Monday, July 29, 2024

August Featured Poet: Carl Kaucher


Featured Poet for August:

Carl Kaucher


Carl Kaucher resides in Temple Pennsylvania. He is a poet, photographer, life adventurer and urban wanderer whose words have been published in many a zine in print and on line. He's the author of four books, most recently "Ugh " released February 2024 by Iniquity Press. His works consist of mostly prose poems and photographs accumulated during his journeys walking through various Pennsylvania towns. The writing captures the essence of place while usually encapsulating a brief moment in time.



This 

poem is like 

the cold stone 

of a vacant building 

on an empty street 

at midnight that 

eerily glows 

obscure parables  

of moonlight  

across the vacant lot 

before the morning  

sun was to beat   

proclamations of heat 

like Fata Morgana 

viewed through a 

dirty laundromat window  

as insurgent shadows                                                                            

draped in silence 

drift across a  

empty can of beer  

at the edge of 

a parking lot 

bordered by 

old barbed wire  

atop a crumbling wall  

lifeless pages  

from a book lie 

littered on the concrete 

next to a police car 

idling outside a  

convenience store 

still the course of time 

rolls down one way 

streets like a plastic 

bag drifting 

in a cross current 

after a bus passes 

a downtown liquor  

store 

Sunday, July 7, 2024

Poetry Open Mic with Berks Bards

Berks Bards will host a Poetry Open Mic on Thursday, July 11, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts. We're hoping to see all of our Reading/Berks poets as we gather for an evening of sharing poetry! 

Bring your poems to share, and bring friends who might want to check us out and read poems of their own. Everyone is welcome, whether you're a longtime poet or a novice, and whether you want to read or just listen.


See you there!


 


Sunday, June 2, 2024

Featured Poet for June: g emil reutter



Featured Poet for June:
g emil reutter



g emil reutter is a writer of poems and stories. 19 collections of his poetry and fiction have been published, most recently, Until Next Time - Selected Poems 1990-2022 and a chapbook, Glint- Down the Shore Poems, 2024.


He can be found here:

 https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/  Videos https://gereutter.wordpress.com/videos/




Not Over the Rainbow

 

I

 

Toto whimpers, Dorothy not here

loud crunching of carrots, rabbit not

here. Jersey across water, interstate ribbons

through. Town of refinery tanks, Amazon rises

from steel dust, under bridges over roads, row house

yards. Refinery towers, warehouses on edge. Sssh/sniffy

rattle/cough. Suburban wasteland, urban landscape of crumbling

cathedrals to store front churches

 

II

 

No snow, rain. Just cold and colder

cold in the woods of everywhere, naked

petrified leaves of rotten brown hang from

frayed small suckers, uprooted trees, broken boles

throw, snap, stands horizontal, broken trunk after broken

trunk, roots splayed in midair. Flashing red light, ice chunks pierce

defeated shore line.



Join us
Thursday, June 6th
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. forFirst Thursday Poetry  
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts201 Washington St., Reading    berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/
 

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Diane Sahms Featured Poet June 6th First Thursday Poetry Reading


Featured Poet for June:

Diane Sahms



Diane Sahms, a native Philadelphian, is author of eight poetry collections, most recently Blues, Prayers & Pagan Chants, 2024 . Former high school English teacher, she works full time for the federal government and is poetry editor at North of Oxford. 

See more here:

https://dianesahmsguarnieri.wordpress.com  

 http://www.dianesahms-guarnieri.com/  

Videos: https://dianesahmsguarnieri.wordpress.com/videos/


 Lady Chatterley

 

She left, to come home to the garden of self, 

greets naked body with orgasmic garland.

 

Camellia japonicas’ blossoms as a lei

softly brush against pink saucers of areolae.

 

Lilacs woven into her own floral crown 

wreaths waist length hair.


Floral anklets encircling steps.

Floral bracelets’ gentle touch of self-respect.


Welcome home windchimes’ hollow notes

ring from hollow reeds of marrowless bones.

 

Dizzyingly & warmly, wild breath of breeze 

dances small genie feet on each rose blush cheek.


Join us
Thursday, June 6th
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. forFirst Thursday Poetry  
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts201 Washington St., Reading    berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/



Wednesday, May 1, 2024

Jerry Wemple Featured Poet May 2nd First Thursday Poetry Reading

 



Featured Poet for May 
Jerry Wemple


A Pennsylvania native, Jerry Wemple is a poet, nonfiction writer, and editor. He has published four poetry collections, mostly recently We Always Wondered What Became of You from Broadstone Books. He also co-edited, with Marjorie Maddox, Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, an anthology from Penn State Press. Maddox and Wemple have another anthology of Pennsylvania poetry forthcoming from Penn State Press. Wemple’s poetry and essays have been published in numerous journal and anthologies, and internationally in Ireland, Sweden, and Chile. Among his honors are the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Literature, the Word Journal Chapbook Prize, a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, and the Jack and Helen Evans Endowed Faculty Fellowship. He teaches in the Creative Writing program at Commonwealth University - Bloomsburg.




American Bison in Pennsylvania 

 

We see them only in memory, myth.  

Some say there weren’t here at all. But if we are heedful 

and listen closely we can sense the remnants:  

the velvet steam of hot breath, the throat’s deep rattle 

drifting like a specter we can almost touch 

through the fog of an early autumn morning.  

We forget fellow humans too, their names 

changed or forgotten: Munsee, Lenape,  

or Susquehannock, which is the name strangers 

called them. The near last of their people killed 

in 1763, struck down because they could be.  

In tribute now, we name our schools after them.  




Join us
Thursday, May 2nd
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. forFirst Thursday Poetry  
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts201 Washington St., Reading    berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/