Our next Village Poets reading at Bolton Hall Museum will be on Sunday, July 26th at 4:30 p.m when we will feature Beth Paulson of Altadena, formerly of Colorado & Nicholas Yingling who will visit us from the Bay Area. Hosted by Joe DeCenzo & Alice Pero, there will also be an open mic and poets are invited to participate in the open reading segment of the event. The Bolton Hall Museum is located at 10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, CA 91042. Bolton Hall is a Los Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913. Our reading starts at 4:30 pm and goes till 6:30 pm. Light refreshments will be served. Free parking is available on the street and also at Elks Lodge 10137 Commerce Ave. Park behind the building and walk a short distance to Bolton Hall Museum across the street and down the block.
Beth Paulson
Beth Paulson has been widely published in national literary journal and online sites for the past two decades. A former writing teacher at California State University Los Angeles for over 20 years, Beth has most recently taught poetry workshops and facilitated writing events in Ouray County, Colorado where she was named Poet Laureate in 2019. Since early 2025 Beth has lived in Altadena, California. Beth’s poems were nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2007, 2009, 20ll, and 2016 and for Best of the Net in 2011. Her poems have also been awarded prizes from Cloudbank, Eleventh Muse, Passager, Naugatuck River Review, Third Wednesday, Common Ground Review, and Able Muse Review. Beth Paulson’s poems are included in several anthologies, including Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest (University of Texas Press, 2007), What’s Nature Got to Do With Me? (Native West Press, 2011), Going Down Grand: Poems from the Canyon (Lithic Press, 2015), In Plein Air: Poems and Drawings of the Natural World (Poetic License Press, 2017), and WET: An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose (Sharehouse, 2021). Beth has seven published poetry collections: The Truth About Thunder (Ponderosa Press, 2001), The Company of Trees (Ponderosa Press, 2004), Wild Raspberries (Plainview Press, 2009), Canyon Notes (Mt. Sneffels Press, 2012), Immensity (Kelsay Books, 2016), and Luminous, (Kelsay Books, 2021) which won the National Press Women Book Prize in that year. Beth’s newest book, Postcards from Altadena, was published in 2026.
Three Poems from Beth Paulson
Shell Hunters
Large and cone-shaped,
it resembles a turban,
wavy and rugged
like the ocean itself,
light brown, thick-ridged,
spotted with tiny coral.
It was gifted to me
by a young man who saw me
walking with my canvas bag,
leaning over the wet, gray sand
one late August afternoon
on the beach in Carpinteria.
It just fits in the palm of my hand.
And when I turn it up
to peer inside, its operculum
is white, smooth like pearl,
doorway once for a large snail
prized greatly for its meat
by divers in other lands.
Now the dominant one
among ringed scallops, hinged
clams, ink-colored mussels,
I keep it on a pine table
in a wide bowl the color
of the sea on a cloudy day.
His wetsuit trailing kelp,
long hair dripping, smiling,
he said, Here. You should have this one.
Cloudbank, 2025
On Edge
It always was where urban met the wild
rustic interface of forest land and city
where on a clear day you could see the sea,
where roads rose up or meandered into
the steeper, southern side of the San Gabriels.
Today smoky air hangs heavy, sun blotted out
where avenues lined with old deodar cedars
grown tall, a firebreak for lucky residents
where we walk uphill from our saved home
amid downed branches, dangling power lines.
The fireman on one corner lets us pass
if we promise to head back to our car
down the next road. We don’t talk much,
know sirens in the distance signal fires
still spark and smolder east of Lake Avenue.
Our block of Santa Anita escaped the fire
where this morning knots of neighbors gather
who surely know the line is thin, so tenuous
between being victim or survivor.
We bend to scoop up embers from the grass
yet around the corner a home burned to the ground.
A plume of burning gas marks the backyard,
ash pile with charred beams, blackened bricks.
twisted metal, a chimney all that’s standing,
a concrete driveway leading in and out.
New Verse News, 2025
Rain
for Judith
Seems there’s no end to these February rains.
No sun, white skies like bed sheets. My friend is dying.
On sheets white as the sky my friend lies dying. No sun
for days, just these steady rains filling the trees.
These steady rains have filled the trees for days
as she drifts in and out of pain. Thin as leaves, her hands.
Hands thin as leaves, she drifts from us, from pain.
I watch out her window as rain drops soft, then harder.
Hard to watch her end. Soft rain drops on the window.
No joking now. She knows death’s not a wit.
She’s not joking now. Knows she can’t outwit death.
I breathe the rain-wet grass. Rain fills my hands.
Rain fills my waiting hands. I breathe wet grass.
Eyes closed, she smiles. Perhaps she’s dreaming of Paris.
Slant, 2024.
© 2026 Beth Paulson
Nicholas Yingling
Three Poems by Nick Yingling
Seaside Apocalypse
All night we sleep as other people,
dreamless and on our backs. The monarchs
like an autumn of eyelids
drowse in their eucalyptus and we sip tea
and oysters at market price. We do our part.
We tip. In time the waves return
our bottles, full of yesterday’s receipts.
You break even or open
says the man burning plastic and we surrender
our palms, his dogs free
to nuzzle our fortunes.
All night the scale turns. All night
the heart in fibrillation turns it back.
Yes, we say, we deserve this.
Moon City Review
I Take Shelter Under the Stables
because it’s hailing in the desert
and the horses seem unmoved
by a sky full of loose teeth. The mare
alone starts and though her bite
could unstring a hand, mine reaches.
As a child I chewed the world
into self and not self. Blanket. Grass.
The mare too has grown by division—
cells splitting, muscles tearing
and mending, her heart that could burst
through this gate, five full pumps
a second, slowing now, locking
stride with my touch. Muzzle. Mane.
My fingers trace between the eyes.
Here. Here my two halves meet
the thin blade of her blindness.
The hail stops. In the rain I am what?
A single organ of sense? I see
rust on the bars, poppies on the hill,
and in another country painted ladies
hang their patterned wings to dry.
Tupelo Quarterly
Against Life Expectancy
Today I read that it’s an act of faith
to plant trees in California, that this oak
whose shade eases the fire road
has a slimmer chance of surviving
the coming decade than me. And here I am
pushing acorns into the dirt. Each day
I rise and nourish this body with more
than a cup of rice or tea. Softness fills in
like a gray moss between my joints
and the muscles stretch to stand
without fear of falling. I offer my shadow
to the live oak and in return morning
offers itself to me as change singing light
from the bottom of a fountain.
Out of acorns, I plant a copper cent
between the roots. 1986. A wish
that can no longer afford to feed me.
Whatever I am, I am not such small tender.
I’ve grown. Like this oak, I’ve grown
toward two hungers and could live
no other way.
Lake Effect
© 2026 Nicholas Yingling
Next reading: August 23rd Featuring Ventura Poet Laureates Mary Rummel & Mary Ann McFadden
Bolton Hall Museum
