Super-Sized Series

 Poetry Readings Part 1

  

  

 Joe Cottonwood reads a poem as poets, fiction writers and song writers clap at Lit Night at Caseo Café in La Honda, CA.

Lit Night by Joe Cottonwood

Once a month in the ghost restaurant
        we bring wine,
        we light candles.
Alan (veterinarian) recites a rowdy lyric
        about the cloacae
        of waterfowl.
Dennis (percussionist, oldies band)
        recites from his bar stool about a pretty lass
        courted by men at a dance, it’s his daughter,
        she saves the last dance for him.
Lynette (social worker) tells how her big brother
        tricked her into looking down
        the nozzle of a hose.
Bob (physical therapist) sings about fishing
        in Canada, then selling all the fish
        to Japan.
Joyce (office manager) reads a poem she wrote
        about music,
so I (contractor, retired) tell about singing
        la la la
        to my grandson
        who needs constant holding.
We all agree holding is a good thing
        but hugging among men is an acquired skill
        not taught in Ohio.
Terry (maintenance man) reads a poem
        about the secret meanings
        of words.
Denise (nobody knows what she does) tells a story
        about hitchhiking in France
        where trapped in a truck
        in the remote alps
        with a man’s hand on her thigh
        she thwarts the tough guy
        by singing songs from The Sound of Music.
Bob washes the wine glasses;
        Terry returns the key to its hiding place.
        We hug, some of us anyway.
Our little town, once a month.
        Literature, home-grown.


Ballade of the Open Mic by Marilyn L. Taylor
             ~ AN OPEN MIC WILL FOLLOW TONIGHT’S POETRY ~
          —Bookshop poster

O will you won’t you join the gang
down at the books-and-java store
where browsers browse and poets hang?
We long to greet you at the door
and steer you to the second floor
where we’ll festoon the atmosphere
with rhythm, rhyme, and metaphor—
the poems you didn’t know you came to hear!

Linger for the whole shebang,
and get more than you bargained for!
Poems in Spanish, poems in slang,
ripe confessionals galore,
piles of sex (please don’t keep score),
and now and then a sonneteer
will show you why you can’t ignore
those incandescent poems you need to hear!

And if some old orangutang
has rescued from a dresser drawer
his strange pentameter harangue,
or some benighted sophomore
reveals her fling in Singapore—
five minutes and they’re outta here,
making way for lines that soar:
the kind you’ve waited far too long to hear!

You simply can’t go home before
we breathe our blessings in your ear—
our songs of the unsung troubadour,
the poems we know you really came to hear!

Originally published on Verse-Virtual

AT THE POULTRY READING by Barbara Crooker

(a misheard line)

Everyone pecks around aimlessly, stirring the dust,
then, wings and tails flapping, they settle in the straw.
The reading starts late, as the last bit of sun
sifts in through cracks in the barnsiding.  
The invited readers begin:  A.  Rooster,
a C=A=C=K=L=E poet, known for his strong
performances, his jazz riffs on the gabble and gobble
of barnyard life; he aims to ruffle some feathers tonight,
loves the shock value of forbidden words:
     rotisserie
     barbecue sauce
     cast iron skillet          
     biscuits light as angel’s breath—

Oh, he’s a cock with confidence, purple punk-cut,
multi-pierced and tattooed, watch him preen
his wattles and combs.  And if he does crow on
and on, extends his time by 45, what’s a little spilled corn
in the barn?

Next we have Jemima Hen, bird of color,
ardent fem-avian.  Railer against the evils of egg production:
I’m not one of those broody types.
Who says you have to lay eggs to feel fulfilled?

I am woman. Hear me squack,
How I love to cluck that talk
How I love to strut that walk

Grain break.

And then, at last, what they’ve all been waiting for,
the open reading, where the entire flock
lines up at the microphone.  Night turns its pages;
at last the sun rises.  But no one is awake
to sing the dawn.

published in Light

POETRY READING
THIS SATURDAY by Shoshauna Shy

You planned your outfit
a week ago: prairie skirt
with ruffle, cherry cardigan,
tank top ordered express
from a catalog–you even
ironed your socks.
Got up at dawn to review
your books one more time.
A fresh cartridge in the
autograph pen for all
the breathless upturned
faces–women clutching
handbags on laps, bearded
men wearing suspenders,
college students in the front
row earnestly jotting notes.
How the librarian, your host,
talked up his lively town–
farmers markets, cello concerts,
an artists’ guild in the old brick
bank and now your face on fliers
up and down Main Street.
You’ll have a crowd he claims
 
but what you have is him,
a pale, perspiring man in flapping
too-big trousers pacing window
to window wringing hands,
the stack clerk slipping into
a seat with her break-time coffee
and the custodian leaning in the
doorway while wax dries.
You have a meadow of empty
chairs mute as tombstones.
The only saving grace is that
no one who matters to you
will find out about this unless
you tell them. Beside the podium,
your basket of books looks as
quaint as the plate of cinnamon
tarts someone baked and set
on a doily, going stale.
 
I don’t get it–your host shakes
his head. All my friends said
they’d come and you want to
pinch shut the pink tip of his
pointy nose and shout SHUT UP
ALREADY because it’s a sixty-mile
drive back home and there’s no
room in your car for feeling sorry
for him, too.


Poetry Reading
at the Train Depot by Alarie Tennille

Lawrence, Kansas

Ticket free, destination unknown
for all willing to leave home
on a rainy Saturday night,
to sit in stiff seats with no
snack trays and wait out
the scream and click-clack
of competing trains. We catch
slivers of poems bobbing
between the passing cars.
We watch each poet tied
to the track, resolute,
as though it was always his
intention to test the Doppler
effect on his final lines.

Prison Poetry Reading by Paul Hostovsky                                    
When we arrived
they took our shoelaces.
But they gave them back
after the reading. Something about
weaponizing shoelaces. Nothing
about weaponizing poetry.
An inmate played the violin
as we filed in and took our seats,
then one by one we read our poems
to the inmates and the inmates
read their poems to us. You could
tell the guards didn't like poetry.
The poetry was a kind of
punishment for the guards,
a kind of escape for the inmates
who walked right out of there
in the poems, barefoot and twirling
the shoelaces, skipping and holding hands
with the guards, telling the truth,
not the whole truth but
lots of tricky emotional truths
which you can only
imagine.

From Pitching for the Apostates


Poetry Reading at the Bucking Horse Bar on Rodeo Drive by Sharon Waller Knutson

Swiveling on stools,
couples in shorts
chug Cabernet and Coors
as they listen to country music.

My husband plays bass
and Bobby wails Willie
and Waylon, as I sit
at my book table.

On the break, I read poems
from, My Grandmother Smokes
Chesterfields, and customers
hand over $20 bills.

The bar owner bans me
from reading poetry
when the band
demands more money

since their tips shrink
when I start selling books.
So during the break,
I read my poems

on the street corner
and sell books
out of the back
of our camper.


At the Poetry Reading by Alan Walowitz

It’s poetry, so the crowd is thin--
more worn and older than last time.
It’s another hot day getting nearer the solstice
and a few take seats at the ends of rows,
so they don’t have far to go
when they have to go.
One lady, old--my age--seems bewildered,
having only wandered into the library
to get out of the sun.  
She turns to me quizzically. I whisper,
Poetry reading. She nods and decides to stay.
Maybe it’s the free coffee, though so far only a battered pot,
a jar of instant, and an old Cremora
its insides requiring a sharp instrument
to urge some of the chemicals loose.
And someone forgot the sugar,
so one of the assembled
rustles up some Sweet ’N Low from her purse.
And there are donut holes pre-wrapped for safety,
four to a pouch.  The emcee comes forward,
describes our intention, our raison d’etre,
how poetry is the life-force,
and, while he’s at it, mentions this summer heat and global warming,
and how we’ve all got to do our part
whatever that is. But a mic’s
only good as the speaker’s willingness to talk into it
and he’s a poet-type unused to such conveniences.
He’s nice enough, but doesn’t rhyme,
and he should speak up,
the lady takes her tote and stands to leave.
Hey, I tell her, I’m next. I have some poems,
as if this should have been encouragement to stay.
She says--and not unkindly--
Can’t stay, but I’m sure your mother would be very proud.

appeared in Live Encounters