CANCELED
Please Stay Well
Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, November 14th, 2020 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
CANCELED
Please Stay Well
Anique Taylor
Mary Leonard
To be rescheduled.
Poets Anique Taylor and Mary Leonard
will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock
Poetry Society meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on
Saturday, November 14th, 2020 at 2pm. Anique Taylor and Mary
Leonard will be rescheduled at a later date.
Note: WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month at Golden
Notebook (Upstairs).
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
29 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.goldennotebook.com
845-679-8000
The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free,
open to the public, and include an open mike.
*
Features:
Anique Taylor - Anique Sara Taylor’s work has appeared
in Rattle, Common Ground Review, Adanna, Stillwater Review, Earth’s
Daughters among others. She’s co-authored works for HBO, Scholastic,
Simon&Schuster and a three-act play that was performed by Playwrights
Horizons and Williamstown Playhouse. In 2014 her chapbook version of Where
Space Bends was chosen Finalist by both Minerva Rising and Blue Light
Press’ Chapbook Competitions. In 2015 her book Under the Ice Moon
was chosen Finalist by Blue Light Press’ Chapbook Competition. She holds
a Poetry MFA (Drew University), Diplome in French Literature (The Sorbonne,
Paris), a Drawing MFA (Pratt Institute), BFA in Painting (With Highest Honors
/Pratt ) and studied Literature at Antioch College. She studied Poetry at
St. Mark's Poetry Project with Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer. An enthusiastic
supporter of community education, she teaches/taught Creative Writing for
Benedictine Hospital’s Oncology Support Program, the Phoenicia Poetry
Workshop, Bard LLI and Writers in the Mountains.
Writing While Driving Across the Tappan Zee Bridge
A fog so dense, I drive ahead
enclosed in a separate world. A member
of the generation raised ignored and unseen, I
swallow each day like a fisherman afraid of the ocean.
The first thing I learned in college after
the in loco parentis lecture on the necessity
of virginity, was how to roll a joint. I paced corn
fields reciting poems to communities of stars, as night
sky engulfed the land. The first time I left you, I hitchhiked into
dawn, sawdust puppets tucked in a cotton laundry bag on one shoulder,
a broken guitar on the other. I boomeranged out Route 68, back to suburban
cocktail parties where adults sipped scotch, their cells embedded with cigarette
smoke.
Across the Tappan Zee, where slabs of
concrete had
crashed into the river leaving openings
in pavement
large enough to see down into the Hudson,
I examine
my wrinkled face in the mirror. A ghost
of myself ringed
with colored mists, the clown in me gives
me courage.
Some pray to the crescent
moon. Some thrash their wings
unable to fly. Lucky ones drive ahead as if
there was nothing to fear. Some scribble on paper
scraps on the steering wheel, to capture whatever they can.
We balance, one-legged
toppling unmetered through dreams
to risk the unknown before the absorption
of all palpable light. We sing and we sing, wanting
only to touch the moving silhouette before it disappears
-Anique Taylor
from Where Space Bends
Forthcoming from Finishing Line Press
Preorder. Ships May 1, 2020
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/where-space-bends-by-anique-sara-taylor/
*
Mary Leonard - Mare Leonard lives and works in the Hudson
Valley where she is an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking
and the MAT programs at Bard College. She has published five chapbooks of
poetry, the latest at Finishing Line Press in 2018. Recently she has published
poems at Ariel Chart, Terror House and Rat’s Ass Review,
and in a worldwide anthology of poems re Covid-19. Finally she was nominated
for a pushcart by The Pickled Body and in addition a full length
poetry book will be published this year at Terror House Press.
Sh-Boom
Do the three blondes sipping Ombre Pink Drinks
believe they're on break from coding at Fitbit
or know they flew the coop, birds with lonely wings.
I hanker to solve the mystery of their designer bags,
pull out a magnifying glass from my backpack,
slip by to identify brown leather, logo in script.
Google says, Gucci: 1000 new,
600 used.
Blonde envy jumps out of a bottle,
at thirteen I bleached my black frizz.
Blondes have more fun.
In '61, I idolized Bob and Justine
sliding the Stroll on American Bandstand.
Life could be a dream Boom
ba doh da
At the country club, I perched at the edge
of the cool blue pool, tapped on my knees.
I peeked through binoculars,
scouted five blonde moms, ten gin and tonics,
piles of discards, stacks of failed tricks,
pastel Bermuda bags clustered on their chairs,
one initialed BABS. My secrets hid
inside
a paper sack.
At Starbucks The blondes laugh,
He complains about cooking for the kids.
Guccis pulled to their chests, they exit in their Mercedes
Every Fall, I ran door to door, watched moms
float toward me, thrilled to see a Girl Scout.
I'll take five boxes of thin mints, love them love...
They tripped back with two twenties, said,
keep the change Sweetheart.
-Mary Leonard
*
Developing WPS 2020 Schedule - all readings at Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
All of 2020 Events: Events
01/January 11th - Elizabeth J. Coleman; Lee Slonimsky
02/February 8th - Andrea Mitchell; Bruce Weber
03/March 14th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan
Canceled
04/April 11th - Brett Bevell; Rebecca Schumejda
Canceled
05/May 9th - Judith Saunders; Raphael Kosek
Canceled
06/June 13th - Elizabethanne Spiotta; William Seaton
Canceled
07/July 11th - Barbara Ungar; Stuart Bartow
Canceled
08/August 8th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
Canceled
09/September 12th - Elizabeth Cohen; Lisa Rhoades
Canceled
10/October 10th - Philip Pardi; Sparrow
Canceled
11/November 14th - Anique Taylor;
Mary Leonard Canceled
12/December 12th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan
and Annual Business Meeting Canceled
Also, why not become a 2020 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?
Membership is $20 a year. (To join, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry
Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as
well as your mailing address and phone number. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html).
Your membership helps pay for meeting space rental, post-office-box rental,
the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events.
One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and
several of your poems appear on this website.
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