Open Mic, Part 1: Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour 3/8/2013

Video permalink: http://youtu.be/X2Xydi1NxyE
Part one of an open mic emceed by Joshua Gage on Friday 8 March 2013 (International Women’s Day) during the Deep Cleveland Poetry Hour at MugShotz in North Royalton, Ohio,  this clip includes readings by Patrick Clark, Azriel Johnson, Skylark Bruce, the poet formerly known as Andrew Line, John Burroughs, Shelley Chernin, Vertigo Xi’an Xavier, and Geoffrey Landis.

Daedalus (by Shelley Chernin)

Shelley Chernin at the Hessler Street Fair, 2012
photo by John Burroughs

Daedalus

Where to land? His child
drowned. He does not know

the dance, but flaps and flaps
tern-feathered arms. Reflexive
choreography. When the bit

of boy tripped and scraped a shin,
his father nestled him snug

to chest, to rise and fall
of breath. A clever dad,
to make his son a bit of bird,

a chance, a wish, a way
to fly by nets and mazes. At last

unfettered, the young man turned
and turned on phantom wings, danced
a solar tarantella into the sea.

Shoulders molt and still heart
beats and beats in search of home.



* * * * *
Shelley Chernin is a freelance writer and ukulele player. Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, Durable Goods, Big Bridge, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon, the Heights Observer and the 2010 and 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest anthologies. She was awarded 2nd Place in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest, and the Akron Art Museum awarded her Honorable Mentions in their New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. She is the author of The Vigil, published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012.

“Daedalus” won an Honorable Mention in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest in 2009, and was previously published at the Akron Art Museum’s website.

Above It All (by Shelley Chernin)

Shelley Chernin at the Hessler Street Fair, 2012
photo by John Burroughs

Above It All

     Imagine you’re a girl on ten mile stilts…………
                                                  Nicky Mehta

I take great strides
carefully; it’s easy
to trip over
the Rockies or knock
Boeings to the ground.

Nearly stratospheric,
I fill my backpack
with sunblock. Never
visit the ozone layer
without it. I also carry

a red Duncan yo-yo
with an extra-long string
and astronomical
binoculars. Sometimes
it’s hard to find

loved ones without
magnification, even
on a clear day. Once
a man in Callicoon
tried to look

up my skirt, but
I was too high
for his aperture. Long
distance romance
is for the birds.

I watch them pecking
in their family nests,
built on tree tips
far below me. I see
specks on specks.


* * * * *

Shelley Chernin is a freelance writer and ukulele player. Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, Durable Goods, Big Bridge, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon, the Heights Observer and the 2010 and 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest anthologies. She was awarded 2nd Place in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest, and the Akron Art Museum awarded her Honorable Mentions in their New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. She is the author of The Vigil, published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012.

“Above It All” won an Honorable Mention in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest in 2010, and was previously published at the Akron Art Museum’s website.

Maggot-pie (by Shelley Chernin)

Shelley Chernin at the Hessler Street Fair, 2012
photo by John Burroughs

Maggot-pie

That dead writer ruined five women
but I’d gladly be sixth
to read another page

and when he touched me
I’d slip into his finger pores
hide there overnight and
jump his keyboard
in the morning

conceiving in the words
he’d decompose.



* * * * *

Shelley Chernin is a freelance writer and ukulele player. Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, Durable Goods, Big Bridge, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon, the Heights Observer and the 2010 and 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest anthologies. She was awarded 2nd Place in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest, and the Akron Art Museum awarded her Honorable Mentions in their New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. She is the author of The Vigil, published by Crisis Chronicles Press in 2012.

“Maggot-pie” originally appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Issue #28, 2004.

Rise and Shine (by Shelley Chernin) – video

“Rise and Shine” written/performed by Shelley Chernin
2nd place winner in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Competition
held at Mac’s Backs in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, on 11 May 2011
(photography & editing by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis)

 Shelley Chernin is a freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books who writes poetry to maintain her insanity. Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon – Cleveland, the Heights Observer, and the 2010 Hessler Street Fair Anthology. The Akron Art Museum awarded her Honorable Mentions in its New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. She recently moved from eastern Cuyahoga to Lorain County, where she’s enjoying the measurement of snowfall in inches rather than feet.