Judith Terzi at Bolton Hall Museum on May 26, 2013

After a phenomenally successful performance by Neil McCarthy, from Ireland to California with Love, we are returning to the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga (10110 Commerce Ave., Tujunga, if not, Google it).

Judith Terzi wil be our Featured Poet on Sunday, May 26 at 4:30 p.m. The evening will also include two segments of Open Mike, and refreshments. As usual, we will collect donations for the Bolton Hall Museum, the Second Historical Monument in the City of Los Angeles. Bolton Hall is celebrating its Centennial this year, and we, as poets, are thrilled to be a part of this celebration.

Judith Terzi is the author of several chapbooks including Sharing Tabouli (Finishing Line, 2011). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Malala: Future Cycle Press Anthology, 2014; Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke: Erotic Poems (Tupelo Press, 2013); Raintown Review; Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s (She Writes Press, 2013); Trivia: Voices of Feminism; and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Web and have garnered prizes and honorable mentions. A new chapbook, Ghazal for a Chambermaid, is forthcoming from Finishing Line. A former high school French teacher at Polytechnic School in Pasadena, CA, she also taught English at California State University, Los Angeles, and in Algiers, Algeria. She holds an M.A. in French literature.

Tsunami

               

            starting with a line by Sappho

           

Who is the one with violets in her lap?

After the earth shook, she rang the bell

to warn the town to run. The women who sell

wool, their skeins spread out like garlands of tulips

and lilies, fled, but what about their shawls,

caps and gloves piled in the beds of trucks?

The sea ripped boats of fishermen like a shark,

twisted roofs and furniture, churches, schools

in its wild walls. The rage complete, it displaced

their planks onto black sand, into forests, streets.

Violet is the light of mourning, luz divina,

luz of healing, luz of valor for Martina.

She is the one with violets; she knits wreaths

for the silt of the río Maule and shredded lace.

Copyright © Judith Terzi

Honorable Mention, Knock Our Hats Off Contest, Mad Hatters' Review, 2010

Party Bus

You can bet your money on fiesta here,

the women wearing dresses short and tight.

Smoothed, oiled thighs glide onto leather seats,

hips and bare shoulders rocking to the jolts

down Cahuenga Boulevard. I'm face à face

with dazzle, breaths hot and minty after cigs

and the joints hid in compartments,

along with the Don Julio and Casadores tequila.

Twenty of us stream into Club La Vida,

corner of Sunset and Gower, my white hair

stark, stark as bleach as I hit the champagne

trail and the dance floor. Twenty-somethings,

some foxed from liquor, others foxed by me––

a jadis diva circling under the strobes.

I'm photographed, I'm fire-foxed, I'm Lady Gaga'd.

I'm re-fired, re-minted in this Hollywoodland

hormonal blitz. For a moment, I become

the young woman in a black sheath, her dress

almost skimming her crotch. After each groove

and grind, she nudges slippery cloth back down,

her partner holding on to accessible parts,

releasing her, then holding on again until the pulsation

ends. I face down time here, though so much closer

to the index than to the preface of a vida loca.

Copyright © Judith Terzi

2nd Prize, Bananagram Contest, Newport Review, 2010

__________________________________________________

Photographs from Neil McCarthy's reading at the McGroarty Arts Center are posted on Facebook, and Picasa Web Albums.

Neil McCarthy, center, with Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga and guests.