Friday, May 2, 2025

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 Its 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 Poets 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
 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 



Monday, March 24, 2025

Spring in Bloom with Poets Elsa Frausto & Sean McGrath


 

Village Poets will celebrate the warmth of spring with a presentation of original poetry by Elsa Frausto & Sean McGrath on Sunday, April 27 at 4:30 pm at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, CA. There will also be an open mic, so please bring your best poems to participate. The Bolton Hall Museum, 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. Parking available across the street at Elks Lodge 10137 Commerce Ave.

 Elsa S. Frausto, the eighth Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga (2014-2017) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has lived in the Foothills with her family for over twenty-five years. Her work has appeared in a number of local and international publications, among them Porte des Poetes, Speechless the Magazine, Poem of the Month in Poet at Work, Badlands, the anthology Meditations on Divine Names and many anthologies by Poets on Site. She was the coordinator and host for Camelback Readings held at the Sunland-Tujunga Library. Elsa is a member of the Chuparosa Writers, volunteers at the Friends of the Library Bookstore and at the Noise Within Theater (Pasadena) and is poetry editor and translator for the Spanish language literary magazine la-luciernaga.com.  Her venture as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga (2014-2016) was the blog Poetria.org. Her local musings Walking Around could be read monthly in the local paper, Voice of the Village.  In 2017, her book, Sunland Park Poems, co-written with Alice Pero was published by Shabda Press.

 Poems by Elsa Frausto

If I could do with the night…

 If I could do with the night

what the choreographer

with the dance.

Undress it of its dictionary,

surprise her moonless.

A crackle of grasshoppers

and an absence of frogs

in the air at eleven,

to the rhythm of a hand

on your hips

and yours on my breast.

If I could do with the night

what it does with me.

Dance without a choreographer,

full moon like once your mouth

on the roundness of mine.

And a second after eleven

the total silence of grasshoppers.

 For you, who know everything

What will be left of this time

a year from now or on my 65th birthday?

The walks and how the wind seemed to come

out of nowhere.

Your body when I bathed it clean

to insult the illness in it,

call it out of you, to show its face.

The one it hides around your heart.

A stone, a beating stone, so sick,

so alive.

Two poems written in the back of books.The first book by a Russian poet imprisoned in Soviet times- Yuli Daniel

Poet,

you left enough pages for me to write on.

It’s past one

and I don’t sleep,

the same way cold and hunger kept you awake.

Thoughts can be jails

with bars on all sides.

I peer out into the night

like a bird

undeserving of the name.

The second book is by Wallace Stevens

Once my father was young.

Once we walked on Sunday

to buy a paper at the stand

on the corner of Hollywood and Western.

It’s not there anymore.

Memory of you

Question I will never ask-

How many years for your hair to grow that long?

Maybe I did and don’t remember.

You could have answered me like this-

I trimmed it every new moon since I had you at 19

until I turned 30. You spread out in its thickness

and the night built nests of light in its waves.

But you wouldn’t have said that.

Those weren’t your words, you didn’t say the rest either

because I never asked you.

Maybe I did. One doesn’t remember everything.

Sean McGrath is a poet, writer and teacher who has resided in the Northeast and the Southwest of the United States. He has published three poetry collections — Untitled Baby Project (2023), From a Balcony in Palos Verdes (2022), and Oculus (2016) — and is working on his fourth, Untitled Baby Project 2.0. His poetry has appeared with the California State Poetry Society and Awakenings Review. He received a B.A. in English from Brown University in 2011. Sean has been teaching literature and writing classes at Chadwick School in Palos Verdes, California for the past eight years and he currently resides in Torrance with his wife, their two young sons, three dogs, and a cat. 

Poems by Sean McGrathhttps://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif

At Sea, After Light

The marine wall poured onto the coastline

  this evening’s moving mountains—

went the sailboats, went the doves,

  lines of sunset streaked through

like tunnel paths for the seagone.

 More boats, droves of pelican and cranes

fleeting from sight, making their winged exit;

  the air was wet with longing.

I shivered on the shore

  underdressed, ill-equipped to harness

all the heaven before me,

  so much of it leaking out,

coming in at once.

I can’t have a cold room when it knocks—

  I should have fire in my lungs

and only a little fear in my heart,

  I should learn to warm myself

amid the wavery sea,

  to be still in the absence of light.

Published in “from a Balcony in Palos Verdes” (wor(l)ds publishing)

hunger for eternity

you ever miss something

even when you are beholding it

right there in your dumbstruck eyes?

it had been close during

the goldfleeced autumns in Massachusetts,

the sunsets in Redondo,

the winters from a balcony in Palos Verdes

when snow had just started to top the distant Angeles

but never so distilled,

not until this little monster

crash landed on my pumping heart

and looked back at me with my own eyes—

then, as before, every moment felt worth holding onto forever

then, like never, each moment felt like it was rushing away

so this is how you fall out of love with the ordinary,

I thought,

this is how the hunger for eternity grows

Published in “Untitled Baby Project” (2023) 1st prize winner CSPS Monthly Contest March 2024

Car Poem #2

I hadn’t thought

  it would be so much time circling

parking lots,

  it would be so much time in the rocking

chair with his paws latched onto the neck of my shirt

  in the dark hours of morning,

 so much time chasing him around

knocking rocks out of his mouth,

   chasing him around with a tissue to get his nose,

     so much time sharing colds,

I hadn’t thought—

 

     I guess I had little interest in forecasting

the future.

     I lived one page at a time, trusting

it was a good book probably, and no

need to skip ahead.

 

    The last chapter was all

beer glasses and long runs, longer drives,

coastal shores and a wife worth every

   mile.

 

Some days I wonder

  is this a punishment

    or a reward

  for all that good living?

maybe both

     and probably neither,

it is just a life,

   hardly a page turner,

      to extend that metaphor—

  though a stone on the beach

may be more fitting,

   something tractable

   and battered slowly and certainly

by the endless waters

  which then

    dust by dust it becomes

part of and maybe remains;

 

I’m not sure, it’s all so uncertain

and I hadn’t thought

    to give it much good thought

 until now with a life more precious than mine

asleep in the backseat.

Published in The Awakenings Review (Spring 2024)