Joseph Ross is December's Featured Poet

 

December's Featured Poet is

Joseph Ross

Joseph Ross is the author of five books of poetry: Crushed & Crowned (forthcoming, 2023), Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many publications including, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, The Langston Hughes Review, and the 2022 anthology, WHERE WE STAND: Poems of Black Resilience. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent

Review Poetry Prize for his poem “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God.” Recently, Ross served as judge for the 2021 Ken Ebert Poetry Prize from Iris G. Press. He currently serves on the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. where he teaches English and Creative Writing. Ross writes regularly at www.JosephRoss.net

Lisa DeVuono is Featured Poet for November 2nd First Thursday Poetry Reading

 

Join us for First Thursday Poetry 
Thursday, November 2nd 
from 6-8:00 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry Open Mic 
In Room Y117 at YOCUM LIBRARY 
Reading Area Community College  
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

November's Featured Poet is
Lisa DeVuono

Feast by Jane Edna Mohler

 

October's Featured Poet is Jane Edna Mohler Feast   I love the fat of summer, flabby green weeks when weeds lap   over the vague rims of back roads, just as batter overtakes   a griddle. Poplar leaves wave wide as cows’ tongues slurping   syrup-thick air. Here, summer spits when it talks, gulps cold milk   and wipes a hand across its mouth. I want to stuff myself full   with warm fields, hills tender and round as yeast rolls bathed   in butter. Oh to scoop the ooze of June’s soft eggs, consume   this season, lick its juices, chew salty bacon days.     One Art: A Journal of Poetry first publication September 3, 2023 Jane Edna Mohler  |   jane.e.mohler@gmail.com  |  www.janeednamohler.com

Jane Edna Mohler is Featured Poet for First Thursday Poetry

 

Join us for First Thursday Poetry 
Thursday, October 5th 
from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. for
1st Thursday Poetry Open Mic 
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
 Meeting Place: Studio 238   
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

October's Featured Poet is
Jane Edna Mohler

Jane Edna Mohler is a Bucks County Poet Laureate Emeritus. She is the 2016 winner of Main Street Voices, a finalist in the Robert Fraser Competition, and second place winner in the 2023 Crossroads Poetry Contest. Recent publications include Gyroscope, Gargoyle, River Heron Review, One Art, and New Verse News. Her collection Broken Umbrellas was published by Kelsay. She is the Poetry Editor of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. www.janeednamohler.com  

You by Aries Franklin Ortiz

September's Featured Poet is

Aries Franklin Ortiz

You

I love the process of getting to know you.
The ins and outs and all the pieces
that come together to form your beautiful mind.
You have always wanted to be understood
So allow me to know the answers to the questions
that unlock your heart without scaring you.
Sometimes love that feels too good;
feels like a setup boo
And we all have small triggers
and it’s inevitable that I might be the cause
of one of these at some point.
Especially when it’s that one thing,
that reminds you of that one time,
that has etched itself inside your mind
and makes you shudder at the thought.
But together we can create a new version of love’s art.
So let’s communicate through it
and place brushes to canvas
to paint the beauty of forever
give Van Gogh a run for his money
help you forget everything you learned over time that love is not.
….

 By Aries Franklin Ortiz

Aries Franklin Ortiz is Featured Poet for September's First Thursday Poetry

 

September's Featured Poet is

Aries Franklin Ortiz

Aries Franklin Ortiz is a National Slam Poet and writer from Reading, PA. 

She started her journey as a Poet in 2005 at West Chester University. She’s had multiple articles published in various newspapers and magazines across the country and currently writes for The Drum newspaper. Her stage name “Smiley” is most accurate description of Aries, because when you meet her or when she’s on stage, that’s what she’s always doing! After a short hiatus, in the beginning of 2023, Aries dove back onto the poetry scene and hasn’t stopped since. Currently she’s working on her first published book of Poems and short stories, you can expect this before the end of the year. (and just in case you’re wondering, she’s a Virgo.).

Join us at the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts in Reading, PA 
for First Thursday Poetry on September 7th from 6-7:45 p.m.

Heather Thomas is Featured Poet for First Thursday Poetry Reading August 3rd

 

August's Featured Poet is Heather Thomas

Heather H. Thomas is the author of Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press), Blue Ruby (FootHills Publishing), Resurrection Papers (Chax Press), and Practicing Amnesia (Singing Horse Press), twice a National Poetry Series finalist. She has poems forthcoming in Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts and the Keystone Poets Anthology. Among the journals publishing her work are About Place, Barrow Street, Interim, Pedestal Magazine, Persimmon Tree, The Wallace Stevens Journal, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and anthologies including Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest. Her poems are translated and published in Albanian, Arabic, Italian, Lithuanian, Spanish, and Swedish. For many years Heather co-edited the literary journal 6ix with five Philadelphia poets, and she recently edited an international portfolio for Persimmon Tree. She lives along the Schuylkill River with her cat, Lily Briscoe. 

DOUBLE HELIX

As if heart and lungs flatten back to ribs

           a clearing inside the body. As if there is

no use in a center, you can live

           hollowed out, away from one taking the place

of a mountain, you whose bluff body

          has the power to part water,

to spin parallel wakes, to stand in the way

         of wind’s blunt edge, diagonal to the flow.

As if standing at the crossroad

         buttoning your coat, wind-whipped,

the coat scissoring into tatters and you

         spiraling into cloudscript,

a double helix across the sky, the future plunging

          to the past, where friction and pressure

shed a signature

         here, now, on the body vibrating.

Heather H. Thomas, from Vortex Street (FutureCycle Press)

First published in Barrow Street