Ron Koertge to Feature at Village Poets Feb 22

                                             Photo of Sunland/Tujunga Wash by Maja Trochimczyk (2025)

Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga is proud to bring renowned poet, Ron Koertge, in a solo feature on the 4th Sunday of February, the 22th, 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. 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.

 

Ron Koertge was appointed Poet Laureate of South Pasadena in June of 2018.  

He attended high school in Collinsville, Illinois, graduated University of Illinois in 1962, University of Arizona in 1965. He taught at the city college in Pasadena for thirty-seven years. His poetry writing workshop at Pasadena City College was one of the department’s most popular classes. An entertaining and dynamic reader, Billy Collins calls him “sly, inventive and deeply good-hearted.”

 

A prolific writer, he published widely in the 60’s and 70’s in such seminal magazines as Kayak, Poetry Now, and The Wormwood Review. He continues to publish today, favoring truly independent magazines like Rattle, Nerve Cowboy, River Styx.  Sumac Press issued The Father Poems in 1973, and that book was followed by many more:  Meat (1973, Mag Press), The Hired Nose (1974, Mag Press), My Summer Vacation ( 1975 Venice Poetry),  Cheap Thrills(Wormwood Review Press, 1976), Men Under Fire (Duck Down Press, 1976) (Red Hill Press, 1976), Sex Object  (Little Caesar Press, 1979) The Jockey Poems  (1980 Maelstrom Press), Diary Cows (Little Ceasar Press, 1981),  Fresh Meat (Kenmore Press, 1981),  Life on the Edge of the Continent:  Selected Poems (University of Arkansas Press, 1982), High School Dirty Poems (Red Wind Press, 1991), Making Love to Roget’s Wife (University of Arkansas Press, 1997), Geography of the Forehead (University of Arkansas Press, 1997), Fever (Red Hen Press, 2006), Indigo (Red Hen Press, 2009), The Ogre’s Wife (Red Hen Press, 2013), Sex Object (Red Hen Press, 2014), Yellow Moving Van, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). 

 

Koertge is the recipient of grants from the N.E.A. and the California Arts Council, has poems in two volumes of Best American Poetry (1999 and 2005). He won a Pushcart Prize in 2017. His most recent book from Red Hen Press is Pandora’s Kitchen.. He is also the author of “Negative Space,” short-listed for an Oscar in Animated Short Films (2018). He was included in Volume 380 in the Dictionary Of Literary Biography series: Twenty-First-Century American Poets.

 

Three Poems by Ron Koertge 

 

Ideal Reader

 

I found a book of mine in a summer cottage,

and I wondered who was tired of gazing at the lake

 

or reading mysteries from the rickety bookcase

so turned to poetry one rainy afternoon.

 

I like to think of him when someone in a blue

bikini leans in for a preliminary kiss

 

and he says, “Wait a minute.  Look at this first.”

 

Published in “Glimpse” magazine

               

The Afterlife

 

I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me.

Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.

Love the game room and those herbal teas.

Everyone remembers Betty Grable. 

 

Sixty thousand channels thanks to cable.

Sleep’s not a problem, we’re all deceased.

Everyone remembers Betty Grable.

Marilyn Monroe keeps asking for a priest.  

 

Sleep’s not a problem, we’re all deceased

tucked in among a thousand souvenirs.

Marilyn Monroe keeps asking for a priest.

Frank Sinatra hums the music of the spheres.

 

Tucked in among a thousand souvenirs,

there’s room for clippings and my Betamax.

Frank Sinatra hums the music of the spheres.

Every afternoon I wax my Cadillacs.

 

There’s room for clippings and my Betamax.

The past is present like a golden key.

Every afternoon I wax my Cadillacs.

I’ve been dead for years, so this place suits me. 

 

Published in Rattle

 

The Old West

 

Rope at her slender

ankles.

 

Villain in a black 

mustache

 

looming.  RR

tracks

 

throbbing

and hot.

 

Explosions

in the distance.

 

Billy the Kid

and his gang

 

of incorrigible

toddlers. 

 

Published in “3^rd Wednesday”

 

© 2026 Ron Koertge All Rights Reserved

                                                         (Photo by Maja Trochimczyk 2026)

 

  

 

 

Mariano Zaro & Jeanette Clough Begin 2026 Season, Sunday Jan 25

Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga will start the New Year featuring renowned poets, Mariano Zaro and Jeanette Clough on the 4th Sunday of January, the 25th, 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.

Fire Roulette is Jeanette Clough’s fifth poetry collection. An earlier book, Flourish, was a finalist in the Otis College of Art and Design, and the Eastern Washington University book competitions. Other publications include Island from Red Hen Press and two artist books, Stone and Rx.   Her poetry received awards from the Los Angeles Poetry Festival Fin de Millennium, Ruskin Art Club, and Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry competitions, a Commendation in Aesthetica Creative Works in England, and Pushcart nominations. Clough edited for Solo, A Journal Poetry; Foreshock, An Anthology of Poems from the Midnight Special; and reviewed for Poetry International.  Among the journals publishing her poems are Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Laurel Review, Spillway, Miramar, and Wisconsin Review. A native of Paterson, N.J., she holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago, Division of the Humanities, and was an art librarian at the Getty Research Institute.  She co-directed the Los Angeles Barnes & Noble and Rose Café poetry series, and hosted Poetry at Bell Arts in Ventura.  She was artist-in-residence at Joshua Tree National Park where for many years she taught outdoor desert poetry workshops.

                               Three Poems by Jeanette Clough

Night Dive

 

I am the foreign body wearing neoprene, descending 

into the Caribbean Sea wrapped in forty pounds 

of gear and I anticipate sinking like a rock,

 

but scientific fact and good equipment let me hover 

underwater over the sand, breath balanced in and out, 

body rising then lowering, as if weightless, safely above

 

the banded sea snake with black rings precisely spaced 

along its white body, settled on the floor, docile but deadly.  

I propel myself with artificial fins.  A nocturnal octopus 

 

blends with a rock.  Two sea turtles swing by.  A flotilla 

of barracuda, then another of squid, half-imagined 

in the blurred distance.  Beneath me a sting ray 

 

disguises itself under a thin layer of sand, only eyes

and gills unveiled.  We are a small group, patient 

with each other, willing to wait while a diver lingers, 

 

transfixed, floating inside the sea.  Our oxygen lowers 

and we return, an armada swaying in the night’s current, 

timing ourselves to rise slowly.  I break the surface, remove 

 

my mouthpiece and take in again the night air.  Our bodies, 

snug in their own suits.  We can hear each other breathe.

 

Fire Roulette (Cahuenga Press, 2025)

Ardor

 

Pick a direction left or right  

to the street where oblivious to traffic, ballet boys 

and ballet girls parade down the center line 

 

swaying on bright muscled legs, roughing up their toes, 

brushing the asphalt with lamb’s wool and sequins,  

with lost elastic and satin ribbons, performing their steps 

 

with a sharp hunger that will solve every problem, with

ardor hard as a rose-cut diamond set in platinum, in angles 

that refract and will not, no matter what, be still. 

 

 Wisconsin Review 50.2 (2017), in Fire Roulette (Cahuenga Press, 2025)

Uncommon Bounty 

 The sky has been turning shades of slate 

for several miles with us driving under its lowering 

 

tent.  An abrupt downpour cuts rivulets 

into the hard-tack ground.   We are surprised 

 

rain survives its descent through parched air 

without evaporating, to drop needles on the unflinching 

 

windshield that flicks them aside with wipers and speed. 

The other surprise is this rainbow over salt brush 

 

and stubble, the end of its spectrum arc pacing the car 

as if to grant an indulgence, or simply to mark 

 

a gift of water in the dry place through which we pass.

 

Fire Roulette (Cahuenga Press, 2025)

Mariano Zaro is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The Weight of Sound (Walton Well Press), Decoding Sparrows (What Books Press) and Padre Tierra (Olifante, Zaragoza, Spain). The English version of Padre Tierra, translated by Blas Falconer, is forthcoming in Artepoética Press (NYC). Zaro’s poems have been included in the anthologies Monster Verse (Penguin Random House), Poetry Goes to the Movies(Beyond Baroque Books), The Coiled Serpent (Tía Chucha Press), We Are Here, Village Poets Anthology (Moonrise Press) and in several magazines in Mexico, Spain and the United States. With the Venice Collective he has published two poetry volumes: Angle of Reflection(Arctos Press) and A Shared Condition (Moon Tide Press). Zaro’s short stories have appeared in Roanoke Review, Portland Review, Pinyon, Baltimore Review and Louisville Review. He is the winner 2018 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Short Fiction Prize. Zaro’s translations include Buda en llamas by Tony Barnstone (El Tucán de Virginia, Mexico) and Cómo escribir una canción de amor by Sholeh Wolpé (Olifante, Spain). For more than ten years Zaro conducted a video interview series with noted Los Angeles poets for Poetry LA, a non-profit video production group dedicated to promoting Southern California’s poetry scene. Since 2016 Zaro has collaborated with Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, first as a member of the Board of Trustees and now as part of the Publication Committee.

 Three poems from Mariano’s new book The Weight of Sound  (Walton Well Press, Los Angeles, 2025). 

 

Vaporetto

 

It’s late and we take the last vaporetto

to go back to the hotel.

 

We will be there in no time at all, I want to say.

But I don’t say anything because

we are not talking much today.

 

After a couple of minutes, we realize

that we have taken the wrong vaporetto,

in the wrong direction, that we are trapped

where we don’t want to be.

 

You remove your small backpack,

drop it on the floor.

I lean my forehead against a windowpane.

The glass is wet, cold.

 

                   Our sense of touch is controlled

                   by a network of nerve endings

                   and touch receptors in the skin

                   known as the somatosensory system.

 

There is no place to sit.

We are next to each other, standing, unstable.

 

                   There are mechanoreceptors for movement,

                   nociceptors for pain,

                   thermoreceptors for temperature,

                   proprioceptors for location and position.

 

I wonder if there are receptors

for the skin to say

how it wants to be touched.

Receptors for repulsion.

Exposure

The summer

brought you back.

 

                   Not the tentative, early summer.

                   The furniture still cold and sleepy.

 

Not the last days of summer,

melancholic, licking the forehead

of autumn.

 

                   The heart of summer.

 

The rooftops offered to the sky

like skinned knees.

 

                   The light— flat, unstoppable.

 

No place to hide.

No other season.

 

                   — Has it been already fifteen years?

       — Exactly fifteen years and three months, since you left.

Some Notes on How to Grow Strawberries

 

He doesn’t know what to do, where to go.

Listen to your inner voice, people tell him.

Find a hobby— painting, gardening.

 

He tries gardening.

 

                   Take one strawberry, scrape at the seeds,

                   place them on a paper towel to dry them out.

 

He keeps seeds in small envelopes

with handwritten labels.

 

                   Find seedling pots (as many as needed).

                   Fill up each pot with soil, pour a little water.

 

Sometimes he mislabels the envelopes.

Seeds look alike, they are so small,

so insignificant, they weigh almost nothing.

 

                   Get your seeds,

                   and let one or two fall into the middle of each pot.

 

Each seed knows the road ahead,

and the road behind.

 

                   Your seeds will germinate and create

                   small visible seedlings in around 2 to 3 weeks.

 

The seeds know what to do.

Even the ones in the wrong envelopes,

even the ones with no labels.

 

Katharine VanDewark & Joe Camhi Feature Sunday Oct 26 at Village Poets

Village Poets of Sunland/Tujunga will feature poets Katharine VanDewark & Joe Camhi on the 4th Sunday of October, the 26th, 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.

Katharine VanDewark’s  latest book of poems & original artwork is Dead Calm, Night Heron. She received a BA in painting from UCSB and has had intensive dance training as well as being a photographer. VanDewark’s poems have appeared in many journals including Lummox Number Nine; Last Call, Chinaski!; Amarillo Bay; Dos Passos Review; Wild Violet; Quiddity; Qwerty No. 32; Sanskrit; several Palos Verdes Library Anthologies; Coracle; Spectrum 26; and she is a regular contributor to Bay to Ocean Journal. In 2022 she was the winner of their Crossroads Micro Fiction & Poetry contest in the poetry category. Katharine lives in San Pedro and can often be found walking the cliffs watching for hawks, falcons and foxes.

Dust from Mongolia   

 

Apparently early spring winds sweep

dust from the Mongolian plains

all the way across China

to and beyond Beijing.

I know this because a friend said so.

 

Millions of people anticipate the

coming wind and chant,

as with the Indian monsoon,

“When the rains come.”

“When the dust comes.”

This has been happening for centuries.

Or at least for years.

 

How has the grass been uprooted

that soil is picked up easily and

blown for miles?

Are nomads to blame?

 

Was it the conquering hordes of

Genghis Khan and his horses

that trampled the carpets to dirt and

started the whole thing?

 

Did they pulverize the blades

playing polo across the steppes, using the

decapitated heads of prisoners as balls?

 

When the grass grew back and

dew collected on it,

was it red?

 

Was it the weight of yurt floors

that compacted it and

caused it to die of asphyxiation?

 

Published in Dead Calm, Night Heron and Lummox Number Nine              

 

Turning ¼ Million Miles

 

747s took a perpendicular bead

with the San Diego freeway southbound.

They shared longitude

with a 1/3 full moon.

On a planetary seesaw it

had the higher seat to the sun.

 

A hyperactive finger painting

of clouds close to the horizon

combined with pollutants

heated to 96 degrees

promised a sunset worth watching. 

I had been doing a mile

every 5 minutes

when the odometer numbers rolled.

 

In my neighborhood

those with balconies

sit on them

clink dinner plates and talk. 

Here a window outlined in pumpkin lights

there a witch on a chimney

with broom, nylons and hat.

 

In the blackberry bramble 3 miles away

the unreachables flaunt themselves

unaware that within days

they will no longer be desirable

will become wrinkled

like salt cured olives

sucked free of their dark juice.

  

Published in Dead Calm, Night Heron

 

Phantasmagoric

She lets her teeth show, the teeth

that weep blood on weekday mornings. 

The teeth she uses to pull up flowering sagebrush

clearing an entire hillside in the time

it takes black ink to turn green.

 

She lets her lip curl, wrap itself

around the sparkling legs of suntanned

bathers walking innocent

into the waves.

 

She lets her hair scream, a gathering

brace of funnel winds that sweep

the plains clean of wrought iron beds

tossed like hot air ping pong balls

in beer soaked poolrooms.

 

She hides her heart

in neighbors’ kitchen trash cans

the rubber belts of Detroit engines

the slide of a tongue over it.

 

She lets her eyes blister the night

through holds of cargo ships

bound for questionable places

their metal hides slowly eaten through

by liquid gasses.

 

©2025 Katharine VanDewark All Rights Reserved

 

 

Joe Camhi has published poetry and fiction in various magazines and Web sites including Exquisite Corpse, the Louisiana Review, Street News, the New Press, and Far Gone Magazine. His plays have been produced by College of the Canyons and in West Hollywood with the Urban Theatre Movement; Santa Clarita; Lafayette, Louisiana; and Portland, Oregon. In NY City, Joe was a featured reader at CBGBs, the Knitting Factory, and the Nuyorican Poets Café where he placed second in one of the semifinals of the poetry slam. Joe Camhi currently teaches English at College of the Canyons and Los Angeles Mission College.