May 26, 2010 – Lorraine Schein

Lorraine Schein

Lorraine Schein is a New York poet and writer. She likes to write about feminist issues and fantasy/sf themes.

Her poetry and stories have appeared recently in Melusine, Home Planet News, the We’Moon calendar and the anthology Alice Redux, a collection of stories about Alice in Wonderland. Her poetry chapbook, The Futurist’s Mistress, is available from Mayapple Press. She will be teaching a spiritual writing workshop in NYC this summer.

Delphic (Projection #3)

The futurist’s mistress
(In this alternate scenario)
Sleeps in his bed,
Beside his other curved concubines,
Space and Time.
She projects herself, once more,
Endlessly into his future.

The dreams crash and glisten;
Presaging a love
More fantastic than science‑‑

The futures tighten around her
like his arms in the night.

 

April 14, 2010 Sharon Charde

Sharon L. Charde, a retired family therapist and writing teacher, is an award-winning poet and recently first prize winner in the Matt Clark New Delta Review contest. Her work has been published in over thirty journals and anthologies.

She edited and published an anthology of poetry I Am Not A Juvenile Delinquent, which was a product of her weekly writing workshop at Touchstone, a Litchfield residential facility for adjudicated teen-aged girls where she’s volunteered since 1999. Last summer Touchstone dedicated “The Sharon Charde Poetry Garden” in her honor. She won first prize in the Flume Press 2005 chapbook competition for her chapbook, Bad Girl At The Altar Rail, which was published in September 2005. Four Trees Down From Ponte Sisto, a chapbook collection of poems on her son’s death, won first prize from The Dallas Poets Community in 2006, and Backwaters Press published her full-length collection, Branch In His Hand, in November 2008. She won the first Litchfield County Inge Morath Award in 2005, given for Sharon’s significant social impact in the arts, and the “Making A Difference For Women Award” from Soroptimist International of Greater Waterbury, CT in 2007. She has received six Pushcart nominations as well as fellowships to both Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center For the Creative Arts.

She has led women’s writing retreats in Lakeville, CT and Block Island, RI since 1990, and has lived in Lakeville since 1970 with her husband John.

AT THE BEST WESTERN

Across the small shining pool I see a boy
about ten, narrow body, loose nylon suit,
and then there you are rising out of him
like steam, in your own ten-year-old body,
navy trunks with the two red stripes down the side,
wet hair sticking to your forehead, you’ve just
gotten out of the pool and are calling me
to come and look at something on the other side.
Your bathing suit is drenched and droopy but you
are widely smiling, you’ve always loved
the water, want me to come in with you now,
swim the length of the shimmering rectangle.
Slowly I rise to move toward you, dive in
and then of course you are gone but the water
takes me in and I begin to stroke, first the crawl,
then I’m on my back and then over on my breast ,
laps and laps, my legs kicking then scissoring, heart
deep in the chlorinated liquid, not drowning.

 

April 7, 2010 -Claire Zoghb

Claire Zoghb

WAR STORY

He’s put the war out of his mind. Shelling and murdered relatives behind him. But it lives on in his legs: one limb at a time shakes constantly, even in sleep, as if someone had told him once long ago that he could outrun memory and he half-believed it.

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Claire Zoghb’s first full-length collection, Small House Breathing, won the 2008 Quercus Review annual competition. A chapbook, Dispatches from Everest, is forthcoming from Pudding House Press. Her work has appeared in Yankee, Connecticut Review, Connecticut River Review, Caduceus, CALYX, Saranac Review, Mizna: Prose, Poetry and Art Exploring Arab America, Natural Bridge, Quercus Review, in the anthologies Through A Child’s Eyes: Poems and Stories About War and Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems. Twice a Pushcart Prize nominee, Claire was the winner of the 2008 Dogwood annual poetry competition. She is a recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism, an Urban Artists Initiative grant, a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and has earned a certificate from the Amherst Writers and Artists Institute. She lives in New Haven, where she works as a graphic artist/book designer and teaches writing workshops for kids.

 

March 24, 2010 – Marianela Medrano Marra & Spring Open Myk

Marianela Medrano Marra

Marianela Medrano-Marra was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, and has lived in Connecticut since 1990. A poet and a writer of non-fiction and fiction, she holds a PhD in psychology, a professional counselor’s license and certification as a poetry therapist.

Medrano offers workshops and readings in various venues in Connecticut, New York and other parts of the country. Her poetry, rich with imagery and metaphor, often deals with women’s issues. In her workshops, she combines literature, psychology and spirituality to help others find new ways of knowing the wholeness of human beings.

Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines in Latin America, Europe and the United States. The following are her individual publications: Oficio de Vivir (1986). Santo Domingo: Editorial Buho, Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza/Happy Eyes of Sadness (1987). Santo Domingo: Editorial Buho. Regando Esencias/ The Scent of Waiting (1998). New York: Alcance, Curada de Espantos/One Who Has Seen It All (2002). Madrid, Spain: Ediciones Torremozas.

An Urban Sadness Converses with Ours

Leagues and leagues of blue sea
without a voice
a sound to guide us
Names also forgotten
confused in uncertain accents
Before
there were bats in the caves
to guard our names in the Guayabas
Also turtles and sacred trees
-surfaces to write them on-
That was before we drowned
before the wind swallowed us
There are no statues of our ancestors in Manhattan
and we have forgotten how to use wings
Yet inside there is a bright Zemi­
signaling a point of light
A voice sings in the sun
our bodies move towards the unkown.

From Goddess of the Yuca (unpublished)

Translated from Spanish by the author and Reggie Marra

 

March 17, 2010 – Reggie Marra plus St Patty’s open myk

Reggie Marra at Molten Java

Peace poet, personal journey facilitator, all around good-guy, Reggie Marra is a poet, author, and educator with over 33 years of experience in elementary, middle, secondary, and higher education.

He is a Master Teaching Artist with the Arts Division of the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, and he works with organizations and individuals who are committed to ongoing growth and development. His Integral Journeys™ workshops provide safe, challenging spaces within which to explore identity, perspective, voice and purpose—your authentic place in the world—through the transformative power of language as it manifests in poetry, story, council, humor & nature. Visit his website at IntegralJourneys.com.

He is author of four books: This Open Eye: Seeing What We Do, Living Poems, Writing Lives: Spirit, Self and the Art of Poetry, Who Lives Better Than We Do? and The Quality of Effort.
His poems have appeared in The Underwood Review, Many Waters, Let the Poets Speak, The Fairfield Review, Concepts, The Journal of Pastoral Counseling, “Story, Silence and Spirit: The Crisis of the First-Person Pronouns,” “Transformation or Stagnation: the Resilience Dilemma,” and “What Do You Mean, Spirituality?”

Prior to developing the Integral Journeys programs, he spent twenty-one years as a teacher, coach, and administrator in secondary and higher education. He currently lives in Connecticut with his family. His wife Marianela Medrano-Marra is our featured poet the following Wednesday. They are very different and quite complementary!

Empty Smoking Boot
August 6, 2006

Green shrubs and
distant haze-shrouded
hills lie beyond the
charred, smoldering
car frame. Scattered
tree limbs, twigs and
dry leaves lure the eye
from the blackened
metal to the lone
empty smoking boot
that leans on its side
against the small stone.
Laces through the bottom
four and top two eyelets
connect nothing,
lead nowhere, yearn
for familiar tension
and purpose. Brown
leather upper folded
down and back as if
to offer relief from
the heat for the absent
ankle and foot.

 

Feb 17, 2010 – the 5-minute DADA poem – a workshop

Creating the 5 minute poem.

Workshop conducted by Louise Sieviec.

This was an exercise in creative spontaneity. In five minutes all present wrote and wrote. When time was up, each person picked their best line and added to a single notepad, then the note book went around a second time, and Louise called it  DaDa TaDa!

Here is the text as supplied by our workshop leader Louise:   You can play with the original lines below and make your own version. When you are done, post it  as a comment on the bottom of this page.

A terrific workshop Louise! People seemed to really enjoy this one!

 

DaDa  TaDa

All that is routine is this routine  (TG)

You have breathed a soul through these ribs (DC)

With silver shins, platinum thighs (MW)

I choked (LS)

We’ve lost our past and don’t care much for the future (JW)

Snow so deep it covers all my carefully placed stones (ED)

To love someone you must have someone to love (LK)

It reminds me of how brilliance is spontaneous, and that there is a warmth to darkeness (T)

And then there’s the NYC scholar who consumed McDonald’s as well as any elite patte-sucking briefcase

Gathering up spontaneity where I am stuck (CpH)

Your binding my tongue and I wish I could meet your gaze and hold it.

Every soft delicate press of your lips

Breathe music into the sea; make steam of the sea with this song

Give to me what writings you have to declare

I love drinking outside, especially when the moon and the stars provide cheap magic tricks

Clearing out inner dialogue (CpH)

With the slight of an edge, footing and medal were lost & I learned that life is really a crap shoot (TG)

The burden and the challenge of historical time. (JW)

A couple of crows are having a long distance conversation

Roses represent beauty, purity of love (LK)

The rosin of his lips, saved the strings of me

Toast the color of compost, red notebook, blue ink (MW)

I am at a loss of words around you, you confound me and impound my words like mutts of the streets.

 

Jan 20th, 2010 – Sympetalous at Blue Z

Sympetalous the younger

Sympetalous

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For an account of this great feature click here

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Direct from the 60′s, wild-eyed poet-guy Sympetalous will read his own all-natural hipster beat poetry.

The following poem is what Sympetalous sent as a bio:

A mild mannered reporter
for The Subterranean Homesick
News hears the call of fate and suddenly
awakes Some Velvet Morning when he’s straight
then starts to sway and write this way for no
apparent planetary reason save the
subtle motion of a Deep Blue Moon
and the Red Dwarf Stars…

And all the while a Whirling Earth performs
one full ellipsis around an ever Sacred Sun and soon
bright pulsing words from Pipes of Pan now rise & soar
and hang a bit about a pointed space filled with heat & light
and pairs of eager ears open wide to vivid minds
some even willing to shoot the rapids
and then float the calms
of this Stream o’ Con
Ki-o-tay

 

12/2/09 Mark McGuire-Schwartz

 

Mark Mcguire-Schwartz

A man in a wheelchair,
wearing a condom,
drinking a Red Bull,
flips the switch
on the 16.2 mile
Particle Accelerator/Particle
Collider, convening a series
of consequences that include
(but are not limited to) the end
of the universe, a consequence
not cautioned against
in the fine print
on the can
of Red Bull,
although no
litigation will
result.

* This poem was written as a direct  result of a discussion one week at Wednesday Night Poetry.

The poet who was raised by friendly bears — Mark McGuire-Schwartz will read his experimental and non experiment poems. with and without jokes, with and without an alarm clock ringing, with and without hawks, etc.  Sure to be full of surprises based on his Word of Mouth reading a few months ago….

Mark Mcguire-Schwartz is a sometimes host of WNPS, is treasurer and chairman of WNPS’s ever evolving “committee,” and also a host of Word of Mouth at the Institute Library in New Haven. He sometimes imagines that he was raised by bears, (as previously noted) and he says it shows. In his 27 years as a state bureaucrat, Mark strove to raise the level of memos to an art form. Despite this his short play, Meeting Arthur Miller, was produced as part of the Short and NEAT program during the 2004 International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in New Haven. His work HAS appeared in The Whatever Journal, RougueScholars.com, The Fairfield Review and in Bent Pin Quarterly. However he protests that he has not yet won many prestigious and lucrative awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Grant. Oh well Oh well. Oh well.

 

10/28/09 – Halloween with Jack McCarthy

Jack McCarthy

Photo by Andi Burk, D.M.B./Nightfall—->

Put on Your Pirate Hat – Jack McCarthy is coming for Halloween!! Every year we have our annual Halloween bash with costume contest – This year we have a feature as well. And what could be better on Halloween than the consumate storyteller poet!!!!

Jack McCarthy is a working guy from the Boston area who’s been writing poetry since the mid-60s. He’d been averaging about a poem a year until 1992-93, when two things happened. First, his new wife, Carol, blackmailed him into attending a workshop with Galway Kinnell; then he brought his daughter Annie, for her birthday, to the open mike at the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, Cambridge, hoping she’d get excited about poetry. Jack was the one who got hooked. Since then he’s brought out Grace Notes, two chapbooks (Actual Grace Notes and Too Old to Make Excuses (But Still Young Enough to Make Love)), a 60-minute cassette tape (Poems for Hannah), and a CD (Breaking Down Outside a Gas Station). A major book, Say Goodnight, Grace Notes, was released in 2003 by EM Press to rave reviews. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including The Spoken Word Revolution. Among his influences he numbers Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, and Garrison Keillor. He doesn’t think of himself as a “performance poet,” but as a “standup poetry guy,” a writer of poems that perform themselves. — from http://standupoet.net

KENMORE SQUARE
I knew a poet who would make
a couple hundred copies of a poem
and stick them in a pouch,
like a mailman
who wrote all the mail himself.

Saturday mornings
he would walk Commonwealth Avenue
from the Public Gardens
all the way to Kenmore Square.
He’d smile at everyone he met,
and offer each a poem.
Most people accepted them.

At Kenmore he would turn
and start back Commonwealth,
conscientious to retrace
the same side of that
gracious boulevard,
and he would reclaim his poems
from the sidewalks and the gutters
where they’d been discarded,
and he would stuff the pieces
back in the pouch.

We watch others go through life
leaving bodies strewn behind
and wonder vaguely
what our own trail looks like.
Bless those brave enough
actually to walk
that backward track.
They walk it for us all.
==============

 

9/30/09 – Cortney Davis

Cortney Davis

Cortney Davis, a career RN, and nurse practitioner and award winning writer and poet has written numerous volumes of poetry and prose. She is the poetry editor of Alimentum: the Literature of Food (www.alimentumjournal.com)  

Cortney has a new poetry chapbook called, “Conversion / Return,” coming out in August from Finishing Line Press. The poems are all religious and very personal, documenting first her conversion to Judeaism, then to Catholisim. The book is $13 at Finishing Line Press.com, and click on new releases. Visit her website at www.cortneydavis.com. Read Cortney Davis talking about her writing process

Then It Was Simple*

You walked up Sylvandell Drive

Father would be home soon,

easing the gray Plymouth into the one-car garage,

and Mother, who was always home,

was cooking meatloaf with its two

sizzling strips of bacon. Snow stung your face,

snow crunched beneath your boots, and the glow

from Pittsburgh’s steel mills hung in the sky.

In such a place, in 1955, Mary could appear to you

casually, leaning out the neighbor’s window—

a blue domestic angel with a movie star face,

round arms crossed on the sill, her brown hair

in a friendly page boy. She smiled, you smiled back,

grounding you, and the frozen snow and the whirl of gravity

holding you, and Mary,

as if she were not from another world,

so happy to see you.

*(First appeared in her book Leopold’s Maneuvers)