Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, December 9th, 2023 at 2pm
Woodstock Library

HYBRID: in-person and virtually via Zoom

Lisa St. John
Lissa Kiernan (Lissa postponed: illness)
and Annual Business Meeting

Poets Lisa St. John and Lissa Kiernan will be the featured readers, along with the Annual Business Meeting, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets in person and via Zoom (and streamed live on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry) on Saturday, December 9th, 2023 at 2pm(eastern).

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Woodstock Library
5 Library Lane, Woodstock, NY 12498
(845) 679-2213
www.woodstock.org

*** We ask all people who wish to attend in person to self-test for Covid within 24 hours prior to the event. Self-test kits are reasonably priced and available at nearly every pharmacy. ***

The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend virtually: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike. Thank you.

The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

Features:

Lisa St. John - Lisa St. John is a writer living in the Hudson Valley of New York State. Swallowing Stones, her first book of poetry, came out in January by Kelsay Books. Lisa’s writing has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including Light, Entropy Magazine, The Poetry Distillery, Poets Reading the News, Boomer Lit, Chronogram, and Sleet. Her awards include Winner of The Poet’s Billow’s Bermuda Triangle Contest and finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry by Broad River Review. Lisa is also a board member of the Stone Ridge Library Foundation and a volunteer for the SUNY Ulster Community College Foundation Board. As a former high school English teacher and current adjunct for SUNY New Paltz, Lisa supervises new student teachers. She has been a member of the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) since 2017, and currently co-hosts the Featured Author and Open Mic Series.



Dressing Mom

Soft as new skin, pliable as silk,
the casing of her bony arms
slide into the bra straps.
After the hospital, at this age,
I cannot help but wonder why she bothers.

Only whores go without bras.

Earlier, helping her wash,
I sponge underneath and around
the long empty breasts that fed five children.
I hold her as she washes the feathery gray pudendum,
the mysterious labia; origin places.

I hate for you to see me like this.

I ask
which shirt she wants to wear,
and she smiles up at me
grateful and gentle.
Nothing like her mothering years.

Then, the hard core of self-preservation
created us both. Born out of its hard shell
with eyes open and screaming, we traded combat secrets
and realized we were both
alone in this war.

How long can you stay this time? We could go to that bookstore you like.

What
would have happened
if I had loved her like this before?
Loved her smooth tan skin
before the rice paper wrinkles?

Hatred is just the awkward side of love.

-Lisa St. John

*

Lissa Kiernan - Founding director of The Poetry Barn, Lissa Kiernan's second poetry collection, The Whispering Wall (2023), won the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize and was a semi-finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize. She lives in West Hurley near the Ashokan Reservoir spillway. She volunteers for the Flying Cat Music concert series and, with her husband, Chris Abramides, is an enthusiastic herder of a fluctuating number of felines. More at lissakiernan.com.



Crow Instability

By the time I learned how to read the weather—
no, not the sky, the weather—what all
those layers mean, this one water, that one vapor,

how to forecast into the future beyond the next hour,
I knew my dream colorscape was rose,
butter, and cream, shades of never-held blooms.

I listened openly to birdcall. Understood
I was slow to forgive. Sugar skulls
taunted me, as did the raptor who arrived

like a needle on my barn’s weathervane.
Nothing but morphined shadows jabbed
each roof ’s slope, nothing but winter’s west

darkened the last sunblade. A phoebe
soffit-nesting is raising a rejected cowbird,
feeds into its beak before tending her own

brood. Could I build them a sort of cage, bars
spaced close enough to dissuade stray talons,
wide enough that fledglings might still fledge?

I assess conditions: dew point high, wind
stream low. Consider the life index:
pollen, pollution—moderate to fair. I gather

I could fashion this contraption, should I choose to,
but then I recall the “feels like” temperature,
tomorrow’s storm warning—those random squalls.

-Lissa Kiernan

*

WPS 2023 Schedule - now in-person at the Woodstock Library and via Zoom (and streamed live on Facebook: www.facebook.com/WoodstockPoetry)
All WPS Events: Events

01/January 14th - Danielle Woerner; Virginia Konchan (via Zoom only)
02/February 11th - Alison Koffler; Dayl Wise
03/March 11th - Allison Argueta; Brianna Heller
04/April 8th - Darcy Smith; Dennis Wayne Bressack
05/May 13th - Jerrice J. Baptiste; Mary K O'Melveny
06/June 10th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas
07/July 8th - Kateri Kosek; Raphael Kosek
08/August 12th - David Messineo; Will Nixon
09/September 9th - Barbara Ungar; Lucia Cherciu
10/October 14th - Bracha Nechama Bomze; Reagan Upshaw
11/November 18th - George Quasha; Sam Truitt 3rd Saturday
12/December 9th - Lisa St. John; Lissa Kiernan and Annual Business Meeting

Also, why not become a 2023 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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