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
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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
