Our next Village Poets reading at
Bolton Hall Museum will be on Sunday, Sept 27, 2026, at 4:30 p.m when we will
feature poets Beth Ruscio & Karen Kevorkian. 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 RUSCIO
Beth Ruscio, whose first paying job
was detasseling corn, is the daughter of actors. She is a published poet & award
winning actor, formerly, a long time mentor at Otis College of Art &
Design. Author of Speaking Parts (2020), she is the winner of the
Brick Road Poetry Prize, finalist honors for The Wilder Prize, and for her
chapbook, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, finalist for The Sunken Garden Poetry Prize, and Two Sylvias Prize. Her recent publications: poems in anthologies: Poetry
Goes to the Movies (Pacific
Coast Poetry Series); Women in a Golden State (Gunpowder Press); Catching Fire (Three Rooms Press); and forthcoming, A Picture Is Worth a Poet’s Words (Moon Tide Press). Her
essay, “In praise of humble ingredients, exalted” and poem “Summer Calling” in
Outlaw Theater (Padua
Playwrights Press). Other publications:
Tupelo Quarterly, Tulane Review, Cultural Weekly, Apeiron Review, Cathexis
Northwest Press, Spillway, Malpais Review, and anthologized in Dark Ink: Poetry Inspired by Horror, Beyond the Lyric Moment, 1001 Nights, Conducting a Life: Maria Irene Fornes and The
Writing Life. Formerly, a longtime
mentor at Otis College of Art and Design. She shares her life with gifted
playwright/teacher/actor Leon Martell with whom she co-wrote/co-starred in
their play “1961 Eldorado,” and their good dog, Lolita.
THREE POEMS BY BETH RUSCIO
3:38 A.M.
In grimy
Manhattan, once,
when
snow absolved the scuzz
and all
was hushed, virgin
as a new
territory, I was
its
first inhabitant. Yes.
Now,
climbing out the oven
of the
unrepentant Valley,
I crest
the hill that’s sealed off
a
cocooning fog—bracing
to feel
its chill. Oncoming
lights
appear milk-glassed.
The
familiar gone foreign.
It’s
refreshing. To become
a
stranger does wonders for me.
At this
liminal hour,
I am the
only traffic
as I
near a chronically clogged
now
ghost-town-deserted
intersection,
and here,
sitting
cross-legged
on
pavement—a grown woman
in the
turning lane,
staring
down the thick sea fret.
Beached,
but miles from shore.
Not some
tentative stance, no.
She’s
decided to just be
in the
way for a change
from Women in a
Golden State
(2025)
And for California, it’s only
June
Ranting
about golden hours and temperate climates
and the blonde
she used
to be hot boxing Salems
her unholy halo of minty smoke.
Just
shows up no call says her place burned down and the place
before
that. The tomorrow woman. We
once gave each other nicknames.
We were
that close. Now she sits in my
captain’s chair a hard glance at
me
and I’m
listening looking west her narrowed eyes the bracing nerviness
of
glacier blue. Out back where we felled the willow mockingbird parents
in the
stubbly growth feed their young in short bursts of hop flit
fly
perilously
exposed in the drought-starved
yard. It’s not natural she’s
saying
in her
strafed voice pulling at the pony
tail she can’t make right.
Over
Zoom her daughters laid it down they
won’t bring kids into this world.
Not now I tried not to scream as our blood red sun sinks
into the maudlin mauve.
from “Catching
Fire/The Los Angeles Wildires” Rose of Sharon Press
And his poetry to protect him for
Jerry Garcia (1954-2024)
His
handwriting, he had to admit, became
illegible,
even to
him—words he’d scrawled across a
page
inscribed
to me will pulse in mystery,
flickering,
for in
its most flammable state, writing is
friction.
A sign
of life. Sisters had taught us both.
Different
classrooms same curriculum
to form
perfect letters, with fountain pens,
jeweled
peacock ink from the color family of
sky,
making
our t’s like signs of the cross
&
between words leaving space for the
holy ghost.
Father
Gregory Boyle rejoicing at the
funeral
that he
could count a poet as a classmate, as
a friend.
We don’t live forever, he said, but we can live in the
forever.
After
his funeral, the sisters sat with us
poets,
we who
love poetry enough to devote
ourselves to it.
His
defeated body in ashes, and mantel
placed, his urn.
We
believed in longhand, thoughts at
the speed of pen
to
paper. Jerry’s sense of wonder at the Eucharist line
of bliss and decadence he
wore cocked like a favorite hat.
Even our
disbelief, by God, they taught us to offer up.
Forthcoming in
’26: “A Picture’s Worth a Poet’s Words”—
Photo of Beth Ruscio by
Alexis Rhone Fancher/Moon Tide Press
KAREN KEVORKIAN
Karen
Kevorkian was born in San Antonio and now lives in Los Angeles, but for
significant periods she has lived in Austin, Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Salt
Lake City; Berkeley, California; and San Francisco. She was educated at the
University of Texas, University of Virginia, and University of Utah and received
an MFA in Virginia where she studied with Greg Orr. In Salt Lake she studied
with Larry Levis and Mark Strand. Kevorkian worked for17 years as publications
editor at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, for 5 years as an adjunct
faculty member teaching creative writing at the University of Virginia, and for
13 years as a continuing lecturer in creative writing at the University of
California Los Angeles.
Karen
has four published poetry collections—Here in My Body It Feels Crowded
(Walton Well Press), Quivira (3:A Taos Press), Lizard Dream (What
Books Press), White Stucco Black Wing (Red Hen Press). Her latest collection, The Body the
Distance Traveled, is forthcoming
from University of New Mexico Press.
Her
poems are published in many journals, among them—Massachusetts Review, New
American Writing, Four Way Review, Volt, Taos Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily,
Laurel Review, Denver Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry
International, Quarterly West, Agni, Shenandoah, Texas Poetry Review, Rio
Grande Review, Third Coast, Mississippi Review, Virginia Quarterly Review,
Hambone, Antioch Review, and Witness. And she has reviewed for Colorado
Review, Poetry Northwest, LA Times Review of Books, Poetry International, and
Virginia Quarterly Review.
Kevorkian
has held artist fellowships at Djerassi Foundation for the Arts, Ucross
Foundation for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony for the Arts, the
Virginia Foundation for the Arts, and six times at the Helene Wurlitzer
Foundation.
In
Los Angeles she spent 7 years as board of trustee member for Beyond Baroque
literary arts organization (LA's oldest, founded 1968). She is also am a
founding member from 2008 of What Books Press, a publishing collective. In
addition she has been a finalist for the Tupelo Dorset award, the Tupelo
chapbook awards, the Wisconsin Pollak award, a Discovery (The Nation) award, a
New Issues award, the Julie Suk award, and has received several Pushcart
nominations.
Over
the years she has read her work at Beyond Baroque, Village Well Bookstore,
Somos, Geronimo’s Bookstore, Op Cit, Book Soup, Last Bookstore, the Texas
Literary Festival, the Ojai Literary Festival, the LA Times Book Festival,
Virginia Festival of the Books, Mills College, Intersection for the Arts,
Cody’s Books, AWP, Vroman’s Bookstore, the Library of Congress, Loyola
Marymount, and many other places.
Karen
is married and has four children, all grown. She goes to the opera and take
online courses in Southwestern archaeology.
THREE POEMS BY KAREN KEVORKIAN
Stunned
Awake
Not
having the book not remembering what it said
stunned
awake into sheets like tissue wrapping of the old dress dank from years’ saving
dusty
gritty cement floor little windowless room who knew
what
children could get up to
crack
of sunlight outside stairs leading down to it
push
open the door whatever took place still lingering
don’t
you feel this way about certain spaces
you
would not know what to say to who you once were
a
life that could have resembled anyone’s
where
your body led you too young to have imagined anything
rearing
like a car alarm a sweeping fire
over
dry grass where you live now
Published in Four
Way Review and in Here
in My Body It Feels Crowded, Walton Well Books, 2025
Desert
Look
quickly at a speedometer see 90 the how can my body move at such speed
right
foot slipping out then back into a sandal the high desert’s graysprigged pale
silk dress you would wear though it meant death
your
small car in a semi’s wake
keep closed the window let a/c blast knees a
woman’s voice frothing on the radio
we
must protect liberty
meaning free to infect or be infected deep in the third year
in
the world not of it
calling
loudly no one in the room
fingerraked
dry hair outside burned-to-thatch summer gardens the faucet’s warm gush
dark
strands on white porcelain
acedic
morning light’s invisible spider silk to blunder through
satisfied
you Made Time meaning hurtled toward a coast as the continent slid into brine
Published in Volt and in Here
in My Body It Feels Crowded, WaltonWell Press, 2025
Body the
Distance Traveled
Morning
spills from the bulk of a small house its quiet hour unyoked to must
shaggy
elms raining green benediction
the
arbutus with its red fruit a baretrunked palm’s spreading crest dear
to
the mother of the gods
in
dim rooms a few mysteries of light
the
leaded body and stunned mind remembering fire
like
waking to a front door standing open the panicked survey what’s askew no
the
purse still gaping the small box with its small adornments
closed
tight it was daylight when you came in turning off the porchlight
so
it must have been wind so strong anyone could have
the
wanting back when you could not speak enough from the bruised body
the
ready underworld and its glimpse of anthracite
like
bats the names of things cling irretrievably
time
to go
your
dirty clothes your smoothed skirt did you look ok the shirt that bore
no
wrinkle of caring
Published in New
American Writing and in Here in My Body It Feels Crowded, Walton
Well Press, 2025
Nature Photos from Descanso Gardens by Lois P. Jones
Bolton Hall Museum
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