*First Saturday Poetry, Half Moon Books*

After her usual series of multiple emails, I suspect there's a Teresa Marta Costa reading somewhere tonight ;)... Support your local used bookstores as well. Who knows when they'll stop making the damned things altogether, and then we'll be stuck with whatever The Man deems worthy of Kindle (or whatever the Underground manages to slip to us...):

FIRST SATURDAY POETRY

TERESA M. COSTA

&

ELIZA PRAETORIUS

Saturday October 2^nd 6:30 PM

Half Moon Books

93 North Front Street

Kingston, NY

(845) 331.5439

Reception & Book Signing

All Welcome No Admission

*HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GROUCHO!*

Life At the Speed of Groucho

It took you eighty years, more,

to live it, and the facts

are sketchy, clipped as they are

from the script of your life.

I wonder about the texture

of your bald head, the smell

of your greasepaint moustache.

It took me a couple of weeks

between calls at work, a

page or two in the evening,

to run thru the stats,

get the wives, daughters,

mother straight, but Groucho,

Julius, twenty years after you

wheezed your last crack,

(a nurse looking for your

temperature was teased with,

"Don't be silly; everybody

has a temperature...") your true

walk will never be clear, how

your black eyes rolled over

this same white way at the

start of the last hundred block,

A doctor?

Minnie knew better. Your meds

wouldn't fit in a bottle,

ills of the world better served

by a Hackenbush, a Spaulding,

a Groucho ready to spring,

ducked into low crouch out

of Establishment's way,

clawhammer coat prying the dust

from Edwardian minds,

Groucho at the mic,

and the secret word is

CAR 8/5/01

*POETS SPEAK LOUD AGAIN!*

Monday night, Sept. 27, marked the return of one of the Emerald City's most interesting open mics, Poets Speak Loud. The series was suspended in May after the devastating fire that closed, for good it seems, the Lark Tavern. Their new home is McGeary's, off Clinton Avenue and spittin' distance from the Palace Theatre.

Host Mary Panza took a few minutes to thank Tess, the Lark's mistress and current manager at the rapidly rising McGeary's. Tess thanked the poets and artists and all who have supported her since the fire. Next was an orderly progression of poets, writers, and other bon vivants who've been saving it up all summer.

For the blow-by-blow, always check out Dan Wilcox's blog at http://dwlcx.blogspot.com. In fact, see him for every literary thing in the Albany area, and sometimes even down South. Poets Speak Loud is held on the last Monday night of the month, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

*New RANDOM WRITING Workshop Series*

Just a reminder: On Jan. 13, I'm beginning a new RANDOM WRITING poetry workshop series. It will be held on the 2nd and 4th Weds. of each month, at the A.I.R. Studio Gallery in Kingston. The workshops are scheduled to run from 6-8 p.m.

For the first half, I'd like to hear what you're working on, and be open to feedback from others there. In the second half, I'll offer a writing prompt, or you can go with an idea inspired by the writing of others, or your own mind breaths.

$10 per night, 6 workshops for $50. Call to confirm or with questions: 845-339-8686, or e-mail me at dorothyy62@hotmail.com.

*Poem: "Ice Fishing"*

Ice Fishing

You and your father and Karen Carpenter

drive slowly out onto the lake

as far as it's safe, then farther,

windows rolled down, doors unlocked;

or, leashed to a rope for safety,

you or your father slinks across the surface,

cigarettes sending up signals

to the other fishermen:

it's safe, it's safe, it's safe,

then farther still.

You haven't told me yet about the

hairline cracks in your solid Minnesota,

midwest fields, woven plaids of green and grey and brown,

or how to cut a hole in a foot of ice

to get through to the real water,

where fish don't know it's Christmas again,

just when they thought it was safe.


CAR 11/30/09

*Poem: "Fish House- Lake Mille Lacs"*

Fish House- Lake Mille Lacs

Purple rising into pink, into blue,

slateful of snow, one narrow path

plowed up to the fish house,

a fancy one you say, not the

plywood shanties you remember.

I know that blue from Catskill winters, twilight,

punctuated with acorns, twigs,

irreverent leaves freckling the surface.

That clean, blue sheet across the frozen water

must be crisp and neat the whole season

but for a hole, a few footprints,

a few lost souls whose fins freeze

quickly in the Minnesota air.

Many Lakes, you say it's called--Mille Lacs,

Ojibwa by way of French traders,

heat-seeking Canadians just steps

from the border, and with this solitute,

lines we draw between countries,

between each other, declarations

blow apart into so many blue stars,

nestled together in the sky above this shack.

The windows glow yellow, bright,

a bit of warmth in all this consistency,

hope for the fish that remain

that somewhere in this frozen landscape

fire survives.


CAR 12/1/09

*Poem: "Mary the Second"

Mary the Second

Luckily, silver becomes me,
shines like a river against my brown skin.
I’ve always been number two.
Even in grief, when we set out for His tomb,
after the soldiers told us where He was stashed,
His Mother tagged along as if we didn't
deserve a little time alone to say goodbye,
like she still didn't trust Him,
didn't trust us.

His buddies ate first, slept beside Him,
asked Him over and over
the obvious questions we had already answered
in the early morning, our time.
He was mine then, but even so,
I could always smell Martha’s oil on His head, His feet,
knew she had been there before me again.

In a previous life, my specialty
was cleaning up afterwards,
comfort, do-overs.
They came to me for something more.
They left with too much.

He called me Beloved.
We bickered and bantered
like an old married couple,
but I knew we’d never marry.
He was a busy man,
never in a place long enough
to pin down about it, anyway.
I like my time alone, too.
After a long day of splitting fish and bread,
who wants to come home to a multitude?

He told the world He cast out my seven demons.
I told Him they were all just friends,
seven veils, seven wonders,
seven deadly sings of joy.
He knew others too, before he got
the nod and wink from Johnny on the Spot.

I introduced Him to the body
He’d only starved and run ragged through the desert.
He made wine from water, brought back the dead,
but never really tasted Himself
before I came along.

So I went to His tomb that Sunday
to bless his battered body with sweet oils myself,
the Sabbath leaving no time for such niceties
(take my advice: never die on a Friday;
your shrift will be short and mumbled),
and like I said, the Mother tagged along.
She never approved of me.
It wasn’t her approval I wanted.

When we got to the tomb,
we saw that somebody had beaten us to the punch.
Somebody had moved the rock!
I ran back to tell the posse.
They didn’t believe me.
They never did listen to a thing I said,
like I got by on my good looks
alone all these years!

He had to tell them Himself,
let that fool Tom poke his fingers
in the hole in His side.
I always knew it wouldn’t last.
Ascension was the last straw.

Now I sell t-shirts at the outlet mall in Tel Aviv.
I sold my story to the Star a while back;
People did a nice thing, too.
I still got it. Men sip from me
like hummingbirds, bees, nervous bridegrooms,
stop for a taste of the eternal,
and go home to meatloaf.