Village Poets Presents Mary Fitzpatrick & Ella Czajkowska on June 22

 

Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga welcomes featured poets Mary Fitzpatrick and Ella Czajkowska on Sunday, June 22, 4:30 pm at Bolton Hall Museum. 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 91040. Bolton Hall is a Los Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913. Our reading starts at 4:30 pm and goes till 6:30 pm. 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.

 

 

Mary Fitzpatrick’s poems have been finalists for the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and the Slapering Hol Chapbook Award; short-listed for the Fish Publishing Prize; featured in Mississippi Review, Atlanta Review and North American Review as contest finalists; and published in such journals as Agenda (UK), Briar Cliff Review, The Paterson Review, Pratik, Red Canary, Silver Birch Press, Terrain, West Trestle Review, plus ten anthologies. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz with an MFA from UMass Amherst, she is a fourth-generation Angeleno who lives in Pasadena and feels at home in Ireland.

Three Poems by Mary Fitzpatrick

Days of Honey

Looking for light in the pandemic, we note

that the bees have returned. Vivid

in their occupation of the clean box

I’d readied, lured by seven-foot

sage-blossom stalks. I’m reassured

there are enough

to break away and form this hive

behind our garage, just in season

to double our pomegranates, a wealth

at any time and especially now.

It’s been three months. By November when

the pomegranates lose the red fuzz

under their leathery crowns, it will be nine.

Our time’s become timeless — is this

BC or AD?   Carthage    Ephesus    Campania?

Make the weeks count.   Lift

a rack of honeycomb from the hive

—it teems and glistens—

and let gold run all over the days.

Published on-line by Silver Birches, 2022

 Last Heat

Grass trampled to a tan parch;

Trees’ green depth blown to dust…

Road, road, ribbon of unfolding—

 

Known as map, called by name,

Calendar, sundial, memory, clock

Unraveling under the hot

 

Footsteps of the runaway, the footfalls

Of her tracker, panting over the layered

Dead, their tendril limbs—Road,

 

You let them clamber at her ankles,

Catch her cast-off, head-boom rags.

Dust returns; the footsteps fade.

 

       *       *       *       *

Now smell the blowze of summer

Curling skyward slow—no

Breeze, no wind

 

To change the season’s mind. As if

Its squandered end

Could put back seeds

 

Into their pods, rewind

Spent stalks and weeds—the things

Time gives so willingly to ash.

Published in Briar Cliff Review, April 2020 

Summer Beach Farewell

Salt Point, CA

Farewell    sweet seal face

Lizard tail    bladder pod    yarrow    farewell. 

Long heat of afternoon gives way

to winter’s storms and lashing wet. 

Today, I hug round stones’ warmth and gather

mollusks in the low tide’s pools:

black mussels    limpets    abalone

fierce and ridiculous crabs. 

Seal watches, undulate in repose. 

Wrapping kelp ribbons round my crops

I lay them in a bed of coals   glowing

amid stones.  My table is

the fallen log.  My company:

the otters tumbled down

their river’s chute to ocean’s edge

to teach their young to hunt.

Farewell.  The racks for drying

fish are folded.  Baskets bulge

with all the sea can give, with salt.  Tonight

I’ll climb    to shelter among trees.

 I’ll turn my back on sea.   No one

will come for me.   At this last feast

I drink the brine.   I gather

one last bleached bone. 

From the basket on my back it grows

radiant as the lonely moon.   

Published in Miramar, 2019

 

Alchemy of Words is the first English-language poetry book of Ella Czajkowska who previously published a book of poems in Polish. These 70 poems deal with themes of nature, divinity, human emotions, existential contemplation and the complexities of life. Ella Czajkowska is a professional Translator, Transcriptionist, Polish and English-Speaking certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner and Neuro-Linguistic Programming Master Practitioner, Certified Personal & Business Life Coach, Graphic Designer, English Second Language Teacher, Poet, and PR Manager. Her love of creative writing was born in high school, where she started writing poetry and short stories. In 2015, Ella started to write poetry in both Polish and English, and from 2017 she writes only in English. Her book of Polish language poetry, entitled “Tam, gdzie umierają marzenia”, was published in Rzeszów by Sowello in 2019. Her English-language poems appeared in the California Quarterly and the Crystal Fire anthology (Moonrise Press, 2022). She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2022 by the California State Poetry Society for her poem "The Calling”.

Three Poems by Ella 

And Still
 

And still hoping and dreaming still
after years of silence and cold,
of breached walls and fallen will -
a thousand years of pain untold.
Body a vessel to be filled
with moonbeam silver, sunlight kissed.
What never was cannot be killed;
what was never known cannot be missed

Endless Feast

I fear the fear of passing days
That lacking be in hopeful grace
Of softer light and lighter ways,
Bereft of new thoughts sweet embrace,
When long be gone the better words,
When long be gone the heat of youth;
That by the time I cut the cords
I will have known the bitter truth.
For I have sat at highest tables
Of their feasts I have partaken,

Ate the fruits of true and fables,
With grandeur been overtaken;
And saw all there was to be seen,
And heard all there was to be heard,
And learned what was, what could have been
I have been still, I have been stirred;
And I have sung a thousand songs,
And I have thought a thousand thoughts,
And I have done the rights and wrongs,
And I have plowed a thousand plots;
And yet the hunger naught abates
For every bite that I have taken
Bite back it did, more yet inflates;
It has no wish to be forsaken.
Must dreams then end, all slumber cease?
What is this law? Or is this need?
Does nature call for strife, then peace,
Then strife again? A sacred creed?
Unmatched then burns that fervid fire
That none can stop, and none can quell;
In its unmet wroth desire
It shall devour itself as well.

Eat Your Heart Out
 

Eat my heart blacken it and season it;

Split apart my ribcage, the choicest pieces

Lay beyond its protection. Reason it
Not with me, halt calm, whatever peace is
This is all passion, this is all fire.
Eat my words devoured from my lips,
Savored; steal breath from my lungs, sweet desire!
Make me mute with awe, that all sound from me strips.
Have my glances, my blushes, my shyness,
My modesty, timidity, demur,
Whisper of grace, beauty, and fineness;
Unravel, till denial and assent blur.
Consume as one consumes long sought meaning:

With desperation born of ceaseless dreaming
 

 Copyright 2024 by Ella Czajkowska and Moonrise Press

Village Poets Welcomes Carine Topal & Rick Lupert Sunday, May 25, 2025

 

Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga welcomes featured poets Carine Topal and Rick Lupert on Sunday, May 25, 4:30 pm at Bolton Hall Museum. 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 91040. Bolton Hall is a Los Angeles Historical Landmark built in 1913. Our reading starts at 4:30 pm and goes till 6:30 pm. 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.

                                           

Carine Topal, a native New Yorker, earned an MA from New York University. She has lived in Jerusalem, Israel, where she worked with Palestinian merchants. She was also employed by the Office of Assimilation, and worked with new immigrants, in particular, Moroccan Jews. After leaving Israel, Carine lived in Germany on the American army base in Heidelberg. Since 1982, she has anthologized the poetry of hundreds of special needs children. She participated in the grassroots organization California Poets in the Schools, was the Poet-in-Residence for the city of Manhattan Beach and Poet-in-Education for Manhattan Beach elementary schools. Carine has been honored with the Excellence in Arts Award from the Cultural Arts Commission of Torrance, California. Her work has appeared in numerous journals throughout the U.S. and Canada. She has published 6 collections of poetry, was awarded a residency at Hedgebrook, as well as a fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 2006, Carine conducted poetry workshops at the VA Hospital in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of numerous poetry awards, including the 2007 Robert G. Cohn Prose Poetry Award from California Arts and Letters, with a special edition chapbook, Bed of Want, published by Cal Arts and Letters, The Briar Cliff Poetry Award, The Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Award, and the Palettes and Quills Chapbook Prize. Her newest collection, Dear Blood, was published by the Ben Yehuda Press in February, 2025. Carine has taught poetry and memoir classes to both adults and children for over 30 years. She currently teaches in Los Angeles and the Southern California desert.

                                                       Three Poems by Carine Topal

 Chagall Psalm

For it was moonlight

in your town of old Jews

the quiet lunatic who

seeking paradise

drowned in the river

of his last winter

It was the tremors of childhood

through which you barely slept

a bed by a window looking

out to the near end of Yiddish

ash spewing from chimneys

the heat before the fire

It was Shemah for your mother who carried

the fever of a great loss

a child hastily named Miriam

her heart chambers closed in the bright

sleeves of snow

Moysey, think of the rows of amber-roofed

homes pitched toward the banks

of your frozen river

the viridian run

of the Luchesa

the fires before you ran

Published in Levure Littéraire

A Lamenting

When I came home to bury her she was already been bathed—draped in white. According to custom we must bury her within a day. It was January. Who would show in a cold that buried the city?  I paid others to mourn my mother. I hired wild old mourners to wail. I leaned on them; 13 thin figures in buttoned-down fleece coats, short black boots, keening like distant spirits, letting me let go of the last thing on earth. Women with a gift. Continuous lamenting, hand wringing, tribal cries. A few pulled at their hair. Some softly wept and some sobbed in throaty ululations, said the unsayable in full howl, feigned a grief dedicated to my dear, my mother.  I will remember her ushered out by the crying of strangers, widows who sobbed out of habit.

Published in Naugatuck River Review

My Father, Who Refused to Sit Shiva

We misunderstood our luck

growing up in that house —

third from the corner, where the forsythia

bloomed, as though to mock us, and my brothers hurried

down the street with a handful of bees in a jar,

for father who had a thousand demands,

who did not easily love, but was loved, who put the boys

in their place with a razor-tongue — afraid to let go of them,

yet keeping a distance — who lacked the know-how to father,

who struggled—feeling diminished in their world as they grew—

who held in his pocket the several sorrows of the world

when the boys grew older and first one, then the other died.

My father, who refused to hold shiva, though he sat fixed

for a week beneath the shrouded mirror. Friends

came anyway, pressing against us like broken stalks

under an impossible weight, some hugging casseroles,

others with bouquets, surrendering the bare-throated

flowers, a continuous loop of murmured comforts

feeding the machine of our grief. So many things

disappear in the world: lilacs. Even the bending light

leaves, though the windows linger.                                                                                

Unaccounted for, the long-numbered streets.

A river that once flanked our city.

And father, overwhelmed and immovable,

withdrew, watched as those who could leave, left

the wreckage of our home.

Published in International Literary Quarterly

                                                            

Rick Lupert has been involved with poetry in Los Angeles since 1990. He is the recipient of the 2017 Ted Slade Award, and the 2014 Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center Distinguished Service Award, a 3 time Pushcart Prize Nominee, and a Best of the Net nominee. He served as a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets for 2 years, and created Poetry Super Highway http://poetrysuperhighway.com/. Rick hosted the weekly Cobalt Cafe reading for almost 21 years which has lived on as a weekly Zoom series since early 2020. His spoken word album "Rick Lupert Live and Dead" featured 25 studio and live tracks. He has authored 29 collections of poetry, including High Moose Alert, (May 2025)  as well as It’s Spritz O’Clock Somewhere, I Am Not Writing a Book of Poems in Hawaii , The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express, and God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion (Ain’t Got No Press.) He has also edited the anthologies A Poet’s Siddur, Ekphrastia Gone Wild, A Poet’s Haggadah and the noir anthology The Night Goes On All Night. He also writes and draws (with Brendan Constantine) the daily web comic “Cat and Banana.”  http://www.facebook.com/catandbanana and writes a Jewish poetry column for JewishJournal.com https://jewishjournal.com/author/rick-lupert/. All of his Jewish Poetry can be found here https://www.jewishpoetry.net/. He has been lucky enough to read his poetry all over the world.

 Three Poems by Rick Lupert

 Late One Night in Vancouver

It is late in the evening in Vancouver,

British Colombia, Canada.

 So far, no moose have been spotted

except the carvings in the tourist shops.

The first-world trauma of the airplane seats,

has been diffused by the architecture

of this place. Buildings seemingly

haphazardly put together with Jenga-like

impossibilities, adorned with nature

and ready to move in. We have eaten

some of everything, though if an emergency

arises, the Japanese hotdog place with

ample vegetarian options is next door

and open until three in the morning.

Our son, back in Simi Valley, has been

spotted wearing a baseball cap

which can only mean one thing.

We’re just not sure what that one thing is.

Did I mention we were on a boat?

They called it an Aquarius and it was

big enough for a handful of us.

We considered it a practice boat for

the immense one to come. We’re planning

on eating more of all the food tomorrow.

You can count on hearing all about it.

From the collection “High Moose Alert” (Ain’t Got No Press, May 2025)

Hey Jude

Whenever I ask the question

 do you know who’s singing this song

to my ten-year-old in the back seat

of the car, invariably he answers

The Beatles. And he is correct as I only

ask him this question when they come on.

He’s been dealing with this since

he was in the womb when his pregnant parents

(hi) saw the film Across the Universe

on the couch one evening and, in a fit

of revelation, knew exactly what we would

be calling this impending, permanent visitor.

Whenever someone meets him and learns his name

it’s impossible for them to not cry out Hey Jude!

It’s like a hiccup, involuntary, can’t be stopped.

He used to tell everyone he hated The Beatles

and then, at a certain point, it all clicked

and he started demanding their voices

on the car stereo. Who wouldn’t want

anthems sung to them while being chauffeured

to and from houses of fundamental learning,

religious institutions, and the occasional

pizza parlor? He knows who he is and the

expectations people have when they sing his name.

He knows what it means and how they used to

label people with his name on yellow stars

decades before men from Liverpool would

front thousands of people, their hands

hoisted in the air, na-na-ing like there

never was another song.

We put every weight on what we called him.

He crosses the universe, making our songs

better.

Lay Me Down Somewhere – A poem for Parsha Vayechi (Aliyah 7)

And Joseph bound the sons of Israel by an oath to bind their descendants by an oath, saying, “God will surely remember you and your descendants, and when He does, you must have them take my bones up from here.” ~ Genesis 50:25

When I die I want them to take my bones

and bring them to where I came from.

I’m just not sure where that is.

It could be the promised land.

If I could find a paper trail that definitively

had my feet there, it could be there.

It could be in Syracuse where the first Cohens

toddled around the 19th Ward before the

neighborhood became a highway.

My mother was a Cohen and though

my father didn’t give me her name

I still claim a familial bond.

It could be Florida. I spent some time there.

Though probably not. Please don’t

lay me down permanently in Florida.

It could be New Jersey where

I first breathed the air, but they

probably won’t remember me.

It could be Paris, but I think

I’d have to die there to earn it.

I wouldn’t mind dying in Paris.

It could be in California where

the foundations of who I am were

forged by the holiest of people

like Joseph, who became who he was

in the narrowest of places, but still asked

they bring his bones home.

 Originally appeared at JewishJournal.com (January, 2025)

                                                                                     Photo by Lois P. Jones