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. for
First Thursday Poetry  
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
   
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

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. for
First Thursday Poetry  
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts
201 Washington St., Reading 
   
berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/

One Minute Poems for 2024

 

 Berks Bards is looking for One-Minute Poems for broadcast between programming on BCTV.org for National Poetry Month in April.

For a $10 donation to Berks Bards, via PayPal, cash or check made out to Berks Bards, you can participate.

There are three options for recording a one-minute poem:
💻 Zoom
🎥 Submitting a self-produced video
🎙️ Recording a poem in-person at @bctv_org

Which ever option you choose, please schedule with Marilyn Klimcho at 💌 : klimcho@msn.com.

Featured Poet for March is Shawn R. Jones

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

The Featured Poet for March is
Shawn R. Jones

 Today My Cousin Brenda Would Have Been 50 

The woman we called Morning limped 

down Washington Street, asking for a dollar. 

Everyone knew it was just a matter of time. 

Government wasn’t an enabler. No Narcan 

  

to resurrect zombies. Folks dropped, 

leaving brown puddles. Heroin ate people. 

  

Every day a little thinner, disappearing 

into clothes like ghosts. Till they were ghosts 

on Washington forever, their nothingness enough 

to change moods of stray cats and dogs. 

  

Morning would be no different. Last time                                                         

I saw her, she swallowed her teeth 

  

before she opened her mouth to speak, 

You remember me? 

  

Did she mean from yesterday? 

I searched her eyes, tried to look inside her. 

  

We used to eat crayons together. I saw something 

familiar. Delightful. Plates full of crayons.  

Her sitting in a yellow romper.  

Legs, hardwood floor-brown.  

Two front teeth missing. 

Mouth full of colored wax, laughing. 

Join us for Open Mics in 2024!

Join us for First Thursday Poetry Readings - Open Mic edition - 

on January 4th and February 1st at the GoggleWorks in Reading, PA. 

 

If Only by Joseph Ross

 

December's Featured Poet is

Joseph Ross

If Only

 

For Elijah McClain, 1996-2019. Killed by police in Aurora, Colorado,

he was known as a gentle soul, who played his violin to soothe anxious

animals in shelters.

 

 

If only a violin could redeem

the world.

 

Your skin, glowing like the violin’s wood,

might still sing its humble lament.

 

Your fingers,

the supple dancers they were,

 

could skim across the violin’s

neck, could light each trembling

 

string. Your gentle

neck could guard the violin’s

 

shivering body, cradling its curves,

a lover.

 

If only we might be transformed,

to delight

 

in smallness, might cherish

a boy, a man, as whole as you.