Guide for Young Martial Artists, from North Atlantic/Blue Snake Books.Goodman claims she always meant to be a poet, but got distracted and went for more than twenty years without writing – until one day while driving, she heard Kay Ryan reading on KQED. She laughed out loud, turned the car around and drove to Berkeley, where she bought the only two Kay Ryan books she could find. She soon began writing again, and has been at it ever since.
Judy Bebelaar's poetry has been published widely in magazines and online, and has won many awards, most recently a first prize, two thirds, and the Grand Prize in the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Contest. Her work is also included in many anthologies, among them The Widows’ Handbook (foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsberg) and River of Earth and Sky. Walking Across the Pacific is her first poetry chapbook. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown, non-fiction, is about the students from Peoples Temple she and co-author Ron Cabral came to know before most of them were sent to Jonestown. Ron and Judy were recently named Library Laureates 2019 by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
The Last Word Reading Series is now presented by Himalayan Flavors, a restaurant that serves Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese cuisine in a beautiful and colorful atmosphere. Dinner here is wonderful and should not be missed. Admission is free, but a one-drink or one-plate minimum is suggested. There is ample parking in the lot next to the restaurant.
3/11/49 Collin Edmond hosted by Jim
Collin Edmonds, also known as “The Artist Formerly Known as Cornrow Collin, is an activist, singer, and poet hailing from Richmond,Ca. He is one fourth of the Rich Oak Alchemy Slam and Oakland Poetry Slam organizing crew. In his spare time he enjoys writing poetry (duh), critiquing societal norms, listening to loud hip hop music in affluent white neighborhoods, and shattering expectations of black men in America.
2/11/19 Carl Kopman hosted by Jim
Carl Kopman is a writer living in Berkeley, California.
He is the publisher of ~ interconnectingcircles.com/ ~
a community based web journal for writers and visual artists.
He is a founding member of The Elk Kelp Choir.
HOOTOWL
It is not me who can explain this mystery
which bemusedly I deflect with charming excuses
explaining away a growing history
of what to some have become my many abuses.
Toothpaste tubes left uncapped,
cookie crumbs on my lap,
messages prematurely erased from an answering machine,
“Someone called, dear, but I can’t remember who”
inbetween increased doses of Ginko Balboa
and a wifely reminder my mind is much slower.
No this cannot be me walking this cast
confusing names first and last
having to create detailed lists
of whom I liked and who I kissed
when I was young and twenty-one
and knew the difference between humiliation and fun.
Who could have foretold that this would be me
searching the forgotten for his destiny
forgetting his keys or misplacing his morning cereal
Wiping his mouth on inappropriate material
No this is not me growing so old
becoming a story soon to be told
by those who capture
the generational baton
leaving behind
what cannot move on
2/18/19 Jan Steckel hosted by Bruce
Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who stopped practicing medicine because of chronic pain. Her latest poetry book is Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, December 2018). Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, New Verse News, November 3 Club, Assaracus and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Oakland, California. Her newest book is just out in December, 2018.
2/25/19 Juba Kalamka hosted by Gary
Juba Kalamka is most recognized for his work with performance troupes Sins Invalid and Mangos With Chili, and as cofounder of the queer hip hop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC). Kalamka's personal work centers on intersectional dialogues on race, identity, gender, disability, sexuality and class in popular media.
His essays and creative writing appear in numerous journals and anthologies including Working Sex:Sex Workers Write About A Changing Industry (2007), Vi är misfits! (2009),The Yale Anthology of Rap (2010), Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Menand Queer and Trans Artists of Color: The Stories of Some of Our Lives (2014). His third solo album Nguzo Sabatage: A Jig School Confidential and first collection of poetry, Son Of Byford, will be published in late 2019.
jubakalamka.bandcamp.com
--------
Wameru
Late for the study job
Where i contemplate
Bout the lil’ thang-thangs
That doo rag bruh-bruh
like him cross the aisle from me trades in
So despite his tea being clocked
He’s right on time
Right next to sistah girl
We gonna give our seats up to homeslice
His skinny seed holding the right hand tight
His youngest holding the left
Sitting in the wagon smiling while
Radio Flying to Sunnyvale
2/4/19 Ivan Arguelles and Neeli Cherkovski
Ivan Arguelles and Neeli Cherkovski
This reading is the result of a rescheduling of the reading that was originally planned for January 11th at the late and lamented Nefeli Caffe.
Innovative and prolific Mexican-American poet, Ivan Argüelles, is the author of many books and chapbooks of poetry. Long associated with the "West Coast surrealists", he has also extended his vision into epic, book length poems. Included among his many books are: "That" Goddess; Madonna Septet; Comedy , Divine , The; FIAT LUX; Orphic Cantos; and Fragments from a Gone World. His most recent publication comprises poems all in Spanish, Lagarto de mi Corazón. His collection, Looking for Mary Lou, won the 1989 William Carlos Wiliams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2013 he received a lifetime Achievement Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A retired librarian he has resided in Berkeley since 1978. He is the identical twin of New Age Prophet José Argüelles (d. 2011).
Neeli Cherkovski was born in Los Angeles and attended Los Angeles State College (now Cal State Los Angeles).He is the author of many books of poetry, including Animal (1996), Leani
The Last Word Reading Series presented, for now, by Himalayan Flavors, a restaurant that serves Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese cuisine in a beautiful and colorful atmosphere. Dinner here is wonderful and should not be missed. Admission is free, but a one-drink or one-plate minimum is suggested.
1/28/19 Rose Mark and Larry Beresford hosted by Gary
Larry Beresford is a freelance medical journalist and author of two books of poetry, Under a Gibbous Moon: The Adventures of Mister Funky, issued by Broken Shadow Publications, and Family Poems, published by Redheaded Press in 2010. He's been an honorable mention in Dancing Poetry (2014), the Benicia Love Poetry Contest (2018) and the Berkeley Poets Cooperative (1982). He lives in a cohousing community called Phoenix Commons in Oakland, Calif., with his wife Rose Mark,a writer and poet, and their three-legged dog Maggie. Their widow/widower creative writing project was first performed at Bay Area Generations in 2018.
Lydia Hirsch is a poet and writer who lives in LA and the Bay Area. She has published journalism, self-published two books of poetry, and is working on a collection of short stories.
In anguish I loved you-- but today I love you
The Sea in Brighton
The color of the sea,
The color
Of the sky an hour before sunrise.
The sea in Brighton
On a day in November, seeming almost spring. I miss you
With the sweetness we miss childhood with, Remembering with longing but not pain.
6/3/19 Bruce Isaacson Plus Julia Vinograd Retrospective host Elaine
PLEASE BRING YOUR FAV JULIA POEM OR A POEM ABOUT HER
Bruce Isaacson met Julia Vinograd in 1985 during SF’s open reading / spoken word resurgence. He earned degrees from Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth and Brooklyn College, where he submitted a thesis to noted American poet Allen Ginsberg. Julia first introduced him to Ginsberg’s work. Together with Julia and the poet David Lerner, Bruce co-founded Zeitgeist Press, which started as the house press for the infamous Cafe Babar readings, as David Lerner called it, Gladiator School for Poets. Today, Bruce serves as publisher for Zeitgeist, with over 100 poetry titles to date. He has lived in Michoacán, Mexico, New York City, Los Angeles, Berkeley-San Francisco, and Leningrad, Russia. He lives today in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada, a community of two million souls encompassing the City of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Strip. His latest book is Crossing Over, which includes stories of Julia, Lerner, and the poet David Gollub.
Here is a one page poem from the book:
My Heart When It’s a Whale
after David Gollub
Mostly roaming silent in dark waters
It is as a thing put steaming
To cool in a tub darker
Than time, times to come, that is
Not times past which are placed
In the afternoon light of memory like
Family photos framed on a
Shelf no one looks at, or a
Cup of wrong coffee, you look
Knowing it’s yours while saying aloud
To no one ‘that’s not mine’ that’s my
Heart holding its breath in the
Deep, lost, with nowhere to go, looking up at
Desire like the sun seen through
Three miles of water, remembering how
Fabulous it was to be young, now that
Murder’s at the border of your
Eyebrows like overgrown bushes
Trimming them’s like trying to walk a cat, like
“Trying” to save a marriage, like trying to
Raise a child when you
Already raised a monster, Dreamzilla’s
Little brother playing with
Firetrucks with an x, t-r-u-
Ex-wives and ex-lovers, ex-
Communicado’d saints, shining hopefully at
History while lost in language, like
A whale, who comes to the surface and
Blows, grateful to breathe, but still
Lost in the wallows and wonders
of the deep.
We are celebrating the poetry life of Julia Vinograd.
Here is a poem appropriate to the moment by Julia:
IN THESE DARK TIMES
You must feel loved when you read this.
Lean against the hand
stroking the back of your neck. Relax.
In the pocket where you once kept marbles
is a small bag full of kisses.
Open it. Let it go.
Someone's humming in the next room
with a throaty laugh at every missed note
because mistakes don't matter.
No, don't go see.
You don't even have to listen.
You are loved.
There's a warm smell coming from the kitchen
and the puppy's nibbling your slippers
but you're too comfortable to get angry.
There are so many people who want this.
Just this.
Believe me, they are not your enemies.
5/27/19 Zephir O'Meara hosted by Gary
WE found the restaurant closed and thus Zephir will be rescheduled. We did hold a small 13 person session at a nearby house.
Zephir O'Meara is a bay area page poet with many children and pets in his care. His ongoing quest to disrupt and subvert bio blurbs has thus far worked for him. So he's probably gonna keep doing it. It's almost a thing at this point.
________________
Email
I opened up this email to send you a poem
I was going to copy and paste something
short and sweet nice and neat
Something with some rhythmic grace
some outer space retro vibe
Glimpsing the infinite
but still staying intimate
Here and now you and me our eyes lock briefly
Flicker away in the breeze
We cinder
We smoke
All our lives could matter in one kind passionate word
I lay at your feet a red carpet
dyed in my blood my heart's blood my soul
my word my bond
But I didn't really know how to finish it so I never sent that email
I guess it's saved as a draft somewhere
5/20/19 hosted by Bruce
Carla Williams-Namboodiri is a humanities teacher and former journalist. Carla's manuscript novel, South Side Blues, set in her hometown of Chicago in the 1970's,was recently named a semi-finalist in Hidden River Arts inaugural Tuscarora Award for Historical Fiction. She will be reading from new work, On Bus Line No. 6, a play in three acts, as well as poems (see below)
Carla Williams-Namboodiri is a humanities teacher and former journalist. Carla's manuscript novel, South Side Blues, set in her hometown of Chicago in the 1970's,was recently named a semi-finalist in Hidden River Arts inaugural Tuscarora Award for Historical Fiction. She will be reading from new work, On Bus Line No. 6, a play in three acts, as well as poems (see below)
Tell Me Again
By Carla Williams-Namboodiri
What did you say?
Say what?
Tell me again what you mean
When you say
Make America great again
Do you mean great
Like the buffalo that roamed
the prairies of my heart
Or the once crystal clear
Great Lakes?
Or great like the voice
Of Tecumseh, who warned,
“Brothers, the white men came among us feeble, and now we have made them strong”
No, that doesn't really sound like who or what you mean
Tell me again what you mean,
When you say you want to build a wall
To keep our lives from coming in
Against the laws those great forefathers
Wrote to steal land Fair and Square
Can you explain, in polite terms,
Where and how you made
America
Was it before the Civil War or after it?
Was it when the Constitution
Settled on counting Africa’s children
As the three-fifths human
Or after blood and terror
Set us free?
Do tell, just once more,
Is your great America lily white,
With small apartheid “black spots”
Reserved for first nations,
“Hispanic-Latinos” and “inner-city blacks”
Or is it a modest version
Of a whitewashed college campus
After rolling back affirmative action
Rolling back to them good old days, ain’t it?
Down at the country club
Or was it the golf club,
With that private spa,
With the black attendant
How fun it was!
How he had to hold the towel,
while you jiggled your pecker,
And how you all called him Charlie Brown, laughing together
Though his name was Charles Brownstone,
After his father the master mason,
Like his fathers before him,
Who worked to buy freedom
Tell me once more,
What you really mean
About “Make America Great Again”
Do you mean like,
The Beach Boys
Or Chuck Berry singing,
“Rock and Roll Music,”
Crisscrossing color lines
When you say America,
It does not sound
Like me saying it
When you say
make it great
It sounds like
screams
Of nuclear bombs
On Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Nothing at all like the greatness
Promised
By the truths we hold
To be self-evident
That we are all equally
Endowed with
Certain liberties
The America of which you speak
Was discovered
By Christopher Columbus
Who got lost
Because he thought
The world was flat
Carla Williams-Namboodiri is a writer and humanities teacher working on surviving the next four years.
5/6/19 Jan Dederick host tba
Jan came out of the poetry closet at Poetry Express just a few years ago. Well, maybe more than a few by now…Since then she has found many voices she had no idea she had. Her work varies from rant to rave, from ode to lyric, from sacred to profane, from humorous to brainiac science-headed.
Her work is inspired by nature, both human and the rest, healing, science, the Big Questions, the usual suspects.
She’s earned a number of prizes in local contests, but doesn’t seem too interested in ‘getting her work out there’, i.e. the publishing thing. Or maybe just not organized enough.
She has self- published 2 chapbooks, Ear to the Rail and Between a Rock and a Soft Place, and a full length memoir in poetry, Hammer It Into Horseshoes. She is incubating another book,The Anatomy Poetry Book.
Jan was for several years a co-host of Poetry Express, and is on the editorial board of Poetalk, journal of the Bay Area Poets’ Coalition.
Cinquaine series:my breaththe in the outI sit to notice itcool coming in, warm going out.changingto sitto watch and waithow long will this itch last?nothing lasts forever, nor this.dharma.betweenthe high and lowthere lies the middle roadBuddha recommended this route:.Good luck!
5/13/19 John Garry hosted by Jim
John R. Garry has made his way across 9 countries by train, plane, automobile and by foot. His poetry is informed by his travels and his work as a licensed clinical psychologist in the community, with our military and in our prison system.
His published works include: 2009’s “Regalos de la Isla: Gifts from the island”, and 2015’s “Lean In: Live from Everywhere”.
His performances are a melodic blend of emotion and deep reflection that will make you think, feel and leave you wanting more.
——
THINGS/
I literally have a jar marked golf money filled with the wishbones of rotisserie chickens going back to 2015. I carried these from apartment to apartment, across state lines. They sat in storage for 10 months while I traveled the globe. It's a jar full of unused wishes, bones for conjuring new ways to fight off patterns that are ever present.
There is a 4-by-2 bin full of poems next to my bed; a pile of notebooks that, boiled down, are just ink and papyrus, emotional hand cramp manifestos. It's a tupperware bucket of unicorn ideas, flightless thoughts tied down with time and self-deprecation.
There are #revolutionarystew mind dumps on Instagram. It's an exercise in public masturbation that we have allowed as normal – all in the internet ether, the globe's electronic closet – full of porn, socks without matches and shit that no longer fits, but isn't thrown away.
I have 82 bowties in my closet and still my wardrobe is repetitive. I have maintained my weight only so that I do not have to buy more pants. All my sweaters from high school remain with me and, like them, I too go in and out of fashion regularly.
I am a pile of skin and bones, bowties, poetry and unused wishes. I spend more time thinking about what I have yet to let go of than using what I already have, and wondering who will throw out my things when I die.
All the things.
4/29/19 Maverick Night: host Gary
Bring 2 poems printed out with out your name on them. We will put in a bag or box or hat and other people will draw out, read. Then we will attempt to identify the poet who wrote the poem. We have been doing this once a year for years and it is great fun.
4/22/19 Judy Wells hosted by Gary
JUDY WELLS was born in San Francisco and raised in Martinez, California. She received her B.A. from Stanford and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. Judy has 12 poetry books to her credit. Her latest collection, Dear Phebe: The Dickinson Sisters Go West is a memoir/novella in poetry and prose about her New England-to-California Dickinson ancestors in the 1860s. She was thrilled to have access to real letters her Dickinson ancestors sent each other.
Her eleventh poetry collection, The Glass Ship, completes her trilogy of Irish-themed works, including Everything Irish and Call Home. Other works includeLittle Lulu Talks with Vincent Van Gogh and I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle.
Judy taught creative writing, women’s poetry, composition, and literature at various Bay Area colleges, before a career as an academic counselor and faculty member at Saint Mary’s College of California, working with adults returning to school. Now a full-time poet, she lives with her husband, avant-garde poet Dale Jensen, in Berkeley. Her website is www.judywellspoet.com.
SUPERMARKET LOVE
Last week at Whole Foods
as I was reaching
into the refrigerated shelves
for the coldest tofu
with the most future
expiration date
a yellow gloved hand
from the other side
laid itself on mine.
I nearly jumped a mile.
"Oh sorry!" said a woman's voice
from the other side.
A man behind me laughed.
This week as I walked by
the same tofu
section
I heard a disembodied voice
from the other side say,
"I needed you,
and you have never
been there
for me once."
“Yes, I have,”
I wanted to protest.
“Last week!”
From I Dream of Circus Characters: A Berkeley Chronicle
Beatitude Press
4/15/19 Diane L. Moomey hosted by Bruce
Diane has lived and wandered around the US and Canada, and now dips her
gardener’s hands in California dirt. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay
Area poetry venues, Diane has published prose and poetry, most recently in
Mezzo Cammin, The Sand Hill Review, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura
and Red Wheelbarrow, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In
2016, 2017 and 2018, she won prizes and Honorable Mentions in the Sonnet
and Creative Non-Fiction categories of the Soul Making Keats Literary
Contest. Her most recent poetry book, Nothing But Itself, is available now.
To know more, please visit https://www.pw.org/content/diane_moomey
Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both
seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. To view her artwork, please visit
www.dianeleemoomeyart.com
Diane has lived and wandered around the US and Canada, and now dips her
gardener’s hands in California dirt. A regular reader at San Francisco Bay
Area poetry venues, Diane has published prose and poetry, most recently in
Mezzo Cammin, The Sand Hill Review, California Poetry Quarterly, Caesura
and Red Wheelbarrow, and has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. In
2016, 2017 and 2018, she won prizes and Honorable Mentions in the Sonnet
and Creative Non-Fiction categories of the Soul Making Keats Literary
Contest. Her most recent poetry book, Nothing But Itself, is available now.
To know more, please visit https://www.pw.org/content/diane_moomey
Diane is also a watercolorist and collage artist, an experience that both
seeds and is seeded by, her poetic imagery. To view her artwork, please visit
www.dianeleemoomeyart.com
4/8/19 Reginald Edmonds hosted by Jim
Reginald Edmonds is a poet, activist, and educator based out of Richmond, CA. Reggie was a member of the 2018 Berkeley Poetry Slam team and runs both the Rich Oak Alchemy Slam and the Oakland Poetry Slam and wide open mic. In their free time, they enjoy long walks through quiet graveyards, Hennessy with limes, and listening to trap music. They have two self published chapbooks, I’m Too Black For This Shxt (2017) and Sad Boi(2018). Their poetry is map of intersections that illustrates the complexity of the human experience. Through their work, they hope you will come to understand how much we all contribute to the degradation of humanity, as well as what we can all do to turn this back around.
All of My Fish Die In the Middle of the Night and I Imagine Myself Alongside Them.
I awaken to twelve glimmering bodies bobbing on the surface. Their eyes
Are just as soulless in death as they were in life, bulging
Pupils staring into the void. A 5-year-old probably shouldn't bury
Pets by himself but nobody really gave a shit about lasting psychological
Harm in the early 2000’s so I had a toilet bowl funeral
Alone. Cried over the time spent excitedly pointing at the fish tank
Like “look at how responsible I can be mama? Don’t that make
Me a man now?” But haven’t I always tried to flush
My boyhood down the drain too early. Wasn’t I, in my foolishness,
Craving manhood with my morning cereal. The same masculinity that is suffocating
Me today. I should have learned that all That glitters is not
Gold… fish. sometimes, they are just pretty Things waiting for a prettier
Death. And what's more beautiful than a Broken dream? Than my body
Floating alongside twelve nuggets of gold? Mama says that gold look good
On us black folks. And don’t I look good, Mama? Am I
Man enough for you, now? Wrapped up in so much Masculine gold
That nobody hears me screaming? That nobody notices me choking? Will anybody
Even know that I’m dead until the sun rises in the morning?
4/1/19 PoetryExpressed magazine release reading hosts Gary & Bruce
Poets include: Adele Mendelson, Andrena Zawinski, Barbara Saunders 2019, Britt Peter, Bruce Fessenden, Bruce Isaacson, Carol Criss, Cathy Cade, Chris Chandler, Chris Dupuy, Chris Warren Smith, Clive Matson, D. Jayne McPherson, D. Leah Steinberg, Dale Jensen, Dan O’Connell, David Zeltzer, Deborah Fruchey, Dee Allen, Dorty Nowak, elana levy, Florence Elon, Garrett Murphy, Gary Turchin, Grace Marie Grafton, Gray Rosado, Indunil Madhusankha, Jack O’Neill, Jan Dederick, Jan Steckel, Jean Biegun, Jeannette DesBoine, Jim Barnard, John (Jake) Cosmos, John Rowe, Juan Sequeira, Judy Wells, Kelliane Parker, Larry Beresford, leoroarbig , Lori Lynne Armstrong, Marilyn Flower, Marty Williams, Melissa Hobbs, Mimi Gonzalez-Barillas, Richard Loranger, Riss Rosado,
All poets who are within are invited to read their poem at this session. Open mic, if any, will be limited to any time remaining after all of our Poetry Expressed Magazine published poets have read. This should be a well attended evening, come early if you are dining so that you can find a table seat.
The work with is excellent!
Poets include: Adele Mendelson, Andrena Zawinski, Barbara Saunders 2019, Britt Peter, Bruce Fessenden, Bruce Isaacson, Carol Criss, Cathy Cade, Chris Chandler, Chris Dupuy, Chris Warren Smith, Clive Matson, D. Jayne McPherson, D. Leah Steinberg, Dale Jensen, Dan O’Connell, David Zeltzer, Deborah Fruchey, Dee Allen, Dorty Nowak, elana levy, Florence Elon, Garrett Murphy, Gary Turchin, Grace Marie Grafton, Gray Rosado, Indunil Madhusankha, Jack O’Neill, Jan Dederick, Jan Steckel, Jean Biegun, Jeannette DesBoine, Jim Barnard, John (Jake) Cosmos, John Rowe, Juan Sequeira, Judy Wells, Kelliane Parker, Larry Beresford, leoroarbig , Lori Lynne Armstrong, Marilyn Flower, Marty Williams, Melissa Hobbs, Mimi Gonzalez-Barillas, Richard Loranger, Riss Rosado,
Saswati Das, Sharon Metzler-Dow, Tureeda Mikell Story Medicine Woman, Yarko Sochynsky,
Zephir O'Meara
3/25/19 Mary Mackey hosted by Gary
In The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams, Mary Mackey writes of life, death, love, and passion with intensity and grace. Her poems are hugely imaginative and multi-layered. Part One contains forty-eight new poems including twenty-one set in Western Kentucky from 1742 to 1975; and twenty-six unified by an exploration of the tropical jungle outside and within us, plus a surreal and sometimes hallucinatory appreciation of the visionary power of fever. Part Two offers the reader seventy-eight poems drawn from Mackey’s seven previous collections including Sugar Zone, winner of the 2012 Oakland PEN Award for Literary Excellence.
I have a lot of good news. It's been a wild ride since September when Marsh Hawk Press published my new collection of poetry The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018.
First, Jaguars sold out the day it was published. Then it made the Small Press Distribution bestseller list. A few weeks later it won a California Institute of Integral Studies Women's Spirituality Book Award.
Since then, I've been on public radio three times, done 36 events, and given talks on everything from creativity and craft to Mirabai, army ants, and Goddess worship in Prehistoric Europe.
Jaguars is now into its 4th printing. On May 9th, I'll be in New York where Harpers Magazine is sponsoring a reading and interview with me at Book Culture on Columbus. But my favorite event title is the one the librarians at California State University Sacramento came up with for an event I'm doing for them on April 10th: "Jaguars in the Library: Poetry, Passion, and Archives." Librarians you rock! It just doesn't get better than that.
"Fever and Jungles: On Becoming a Poet": I describe the strange things I see when my fever rises above 106 degrees and how these visions, combined with the jungles of Costa Rica and Brazil, turned me into a poet.
Lenore recently won first prize in the Alexandria Quarterly Press small stories series for her flash fiction chapbook, Holding on to the Fringes of Love. Lenore has read in different cities across the country and performed on the radio. Her three poetry collections form a trilogy about being mortal: Cutting Down the Last Tree on Easter Island (West End Press, 2012); Two Places (Aldrich Press, 2014), and The Golem (Hadassa Word Press, 2017). In reviewing Two Places, Nina Serrano wrote, “Weiss’ mind travels like the speed of light from the real, to the symbolic and the surreal.” Lenore tutors middle-school students and volunteers at Oakland’s writing center, Chapter510.
Black is the Color
Black is the color of my true love's hair
and Marlon Brando's motorcycle jacket,
each tooth a silver zipper.
Black is the color of roadies
drinking beer down the street
at the Big Dipper.
Black is the color of Johnny Cash
who kept praying for 'Nam
to be over in a flicker.
Black is the color of T-shirts
of high-tech workers
designing glass slippers.
Black is the color of a woman
stoned on a red carpet
because a veil didn't fit her.
Black is the color of people who fade
behind the sidelines of center stage.
Black is the color of our grueling age.
Chorus:
And sorry, I drive a Ferrari.
Bob Dylan (or insert another name)
didn't wear black to the Grammys.
He wore gold.
3/4/19 D. R. Goodman & Judy Bebelaar hosted by The Last Word Reading Series
D. R. Goodman and Judy Bebelaar will read at 7 pm on Monday, March 4th, at Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Avenue, cross street California, in Berkeley, as part of the Last Word Reading Series, with thanks to Poetry Express and Himalayan Flavors for their hospitality. Cafe phone is 510-704-0174. There is also an open reading.
D. R. Goodman, author of Greed: A Confession (Able Muse Press), is a past winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and two-time winner of the Able Muse Write Prize for poetry. Her work has appeared in many journals across the U.S., and has been selected for inclusion in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and in the anthology, Sonnets: 150 Contemporary Sonnets, William Baer, editor. A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, she now lives in Oakland, California, where she is founder and senior instructor at a martial arts school. She is also the author of The Kids’ Karate Workbook: A Take-Home Training Guide for Young Martial Artists, from North Atlantic/Blue Snake Books.Goodman claims she always meant to be a poet, but got distracted and went for more than twenty years without writing – until one day while driving, she heard Kay Ryan reading on KQED. She laughed out loud, turned the car around and drove to Berkeley, where she bought the only two Kay Ryan books she could find. She soon began writing again, and has been at it ever since.
Judy Bebelaar's poetry has been published widely in magazines and online, and has won many awards, most recently a first prize, two thirds, and the Grand Prize in the Ina Coolbrith Circle Poetry Contest. Her work is also included in many anthologies, among them The Widows’ Handbook (foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsberg) and River of Earth and Sky. Walking Across the Pacific is her first poetry chapbook. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown, non-fiction, is about the students from Peoples Temple she and co-author Ron Cabral came to know before most of them were sent to Jonestown. Ron and Judy were recently named Library Laureates 2019 by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
The Last Word Reading Series is now presented by Himalayan Flavors, a restaurant that serves Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese cuisine in a beautiful and colorful atmosphere. Dinner here is wonderful and should not be missed. Admission is free, but a one-drink or one-plate minimum is suggested. There is ample parking in the lot next to the restaurant.
3/11/49 Collin Edmond hosted by Jim
Collin Edmonds, also known as “The Artist Formerly Known as Cornrow Collin, is an activist, singer, and poet hailing from Richmond,Ca. He is one fourth of the Rich Oak Alchemy Slam and Oakland Poetry Slam organizing crew. In his spare time he enjoys writing poetry (duh), critiquing societal norms, listening to loud hip hop music in affluent white neighborhoods, and shattering expectations of black men in America.
2/11/19 Carl Kopman hosted by Jim
He is the publisher of ~ interconnectingcircles.com/ ~
a community based web journal for writers and visual artists.
He is a founding member of The Elk Kelp Choir.
HOOTOWL
It is not me who can explain this mystery
which bemusedly I deflect with charming excuses
explaining away a growing history
of what to some have become my many abuses.
Toothpaste tubes left uncapped,
cookie crumbs on my lap,
messages prematurely erased from an answering machine,
“Someone called, dear, but I can’t remember who”
inbetween increased doses of Ginko Balboa
and a wifely reminder my mind is much slower.
No this cannot be me walking this cast
confusing names first and last
having to create detailed lists
of whom I liked and who I kissed
when I was young and twenty-one
and knew the difference between humiliation and fun.
Who could have foretold that this would be me
searching the forgotten for his destiny
forgetting his keys or misplacing his morning cereal
Wiping his mouth on inappropriate material
No this is not me growing so old
becoming a story soon to be told
by those who capture
the generational baton
leaving behind
what cannot move on
2/18/19 Jan Steckel hosted by Bruce
Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who stopped practicing medicine because of chronic pain. Her latest poetry book is Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, December 2018). Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, New Verse News, November 3 Club, Assaracus and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Oakland, California. Her newest book is just out in December, 2018.
2/25/19 Juba Kalamka hosted by Gary
Juba Kalamka is most recognized for his work with performance troupes Sins Invalid and Mangos With Chili, and as cofounder of the queer hip hop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC). Kalamka's personal work centers on intersectional dialogues on race, identity, gender, disability, sexuality and class in popular media.
His essays and creative writing appear in numerous journals and anthologies including Working Sex:Sex Workers Write About A Changing Industry (2007), Vi är misfits! (2009),The Yale Anthology of Rap (2010), Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Menand Queer and Trans Artists of Color: The Stories of Some of Our Lives (2014). His third solo album Nguzo Sabatage: A Jig School Confidential and first collection of poetry, Son Of Byford, will be published in late 2019.
jubakalamka.bandcamp.com
His essays and creative writing appear in numerous journals and anthologies including Working Sex:Sex Workers Write About A Changing Industry (2007), Vi är misfits! (2009),The Yale Anthology of Rap (2010), Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Menand Queer and Trans Artists of Color: The Stories of Some of Our Lives (2014). His third solo album Nguzo Sabatage: A Jig School Confidential and first collection of poetry, Son Of Byford, will be published in late 2019.
jubakalamka.bandcamp.com
--------
Wameru
Late for the study job
Where i contemplate
Bout the lil’ thang-thangs
That doo rag bruh-bruh
like him cross the aisle from me trades in
like him cross the aisle from me trades in
So despite his tea being clocked
He’s right on time
Right next to sistah girl
We gonna give our seats up to homeslice
His skinny seed holding the right hand tight
His youngest holding the left
Sitting in the wagon smiling while
Radio Flying to Sunnyvale
Ivan Arguelles and Neeli Cherkovski
This reading is the result of a rescheduling of the reading that was originally planned for January 11th at the late and lamented Nefeli Caffe.
Innovative and prolific Mexican-American poet, Ivan Argüelles, is the author of many books and chapbooks of poetry. Long associated with the "West Coast surrealists", he has also extended his vision into epic, book length poems. Included among his many books are: "That" Goddess; Madonna Septet; Comedy , Divine , The; FIAT LUX; Orphic Cantos; and Fragments from a Gone World. His most recent publication comprises poems all in Spanish, Lagarto de mi Corazón. His collection, Looking for Mary Lou, won the 1989 William Carlos Wiliams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2013 he received a lifetime Achievement Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A retired librarian he has resided in Berkeley since 1978. He is the identical twin of New Age Prophet José Argüelles (d. 2011).
Neeli Cherkovski was born in Los Angeles and attended Los Angeles State College (now Cal State Los Angeles).He is the author of many books of poetry, including Animal (1996), Leani
The Last Word Reading Series presented, for now, by Himalayan Flavors, a restaurant that serves Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese cuisine in a beautiful and colorful atmosphere. Dinner here is wonderful and should not be missed. Admission is free, but a one-drink or one-plate minimum is suggested.
1/28/19 Rose Mark and Larry Beresford hosted by Gary
Larry Beresford is a freelance medical journalist and author of two books of poetry, Under a Gibbous Moon: The Adventures of Mister Funky, issued by Broken Shadow Publications, and Family Poems, published by Redheaded Press in 2010. He's been an honorable mention in Dancing Poetry (2014), the Benicia Love Poetry Contest (2018) and the Berkeley Poets Cooperative (1982). He lives in a cohousing community called Phoenix Commons in Oakland, Calif., with his wife Rose Mark,a writer and poet, and their three-legged dog Maggie. Their widow/widower creative writing project was first performed at Bay Area Generations in 2018.
Life’s Currency
Rose K. Mark writes about relationships, people, love, gratitude, food, erotica, disease, death and design. It’s all so connected.
Her work can be found in several anthologies: Oakland Neighborhoods, Dirty Old Women- Elder Erotica and Bay Area Generations. Her food and travel articles have been published overseas and locally. Her book Tasting Life, contains stories, poems and recipes about food. Her newest book, Interior Design for Small Dwellings, co-written with Sherrill Baldwin Halbe was published by Routlege Press in November 2018. This is a book for beginning interior design students and laypersons interested in personalizing the interiors of their small home using participatory design. Our philosophy of living simpler by choosing more meaningful design is shared within the book.
Rose has read and performed her pieces throughout the San Francisco and East Bay Area. She’s won 2nd prize in several Poetry Slams much to her surprise and is lately enamoured with sharing her work at a reading series called “You are Going to Die”.
Her life partner/husband and writing compadre is Larry Beresford. They live in a cozy 627 square foot condominium unit in a co-housing community next to the Oakland Estuary in Jingletown. Life is good.
1/21/2019 Sharon Coleman & Lisa Rosenberg
THIS SESSION WILL START EXACTLY AT 7PM TO ALLOW FOR BOTH FEATURES TO HAVE FULL TIME. COME EARLY! hosted by Bruce
1/14/19 Diane Frank hosted by Jim
Diane Frank is author of Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place: A Journey through the Nepal Himalayas, (Nirala Press, Delhi , India
About her book:Annapurna , with an ascent of 17,800 feet to Thorong La, and anoint your spirit in the sacred fountains of Muktinath. You will climb the Everest trail with astounding views of the mountains and go on pilgrimage to Buddhist temples and monasteries. The rushing water of sacred rivers will sing to your imagination. With each step of your journey, you will be transformed by the magic of the mountains.
Dreams of the Ecliptic
To change a girl into a kite,
To teach a tree to sing,
To change a bowl of dust into a planet,
To change the sky into a dream,
To melt an ice cube,
To write a symphony in a major key,
To create a universe,
When the sun rises for the first time,
~ Diane Frank
1/7/19 Adele Mendelson
Adele Mendelson was born in Cleveland, Ohio and now lives in Oakland, California. She writes both fiction and poetry and has produced three volumes of work. Her strongest conviction about writing is that it should never bore the writer or anyone else, that it should be sexy, have something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover.
12/24/2018 NO PE H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S hosted by Upta Yu
12/31/2018 NO PE H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S hosted by Upta Yu
12/17/2018 Barbara West & Grace Loescher
Barbara West and Grace Loescher began collaborating last year, when they were 50 and 25 years old respectively. Barbara works part-time as a nurse, while Grace is a full-time activist for social justice issues in general, homeless youth in particular, and cultivating the arts in all of us. When Barbara published a book, Grace put out a spoken word CD and enjoyed live audience and social media success, accompanying herself on piano and guitar. Dec. 17th in Berkeley will be their fifth collaborative performance. They expect to start off with a lively voice/guitar/washboard duet and then mix it up with a combination of solo and joint pieces. Topics range from preventing/mourning suicide to an unusual request by a hospice patient, and will include love and other activities of body, mind and spirit.
Barbara West is the only parent of a 21-year-old son and works as a Wound/Ostomy/Continence Nurse, with prior work in Hospice. Previous publications include Full of Crow, Brevities, Medusa’s Kitchen, Sacramento Voices, and Davis Shambhala Center Newsletter. Her first book "...and I felt the simple sweetness of me" was published last year by Cold River Press. She is currently working on a memoir “Hunger to Help: Sorting Extraordinary Legacies”which explores the tension between Christian/Buddhist directives to “help others” and 12-step Recovery work which directs her to “focus on yourself.” Thanks to a background in theater, and some time singing with a band, Barbara often recites from memory, usually without a mic, since her voice is plenty loud. She also enjoys windsurfing.
Fly
Fly flew
then swerved
Luke
including me
the thrill.
12/10/2018 Chris Chandler
Celebrating 30 years on the road! Few musicians can claim "on-the roadisms" the way Chris Chandler can. He is a true veteran of the road, traveling across The United States of Generica for many years. His anthology of road tales transforms into a flock of doves beneath the musical high-wire act. He has worked with everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Ani DiFranco and Pete Seeger to Mojo Nixon. Utah Phillips says, "Chris Chandler is the best performance poet I have ever seen."
Poetry Express is proud to be able to present Chris as a featured poet/performer.
Paradise Found
By Chris Chandler
Lately...
Loss of life...
Big Picture stuff...
But every big picture is composed of many smaller ones.
Smaller ones that depict lives impacted in ways we don't even think of...
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.
In Paradise California,
"Ya know what pisses me off - is that they do the trash pickups on Mondays - and almost every Month has a Monday holiday. Veterans day... No Trash Pick up? Whats up with that?
"Paradise Adventist? Really? Do they even have a football team?"
"Volleyball...
Before the fire
And although in ashes The Paradise Post - through the help of her sister paper The Chico Enterprise-Record continues to publish as they had...
For,
What started as a small brush fire well west of the town...
Potholes and Volleyball are no longer on anyone's mind.
Grab your family and escape...
But not all of the pre fire drama
There are twelve players on
They and their families all made it out alive...
Eight of them
They were all spread out - staying in shelters or with relatives
How could there be a Volley Ball game?
But, this is the semi finals.
No sport in the school's long history
Their opponent...
But the Cougars refused to be defeated!
Yet,
But these girls? Now, that is a different story.
Thank god, on Thanksgiving that they don't see things
NEVER
under-estimate the power of young women.
In Solidarity, the Lady Falcons agreed to host...
The Lady Cougars...
The twelve girls
Together, they marched into the opposing team's gym....
There they were met with something that few "visiting teams" receive when they walk into an opposing teams' home:
They were also met with much more...
Within 24 hours of the devastating fire,
Laid out on the visiting bench...
Instrumental in this act of generosity was Forest Lake coach Travis Smith
When he
the applause calmed into an appreciative hush.
"I had been looking for a reason to have returned as coach this year... and I think this...
The Paradise Lady Cougars went on to win that game against the Forest Lake Falcons.
But in truth, they won much more
They are the champions of my heart!
It would be poetic to say that the Lady Cougars went on to win the state championship
Instead, (sorry for the pun)
They had to...
because, my friends,
This is Paradise.
12/03/2018 Barbara Saunders
Barbara Saunders is a poet and solo performer from Westchester, NY. She followed the Grateful Dead to California and stayed. Her work explores themes of family, biography, and identity. Barbara has featured recently at the Last Word and Saturday Night Special poetry series, That Really Happened storytelling series, and Monday Night Marsh.
Haiku
Ripened on the tree
The apple drops at her feet
Juicy bites bring joy
11/26/2018
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.
11/19/2018 Joyce Young
Joyce E. Young currently lives and writes in Berkeley, California. She has read and performed at venues as diverse as The M.H. de Young Museum, Intersection for the Arts, La Peña Cultural Center, Art & Soul Oakland, Mills College, and Smith College, and elsewhere. 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 an English teacher for Mills College Upward Bound for 3 years. She is founder and facilitator of Write in Peace. She has received a California Arts Council Artist in Communities grant. She was awarded a Writers on Site residency through Poets & Writers, Inc. and has also been awarded writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Soapstone and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has most recently appeared in riverbabble, The New Voices of the American West, Temba Tupu! (Walking Naked): The Africana Woman’s Self-Portrait, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Paint Dreams on Walls, voicesinwartime.org and Her Mark Gallery Datebook. She currently serves as a writing consultant at John F. Kennedy University, teaches privately and is at work on Parallel Journey, a novel.
Her poetry chapbook, How it Happens is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in September 2018.
11/12/2018 Sophia Moore
Sophia Moore is 20 years old and attends UC Berkeley for English and Gender and Women's Studies. In high school, she sat on the Alameda Island Poets Board and served as the Poet Laureate at her school, Alameda Community Learning Center. Additionally, she interned at the Dancing Poetry Festival and performed in a number of the dances at Palace of the Legion of Honor.
The Possibilities of Half a Tank of Gas and Two Healing Hearts
There might be beauty in the way she cries,
In the way blood leaks between ribs from her breaking heart.
There might be beauty in the security of a setting sun.
One golden horizon intertwines at the top of their fishbowl
With the deep blue of another skyline,
But when she looks up, she only sees his eyes.
Oncoming armies melt away into the fickle clouds.
There might be beauty in the way the dawn lifts the twilit dew into a burning night.
The ghost of an undetermined future sits in the driver’s seat of a motionless car.
The passenger closes her eyes, bathing in each pulse of electricity,
Clinging as if the beat of her heart relies on every shock.
A fog climbs down the mountain in waterfall determination,
While calloused memories slip down the rocky slope in a bubble of giggles.
There might be beauty in the silence of their conversation.
Every spoken phrase already known between them:
“Hide your eyes so they don’t know this is private property.”
There might be beauty in the way she wishes on shooting stars,
There might be beauty in the way she falls deeper into her own heart with each breath,
There might be--
There might be--
There might be beauty in the way she cries,
But it might be the glimpse of a dream-- intangible as the burning sky.
There is beauty in the way she falls asleep alone, asking still for tomorrow’s blessing.
Next time these piggybacking fictions hop from one island of light to another,
I promise not to leave the stitching between their hearts so unfinished.
11/05/2018 elana levy
elana levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocados and redwoods from the northeast, of snow lakes and green. Legacies and Heresies with blessings is her latest collection. She has also translated from the German the much heralded 20th century Jewish poet Rose Asländer. Elana taught math a community college for two decades. She was firs photographed by the FBI in 1959. Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly. Still studying hard, knowing there are no easy answers. She doesn’t Capitalize her name.
10/22/2018
Andrew J. Thomas was born and raised by a couple of hippies in a small Alabama town. And if that wasn't confusing enough, he joined the Navy and traveled all over Europe before relocating to Oakland, California. Married too young, he soon became a dad, got divorced and found a "real" job. Eventually he remarried and settled down in the Bay Area brackish waters known as Vacaville. These days, he is a sad man full of sad words that he sometimes shares in order to make you sad.
When he's not enjoying your tears, he's busy parenting two young adults, or professionally bullshitting for a living. He's the webmaster for various poets and small presses and a founding member of The Beast Crawl Literary Festival. His book, Strangeland, was the inaugural publication from Naked Bulb Press, even though he is generally unpublished due to laziness and fear. Unable to completely abandon his Southern roots, he still enjoys politeness, fried food, and whiskey.
The Myth We Lent to GodTo Hart Crane
In pieces now, slowly dissected, a little less there each time
I drive across the bay from east to west.
At night, a silhouette of what once was, the shadow of a beast,
that grey metal testament of man’s faith in man,
stretching from crane to crane.
The replacement, a white lighted beacon of hope
suspended on the precipice of disillusion;
Rust already eating away at the unseen foundational cracks,
as man is no longer capable of such impossible feats.
And yet we witness the reversal of construction,
a more intentional disassembly than Loma Prieta.
There is a metaphor here about the limitations of belief,
another about impermanence.
The myth is being forgotten.
We are owed an explanation that will never come,
because man, like God, won’t make good on his promises.
10/29/2018 Other People's Poems Guess who wrote it? hosted by
Bring 2 poems printed out with out your name on them. We will put in a bag or box or hat and other people will draw out, read. Then we will attempt to identify the poet who wrote the poem. We have been doing this once a year for years and it is great fun.
10/15/2018 Garrett Murphy hosted by bruce
Garrett Murphy is known throughout the greater Bay Area as (the "King of Political Satire," (much to his utter surprise)
sharing tongue-in-cheek observations about political and other forms of human nature.
He is the author of the poetry anthologies "Noe Showing" and "What We Claim...What We Are," the prose
collection "The Ugly Salon," and the novel "Yang But Yin: The Legend of Miss Dragonheel," in addition to
appearing in various other anthologies.
NOT GEORGE CARLIN’S SEVEN DIRTY WORDS
Fetus.
Entitlement.
Diversity.
Transgender
Vulnerable.
Evidence-based.
Science-based.
What?
No buzz?
Where’s the beeper?
The shock?
Anything?
Was there not supposed to be some sort of catastrophe?
Some earth-shattering cataclysm?
But all that can be heard
is some faint,
feeble-minded inept hissyfit
from a most miniscule gallery
which one would not dare offend peanuts
by naming it in their honor.
Perhaps if they had chosen
a few slurs instead…
© 2018 Garrett Murphy
10/8/2018 Saswati Das
Saswati Das, an engineer by profession and a poet by heart, lives in Milpitas, California, and writes poems and fiction in both English and Hindi. She publishes her poetry in local magazines and anthologies. She has recited her verses in cultural and poetry events such as Lit Crawl, 100k poets for change and Oakland Poetry Slam. She has published a poetry book in English captioned “Fragrant Flute of Fire” which is available in Amazon. She maintains a blog at www.kalpanain.blogspot.com.
Rose K. Mark writes about relationships, people, love, gratitude, food, erotica, disease, death and design. It’s all so connected.
Her work can be found in several anthologies: Oakland Neighborhoods, Dirty Old Women- Elder Erotica and Bay Area Generations. Her food and travel articles have been published overseas and locally. Her book Tasting Life, contains stories, poems and recipes about food. Her newest book, Interior Design for Small Dwellings, co-written with Sherrill Baldwin Halbe was published by Routlege Press in November 2018. This is a book for beginning interior design students and laypersons interested in personalizing the interiors of their small home using participatory design. Our philosophy of living simpler by choosing more meaningful design is shared within the book.
Rose has read and performed her pieces throughout the San Francisco and East Bay Area. She’s won 2nd prize in several Poetry Slams much to her surprise and is lately enamoured with sharing her work at a reading series called “You are Going to Die”.
Her life partner/husband and writing compadre is Larry Beresford. They live in a cozy 627 square foot condominium unit in a co-housing community next to the Oakland Estuary in Jingletown. Life is good.
1/21/2019 Sharon Coleman & Lisa Rosenberg
THIS SESSION WILL START EXACTLY AT 7PM TO ALLOW FOR BOTH FEATURES TO HAVE FULL TIME. COME EARLY! hosted by Bruce
THIS SESSION WILL START EXACTLY AT 7PM TO ALLOW FOR BOTH FEATURES TO HAVE FULL TIME. COME EARLY! hosted by Bruce
1/14/19 Diane Frank hosted by Jim
Diane Frank is author of Letters from a Sacred Mountain Place: A Journey through the Nepal Himalayas, (Nirala Press, Delhi , India
About her book:
Walk with Diane Frank, poet and novelist, on a 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas. With photographs and her beautifully written narrative, she will take you to many Sacred Mountain Places. You will trek on mountain trails around Annapurna , with an ascent of 17,800 feet to Thorong La, and anoint your spirit in the sacred fountains of Muktinath. You will climb the Everest trail with astounding views of the mountains and go on pilgrimage to Buddhist temples and monasteries. The rushing water of sacred rivers will sing to your imagination. With each step of your journey, you will be transformed by the magic of the mountains.
Dreams of the Ecliptic
To change a girl into a kite,
tell her that love is the moon.
To teach a tree to sing,
put a harp under its branches.
To change a bowl of dust into a planet,
paint watercolor rings around the ecliptic.
To change the sky into a dream,
put a song into a hammock.
To melt an ice cube,
light a fire under the map of the constellations.
To write a symphony in a major key,
plant a rainbow under an apple tree.
To create a universe,
ride on a meteor shower
as the archer shoots a path of light
across the sky.
When the sun rises for the first time,
fill the sky with your singing.
~ Diane Frank
1/7/19 Adele Mendelson
Adele Mendelson was born in Cleveland, Ohio and now lives in Oakland, California. She writes both fiction and poetry and has produced three volumes of work. Her strongest conviction about writing is that it should never bore the writer or anyone else, that it should be sexy, have something at stake, and the dark side should be lurking just beneath the cover.
12/24/2018 NO PE H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S hosted by Upta Yu
12/31/2018 NO PE H A P P Y H O L I D A Y S hosted by Upta Yu
12/17/2018 Barbara West & Grace Loescher 
Barbara West is the only parent of a 21-year-old son and works as a Wound/Ostomy/Continence Nurse, with prior work in Hospice. Previous publications include Full of Crow, Brevities, Medusa’s Kitchen, Sacramento Voices, and Davis Shambhala Center Newsletter. Her first book "...and I felt the simple sweetness of me" was published last year by Cold River Press. She is currently working on a memoir “Hunger to Help: Sorting Extraordinary Legacies”which explores the tension between Christian/Buddhist directives to “help others” and 12-step Recovery work which directs her to “focus on yourself.” Thanks to a background in theater, and some time singing with a band, Barbara often recites from memory, usually without a mic, since her voice is plenty loud. She also enjoys windsurfing.
Fly
Fly flew
at my
face
then swerved
past my left
ear like
Luke
Skywalker
on his home
planet,
including me
in
the thrill.
12/10/2018 Chris Chandler
Celebrating 30 years on the road! Few musicians can claim "on-the roadisms" the way Chris Chandler can. He is a true veteran of the road, traveling across The United States of Generica for many years. His anthology of road tales transforms into a flock of doves beneath the musical high-wire act. He has worked with everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Ani DiFranco and Pete Seeger to Mojo Nixon. Utah Phillips says, "Chris Chandler is the best performance poet I have ever seen."
Originally from Stone Mountain, Georgia the son of a Baptist minister, Chris has been on or around the stage his whole life. As a teen-ager he was in the bars and on the road working as a roadie for bands like the Georgia Satellites. He graduated from the North Carolina School of the Performing Arts in 1988. That summer - which was supposed to be a "summer away from college" he hit the road as a street performer to fund his way to audition as a lighting designer in Theaters across America. He actually landed a job on Broadway no-less but turned it down to become a performer in his own right. He has been on the road ever since.
For the first few years he was living in his car and stopping in every town from Bangor to San Ysidro where he opened his guitar case and waxed the manifesto electric sporting a sign that read "Stranded Musician Needs Gas Out of Town." Eventually he hooked up with a group of performers busking in Harvard Square where he joined a commune of other traveling street musicians. These nomadic experiences naturally fed him into the world of activism. Since then he has performed at thousands of festivals, colleges, and bar rooms across the US and Canada.
Poetry Express is proud to be able to present Chris as a featured poet/performer.
Paradise Found
By Chris Chandler
Oakland, CA
Thanksgiving, 2018
Lately...
as we walk through the streets of San Francisco,
Oakland, Sacramento...Berkeley...
complaining that the elastic band
on our N-95 masks fits too tight...
... then remembering the lives that have been more severely impacted than our own.
Loss of life...
loss of family..
loss of home...
loss of community...
Big Picture stuff...
But every big picture is composed of many smaller ones.
Smaller ones that depict lives impacted in ways we don't even think of...
can't even think of...
even though... it is the smaller picture that depicts the greater reality.
The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.
In Paradise California,
before the fire...
like in any community...
everyday dramas were being played out on a routine Sunday morning sidewalk basis.
"Ya know what pisses me off - is that they do the trash pickups on Mondays - and almost every Month has a Monday holiday. Veterans day... No Trash Pick up? Whats up with that?
Do you think they will ever fix the potholes?
"Hey, did you see the Paradise Adventist Academy had advanced to the Northern California Semi-Finals?"
"Paradise Adventist? Really? Do they even have a football team?"
"Volleyball...
Girls Volleyball."
Before the fire
these were the buzzes of front porch
morning coffee neighborhood chit chat.
The stories on the local AM radio station,
the front pages of the local newspaper
"The Paradise Post"
that is now in ashes.
And although in ashes The Paradise Post - through the help of her sister paper The Chico Enterprise-Record continues to publish as they had...
Only,
Now there is no town to deliver to, so they deliver... to the evacuation centers.
For,
we all know...
what happened...
over a two day period...
What started as a small brush fire well west of the town...
swelled into a bonfire...
that turned Paradise...
into Hades...
in a matter of hours.
Potholes and Volleyball are no longer on anyone's mind.
Grab your family and escape...
Escape...
Escape...
But not all of the pre fire drama
of Paradise's "Refuse to Die Community"
was turned into floating ash
that settled on to your car windshield
in Berkeley.
There are twelve players on
The Paradise Adventist Academy Girls Varsity Volley Ball Squad... (GO COUGARS!)
They and their families all made it out alive...
Barely.
Eight of them
and their families
had lost their homes.
Lost everything.
They were all spread out - staying in shelters or with relatives
from Shasta to Stockton.
How could there be a Volley Ball game?
But, this is the semi finals.
No sport in the school's long history
had ever made it that far.
Their opponent...
The Forest Lake Lady Falcons assumed that the team would have to forfeit, and the Falcons began preparing for their next opponent.
But the Cougars refused to be defeated!
Yet,
The Cougars had no equipment,
no uniforms,
no place to practice.
NO PLACE TO PLAY.
No Homes.
But these girls? Now, that is a different story.
Thank god, on Thanksgiving that they don't see things
like you and me.
NEVER
under-estimate the power of young women.
These girls took to social media and they let it be known that THEY needed the game to go on!
In Solidarity, the Lady Falcons agreed to host...
The Lady Cougars...
their lives in total chaos...
arranged for transportation from points unknown to...
Auburn, California....
Home of the Forest Lake Christian School.
The twelve girls
met in a parking lot for the first time since the fire...
they linked arms.... United. Defiant.
Together, they marched into the opposing team's gym....
There they were met with something that few "visiting teams" receive when they walk into an opposing teams' home:
They were met with a standing ovation.
They were also met with much more...
Within 24 hours of the devastating fire,
the Forest Lake Falcons had collected donations of $16,000
Laid out on the visiting bench...
were new knee pads,
socks...
and most impressively...
new uniforms.
Each matched with the players' number and name on the back.....
matched perfectly
with what they would have worn
if the fire had not happened.
Instrumental in this act of generosity was Forest Lake coach Travis Smith
who had recently retired from coaching...
but was asked to return for one more season. Initially, he was ambivalent, but his wife had had a premonition that he needed to do this.
So he agreed - for this - his final season.
When he
was asked to address the crowd...
the applause calmed into an appreciative hush.
"I had been looking for a reason to have returned as coach this year... and I think this...
this...
this moment right here...
is it.
The Paradise Lady Cougars went on to win that game against the Forest Lake Falcons.
They won the game, but not the match.
But in truth, they won much more
than any volleyball squad could.
They are the champions of my heart!
It would be poetic to say that the Lady Cougars went on to win the state championship
but in a way they did.
Instead, (sorry for the pun)
Paradise Lost.
They had to...
because, my friends,
this is not Hollywood.
This is Paradise.
12/03/2018 Barbara Saunders
Barbara Saunders is a poet and solo performer from Westchester, NY. She followed the Grateful Dead to California and stayed. Her work explores themes of family, biography, and identity. Barbara has featured recently at the Last Word and Saturday Night Special poetry series, That Really Happened storytelling series, and Monday Night Marsh.
Haiku
Ripened on the tree
The apple drops at her feet
Juicy bites bring joy
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.
11/19/2018 Joyce Young
Joyce E. Young currently lives and writes in Berkeley, California. She has read and performed at venues as diverse as The M.H. de Young Museum, Intersection for the Arts, La Peña Cultural Center, Art & Soul Oakland, Mills College, and Smith College, and elsewhere. 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 an English teacher for Mills College Upward Bound for 3 years. She is founder and facilitator of Write in Peace. She has received a California Arts Council Artist in Communities grant. She was awarded a Writers on Site residency through Poets & Writers, Inc. and has also been awarded writing residencies at Hedgebrook, Soapstone and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has most recently appeared in riverbabble, The New Voices of the American West, Temba Tupu! (Walking Naked): The Africana Woman’s Self-Portrait, The Berkeley Daily Planet, Paint Dreams on Walls, voicesinwartime.org and Her Mark Gallery Datebook. She currently serves as a writing consultant at John F. Kennedy University, teaches privately and is at work on Parallel Journey, a novel.
Her poetry chapbook, How it Happens is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in September 2018.
Her poetry chapbook, How it Happens is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in September 2018.
11/12/2018 Sophia Moore
Sophia Moore is 20 years old and attends UC Berkeley for English and Gender and Women's Studies. In high school, she sat on the Alameda Island Poets Board and served as the Poet Laureate at her school, Alameda Community Learning Center. Additionally, she interned at the Dancing Poetry Festival and performed in a number of the dances at Palace of the Legion of Honor.
The Possibilities of Half a Tank of Gas and Two Healing Hearts
There might be beauty in the way she cries,
In the way blood leaks between ribs from her breaking heart.
There might be beauty in the security of a setting sun.
One golden horizon intertwines at the top of their fishbowl
With the deep blue of another skyline,
But when she looks up, she only sees his eyes.
Oncoming armies melt away into the fickle clouds.
There might be beauty in the way the dawn lifts the twilit dew into a burning night.
The ghost of an undetermined future sits in the driver’s seat of a motionless car.
The passenger closes her eyes, bathing in each pulse of electricity,
Clinging as if the beat of her heart relies on every shock.
A fog climbs down the mountain in waterfall determination,
While calloused memories slip down the rocky slope in a bubble of giggles.
There might be beauty in the silence of their conversation.
Every spoken phrase already known between them:
“Hide your eyes so they don’t know this is private property.”
There might be beauty in the way she wishes on shooting stars,
There might be beauty in the way she falls deeper into her own heart with each breath,
There might be--
There might be--
There might be beauty in the way she cries,
But it might be the glimpse of a dream-- intangible as the burning sky.
There is beauty in the way she falls asleep alone, asking still for tomorrow’s blessing.
Next time these piggybacking fictions hop from one island of light to another,
I promise not to leave the stitching between their hearts so unfinished.
11/05/2018 elana levy
elana levy is a recent transplant to the land of her daughter, of avocados and redwoods from the northeast, of snow lakes and green. Legacies and Heresies with blessings is her latest collection. She has also translated from the German the much heralded 20th century Jewish poet Rose Asländer. Elana taught math a community college for two decades. She was firs photographed by the FBI in 1959. Student and teacher of Jewish meditation and Kabbala; factory worker, social justice activist, radio producer, video director; embraces silence one month yearly. Still studying hard, knowing there are no easy answers. She doesn’t Capitalize her name.
10/22/2018
Andrew J. Thomas was born and raised by a couple of hippies in a small Alabama town. And if that wasn't confusing enough, he joined the Navy and traveled all over Europe before relocating to Oakland, California. Married too young, he soon became a dad, got divorced and found a "real" job. Eventually he remarried and settled down in the Bay Area brackish waters known as Vacaville. These days, he is a sad man full of sad words that he sometimes shares in order to make you sad.
When he's not enjoying your tears, he's busy parenting two young adults, or professionally bullshitting for a living. He's the webmaster for various poets and small presses and a founding member of The Beast Crawl Literary Festival. His book, Strangeland, was the inaugural publication from Naked Bulb Press, even though he is generally unpublished due to laziness and fear. Unable to completely abandon his Southern roots, he still enjoys politeness, fried food, and whiskey.
The Myth We Lent to GodTo Hart Crane
In pieces now, slowly dissected, a little less there each time
I drive across the bay from east to west.
At night, a silhouette of what once was, the shadow of a beast,
that grey metal testament of man’s faith in man,
stretching from crane to crane.
The replacement, a white lighted beacon of hope
stretching from crane to crane.
The replacement, a white lighted beacon of hope
suspended on the precipice of disillusion;
Rust already eating away at the unseen foundational cracks,
Rust already eating away at the unseen foundational cracks,
as man is no longer capable of such impossible feats.
And yet we witness the reversal of construction,
a more intentional disassembly than Loma Prieta.
There is a metaphor here about the limitations of belief,
And yet we witness the reversal of construction,
a more intentional disassembly than Loma Prieta.
There is a metaphor here about the limitations of belief,
another about impermanence.
The myth is being forgotten.
We are owed an explanation that will never come,
The myth is being forgotten.
We are owed an explanation that will never come,
because man, like God, won’t make good on his promises.
10/29/2018 Other People's Poems Guess who wrote it? hosted by
10/15/2018 Garrett Murphy hosted by bruce
Garrett Murphy is known throughout the greater Bay Area as (the "King of Political Satire," (much to his utter surprise)
sharing tongue-in-cheek observations about political and other forms of human nature.
He is the author of the poetry anthologies "Noe Showing" and "What We Claim...What We Are," the prose
collection "The Ugly Salon," and the novel "Yang But Yin: The Legend of Miss Dragonheel," in addition to
appearing in various other anthologies.
NOT GEORGE CARLIN’S SEVEN DIRTY WORDS
Fetus.
Entitlement.
Diversity.
Transgender
Vulnerable.
Evidence-based.
Science-based.
What?
No buzz?
Where’s the beeper?
The shock?
Anything?
Was there not supposed to be some sort of catastrophe?
Some earth-shattering cataclysm?
But all that can be heard
is some faint,
feeble-minded inept hissyfit
from a most miniscule gallery
which one would not dare offend peanuts
by naming it in their honor.
Perhaps if they had chosen
a few slurs instead…
© 2018 Garrett Murphy
10/8/2018 Saswati Das
Saswati Das, an engineer by profession and a poet by heart, lives in Milpitas, California, and writes poems and fiction in both English and Hindi. She publishes her poetry in local magazines and anthologies. She has recited her verses in cultural and poetry events such as Lit Crawl, 100k poets for change and Oakland Poetry Slam. She has published a poetry book in English captioned “Fragrant Flute of Fire” which is available in Amazon. She maintains a blog at www.kalpanain.blogspot.com.
Struggle for Liberty
Oh listen, listen to the voice,
Here's misery and whips of tyranny,
Exploit us they, our feet chained
History of Justice always summons
Marvin R. Hiemstra appeared a valiant Leo in the Year of the Rabbit and was instructed by a tiny prairie grass frog on his wrist at age three. Honors Graduate from Iowa Writers Workshop and founding Editor-in-Chief of the Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review with work in Caveat Lector, Amsterdam Quarterly, The Satirist, North American Review, and elsewhere Marvin publishes and performs around the world. Dana Gioia called the DVD French Kiss Destiny, “superb work.” Shawn Pittard, The Great American Pinup, said, “What I hold closest to my heart is Marvin’s reminder of the importance of human affection in this totally terrifying 21st Century.” Library Journal reported, “Whimsical poet/humorist Hiemstra shares his thoughts and observations on society: a very agreeable addition to contemporary American literature.”
AUTUMN DAZZLE
The last bowl of red cherries
for this year means autumn.
Oops! One clever cherry escaped
the bowl. Everyone laughs.
I am carefully arranging wildflowers
in a boat-shaped basket.
Wind hits verandah, twists
arrangement. It looks better.
Pure wind from the North
transforms a quiet hill of flame
maple brocade into a shimmering
spirit forest, all ablaze.
It’s time to put fresh white paper
on all the shoji. No more
patches! Oldest tree in the garden
wears brilliant persimmons.
“Pearls!” shouted Yogi when snow fell
through a ruined thatch roof.
Pearls tumble through our sun yellow
wisteria leaves. It makes me blue.
09/24/2018
Missy Church runs Naked Bulb open-mic, now on it’s seventh year in Fruitvale. She founded Naked Bulb Press and helped to bring the first lit crawl to Oakland. Missy has appeared in numerous readings in the Bay Area over the last ten years and her first full length book, CHURCH, by Paper Press can be found on her mom’s book shelf or at paperpress.org
Looking Back and Thinking, What Was I So Worried About
To be bare and so far apart
our bodies, a panic attack
magnets propped up
in just the right way
skin on skin
reject
attract
I whisper, I love you
with the night ears
of cotton swabs
bee’s wax and
the intermittent breath
from my muscle memory
to yours
09/17/2018 Clyde Always
Clyde Always (the Bard of the Lower Haight), being the All-American tall-talesman and dime-a-rhyme vaudevillian that he is, has successfully provided audiences, both at home and abroad, with the refreshing splash of laughter and the snug comfort of joy; to inspire creativity is his primary objective here on planet Earth. You can catch his act any Friday evening at Cafe International where he serves the community fostering new talents as host and ringleader of the weekly open-mic showcase. His writings and artwork have recently been accepted to exclusive publications: Poetalk, The Broke Bohemian, 17 Very Funny Very Short Stories and others. Melanie Bell and the Story Salon, the bard’s debut novel, published by Rational Malarkey Inc, placed as a semifinalist in the Faulkner Society’s William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2017. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Haylee the Ukulele.
Oh listen, listen to the voice,
For there the cuckoo cry-
We'll have to sail through the ocean of blood-
For the deep blue sky.
Here's misery and whips of tyranny,
Pains, pathos outcry-
There the bird of liberty and freedom
Throughout the day fly.
Exploit us they, our feet chained
But amidst darkness, the candle flames-
Every drop of blood that runs through the veins
Sings, Sings and says again-
Thousands of blazes is the demand of the day
Fight we must, die we may.
History of Justice always summons
Sweat, tears and martyrdom
Let’s measure the nights of mourn and sacrifice,
The brilliant sun there arise-
To heel our hearts and charm souls with gaiety
By the songs of love and liberty.
10/01/2018 Marvin R. Hiemstra
Marvin R. Hiemstra appeared a valiant Leo in the Year of the Rabbit and was instructed by a tiny prairie grass frog on his wrist at age three. Honors Graduate from Iowa Writers Workshop and founding Editor-in-Chief of the Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review with work in Caveat Lector, Amsterdam Quarterly, The Satirist, North American Review, and elsewhere Marvin publishes and performs around the world. Dana Gioia called the DVD French Kiss Destiny, “superb work.” Shawn Pittard, The Great American Pinup, said, “What I hold closest to my heart is Marvin’s reminder of the importance of human affection in this totally terrifying 21st Century.” Library Journal reported, “Whimsical poet/humorist Hiemstra shares his thoughts and observations on society: a very agreeable addition to contemporary American literature.”
AUTUMN DAZZLE
The last bowl of red cherries
for this year means autumn.
Oops! One clever cherry escaped
the bowl. Everyone laughs.
I am carefully arranging wildflowers
in a boat-shaped basket.
Wind hits verandah, twists
arrangement. It looks better.
Pure wind from the North
transforms a quiet hill of flame
maple brocade into a shimmering
spirit forest, all ablaze.
It’s time to put fresh white paper
on all the shoji. No more
patches! Oldest tree in the garden
wears brilliant persimmons.
“Pearls!” shouted Yogi when snow fell
through a ruined thatch roof.
Pearls tumble through our sun yellow
wisteria leaves. It makes me blue.
09/24/2018
Missy Church runs Naked Bulb open-mic, now on it’s seventh year in Fruitvale. She founded Naked Bulb Press and helped to bring the first lit crawl to Oakland. Missy has appeared in numerous readings in the Bay Area over the last ten years and her first full length book, CHURCH, by Paper Press can be found on her mom’s book shelf or at paperpress.org
Looking Back and Thinking, What Was I So Worried About
To be bare and so far apart
our bodies, a panic attack
magnets propped up
in just the right way
skin on skin
reject
attract
I whisper, I love you
with the night ears
of cotton swabs
bee’s wax and
the intermittent breath
from my muscle memory
to yours
Missy Church runs Naked Bulb open-mic, now on it’s seventh year in Fruitvale. She founded Naked Bulb Press and helped to bring the first lit crawl to Oakland. Missy has appeared in numerous readings in the Bay Area over the last ten years and her first full length book, CHURCH, by Paper Press can be found on her mom’s book shelf or at paperpress.org
Looking Back and Thinking, What Was I So Worried About
To be bare and so far apart
our bodies, a panic attack
magnets propped up
in just the right way
skin on skin
reject
attract
I whisper, I love you
with the night ears
of cotton swabs
bee’s wax and
the intermittent breath
from my muscle memory
to yours
09/17/2018 Clyde Always
Clyde Always (the Bard of the Lower Haight), being the All-American tall-talesman and dime-a-rhyme vaudevillian that he is, has successfully provided audiences, both at home and abroad, with the refreshing splash of laughter and the snug comfort of joy; to inspire creativity is his primary objective here on planet Earth. You can catch his act any Friday evening at Cafe International where he serves the community fostering new talents as host and ringleader of the weekly open-mic showcase. His writings and artwork have recently been accepted to exclusive publications: Poetalk, The Broke Bohemian, 17 Very Funny Very Short Stories and others. Melanie Bell and the Story Salon, the bard’s debut novel, published by Rational Malarkey Inc, placed as a semifinalist in the Faulkner Society’s William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition in 2017. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Haylee the Ukulele.
Bloodbath!
What ruthless warrior am I,
to cause this crimson flood?
Remorseful now, I stand and cry
above a sea of blood.
Oh, slaughterhouses everywhere
will crumble down in shame;
and Tarantino’s kiddie fare
seems infantile—tame.
The Chupacabra’s drank a sip
compared to all this swill.
Count Dracula would curl his lip
and call it ‘overkill.’
Was Gettysburg a lousy joke?
Were Spartans rarely rough?
Felt Caesar but a measly poke?
Was Patton just a puff?
Attila’s savagery’s now moot,
that tender, gentle Hun…
and Genghis Kahn would lick my boot
to see such horrors done!
Perhaps a tiny trickle fell
from Christ upon the cross,
but none have raise such gruesome Hell
as I, who’s tried to floss.
9/10/2018 Truly Edison hosted by Jim
Truly Edison is a senior at Alameda Community Learning Center, and the current poet laureate of her school. She lives in Alameda with her parents, her three siblings, and her pet dog. She has been writing poetry since middle school, and is very active within her school's poetry club. She describes her writing as a form of dreaming while awake; a method of processing outside images and sensation through words.
"BODYWORDZ"
My heart is no organ of fire
Because I'm much too shy
It's more of a deer at the side of the highway
Wandering the dying grass with headlight eyes
It lives only at dusk and dawn
Creeping into the light when all others lay still
Decaying in the shallow end of sleep
In my mind I conjured up a collage of you
Eyes and ears and tongues disconnected
Out of context
But what finally did it was
A single strand of my hair on your bathroom counter
And the fraud of intimacy
It so coyly implied
08/27/2018
Clive Matson hung with the Beats in New York City in the early 1960s and he reconnected when he performed “Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Good-bye” at the European Beat Studies Network in 2017 in Paris. The passionate intensity that runs through us all emerged on a backpacking trip in the southern Sierra when he saw trees and mountains and smoke from a wild fire – and began that poem. He won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award and the City of Berkeley Lifetime Achievement award in poetry for 2012. Visit him at matsonpoet.com or wikipedia.
09/03/2018 Labor Day, NO PE, BAPC Picnic instead, see Bay Area Poets Coalition for details.
08/20/2018 Judy Bebelaar Reads from Her Book About the Children of Jonestown.
hosted by bruce
Of the 918 Americans who died in the shocking murder-suicides of November 18, 1978 in Jonestown and Georgetown, Guyana, one-third were under eighteen; more than half in their twenties or younger. And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown begins in San Francisco, at the small school where Reverend Jim Jones enrolled the teens of his Peoples Temple church in 1976. Within nine months, most had been sent—many disappearing over that summer —to what Jones described as a jungle paradise.
A Bay Area Writing Project Teacher Consultant, Judy Bebelaar’s poetry has been published widely in magazines and in three anthologies. Walking Across the Pacific, a chapbook, was published in 2014 by Finishing Line Press. She and Ron Cabral are co-authors of And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown.
Ron Cabral, a teacher and administrator in the San Francisco Unified School District for 35 years, served in the Reserve programs of the Navy and Coast Guard. He contributed writing and photography to the Coast Guard magazine and is the author of Country Joe and Me, about his friendship with Joe.
08/13/2018 Avotcja
What ruthless warrior am I,
to cause this crimson flood?
Remorseful now, I stand and cry
above a sea of blood.
Oh, slaughterhouses everywhere
will crumble down in shame;
and Tarantino’s kiddie fare
seems infantile—tame.
The Chupacabra’s drank a sip
compared to all this swill.
Count Dracula would curl his lip
and call it ‘overkill.’
Was Gettysburg a lousy joke?
Were Spartans rarely rough?
Felt Caesar but a measly poke?
Was Patton just a puff?
Attila’s savagery’s now moot,
that tender, gentle Hun…
and Genghis Kahn would lick my boot
to see such horrors done!
Perhaps a tiny trickle fell
from Christ upon the cross,
but none have raise such gruesome Hell
as I, who’s tried to floss.
to cause this crimson flood?
Remorseful now, I stand and cry
above a sea of blood.
Oh, slaughterhouses everywhere
will crumble down in shame;
and Tarantino’s kiddie fare
seems infantile—tame.
The Chupacabra’s drank a sip
compared to all this swill.
Count Dracula would curl his lip
and call it ‘overkill.’
Was Gettysburg a lousy joke?
Were Spartans rarely rough?
Felt Caesar but a measly poke?
Was Patton just a puff?
Attila’s savagery’s now moot,
that tender, gentle Hun…
and Genghis Kahn would lick my boot
to see such horrors done!
Perhaps a tiny trickle fell
from Christ upon the cross,
but none have raise such gruesome Hell
as I, who’s tried to floss.
9/10/2018 Truly Edison hosted by Jim
Truly Edison is a senior at Alameda Community Learning Center, and the current poet laureate of her school. She lives in Alameda with her parents, her three siblings, and her pet dog. She has been writing poetry since middle school, and is very active within her school's poetry club. She describes her writing as a form of dreaming while awake; a method of processing outside images and sensation through words."BODYWORDZ"My heart is no organ of fireBecause I'm much too shyIt's more of a deer at the side of the highwayWandering the dying grass with headlight eyesIt lives only at dusk and dawnCreeping into the light when all others lay stillDecaying in the shallow end of sleepIn my mind I conjured up a collage of youEyes and ears and tongues disconnectedOut of contextBut what finally did it wasA single strand of my hair on your bathroom counterAnd the fraud of intimacyIt so coyly implied
08/27/2018
Clive Matson hung with the Beats in New York City in the early 1960s and he reconnected when he performed “Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Good-bye” at the European Beat Studies Network in 2017 in Paris. The passionate intensity that runs through us all emerged on a backpacking trip in the southern Sierra when he saw trees and mountains and smoke from a wild fire – and began that poem. He won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award and the City of Berkeley Lifetime Achievement award in poetry for 2012. Visit him at matsonpoet.com or wikipedia.
09/03/2018 Labor Day, NO PE, BAPC Picnic instead, see Bay Area Poets Coalition for details.
08/20/2018 Judy Bebelaar Reads from Her Book About the Children of Jonestown.
hosted by bruce
hosted by bruce
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08/13/2018 Avotcja
Poet/Playwright/Multi-Percussionist/Photographer/Teacher
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 Bacaat 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.
07/23/2018
Colleen McKee is the author of five collections of memoir, poetry, and fiction. Her latest book is called The Kingdom of Roly-Polys (Pedestrian Press). http://thepedestrianpress.weebly.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html For upcoming appearances, visit http://colleenmckee.blogspot.com/.
When I was little, a wild hill girl
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 Bacaat 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.
07/23/2018
Colleen McKee is the author of five collections of memoir, poetry, and fiction. Her latest book is called The Kingdom of Roly-Polys (Pedestrian Press). http://thepedestrianpress.weebly.com/store/c1/Featured_Products.html For upcoming appearances, visit http://colleenmckee.blogspot.com/.
When I was little, a wild hill girl
of sun-scratched prairie
and shadowy woods cool
with the breath of the river,
I would spend hours in the tall tick-filled grass
just thinking about giraffes,
the mahogany and pale gold fur,
the arch of their necks bisecting the sun,
their elegant limbs listing and loping—
I’d dream of the giants of Africa
and play with the critters of Missouri,
walking sticks looking with paranoid eyes
at the tiny brown twig of my finger,
dizzy at being lifted
a mere two inches
from the dark grass.
Solace is a Small Gray Stone
Solace is a small gray stone
It is smooth. Curl your fingers
it is. Unlike sorrow, the stone
Feel the way
even in the shade
07/30/2018 StoryTelling / Flash Fiction Night hosted by Jim
08/06/2018 Steve Arntson & Loie Johnson
Steve Arntson came to writing after musical studies at the University of Washington - he became interested in poetry as read at some of the open mics in San Francisco in the 80s and 90s while he would always love to read poetry before, it was only after hearing others share their work at places like Cafe Babar and the Old Spaghetti Factory and myriad other open mics around town that he committed to writing himself he believes in writing each day if possible and cites journaling as a way to realize that end
Lately he's enjoyed the experience of writing short stories as well and finds them fun to do after the stricter demands of imagery and metaphor
Over time he's narrowed the scope of the writing to geography, especially the Oregon coast and the open spaces of Nevada where the Burning Man Arts Festival is
He's grateful to many friends and writers who have influenced and also continues to study music
Loie Johnson is a local Bay Area poet who lives in Palo Alto. She has been a writer and
an artist beginning in childhood.
Loie has been published internationally, and in many Bay Area anthologies.
She was a Feature at Kepler's in Menlo Park, and did a special Poetry Feature with a
Shinto Art Presentation at the Waverly Writers after a visit to Japan.
She has also been a Feature at other Bay Area venues.
She and Elyse Garlock, a theatrical Mime, collaborated for many years, doing performances in
Palo Alto, and Santa Monica.
07/16/2018 David Zeltzer hosted by bruce
I started writing poems in grade school and I've never stopped. My writing continued but slowed down in grad school, and during my years in Boston working on human/computer interface design. I’ve returned to the Bay Area, writing at full speed, and reading everywhere I can.
While I was living in Eugene, Oregon, I co-founded the editorial collective that published 10 Point 5: A Magazine of the Arts. We published 7 issues from 1976-78, including poetry, images, and interviews with local filmmakers, dancers, Robert Bly, and the novelist Ursula Le Guin. My poems have appeared in Troubador Anthology, The Goodly Company, Mr. Cogito, Echo, 10 Point 5, Uut Poetry and Fur-lined Ghettos. You can get my digital chapbook, Realtime Babies, from iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and amazon -- you can hear me read all the poems in that volume at www.realtimebabies.net. On May 30, 2016, I was the featured poet in the San Francisco Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV Show on youtube, in the segment hotsted by Clara Hsu.
melt the poured titanium
overgrown life has graves
growing normal pilots in paris
i can’t find trees inside us
to reach molybdenum anywhere
or salvage the ancient robot wheatfield violin dances
there’s not enough mustard gas
in the student aircraft wires
to guide us through the stalingrad meteors
i talked to her this week so please rescue us
and start over
tiny little machines listen to my favorite dying hole
the laser found my hot
stellar tape will say my name
and push the wrong button under the green bushes
i like to think i have no friend to meet
someday all my radios will sing stillness
stop the microscope satellite
under small trees
and marry the silent deathbed
gathered in dark mountain gunshots
— san jose
may 2015
07/9/2018 Leticia Garcia Bradford
Leticia Garcia Bradford is a poet, playwright and publisher. In 2014 she founded B Street Writers Collective (BSWC), Hayward, CA- a community of writers both amateur and professional. Her poems and stories have been published in local and national journals. She edited BSWC’s anthology FLY WITH ME which she is, also, the publisher for MoonShine Star Co. BSWC’s new anthology WHAT IS LOVE debuted this spring for which she is also editor and publisher. In 2017, Leticia toured around the entire SF Bay Area with her poetry and stories at open mics and readings. Check out her blogs: MY NEW ADVENTURE, living without a place to call home at leticiagarciabradford.
Poem for Christopher
(and Kason)
I want to be alone
Life outside heavy and hardening
Driving streets freeway and stoplights with
fears of bumper to bumper
A terrifying scream from way down deep
Easier to sit inside
Inside I have my cat, my Lazyboy
My blanket which to hide beneath
My pillow where my lover rested his head
Alone I am safe and free
Safe and free
I want to be free
Escaping a past that haunts me
Nightmares of the restraints coupling my wrists
Cutting deep chafing my unprotected skin
Painfully reminding me that the release remains
elusive at the same time comforting
Letting go of the ills of my shallow heart
Shallow heart
I want to be a heart
blood pooling coursing to and fro
Dripping via veins arteries capillaries
Threat of vulnerability bearing down
Combined with insecurity of touch
Trusting you my friend
I’ve been here before
the rhythm the pounding
bathed in warmth
Capture a dandelion, unpredictable wish
Unpredictable wish
I want to be a dandelion
Wisps of fuzz and seeds hidden in my wallet
A part of you I don’t know why
The night my nephew had had enough of this world
I found myself walking the neighborhood
Searching for soothing moonlight
Moon Light
I want to be the moon
With cows and cheese
Teasing stars with
tickles and butterfly kisses
Tears sprouting laughter
The man’s luminescent teeth hearty
like a lover on the horizon
the horizon
I want to be loved
Know that I am worthy
Quirkiness and all
Companionship
Independence
Respect for the life giving muscle
Transversing between time with patience and perseverance
To find I’m alone
Leticia Garcia Bradford
© February 2018
07/02/2018 Roopa Ramamoorthi
Roopa is a biotech scientist and poet who grew up in India and calls Berkeley home. She was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2011 and her work has appeared in the anthologies, 'She is Such a Geek', 'Dismantle' and 'Red Skirt Blue Jeans' and on Perspectives on NPR and in India Currents, Berkeley Daily Planet, Khabar, Ursa Minor, Spectrum and other venues.
Family Tree
By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Few weeks ago I spent two days in Mendocino
tucked away on California’s northern coast
Heard the waves lashing the rocks, saw a red-breasted robin
ready to take flight, a young seal on the rocks
sunning itself, then setting out for a swim
When I hiked in fern canyon
I touched the trunk
Of one sturdy redwood tree
Climbing the narrow trails, inhaling the misty air
I saw nobody else out there this Tuesday
Only those ancient pteridophytes
Layers upon layers of green
Beckoning and bewitching from the other side of time
I descended back to pygmy forest
Nature’s bonsai of acorn and cypress
Stunted trees adapted to the saline soil
five hundred thousand years old
The landscape here became more stark, less serene
I stood transported to a different tree, a different time
A photocopy in charcoal black, empty white and shades of gray
From five full years ago. It could have been
a Japanese artist’s ink brush drawing
A single tree standing on a winter’s night, severe and still
Or a botanist’s sketch of a new species
with nodules narrowing four branches
But no, it was my mother’s arteries
Captured from her angiography
In Jaslok hospital, Mumbai
soon after her heart attack
I took that image—consulted cardiologists
In Palo Alto and San Francisco
A month later she became ashes sprinkled in the Godavari River
Traveling to where the Arabian sea kisses the star-studded sky
Becoming engulfed in the universe’s eternal canopy
A black and white sketch that still breathes in a cardboard box of mine
Along with the torn black book of her recipes and her childhood photos
One of her sitting in her chubby frock at one
Another of her watering young saplings
as a girl of eleven
One more at twenty-four
Holding her newborn baby
standing next to a budding jasmine tree
This poem was published in http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-12-23/article/31888?headline=Family-Tree
06/25/2018
Sandra Anfang is a Northern California teacher, poet, and visual artist. She is the author of four poetry collections and several chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetalk, San Francisco Peace and Hope, two Healdsburg Literary Guild anthologies, Unbroken Literary Journal, Rattle, and Spillway. Her chapbook, Looking Glass Heart, was published by Finishing Line Press in early 2016. Road Worrier, her new chapbook, is due in March, 2018. She was nominated for a Best Short Fictions in 2016 and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sandra is founder and host of the monthly poetry series, Rivertown Poets, in Petaluma, and a California Poet/Teacher in the Schools. To write, for her, is to breathe.
Board of Directors
The first one I'd appoint is Rain, for humility.
I'd taste my tears, bled from the mask
as they roll down to court heaven's effluence
watch as both commingle in a stormy sea.
Next, I'd seat the Moon, for mystery
who rules my dreams and guides my pen.
I want to climb inside her iridescent skin
to die before I parse her essence
into tiny, measurable things.
Finally, I'd invite the Sun, for kindness and for love
the warmth of his beneficence
the way he enters me, encircles grief
melts the ice-glass curtain of the heart.
These three would be
the only guests I'd need
my pantheon
my holy trinity.
Sandra Anfang --Author of Looking Glass Heart, a poetry chapbook, published by Finishing Line Press © 2016. Available at finishinglinepress.com and Amazon.com. My new chapbook, Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape, is forthcoming from the same publisher. Pre-order by January 26, 2018, at a discounted rate: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/road-worrier-poems-of-the-inner-and-outer-landscape-by-sandra-anfang/
06/18/2018
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker and educator. His book titled, "Someone's Dead Already" was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book of poems “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” was published in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series.
06/11/2018 Nancy Schimmel hosted by Jim
Civilization
In the juncture between two narrow roads
The last fragment of a once-great circle of trunk still stands
Shaggy redbrown bark worn down
The tallest part upthrust higher than a person’s head
But not by much
Around the tip of this finger of wood
Someone has wrapped a telephone line
A redwood must be even slower to anger than I am
But as I stand in the road
It is clear to me which finger
It holds up
05/28/2018 Memorial Day NO PE
06/04/2018 Ken Risling
Bay Area singer-songwriter Ken Risling has been having a love affair with music since childhood: singing before he could talk, learning his tribe’s traditional dances, and playing instruments -- piano, trumpet, French horn, guitar, bass -- at every chance he could grab. But it was grief that broke the dam and released the songs within him. He was 40 before he finished his first testimonial to loss, “Down To Jonestown”; it's critical acclaim signaled the emergence of his voice from the ocean of silence, and so began the gentle rain of songs. There are many, now, in all manner of style and subject. It is the delicate pas de deux between words and music that fuels his enthusiasm for the art; and it is the connection with the audience through songs that feeds his love for performing.
05/21/2018 Marty Williams
Oakland poet, Marty Williams's work appears most recently in Atlanta Review, The Heron Tree and Poetry East, as well as in anthologies, Bearing Witness: Poetry By Teachers About Teaching and Winged: New Writing About Bees. With the Bay Area Writing Project and Amherst Writers and Artists, Marty leads writing workshops through Room to Write for writers of all ages. She also co-coordinates the monthly Bay Area Writing Project reading series, Teachers Write – Writers Teach. Marty is currently working on a manuscript, The Forest Within, poems about hometown Oakland, California, and her homeground, Alaska.
THE CLEARING (FOR MY FATHER)
Solace is a small gray stone
at rest in the palm of your hand.
It is smooth. Curl your fingers
around it, but slowly. How solid
it is. Unlike sorrow, the stone
is finite. It can be weighed.
Feel the way
it carries the sun
even in the shade
of your thumb.
07/30/2018 StoryTelling / Flash Fiction Night hosted by Jim
08/06/2018 Steve Arntson & Loie Johnson
Steve Arntson came to writing after musical studies at the University of Washington - he became interested in poetry as read at some of the open mics in San Francisco in the 80s and 90s while he would always love to read poetry before, it was only after hearing others share their work at places like Cafe Babar and the Old Spaghetti Factory and myriad other open mics around town that he committed to writing himself he believes in writing each day if possible and cites journaling as a way to realize that end
Lately he's enjoyed the experience of writing short stories as well and finds them fun to do after the stricter demands of imagery and metaphor
Over time he's narrowed the scope of the writing to geography, especially the Oregon coast and the open spaces of Nevada where the Burning Man Arts Festival is
He's grateful to many friends and writers who have influenced and also continues to study music
Loie Johnson is a local Bay Area poet who lives in Palo Alto. She has been a writer and
an artist beginning in childhood.
an artist beginning in childhood.
Loie has been published internationally, and in many Bay Area anthologies.
She was a Feature at Kepler's in Menlo Park, and did a special Poetry Feature with a
Shinto Art Presentation at the Waverly Writers after a visit to Japan.
Shinto Art Presentation at the Waverly Writers after a visit to Japan.
She has also been a Feature at other Bay Area venues.
She and Elyse Garlock, a theatrical Mime, collaborated for many years, doing performances in
Palo Alto, and Santa Monica.
Palo Alto, and Santa Monica.
07/16/2018 David Zeltzer hosted by bruce
I started writing poems in grade school and I've never stopped. My writing continued but slowed down in grad school, and during my years in Boston working on human/computer interface design. I’ve returned to the Bay Area, writing at full speed, and reading everywhere I can.
While I was living in Eugene, Oregon, I co-founded the editorial collective that published 10 Point 5: A Magazine of the Arts. We published 7 issues from 1976-78, including poetry, images, and interviews with local filmmakers, dancers, Robert Bly, and the novelist Ursula Le Guin. My poems have appeared in Troubador Anthology, The Goodly Company, Mr. Cogito, Echo, 10 Point 5, Uut Poetry and Fur-lined Ghettos. You can get my digital chapbook, Realtime Babies, from iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and amazon -- you can hear me read all the poems in that volume at www.realtimebabies.net. On May 30, 2016, I was the featured poet in the San Francisco Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV Show on youtube, in the segment hotsted by Clara Hsu.
melt the poured titanium
overgrown life has graves
growing normal pilots in paris
i can’t find trees inside us
to reach molybdenum anywhere
or salvage the ancient robot wheatfield violin dances
there’s not enough mustard gas
in the student aircraft wires
to guide us through the stalingrad meteors
i talked to her this week so please rescue us
and start over
tiny little machines listen to my favorite dying hole
the laser found my hot
stellar tape will say my name
and push the wrong button under the green bushes
i like to think i have no friend to meet
someday all my radios will sing stillness
stop the microscope satellite
under small trees
and marry the silent deathbed
gathered in dark mountain gunshots
— san jose
may 2015
Leticia Garcia Bradford is a poet, playwright and publisher. In 2014 she founded B Street Writers Collective (BSWC), Hayward, CA- a community of writers both amateur and professional. Her poems and stories have been published in local and national journals. She edited BSWC’s anthology FLY WITH ME which she is, also, the publisher for MoonShine Star Co. BSWC’s new anthology WHAT IS LOVE debuted this spring for which she is also editor and publisher. In 2017, Leticia toured around the entire SF Bay Area with her poetry and stories at open mics and readings. Check out her blogs: MY NEW ADVENTURE, living without a place to call home at leticiagarciabradford.
Poem for Christopher
(and Kason)
I want to be alone
Life outside heavy and hardening
Driving streets freeway and stoplights with
fears of bumper to bumper
A terrifying scream from way down deep
Easier to sit inside
Inside I have my cat, my Lazyboy
My blanket which to hide beneath
My pillow where my lover rested his head
Alone I am safe and free
Safe and free
I want to be free
Escaping a past that haunts me
Nightmares of the restraints coupling my wrists
Cutting deep chafing my unprotected skin
Painfully reminding me that the release remains
elusive at the same time comforting
Letting go of the ills of my shallow heart
Shallow heart
I want to be a heart
blood pooling coursing to and fro
Dripping via veins arteries capillaries
Threat of vulnerability bearing down
Combined with insecurity of touch
Trusting you my friend
I’ve been here before
the rhythm the pounding
bathed in warmth
Capture a dandelion, unpredictable wish
Unpredictable wish
I want to be a dandelion
Wisps of fuzz and seeds hidden in my wallet
A part of you I don’t know why
The night my nephew had had enough of this world
I found myself walking the neighborhood
Searching for soothing moonlight
Moon Light
I want to be the moon
With cows and cheese
Teasing stars with
tickles and butterfly kisses
Tears sprouting laughter
The man’s luminescent teeth hearty
like a lover on the horizon
the horizon
I want to be loved
Know that I am worthy
Quirkiness and all
Companionship
Independence
Respect for the life giving muscle
Transversing between time with patience and perseverance
To find I’m alone
Leticia Garcia Bradford
© February 2018
07/02/2018 Roopa Ramamoorthi
Roopa is a biotech scientist and poet who grew up in India and calls Berkeley home. She was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2011 and her work has appeared in the anthologies, 'She is Such a Geek', 'Dismantle' and 'Red Skirt Blue Jeans' and on Perspectives on NPR and in India Currents, Berkeley Daily Planet, Khabar, Ursa Minor, Spectrum and other venues.
Family Tree
By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Few weeks ago I spent two days in Mendocino
tucked away on California’s northern coast
Heard the waves lashing the rocks, saw a red-breasted robin
ready to take flight, a young seal on the rocks
sunning itself, then setting out for a swim
When I hiked in fern canyon
I touched the trunk
Of one sturdy redwood tree
Climbing the narrow trails, inhaling the misty air
I saw nobody else out there this Tuesday
Only those ancient pteridophytes
Layers upon layers of green
Beckoning and bewitching from the other side of time
I descended back to pygmy forest
Nature’s bonsai of acorn and cypress
Stunted trees adapted to the saline soil
five hundred thousand years old
The landscape here became more stark, less serene
I stood transported to a different tree, a different time
A photocopy in charcoal black, empty white and shades of gray
From five full years ago. It could have been
a Japanese artist’s ink brush drawing
A single tree standing on a winter’s night, severe and still
Or a botanist’s sketch of a new species
with nodules narrowing four branches
But no, it was my mother’s arteries
Captured from her angiography
In Jaslok hospital, Mumbai
soon after her heart attack
I took that image—consulted cardiologists
In Palo Alto and San Francisco
A month later she became ashes sprinkled in the Godavari River
Traveling to where the Arabian sea kisses the star-studded sky
Becoming engulfed in the universe’s eternal canopy
A black and white sketch that still breathes in a cardboard box of mine
Along with the torn black book of her recipes and her childhood photos
One of her sitting in her chubby frock at one
Another of her watering young saplings
as a girl of eleven
One more at twenty-four
Holding her newborn baby
standing next to a budding jasmine tree
This poem was published in http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-12-23/article/31888?headline=Family-Tree
Family Tree
By Roopa Ramamoorthi
Few weeks ago I spent two days in Mendocino
tucked away on California’s northern coast
Heard the waves lashing the rocks, saw a red-breasted robin
ready to take flight, a young seal on the rocks
sunning itself, then setting out for a swim
When I hiked in fern canyon
I touched the trunk
Of one sturdy redwood tree
Climbing the narrow trails, inhaling the misty air
I saw nobody else out there this Tuesday
Only those ancient pteridophytes
Layers upon layers of green
Beckoning and bewitching from the other side of time
I descended back to pygmy forest
Nature’s bonsai of acorn and cypress
Stunted trees adapted to the saline soil
five hundred thousand years old
The landscape here became more stark, less serene
I stood transported to a different tree, a different time
A photocopy in charcoal black, empty white and shades of gray
From five full years ago. It could have been
a Japanese artist’s ink brush drawing
A single tree standing on a winter’s night, severe and still
Or a botanist’s sketch of a new species
with nodules narrowing four branches
But no, it was my mother’s arteries
Captured from her angiography
In Jaslok hospital, Mumbai
soon after her heart attack
I took that image—consulted cardiologists
In Palo Alto and San Francisco
A month later she became ashes sprinkled in the Godavari River
Traveling to where the Arabian sea kisses the star-studded sky
Becoming engulfed in the universe’s eternal canopy
A black and white sketch that still breathes in a cardboard box of mine
Along with the torn black book of her recipes and her childhood photos
One of her sitting in her chubby frock at one
Another of her watering young saplings
as a girl of eleven
One more at twenty-four
Holding her newborn baby
standing next to a budding jasmine tree
This poem was published in http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-12-23/article/31888?headline=Family-Tree
06/25/2018
Sandra Anfang is a Northern California teacher, poet, and visual artist. She is the author of four poetry collections and several chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetalk, San Francisco Peace and Hope, two Healdsburg Literary Guild anthologies, Unbroken Literary Journal, Rattle, and Spillway. Her chapbook, Looking Glass Heart, was published by Finishing Line Press in early 2016. Road Worrier, her new chapbook, is due in March, 2018. She was nominated for a Best Short Fictions in 2016 and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sandra is founder and host of the monthly poetry series, Rivertown Poets, in Petaluma, and a California Poet/Teacher in the Schools. To write, for her, is to breathe.
Board of DirectorsThe first one I'd appoint is Rain, for humility.
I'd taste my tears, bled from the mask
as they roll down to court heaven's effluence
watch as both commingle in a stormy sea.
Next, I'd seat the Moon, for mystery
who rules my dreams and guides my pen.
I want to climb inside her iridescent skin
to die before I parse her essence
into tiny, measurable things.
Finally, I'd invite the Sun, for kindness and for love
the warmth of his beneficence
the way he enters me, encircles grief
melts the ice-glass curtain of the heart.
These three would be
into tiny, measurable things.
Finally, I'd invite the Sun, for kindness and for love
the warmth of his beneficence
the way he enters me, encircles grief
melts the ice-glass curtain of the heart.
These three would be
the only guests I'd need
my pantheon
my pantheon
my holy trinity.
Sandra Anfang --Author of Looking Glass Heart, a poetry chapbook, published by Finishing Line Press © 2016. Available at finishinglinepress.com and Amazon.com. My new chapbook, Road Worrier: Poems of the Inner and Outer Landscape, is forthcoming from the same publisher. Pre-order by January 26, 2018, at a discounted rate: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/road-worrier-poems-of-the-inner-and-outer-landscape-by-sandra-anfang/
06/18/2018
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker and educator. His book titled, "Someone's Dead Already" was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book of poems “Heaven Is All Goodbyes” was published in the City Lights Pocket Poets Series.
06/11/2018 Nancy Schimmel hosted by Jim
Civilization
In the juncture between two narrow roads
The last fragment of a once-great circle of trunk still stands
Shaggy redbrown bark worn down
The tallest part upthrust higher than a person’s head
But not by much
Around the tip of this finger of wood
Someone has wrapped a telephone line
A redwood must be even slower to anger than I am
But as I stand in the road
It is clear to me which finger
It holds up
05/28/2018 Memorial Day NO PE
06/04/2018 Ken Risling
Bay Area singer-songwriter Ken Risling has been having a love affair with music since childhood: singing before he could talk, learning his tribe’s traditional dances, and playing instruments -- piano, trumpet, French horn, guitar, bass -- at every chance he could grab. But it was grief that broke the dam and released the songs within him. He was 40 before he finished his first testimonial to loss, “Down To Jonestown”; it's critical acclaim signaled the emergence of his voice from the ocean of silence, and so began the gentle rain of songs. There are many, now, in all manner of style and subject. It is the delicate pas de deux between words and music that fuels his enthusiasm for the art; and it is the connection with the audience through songs that feeds his love for performing.
05/21/2018 Marty Williams 
Bay Area singer-songwriter Ken Risling has been having a love affair with music since childhood: singing before he could talk, learning his tribe’s traditional dances, and playing instruments -- piano, trumpet, French horn, guitar, bass -- at every chance he could grab. But it was grief that broke the dam and released the songs within him. He was 40 before he finished his first testimonial to loss, “Down To Jonestown”; it's critical acclaim signaled the emergence of his voice from the ocean of silence, and so began the gentle rain of songs. There are many, now, in all manner of style and subject. It is the delicate pas de deux between words and music that fuels his enthusiasm for the art; and it is the connection with the audience through songs that feeds his love for performing.
THE CLEARING (FOR MY FATHER)Oakland poet, Marty Williams's work appears most recently in Atlanta Review, The Heron Tree and Poetry East, as well as in anthologies, Bearing Witness: Poetry By Teachers About Teaching and Winged: New Writing About Bees. With the Bay Area Writing Project and Amherst Writers and Artists, Marty leads writing workshops through Room to Write for writers of all ages. She also co-coordinates the monthly Bay Area Writing Project reading series, Teachers Write – Writers Teach. Marty is currently working on a manuscript, The Forest Within, poems about hometown Oakland, California, and her homeground, Alaska.
That year, well before thaw, he cleared
a path through scrub alder and spruce,
a path through scrub alder and spruce,
halted where the slope flattened out,
drove a stake into the hard ground.
He sunk pilings for a foundation and returned
to build a cabin on the bog. Alone, foot stopped
to build a cabin on the bog. Alone, foot stopped
on the shovel, he heard a loon. Knew the raunch
of bear nearby, outside the circle of light.
Season after season, he left his work in town,
went there to that clearing. Peeled back the trees
with his axe, salted the bog with gravel
from the lakebed. There were summers
full of sawdust and hammers,
wheelbarrow handles cleaved to his palm.
Warm in the snug, square cabin he dreamed a garden
full of flowers and daisies gleamed
full of flowers and daisies gleamed
bold and white in the evening. Made a home
for themselves there. In the face of the mountain,
on the shore of the lake.
In the afternoon, all wood smoke and gin, he watches
the young birches grow, block the lake from
Trees creep back into the clearing.
05/14/2018 Marilyn Flower
Marilyn Floweris an active member of Alameda Island Poets even though she lives in Oakland. Her passion for drama improv translates into a love for performing her poetry out loud in front of audiences. Hence, her poems are meant to be read out loud!!!! When not writing, reading, or leading workshops, she spends her time taking classes at Stagebridge school for performing arts, writing the great American political satirical novel, and being the change she wishes to see in the soul of our country.
Southern Magic
She sits on the porch eating watermelon
and when she goes to spit the seeds,
flocks of birds fly out of her mouth —
tiny green-winged hummingbirds —
with tear-shaped spots on ruby breasts,
praising the sun with iridescence.
Needles
she rarely talks,
but when she does…
poems stand up and salute.
05/07/2018 Richard Loranger
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.
04/30/2018 PoetryExpressed Mag poets read from their work published in the mag hosted by Gary
04/16/2018 Jeanne Lupton
Jeanne Lupton is a writer and poet living in Berkeley. She has hosted Frank Bette Center for the Arts Second Saturdays poetry series for eleven years and leads a weekly memoir writing group at the North Berkeley Senior Center. She is delighted to feature again at Poetry Express.
73rd spring
honeybees wild
in yellow blossoms
i was born
for growing old
04/23/2018
Paradise the Poet of a thousand poems is president of the International Black Writers & Artists, and was recently honored by the City of Oakland with his own day, Paradise Day, October 6, for his many years of community service in the local arts and poetry scene. He competed with the Berkeley team that finished 12th in the nation in Seattle. He is currently starring in his one man show, How to Be a Black Man in America, which includes him singing, dancing, playing the people and sharing his art. He has been called the Muhammad Ali and Michael Jackson of the performing arts! And is known for such classics as, Beloved: A Love Letter to the Goddess in Every Woman, You Should be Concerned that it Takes Team of Scientists to Make Your French Fries, A Woman is Made of Love, I Love Everything About You, But You, Everybody Needs a New Name, and Why Oakland Has No Record Stores.
His work, called JazzFunkHipHoPoetry, has inspired the establishment of a new record company:
www.trueviberecords.com
Beloved
I remember before you were born
There was no sunshine, no light
You are the reason the Sun comes up
In the morning and the Stars come out at night
You are the reason God said
"Let there be light!!!"
So he could feature you
And be inspired to writes uni
Verses across the skies at night for you!
So while others dream of Heaven
Heaven dreams of you
................
And although you are God's gift
To himself - it's true!
God so loved the world
He gave us....YOU!
04/09/2018 Sharon Metzler-Dow hosted by Jim
Sharon Metzler-Dow is an internationally published poet and writer. Her poetry was published in the anthology Eternal Snow on world tour, 2017-2018. Based on her research in France, her poem “Beyond the Cave Wall,” was published in 2016 for international readership on The Leakey Foundation website, a major global anthropology organization. She was the 2014 Conference Poet for the annual International Conference for Women's Reproductive Health. Her poems have been published in Bay Area Generations chapbook and The B
At age 15 Lynne Cox swam across the English Channel and shattered the men’s and women’s world records swimming from England to France in 9 hours, 57 minutes.
Nightswimming
It’s another year
and time to swim the English Channel.
Safety boats at distance follow
but not near. At anytime a shark
can mistake us for a seal and devour
our whole estate for his next…
we wonder what’s nipping at our heels.
Higher, lower, faster, slower,
night’s tides test our willpower.
We navigate by watching moving sign-posts
in the black firmament above and below
and by currents pushing our back
then our toes
for good or detriment.
Hold onto the stars to avoid vertigo!
Liquid laps our skin, enfolds us.
Phosporescence scintillates.
Neon prosecco. Firefly fish.
Blue tears and blue comets.
Nightswimming
from Dover to Calais
treacherous and luminous.
A lot can happen
swimming to another continent.
40,000 armstrokes.
It’s all in the mind.
Sharon Metzler Dow © 2018
04/02/2018 Maria Rosales hosted by Jan
Maria Rosales was born in London , and lived in Europe , North Africa , Canada Hawaii before settling in California . Her poems have appeared in Meridian Anthology, Byline, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetalk, the Nashville Newsletter, The Dirty Napkin Online Magazine, The Contra Costa Times, Medusa’s Kitchen, Brevities, The Art of Awe and several Anthologies. Her book “Time to Fly” was published with Small Poetry Press. She has received many Awards from the Ina Coolbrith Circle, Artists Embassy International, and contests sponsored by Benicia Historical Museum, City of Pleasanton and Livermore Arts. Maria hosted the successful PrimoPoets series for several years, and has served on the Board of Directors for the Ina Coolbrith Circle since 2007. She currently hosts the Writing in Paradise salon in her home in Paradise, California.
Attachment
“Even puddles touch the sky”
He said despair is not the end, but
Anyway, she held her breath
Suddenly there was no air beneath
Silence. The tightrope strung
Grace Marie Grafton is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently 'Jester' from Hip Pocket Press. Her themes range from lyrical sonnets to sestinas to experimental prose poems, with a concentration on response to fine art. Her poems have won honors from The Bellingham Review, Sycamore Review, Keats Soul Making contest, The National Womens Book Association, and Poetic Matrix Press. Poems recently appear in Fifth Wednesday, The Cortland Review, Ambush Review, Sin Fronteras, Basalt, Mezzo Cammin and Canary, among others. Through her work with CA Poets in the Schools and the CA Arts Council, she has taught thousands of children to write poetry.
The knell of winter
At 4 pm on a Tuesday, air almost bite-able,
you think maybe you could play with it, invisible
man-of-air or un-see-able woman singing her
sharp cold note, tickles you down your neck. You
wish you knew the words in the dark colors pulled
up out of the pit where the days are stored. The
draftsman of the future down there, drawing the plans
in his blind state, feeling his way, trained from his
birth to do this each year as the light grows
wan and the chill undresses the trees, the waters
forget their underground ancestors boiled
by fundamental lava. The future's plans all there
in his unreadable notebooks. And now the council
of the creators will spend ninety long nights
arguing about details and which of them must
roll naked in the snow to bring the future into being.
For Roy De Forest, 'Dogcart From Hell'
How black is the jest,
how red-wheeled the cart,
earth-brown the driver who doesn't
know right from wrong but,
like a passionate pilgrim, drives on
smiling ignorantly, just happy
to have a job and a dog to help.
If help is what this trip can be called.
Do we want to call it anything?
Can labels do any good?
The tree, passed by, is in disguise
as a famous actor, the Devil presents
a facsimile moon as prize to
the acting-tree who, we know,
has sold his soul. It's a reunion
of sorts: the beans of life sorted
to one side (the right, the wrong?),
the stones of death to the other.
They talk, the driver, the acting-tree
and the Devil with the moon prize
but they can neither be heard nor
understood.
3/19/18 Naomi Quinonez hosted by Bruce
Naomi
Helena Quiñonez is a poet, educator and activist. She is the
Dance:
Latino Writing in the U.S. and Infinite Divisions.
03/12/2018 Cathy Dana hosted by Jim With a Mini-Feature by Bruce Isaacson
Cathy Dana, President of Alameda Island Poets, just became Alameda's new Poet Laureate. She founded and runs The Mighty Pens poetry club and high school poet laureate program at Alameda Community Learning Center. 2014 Dancing Poetry Grand Prize winner and first prize winner of the 2013 Benicia Love Poetry Contest, it's no surprise Cathy titled her first book of poems "My Dad Believed in Love."
Empty Nest
Still Not Ready to Say Goodbye…
The morning after her son left home for college far away
she noticed a crying baby had taken up residence
in her heart.
Everywhere she went in the house
she found remnants of him:
the sprouted-wheat bagels he’d introduced her to
the carton of eggs he scrambled for breakfast
the lonely hook where his egg-frying pan had hung
the heavy whipping cream he put in his coffee
the green-leaf houseplant from his room
now seated by her picture window.
Not to mention his disheveled but vacant room.
She already missed his deep bass voice, ordinarily so logical, so rational,
so full of facts and theories and techie tidbits,
but surprisingly soft and teasing when he would come up the stairs
in that certain mood, saying,
“Where’s that boy-o? Where’s that kitty? Where’s that boy-o?”
He would find Raffi, scoop him up,
cradle him upside down like a baby,
start rubbing his tummy
and bring him to her, holding Raffi so she could
stroke his head, ears, neck—all his favorite spots.
Her son would become the voice of Raffi feigning resistance.
“No. Stop. Don’t,” the voice protested in mock indignance,
even as the cat closed his eyes dreamily and purred.
Continuing to stroke Raffi’s tummy
her son would assume Raffi’s voice:
“I’ll give you an hour to stop that and put me down.”
Trying to hold back giggles,
they would stand cuddling their kitty in the kitchen.
The morning after her son left home for college
she slipped into her bedroom to begin her morning ritual,
straightening the covers and pillows,
opening the curtains to let the light in.
Every day, she gathered up from her husband’s nightstand
the stuffed animals she placed together on the bed:
her son’s long-ago toy, a tall cloth doll Pinocchio
and, on either side of him, a mama and papa teddy bear
to watch over him.
But this day, as she looked toward the nightstand,
there, for the first time in Raffi’s three-year life--
the first time ever--
she saw their kitty lying on top of the nightstand
snuggled up with Pinocchio and the teddy bears.
She stood there looking, shaking her head,
leaving the stuffed animals where they were.
Then she leaned in close.
“Make sure he’s safe,” she whispered to Raffi.
“Make sure he’s okay. He’s our boy-o.”
3/12 Mini-Feature Bruce Isaacson:
Bruce Isaacson is a poet and publisher of Zeitgeist Press, with over a hundred poetry titles to date. He’s known in the Bay Area from the Cafe Babar 1980s poetry community. He earned degrees at Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth, and Brooklyn College, where he submitted a thesis to noted American poet Allen Ginsberg. More recently, he was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada-- a community of two million souls that includes the City of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Strip.
From: The Last Lie, Zeitgeist Press, 2017
Unnatural Selection
One poet after another
Ode to a Diet Cherry Coke
O dark, fizzy syrup—
03/05/2018
Bruce lives in Berkeley and is co-owner of Fessenden Firewood with his partner Christine. He has been deeply immersed in the natural world his entire life through the activities of backpacking, climbing and skiing. A book of his poems —“Crimson Coat” — was published in 2014 by Goldenstone Press. Pieces of Bruce’s writings have appeared in a MoonShine Star Co. anthology called “What is Love”, and also in Richard Grossinger’s book “2013”. A second volumne of poems, titled “Bones” will be published shortly.
Rough-Cut
People are sick these days
It’s not that I’m rough all the time
I’m not a misfit, not a stranger
My darkness is the glade
What is my last day?
02/26/2018 Chris Warren Smith hosted by Gary
Chris Warren Smith has been a featured writer for Steve Arnston, Gina Goldblatt, Paul Corman Roberts, Bay Area Generations and Charise Sowells Malouf(Lake Lady)
He has been published in the Oakland Review, and East Fork Press. He first kid's book: A Tennis Lesson can be found in the Magic Blox children's library.
You can find more of his writing at his blog on Poeticous.com
Human Nature is smiling, holding out a closed fist.
Inside is a coin.
On one side is love and the other is fear.
Until she opens her hand the coin is two sided, representing duality.
It is in a state of superposition.
Only when she opens her hand will you witness your truth.
And you will see either fear or love.
Because observing the system changes the system.
What will you change today?
The Earth gave you your path to walk.
The World put in a toll booth.
The Earth created beautiful women.
The World made you shy.
The Earth gave you a mind to be free.
The World gave you an ego to be it’s slave.
The Earth gave you a voice to speak your truth.
The World gave you an ear the didn’t want to hear.
The Earth gave you eyes to see your vision.
The World gave you rules to keep it at bay.
The Earth gave you a beautiful child.
The World took him back.
You say “ you’ve had enough of this life”.
And I say to you “You don’t belong to yourself.
You belong to the Earth and you belong to the World”.
02/19/2018 Bruce Jim
Photo Credit: Don Dutra
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection, Landings, is from Kelsay Books (Hemet, CA). She has published two previous full collections of poetry: Something About (Blue Light Press, San Francisco, CA), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient, and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, O), a Kenneth Patchen competition winner. She has also authored four chapbooks and is editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, Oakland, CA). Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
In Landings, Zawinski presents poems that embrace, in original ways and with deep-rooted emotional power, the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside an abiding reverence for the natural world. Of this work, Jan Beatty says Zawinski is the necessary voice of the truth teller, speaking trouble among the beauty. Rebecca Foust lauds the collection as a book that offers wisdom and solace and one you will take comfort in reading again and again. Carolyne Wright goes on to say in these Landings, she embraces the richness of human experience and praises the courage of those who go on ‘living as if they could do anything.’
poem recited with images:
http://www.poetrymagazine.com/
Andrena Zawinski:
Rafts
Sun spills silver stars of light along rippling summer waves.
A string of pelicans wing the horizon,
light in flight for all their heft.
Children squeal and squirm inside their plastic inflatable.
One slips over the side, feigns drowning, splashing and kicking,
holding onto his crying sister, jumps back in to tickle her side––
all of them then swimming in giggles and smiles in frolic and fun,
family picnicking at the shore, waving from bright beach towels.
Other children, roped onto rafts in flimsy life jackets, float in
from Aleppo across the Aegean away from bombs and bullets
to find a way out, forge a way in, whole families cattled
by smugglers, squeezed in dozens deep. But those who slip
into this dark sea cannot be rescued with innocent teasing and mirth.
A three-year-old washes up onto the beach face down on the sand,
limp body leaden in his father’s arms,
water lapping the wounded shore.
Publication Credit:
Reunion Dallas Review, Vol 6, 2017. Univ. of Texas, Dallas, TX
02/12/2018 Alameda Students: The Mighty Pens hosted by Jim
With the hope of sharing a lifelong love of poetry and the exquisite beauty of words, in 2012 Cathy Dana, teacher of Creative Expressions at charter school, Alameda Community Learning Center, founded a school-wide poetry club called The Mighty Pens. The group meets weekly to write and share poetry, culminating each year in a book of student poems, entitled “Wandering Minds, Dancing Words.” Students have read poetry at the Art and Diversity Night, Books, Inc., the Ina Coolbrith Circle, and the Dancing Poetry Festival. Each week, the Mighty Pens choose a “poet of the week” to read a poem to the entire school. Here are their names:
Gavin Barron, Sophie McCain-Novakowski, Truly Edison, Miranda Rittenbach, Liam Foster, Oxford Lewis, Cayden Lewis-McCabe, Killian Connolly, Tay Lew.
The Ocean Depths
by Liam Foster
I live in a little house on an island in a great black sea.
Every night, I dive into the inky darkness beneath the stars.
I search for the dim lights of the fallen, like dying quasars.
I know not where they come from, nor where they go.
But I bring them to shore, solid rock and a warm glow.
That's enough for me.
02/05/2018 Ralph Dranow hosted by Jan
Ralph Dranow's widely published poems focus on exploring our common humanity and the poetry and beauty of everyday life. His most recent books are A New Life and Love in Unexpected Places, a limited edition letterpress book. He works as a freelance editor and ghostwriter.
Trees
They never market themselves,
Post of Facebook
Or tweet on Twitter.
Yet day after day,
Like alchemists,
These majestic beings
Take in carbon dioxide
And breathe out oxygen.
Their sturdy trunks, strong roots
Are barriers to soil erosion, floods.
Leaves provide shade,
Bark valuable medicines,
Branches sweet fruits.
Communal creatures,
Inspiring role models,
Trees share water and nutrients with each other.
And like Jesus,
They die for our sins,
Not only for houses, furniture, paper
But the insatiable, fanged maw
Of profit.
I nominate trees for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ralph Dranow
Editing, Ghostwriting, & Writing-Coaching Services
A NEW LIFE: POEMS, by Ralph Dranow
$14.95 / print edition
The 76 vivid poems in this book offer a unique and compassionate view of what it is to be human. "Ralph's poetry is tender and honest and bittersweet, like sweet-sour candy melting on the tongue. His poems nestle into the heart in a genuinely comforting way." ~ Shonen Bressler "
01/29/2018 HA HA night--bring your humorous work hosted by Gary
01/22/2018 Mare' Simonet hosted by Gary
Need a prompt tonight? Pick one from the words & images in Mare’s poem.
Mare’ Simonet is a poet and multi-media artist, living in Berkeley, CA. Her series of essays, Confessions of a Dopamine Addict, as well as her first poetry book, The Poet Next Door, are due to be released in early 2018. Both works include many humorous references that reveal aspects of life with Parkinson’ s Disease.
While Ms. Simonet has said she dislikes being labeled as a disabled artist, living with Parkinson’s Disease has influenced her choices of
subject matter and the desire to create a mythology with a message .
Mare’ has said that poetry is “ without linear parameters .. One can disregard, recreate, bend, flex, or falsify time in a poem.”
After she presented a poem written two days after her husband passed away, a recent reviewer had this to say :
… I heard the writings of a friend (of his) who had lost a loved one recently, and her words, like a gale, swept powerfully through the room but exited gently and with such raw elegance that it left me wishing I knew how to write.
During the program, Mare’ will read excerpts from her essays and book, as well as new works dedicated to her late husband .
Untitled
my mind is inoperably bound to memory
I try to hold on when the ascent is threatened
try to stay calm, find a portable bridge
to negotiate that rotten crevasse
filled with the carcasses of lost phrases,
today's to-do list, yesterday's memos
sometimes the tightly wrapped package
becomes unbound
the flow of remembered occurrences
stretched out in one long straight line
coyly teasing the telomeres, trying to outrace them
01/15/18 Fred Dodsworth hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "The name I don't call myself" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
Fred Dodsworth As a 30 year publishing professional Fred Dodsworth has launched and or edited or published more than a dozen magazines and newspapers and three books on California Indians. Six years ago he decided to go to college, graduating magna cum laude from SFSU in 2013 with a bachelors in Creative Writing (concentration in Gender Studies). He earned his Masters in Poetry from SFSU in 2017 and is now pursuing an MFA in Fiction.
Formerly a high-school drop out, front-page daily columnist (SF Examiner), award winning art director, sandal maker, and truck driver (not in that order), in his professional career Fred was fortunate enough to work with renown designer Roger Black and to publish work by Alan Ginsberg, June Jordon, Kim Addonizio, Amy Wallace, Garrison Keillor, Corby Kummer, Ginu Kamani and many other accomplished and beginning writers.
Co-host of the 8th 9th & 10th Annual SF Beat Poetry Festival, board member of the 20th Annual Watershed Ecological Poetry Festival, co-organizer of the Northern California Book Awards, collective member of the Beast Crawl Collective for 5 years (now retired), founding board member of Bay Area Generations—A Reading Series For The Ages (now retired), for the last six years Fred Dodsworth has worked with Sharon Coleman producing Milvia Street, the venerable Peralta Colleges literary magazine. He is also publications advisor to Joyce Jenkins of Poetry Flash.
Fred has been a featured reader at the 2014 Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival, East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest, Art of the Muse, Broken Concrete, Literary Speakeasy, Red Light at the Battery, Pandemonium Press at the Spice Monkey, Moe’s Books, Writing Without Walls, the MFA Reading Series, Velvet Revolution, Rolling Writers, Nomadic Press, riverbabble, Red Light Lit, the Aesthetic Union, The Battery, XYZ at the Stork, the SF Beat Poetry Festival, Rolling Writers, Heart of the Muse, Black Health Matters, Naked Bulb, and many other reading series events.
His stories and poems have been published in Red Light Lit, Rag Mag, Troop, Oakland Review #3, riverbabble, Transfer, Milvia Street, Bay Area Generations, Writing Without Walls, Saturday Night Special, Something Worth Revising, US Represented, 11-9 the Fall of Democracy, RISE!, and others. He’s currently finishing a book of poems, a book of short stories, and his first novel.
01/8/18 Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell. Her latest chapbook "Look Out"has just been published in October, 2016
2017 is listed at _
the young birches grow, block the lake from
his view. He sits there, still, into evening,
waiting for the loon or the bear to return.
Gravel sinks, the woodpile falls out of its rows.
Trees creep back into the clearing.
Southern Magic
She sits on the porch eating watermelon
and when she goes to spit the seeds,
flocks of birds fly out of her mouth —
tiny green-winged hummingbirds —
with tear-shaped spots on ruby breasts,
praising the sun with iridescence.
Needles
she rarely talks,
but when she does…
poems stand up and salute.
and when she goes to spit the seeds,
flocks of birds fly out of her mouth —
tiny green-winged hummingbirds —
with tear-shaped spots on ruby breasts,
praising the sun with iridescence.
Needles
she rarely talks,
but when she does…
poems stand up and salute.
05/07/2018 Richard Loranger
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.
Jeanne Lupton is a writer and poet living in Berkeley. She has hosted Frank Bette Center for the Arts Second Saturdays poetry series for eleven years and leads a weekly memoir writing group at the North Berkeley Senior Center. She is delighted to feature again at Poetry Express.
73rd spring
honeybees wild
in yellow blossoms
i was born
for growing old
04/23/2018
Paradise the Poet of a thousand poems is president of the International Black Writers & Artists, and was recently honored by the City of Oakland with his own day, Paradise Day, October 6, for his many years of community service in the local arts and poetry scene. He competed with the Berkeley team that finished 12th in the nation in Seattle. He is currently starring in his one man show, How to Be a Black Man in America, which includes him singing, dancing, playing the people and sharing his art. He has been called the Muhammad Ali and Michael Jackson of the performing arts! And is known for such classics as, Beloved: A Love Letter to the Goddess in Every Woman, You Should be Concerned that it Takes Team of Scientists to Make Your French Fries, A Woman is Made of Love, I Love Everything About You, But You, Everybody Needs a New Name, and Why Oakland Has No Record Stores.
His work, called JazzFunkHipHoPoetry, has inspired the establishment of a new record company:
www.trueviberecords.com
Beloved
I remember before you were born
There was no sunshine, no light
You are the reason the Sun comes up
In the morning and the Stars come out at night
You are the reason God said
"Let there be light!!!"
So he could feature you
And be inspired to writes uni
Verses across the skies at night for you!
So while others dream of Heaven
Heaven dreams of you
................
And although you are God's gift
To himself - it's true!
God so loved the world
He gave us....YOU!
Paradise the Poet of a thousand poems is president of the International Black Writers & Artists, and was recently honored by the City of Oakland with his own day, Paradise Day, October 6, for his many years of community service in the local arts and poetry scene. He competed with the Berkeley team that finished 12th in the nation in Seattle. He is currently starring in his one man show, How to Be a Black Man in America, which includes him singing, dancing, playing the people and sharing his art. He has been called the Muhammad Ali and Michael Jackson of the performing arts! And is known for such classics as, Beloved: A Love Letter to the Goddess in Every Woman, You Should be Concerned that it Takes Team of Scientists to Make Your French Fries, A Woman is Made of Love, I Love Everything About You, But You, Everybody Needs a New Name, and Why Oakland Has No Record Stores.
His work, called JazzFunkHipHoPoetry, has inspired the establishment of a new record company:
www.trueviberecords.com
Beloved
I remember before you were born
There was no sunshine, no light
You are the reason the Sun comes up
In the morning and the Stars come out at night
You are the reason God said
"Let there be light!!!"
So he could feature you
And be inspired to writes uni
Verses across the skies at night for you!
So while others dream of Heaven
Heaven dreams of you
................
And although you are God's gift
To himself - it's true!
God so loved the world
He gave us....YOU!
04/09/2018 Sharon Metzler-Dow hosted by Jim
Sharon Metzler-Dow is an internationally published poet and writer. Her poetry was published in the anthology Eternal Snow on world tour, 2017-2018. Based on her research in France, her poem “Beyond the Cave Wall,” was published in 2016 for international readership on The Leakey Foundation website, a major global anthropology organization. She was the 2014 Conference Poet for the annual International Conference for Women's Reproductive Health. Her poems have been published in Bay Area Generations chapbook and The B
Sharon Metzler-Dow is an internationally published poet and writer. Her poetry was published in the anthology Eternal Snow on world tour, 2017-2018. Based on her research in France, her poem “Beyond the Cave Wall,” was published in 2016 for international readership on The Leakey Foundation website, a major global anthropology organization. She was the 2014 Conference Poet for the annual International Conference for Women's Reproductive Health. Her poems have been published in Bay Area Generations chapbook and The B
At age 15 Lynne Cox swam across the English Channel and shattered the men’s and women’s world records swimming from England to France in 9 hours, 57 minutes.
Nightswimming
It’s another year
and time to swim the English Channel.
Safety boats at distance follow
but not near. At anytime a shark
can mistake us for a seal and devour
our whole estate for his next…
we wonder what’s nipping at our heels.
Higher, lower, faster, slower,
night’s tides test our willpower.
We navigate by watching moving sign-posts
in the black firmament above and below
and by currents pushing our back
then our toes
for good or detriment.
Hold onto the stars to avoid vertigo!
Liquid laps our skin, enfolds us.
Phosporescence scintillates.
Neon prosecco. Firefly fish.
Blue tears and blue comets.
Nightswimming
from Dover to Calais
treacherous and luminous.
A lot can happen
swimming to another continent.
40,000 armstrokes.
It’s all in the mind.
Sharon Metzler Dow © 2018
04/02/2018 Maria Rosales hosted by Jan
Maria Rosales was born in London , and lived in Europe , North Africa , Canada Hawaii before settling in California . Her poems have appeared in Meridian Anthology, Byline, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetalk, the Nashville Newsletter, The Dirty Napkin Online Magazine, The Contra Costa Times, Medusa’s Kitchen, Brevities, The Art of Awe and several Anthologies. Her book “Time to Fly” was published with Small Poetry Press. She has received many Awards from the Ina Coolbrith Circle, Artists Embassy International, and contests sponsored by Benicia Historical Museum, City of Pleasanton and Livermore Arts. Maria hosted the successful PrimoPoets series for several years, and has served on the Board of Directors for the Ina Coolbrith Circle since 2007. She currently hosts the Writing in Paradise salon in her home in Paradise, California.
Attachment
A Pantoum
“Even puddles touch the sky”
he said, “Despair is not the end…”
His cigarette burned, but the ash did not fall.
She watched transfixed.
He said despair is not the end, but
she held her breath anyway,
watching transfixed, as something between them
detached in slow motion…
Anyway, she held her breath
because suddenly there was no air…
oxygen molecules detached in slow motion.
The sidewalk became a cliff.
Suddenly there was no air beneath
the tightrope of silence strung
across the sidewalk cliffs --
the chasm of fear widening.
Silence. The tightrope strung
between his words sagged. She exhaled --
saw the ash fall finally, land at her feet in a puddle.
Sure enough, ripples reflected the sky.
03/26/2018
Grace Marie Grafton is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently 'Jester' from Hip Pocket Press. Her themes range from lyrical sonnets to sestinas to experimental prose poems, with a concentration on response to fine art. Her poems have won honors from The Bellingham Review, Sycamore Review, Keats Soul Making contest, The National Womens Book Association, and Poetic Matrix Press. Poems recently appear in Fifth Wednesday, The Cortland Review, Ambush Review, Sin Fronteras, Basalt, Mezzo Cammin and Canary, among others. Through her work with CA Poets in the Schools and the CA Arts Council, she has taught thousands of children to write poetry.
The knell of winter
At 4 pm on a Tuesday, air almost bite-able,
you think maybe you could play with it, invisible
man-of-air or un-see-able woman singing her
sharp cold note, tickles you down your neck. You
wish you knew the words in the dark colors pulled
up out of the pit where the days are stored. The
draftsman of the future down there, drawing the plans
in his blind state, feeling his way, trained from his
birth to do this each year as the light grows
wan and the chill undresses the trees, the waters
forget their underground ancestors boiled
by fundamental lava. The future's plans all there
in his unreadable notebooks. And now the council
of the creators will spend ninety long nights
arguing about details and which of them must
roll naked in the snow to bring the future into being.
For Roy De Forest, 'Dogcart From Hell'
How black is the jest,
how red-wheeled the cart,
earth-brown the driver who doesn't
know right from wrong but,
like a passionate pilgrim, drives on
smiling ignorantly, just happy
to have a job and a dog to help.
If help is what this trip can be called.
Do we want to call it anything?
Can labels do any good?
The tree, passed by, is in disguise
as a famous actor, the Devil presents
a facsimile moon as prize to
the acting-tree who, we know,
has sold his soul. It's a reunion
of sorts: the beans of life sorted
to one side (the right, the wrong?),
the stones of death to the other.
They talk, the driver, the acting-tree
and the Devil with the moon prize
but they can neither be heard nor
understood.
3/19/18 Naomi Quinonez hosted by Bruce
Naomi
Helena Quiñonez is a poet, educator and activist. She is the
author of
three collections of poetry, Hummingbird Dream/Sueño de
Colibri,
The Smoking Mirror and The Exiled Moon.
She co edited
Invocation
L.A: Urban Multicultural Poetry which received the
American
Book Award. Among her achievements are
the American
Book
Award, the Rockefeller Fellowship and the California Arts
Council
Award. Her poems and essays have
appeared in many
journals
and publications such as the Colorado Review, Paper
Dance:
Latino Writing in the U.S. and Infinite Divisions.
03/12/2018 Cathy Dana hosted by Jim With a Mini-Feature by Bruce Isaacson
Cathy Dana, President of Alameda Island Poets, just became Alameda's new Poet Laureate. She founded and runs The Mighty Pens poetry club and high school poet laureate program at Alameda Community Learning Center. 2014 Dancing Poetry Grand Prize winner and first prize winner of the 2013 Benicia Love Poetry Contest, it's no surprise Cathy titled her first book of poems "My Dad Believed in Love."
Empty NestStill Not Ready to Say Goodbye…The morning after her son left home for college far awayshe noticed a crying baby had taken up residencein her heart.Everywhere she went in the houseshe found remnants of him:the sprouted-wheat bagels he’d introduced her tothe carton of eggs he scrambled for breakfastthe lonely hook where his egg-frying pan had hungthe heavy whipping cream he put in his coffeethe green-leaf houseplant from his roomnow seated by her picture window.Not to mention his disheveled but vacant room.She already missed his deep bass voice, ordinarily so logical, so rational,so full of facts and theories and techie tidbits,but surprisingly soft and teasing when he would come up the stairsin that certain mood, saying,“Where’s that boy-o? Where’s that kitty? Where’s that boy-o?”He would find Raffi, scoop him up,cradle him upside down like a baby,start rubbing his tummyand bring him to her, holding Raffi so she couldstroke his head, ears, neck—all his favorite spots.Her son would become the voice of Raffi feigning resistance.“No. Stop. Don’t,” the voice protested in mock indignance,even as the cat closed his eyes dreamily and purred.Continuing to stroke Raffi’s tummyher son would assume Raffi’s voice:“I’ll give you an hour to stop that and put me down.”Trying to hold back giggles,they would stand cuddling their kitty in the kitchen.The morning after her son left home for collegeshe slipped into her bedroom to begin her morning ritual,straightening the covers and pillows,opening the curtains to let the light in.Every day, she gathered up from her husband’s nightstandthe stuffed animals she placed together on the bed:her son’s long-ago toy, a tall cloth doll Pinocchioand, on either side of him, a mama and papa teddy bearto watch over him.But this day, as she looked toward the nightstand,there, for the first time in Raffi’s three-year life--the first time ever--she saw their kitty lying on top of the nightstandsnuggled up with Pinocchio and the teddy bears.She stood there looking, shaking her head,leaving the stuffed animals where they were.Then she leaned in close.“Make sure he’s safe,” she whispered to Raffi.“Make sure he’s okay. He’s our boy-o.”
3/12 Mini-Feature Bruce Isaacson:
Bruce Isaacson is a poet and publisher of Zeitgeist Press, with over a hundred poetry titles to date. He’s known in the Bay Area from the Cafe Babar 1980s poetry community. He earned degrees at Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth, and Brooklyn College, where he submitted a thesis to noted American poet Allen Ginsberg. More recently, he was the first Poet Laureate of Clark County, Nevada-- a community of two million souls that includes the City of Las Vegas and the Las Vegas Strip.
From: The Last Lie, Zeitgeist Press, 2017
Unnatural Selection
One poet after another
up to the mike we're like penguins
waddling to the edge of the ice
Like dice thrown against night sky
Like a transistor radio in a demolition zone
It's hard to hear your true voice
As cars screech & crunch on Flamingo
As people cope with treatable diseases
in the bathroom of the public library
As if we needed metaphors for suffering
As if Crete were an island
We humans are made to love truth
and tell lies.
Ode to a Diet Cherry Coke
O dark, fizzy syrup—
bonded to clear water.
O faintly fruity eau—
You explode on my tongue
with taste, a virtual
bomb of refreshment.
You darling of the Coca
corporation, made rich with billions of
momentary satisfactions, like little mini
taste-gasms leaving syrup to rust in
the machinery of my body. Yet how I
love you, fizzing in front of me I
sharply realize that you are
master and I indentured to
your momentary pleasure.
My stomach lining gets a
hole the size of a dime, my energy
sapped for hours after fix of fizz,
but I do not blame you,
brown and bubbling beverage,
whatever my body is, it was made to
live, die, drink.
03/05/2018
Bruce lives in Berkeley and is co-owner of Fessenden Firewood with his partner Christine. He has been deeply immersed in the natural world his entire life through the activities of backpacking, climbing and skiing. A book of his poems —“Crimson Coat” — was published in 2014 by Goldenstone Press. Pieces of Bruce’s writings have appeared in a MoonShine Star Co. anthology called “What is Love”, and also in Richard Grossinger’s book “2013”. A second volumne of poems, titled “Bones” will be published shortly.
Rough-Cut
People are sick these days
you can hear it in the coughing
at the coffee house, behind the words
you can hear the phlegm
from rushing around too fast
chasing after what they already have.
Inside lung and organ tissue, inside marrow of bone
unseen surfaces, stairways, hidden windows
are already here in the world
patiently waiting to be found.
It’s not that I’m rough all the time
it’s something else, something that doesn’t quite fit
or is a little too silent
some part of me a little awkward
a little alien; never feel quite right
in the light of the everyday world.
I’m not a misfit, not a stranger
I fit in, in a different sort of way
like a crystal, opaque and transparent simultaneous
almost black, but inward, not glowing
more like an emphasizing
the innerness of the stone
a soft radiance, like an animal
attentive, alive to its world
just noticing, nothing more.
My darkness is the glade
on the western side of the ridge
where nobody goes.
Or the wild desert, a land of extremes
harsh at high noon; yet crystalline purity
with the early morning light.
Caravansari of old brought a human exchange
all the remains is the sand, the dunes
nights littered with stars.
What is exchanged now? Where there is only wind
and endless quiet, where footprints
are erased in an instant.
What is my last day?
Is it the holly tree, with its deep greens
and reds; luscious growth and a steady joy?
Or is it the aurora borealis, with crackling mystery
and otherworldly colors: lime, magenta, pink?
What have I released back to the
ground, to matter, to the mother
to the innerness of all things?
What gesture was I making inside
the arc of my days, that others may have noticed
which I could never see.
But love is not for understanding
love is an activity; love moves.
Ashes to ashes, the course of my days
a hollowing, for innerness
a hallowing, full circle, the shape that
holds the sacred, like a garden
sifting, reflecting, dreaming
then releasing.
02/26/2018 Chris Warren Smith hosted by Gary
You can find more of his writing at his blog on Poeticous.com
Chris Warren Smith has been a featured writer for Steve Arnston, Gina Goldblatt, Paul Corman Roberts, Bay Area Generations and Charise Sowells Malouf(Lake Lady)
He has been published in the Oakland Review, and East Fork Press. He first kid's book: A Tennis Lesson can be found in the Magic Blox children's library.
Human Nature is smiling, holding out a closed fist.
Inside is a coin.
On one side is love and the other is fear.
Until she opens her hand the coin is two sided, representing duality.
It is in a state of superposition.
Only when she opens her hand will you witness your truth.
And you will see either fear or love.
Because observing the system changes the system.
What will you change today?
The Earth gave you your path to walk.
The World put in a toll booth.
The Earth created beautiful women.
The World made you shy.
The Earth gave you a mind to be free.
The World gave you an ego to be it’s slave.
The Earth gave you a voice to speak your truth.
The World gave you an ear the didn’t want to hear.
The Earth gave you eyes to see your vision.
The World gave you rules to keep it at bay.
The Earth gave you a beautiful child.
The World took him back.
You say “ you’ve had enough of this life”.
And I say to you “You don’t belong to yourself.
You belong to the Earth and you belong to the World”.
02/19/2018 Bruce Jim
Photo Credit: Don Dutra
Photo Credit: Don Dutra
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection, Landings, is from Kelsay Books (Hemet, CA). She has published two previous full collections of poetry: Something About (Blue Light Press, San Francisco, CA), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award recipient, and Traveling in Reflected Light (Pig Iron Press, Youngstown, O), a Kenneth Patchen competition winner. She has also authored four chapbooks and is editor of Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry (Scarlet Tanager Books, Oakland, CA). Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She founded and runs the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
In Landings, Zawinski presents poems that embrace, in original ways and with deep-rooted emotional power, the worldwide condition of women, immigrants, and the working class alongside an abiding reverence for the natural world. Of this work, Jan Beatty says Zawinski is the necessary voice of the truth teller, speaking trouble among the beauty. Rebecca Foust lauds the collection as a book that offers wisdom and solace and one you will take comfort in reading again and again. Carolyne Wright goes on to say in these Landings, she embraces the richness of human experience and praises the courage of those who go on ‘living as if they could do anything.’
poem recited with images:
http://www.poetrymagazine.com/
Andrena Zawinski:
Rafts
Sun spills silver stars of light along rippling summer waves.
A string of pelicans wing the horizon,
light in flight for all their heft.
Children squeal and squirm inside their plastic inflatable.
One slips over the side, feigns drowning, splashing and kicking,
holding onto his crying sister, jumps back in to tickle her side––
all of them then swimming in giggles and smiles in frolic and fun,
family picnicking at the shore, waving from bright beach towels.
Other children, roped onto rafts in flimsy life jackets, float in
from Aleppo across the Aegean away from bombs and bullets
to find a way out, forge a way in, whole families cattled
by smugglers, squeezed in dozens deep. But those who slip
into this dark sea cannot be rescued with innocent teasing and mirth.
A three-year-old washes up onto the beach face down on the sand,
limp body leaden in his father’s arms,
water lapping the wounded shore.
Publication Credit:
Reunion Dallas Review, Vol 6, 2017. Univ. of Texas, Dallas, TX
02/12/2018 Alameda Students: The Mighty Pens hosted by Jim
That's enough for me.But I bring them to shore, solid rock and a warm glow.I know not where they come from, nor where they go.I search for the dim lights of the fallen, like dying quasars.Every night, I dive into the inky darkness beneath the stars.The Ocean DepthsWith the hope of sharing a lifelong love of poetry and the exquisite beauty of words, in 2012 Cathy Dana, teacher of Creative Expressions at charter school, Alameda Community Learning Center, founded a school-wide poetry club called The Mighty Pens. The group meets weekly to write and share poetry, culminating each year in a book of student poems, entitled “Wandering Minds, Dancing Words.” Students have read poetry at the Art and Diversity Night, Books, Inc., the Ina Coolbrith Circle, and the Dancing Poetry Festival. Each week, the Mighty Pens choose a “poet of the week” to read a poem to the entire school. Here are their names:Gavin Barron, Sophie McCain-Novakowski, Truly Edison, Miranda Rittenbach, Liam Foster, Oxford Lewis, Cayden Lewis-McCabe, Killian Connolly, Tay Lew.by Liam FosterI live in a little house on an island in a great black sea.
02/05/2018 Ralph Dranow hosted by Jan
Ralph Dranow's widely published poems focus on exploring our common humanity and the poetry and beauty of everyday life. His most recent books are A New Life and Love in Unexpected Places, a limited edition letterpress book. He works as a freelance editor and ghostwriter.
Trees
They never market themselves,
Post of Facebook
Or tweet on Twitter.
Yet day after day,
Like alchemists,
These majestic beings
Take in carbon dioxide
And breathe out oxygen.
Their sturdy trunks, strong roots
Are barriers to soil erosion, floods.
Leaves provide shade,
Bark valuable medicines,
Branches sweet fruits.
Communal creatures,
Inspiring role models,
Trees share water and nutrients with each other.
And like Jesus,
They die for our sins,
Not only for houses, furniture, paper
But the insatiable, fanged maw
Of profit.
I nominate trees for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Ralph Dranow
Editing, Ghostwriting, & Writing-Coaching Services
A NEW LIFE: POEMS, by Ralph Dranow
$14.95 / print edition
The 76 vivid poems in this book offer a unique and compassionate view of what it is to be human. "Ralph's poetry is tender and honest and bittersweet, like sweet-sour candy melting on the tongue. His poems nestle into the heart in a genuinely comforting way." ~ Shonen Bressler "
01/29/2018 HA HA night--bring your humorous work hosted by Gary
01/22/2018 Mare' Simonet hosted by Gary
Need a prompt tonight? Pick one from the words & images in Mare’s poem.
Mare’ Simonet is a poet and multi-media artist, living in Berkeley, CA. Her series of essays, Confessions of a Dopamine Addict, as well as her first poetry book, The Poet Next Door, are due to be released in early 2018. Both works include many humorous references that reveal aspects of life with Parkinson’ s Disease.
While Ms. Simonet has said she dislikes being labeled as a disabled artist, living with Parkinson’s Disease has influenced her choices of
subject matter and the desire to create a mythology with a message .
Mare’ has said that poetry is “ without linear parameters .. One can disregard, recreate, bend, flex, or falsify time in a poem.”
After she presented a poem written two days after her husband passed away, a recent reviewer had this to say :
… I heard the writings of a friend (of his) who had lost a loved one recently, and her words, like a gale, swept powerfully through the room but exited gently and with such raw elegance that it left me wishing I knew how to write.
During the program, Mare’ will read excerpts from her essays and book, as well as new works dedicated to her late husband .
Untitled
Untitled
my mind is inoperably bound to memory
I try to hold on when the ascent is threatened
try to stay calm, find a portable bridge
to negotiate that rotten crevasse
filled with the carcasses of lost phrases,
today's to-do list, yesterday's memos
sometimes the tightly wrapped package
becomes unbound
the flow of remembered occurrences
stretched out in one long straight line
coyly teasing the telomeres, trying to outrace them
01/15/18 Fred Dodsworth hosted by Bruce
(Need a prompt? "The name I don't call myself" -- as in any use or thought of it -- you don't have to use those words.)
Fred Dodsworth As a 30 year publishing professional Fred Dodsworth has launched and or edited or published more than a dozen magazines and newspapers and three books on California Indians. Six years ago he decided to go to college, graduating magna cum laude from SFSU in 2013 with a bachelors in Creative Writing (concentration in Gender Studies). He earned his Masters in Poetry from SFSU in 2017 and is now pursuing an MFA in Fiction.
Formerly a high-school drop out, front-page daily columnist (SF Examiner), award winning art director, sandal maker, and truck driver (not in that order), in his professional career Fred was fortunate enough to work with renown designer Roger Black and to publish work by Alan Ginsberg, June Jordon, Kim Addonizio, Amy Wallace, Garrison Keillor, Corby Kummer, Ginu Kamani and many other accomplished and beginning writers.
Co-host of the 8th 9th & 10th Annual SF Beat Poetry Festival, board member of the 20th Annual Watershed Ecological Poetry Festival, co-organizer of the Northern California Book Awards, collective member of the Beast Crawl Collective for 5 years (now retired), founding board member of Bay Area Generations—A Reading Series For The Ages (now retired), for the last six years Fred Dodsworth has worked with Sharon Coleman producing Milvia Street, the venerable Peralta Colleges literary magazine. He is also publications advisor to Joyce Jenkins of Poetry Flash.
Fred has been a featured reader at the 2014 Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival, East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest, Art of the Muse, Broken Concrete, Literary Speakeasy, Red Light at the Battery, Pandemonium Press at the Spice Monkey, Moe’s Books, Writing Without Walls, the MFA Reading Series, Velvet Revolution, Rolling Writers, Nomadic Press, riverbabble, Red Light Lit, the Aesthetic Union, The Battery, XYZ at the Stork, the SF Beat Poetry Festival, Rolling Writers, Heart of the Muse, Black Health Matters, Naked Bulb, and many other reading series events.
His stories and poems have been published in Red Light Lit, Rag Mag, Troop, Oakland Review #3, riverbabble, Transfer, Milvia Street, Bay Area Generations, Writing Without Walls, Saturday Night Special, Something Worth Revising, US Represented, 11-9 the Fall of Democracy, RISE!, and others. He’s currently finishing a book of poems, a book of short stories, and his first novel.
01/8/18 Julia Vinograd hosted by Jim
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell. Her latest chapbook "Look Out"has just been published in October, 2016
Julia Vinograd is a Berkeley street poet. She has published over 59 books of poetry and won the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley and a M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A Pushcart Prize winner for "The Young Men Who Died of AIDS," she has a Poetry Lifetime Achievement Award from the City of Berkeley and is one of the editors of the anthology New American Poetry Vol. I: The Babarians of San Francisco -- Poets from Hell. Her latest chapbook "Look Out"has just been published in October, 2016
2017 is listed at _
2016 and prior features listed at http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/2016-prior.html
2016 and prior features listed at http://poetryexpressberkeley.blogspot.com/p/2016-prior.html
