Joshua Gage at Lix and Kix, 16 June 2010, part two

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5qIuX_MKDg

Part two (of three) of Joshua Gage‘s
featured reading on June
16th 2010 during
the Lix
and Kix Poetry Extravaganza at Bela Dubby, 13321 Madison Ave. in
Lakewood, OH

Joshua Gage
is author
of Deep
Cleveland Lenten Blues [deep cleveland press], breaths
[vanZeno
Press], and co-author (with J.E. Stanley) of
Intrinsic
Night [Sam’s Dot Publishing].  He hosts the deep cleveland poetry
hour at Borders Books in Strongsville, Ohio, on the second
Friday of every month at 8:30 p.m. 
Find more Joshua Gage online at http://hooks-and-books.livejournal.com.

Joshua Gage at Lix and Kix, 16 June 2010, part one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWDgGKtxvRY

Part one (of three) of Joshua Gage‘s featured reading on June
16th 2010 during
the Lix
and Kix Poetry Extravaganza at Bela Dubby, 13321 Madison Ave. in Lakewood, OH

Joshua Gage is author
of Deep Cleveland Lenten Blues [deep cleveland press], breaths [vanZeno
Press], and co-author (with J.E. Stanley) of
Intrinsic Night [Sam’s Dot Publishing].  He hosts the deep cleveland poetry hour at Borders Books in Strongsville, Ohio, on the second Friday of every month at 8:30 p.m. 
Find more Joshua Gage online at http://hooks-and-books.livejournal.com.

Walter Simmons (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Walter Simmons
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

My parents thought that I would be
As great as Edison or greater:
For as a boy I made balloons
And wondrous kites and toys with clocks
And little engines with tracks to run on
And telephones of cans and thread.
I played the cornet and painted pictures,
Modeled in clay and took the part
Of the villain in the Octoroon.
But then at twenty-one I married
And had to live, and so, to live
I learned the trade of making watches
And kept the jewelry store on the square,
Thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking,–
Not of business, but of the engine
I studied the calculus to build.
And all Spoon River watched and waited
To see it work, but it never worked.
And a few kind souls believed my genius
Was somehow hampered by the store.
It wasn’t true.  The truth was this:
I did not have the brains.

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click
here.]

Jacob Godbey (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Jacob Godbey
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

How did you feel, you libertarians,
Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons
Around the saloon, as if Liberty
Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar
Or at a table, guzzling?
How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you,
Who almost stoned me for a tyrant
Garbed as a moralist,
And as a wry-faced ascetic frowning upon Yorkshire pudding,
Roast beef and ale and good will and rosy cheer–
Things you never saw in a grog-shop in your life?
How did you feel after I was dead and gone,
And your goddess, Liberty, unmasked as a strumpet,
Selling out the streets of Spoon River
To the insolent giants
Who manned the saloons from afar?
Did it occur to you that personal liberty
Is liberty of the mind,
Rather than of the belly?

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click
here.]

Batterton Dobyns (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Batterton Dobyns
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1 of 33 poems added to the 1916
edition]

Did my widow flit about
From Mackinac to Los Angeles,
Resting and bathing and sitting an hour
Or more at the table over soup and meats
And delicate sweets and coffee?
I was cut down in my prime
From overwork and anxiety.
But I thought all along, whatever happens
I’ve kept my insurance up,
And there’s something in the bank,
And a section of land in Manitoba.
But just as I slipped I had a vision
In a last delirium:
I saw myself lying nailed in a box
With a white lawn tie and a boutonniere,
And my wife was sitting by a window
Some place afar overlooking the sea;
She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat,
Although her hair was white.
And she smiled and said to a colored waiter:
“Another slice of roast beef, George.
Here’s a nickel for your trouble.”

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click
here.]

Hortense Robbins (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Hortense Robbins
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

My name used to be in the papers daily
As having dined somewhere,
Or traveled somewhere,
Or rented a house in Paris,
Where I entertained the nobility.
I was forever eating or traveling,
Or taking the cure at Baden-Baden.
Now I am here to do honor
To Spoon River, here beside the family whence I sprang.
No one cares now where I dined,
Or lived, or whom I entertained,
Or how often I took the cure at Baden-Baden!

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click
here.]

Heather Ann Schmidt at Lix & Kix, part two – 12/15/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVQncGPLZDo

Part two of Heather Ann Schmidt‘s featured reading on 15 December 2009
during the Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza at Bela Dubby in Lakewood, Ohio

* * * * *

Heather Ann Schmidt is an adjunct professor at Oakland Community College in Michigan. She edits tinfoildresses poetry journal. Her poems can be found in various online and print journals. Her books include Channeling Isadora Duncan (Gold Wake Press), The Owl & the Muse: Collected Tanka (recycled karma press), The Bat’s Love Song: American Haiku (Crisis Chronicles Press), Njaa (recycled karma press) and a full collection of poems forthcoming from Village Green Press.  She received her MFA from National University.  Keep track of her writing projects and upcoming readings at http://heatherannschmidt.yolasite.com.

Heather Ann Schmidt’s Transient Angels and Red Hibiscus are coming soon from Crisis Chronicles Press.

Heather Ann Schmidt at Lix & Kix, part one – 12/15/2009

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tloercB_bg4

Part one of Heather Ann Schmidt‘s featured reading on 15 December 2009
during the Lix and Kix Poetry Extravaganza at Bela Dubby in Lakewood, Ohio

* * * * *

Heather Ann Schmidt is an adjunct professor at Oakland Community College in Michigan. She edits tinfoildresses poetry journal. Her poems can be found in various online and print journals. Her books include Channeling Isadora Duncan (Gold Wake Press), The Owl & the Muse: Collected Tanka (recycled karma press), The Bat’s Love Song: American Haiku (Crisis Chronicles Press), Njaa (recycled karma press) and a full collection of poems forthcoming from Village Green Press.  She received her MFA from National University.  Keep track of her writing projects and upcoming readings at http://heatherannschmidt.yolasite.com.

Heather Ann Schmidt’s Transient Angels and Red Hibiscus are coming soon from Crisis Chronicles Press.

The last day of eternity (by Tanuj Solanki)

The last day of eternity

by Tanuj Solanki

At
midnight tomorrow,

I’ll bloom.

Rushdie
will like it,

for I too will become a child of some midnight,

born
again,

fragment by fragment second by second,

in
the clay I have myself prepared;

Maybe I will paste my flakes
back,

(tears shed, and sighs let,

become invisible
glue

for tatters of the heart)

Pamuk
will like it too,

for I will become a lover suddenly in
possession,

like Ka, or Black,

plunged into
happiness after solitude,

(just as Kafka’s country doctor
reaches the dying boy in an instant)

hyper-charged, yet a
slave of emotive inaction

(one doesn’t act in love, one is
acted on;

driven by the status-quo, driven to the status-quo,

not
the end, never the end, there is no end)

Tomorrow
is the last day of eternity folks,

the last day of implosions of
the heart,

the last day of looking at this city rush through a
taxi window each morning and disappear,

the last day of
looking in the mirror to create memories,

the last day of
groping the air in sleep,

the last day of zombie-ness,

the
last day of longing.

At midnight tomorrow,

when
I see her with these pupils

(why are they wet again?)

I’ll
bloom.

* * * * *

(c) 2010 Tanuj Solankki
used by permission

Tanuj Solankki is a blogger and poet in India
as well as an MBA graduate of IIM Ahmedabad

For more, please visit his blog at
http://www.dotcommedtanuj.blogspot.com

Lillian Stewart (by Edgar Lee Masters)

Lillian Stewart
by Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology [1915]

I was the daughter of Lambert Hutchins,
Born in a cottage near the grist-mill,
Reared in the mansion there on the hill,
With its spires, bay-windows, and roof of slate.
How proud my mother was of the mansion!
How proud of father’s rise in the world!
And how my father loved and watched us,
And guarded our happiness.
But I believe the house was a curse,
For father’s fortune was little beside it;
And when my husband found he had married
A girl who was really poor,
He taunted me with the spires,
And called the house a fraud on the world,
A treacherous lure to young men, raising hopes
Of a dowry not to be had;
And a man while selling his vote
Should get enough from the people’s betrayal
To wall the whole of his family in.
He vexed my life till I went back home
And lived like an old maid till I died,
Keeping house for father.

[To read more Spoon River Anthology click
here.]