Ron Koertge to Feature at Village Poets on February 22, 2026

                                             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 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.

 

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 of Big Tujunga Wash by Maja Trochimczyk 2026

 

  

 

 

Come on November 22, 2015 to Thank Jack Cooper and Jeanette Clough for their Poetic Gifts

So close to Thanksgiving, Village Poets' last Monthly Reading at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, will feature poetry we have a reason to be really thankful for.  Jeannette Clough and Jack Cooper are both well known in Southern California poetry community, and beyond. Their presence with us will give us something to be thankful for...

The Monthly Village Poets Reading at Bolton Hall will take place on Sunday, November 22, 2015 at 4:30 p.m. There will be two segments of Open Mike Readings for our poets and refreshments will be served.  The Bolton Hall Museum is Historical Landmark No. 2 in the City of Los Angeles and is located at 10110 Commerce Ave, Tujunga, CA 91042.

Jeannette Clough

Jeanette Clough’s 2014 collection, Flourish, was a finalist in the Otis College of Art and Design and Eastern Washington University annual book competitions. She has edited and reviewed for journals, and served as Artist in Residence for the National Parks. Recent poetry appears in the Laurel Review and Colorado Review.

A Sample Poem, from Flourish:

Salt

I choose salt, a common mineral unfit for jewelry. 

Its ladder is fragile and vital, which other jewels are not. 

Salt lives in the blood.

It does not care how it is seen

but cares a great deal how it is savored on the tongue.

I cannot live without you, jewel of choice. 

I work myself into your skin so we will last together a long time,

older and tougher. 

I adorn my body with salt.  You comply,

an animal drawn to the lick. 

Predators skirt the underbrush but we ignore them

because our hunger is more huge. 

I wish to be nowhere but encasing the saltiness of you.

(C) 2014 by Jeanette Clough

Jack Cooper

Jack Cooper's first poetry collection, Across My Silence, was published by World Audience, Inc., 2007. His work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, and chosen as a finalist in North American Review's 2012 James Hearst Poetry Prize and in the 2014 Eco Arts Award in Creative Excellence, and winner, Annual Flash Contest, Flash Fiction Chronicles, April 2015.  His poetry and/or flash and mini-plays have also appeared in Slant, Bryant Literary Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and many other publications. He is a contributing editor at www.KYSOflash.com.

We are very happy that Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez found time to visit our reading in Sunland-Tujunga. Here's a group photo of Mr. Rodriguez with Village Poets at Bolton Hall Museum on October 25, 2015.

L to R: Mira Mataric, Maja Trochimczyk, Dorothy Skiles, Elsa Frausto,

Janet Nippell, Luis J. Rodriguez, Peter Larsen, Joe DeCenzo, Mari Werner,

Tom Hall, Marlene Hill - at Bolton Hall Museum. 

Marlene Hitt and Brenda Petrakos - Featured Village Poets on May 24, 2015

The Village Poets of Sunland-Tujunga are delighted to announce that poets Marlene Hitt and Brenda Petrakos will co-feature at the upcoming Monthly Reading Series, Sunday, May 24, 2015, 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m., at Bolton Hall Museum 10110 Commerce Ave., Tujunga, CA 91042.  

Poets are welcome to sign-up for the open reading upon arrival.  Light refreshments will be served – a $3.00 donation is appreciated! 

MARLENE HITT

 Marlene Hitt is a Los Angeles poet, writer and retired educator with local history as an avocation. She has served  for many years as archivist, historian and docent at the Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga. She is a native Californian and a graduate of Occidental College in Los Angeles. She studied casually at CSUN, UCLA, USC, Glendale College and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. As a member of the Chupa Rosa Writers of Sunland for nearly 30 years, she has worked with this small group of poets from which has sprung readings at the local library, the Poet Laureate Program of Sunland-Tujunga, and the currently popular Village Poets.

Her poetry received several first prizes in annual competitions of the Woman's Club of San Fernanado Valley, and many awards from the John Steven McGroarty Chapter of the California Federations of Chaparral Poets. Her work appeared in Psychopoetica(U.K.), Chupa Rosa Diaries of the Chupa Rosa Writers, (2001-2003), Glendale College Eclipse  anthologies, two Moonrise Press anthologies Chopin with Cherries (2010)  Meditations on Divine Names(2012). Also, Sometimes in the Open, a collection of verse by California Poets Laureate. She published Sad With Cinnamon, Mint Leaves,and Bent Grass(all in 2001), as well as Riddle in the Rain with Dorothy Skiles, and a stack of chapbooks for friends and family. 

Her most recent book, Clocks and Water Drops appeared in May 2015 from Moonrise Press. Poet Jack Cooper commented: "Clocks and Water Drops is a book of treasured gifts packed in memories and reflections as tasty as homemade bread, fanciful as a rose petal salad and healing as warm camphor oil on a child's skin. Marlene Hitt's astute and thoughtful voice paints a world as gentle as lamb’s wool and precious as a girl’s first pony. Open this cedar chest of poems, don its knitted socks and prepare to chase the moon through love and time." Kathabela Wilson noted: "Marlene Hitt is a poet beyond measure... she holds each thing to her eye and finds inner correspondences. She finds in the mind - an empty glove, a "back alley" and wonders what words to write, as we all do, on a blank page, or "the bronze grave marker" she buys for herself. Each of her poems works on several levels, and almost always ends with a very interesting surprise or revelation. The significance of each detail is stunning and inspiring."

  

Ms. Hitt, elected Woman of Achievement for year 2001, served as Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga 1999-2001, at the turn of the century. She has published books on local history, including Sunland-Tujunga from Village to City (Arcadia, 2000,2005) based on columns written for The Foothill Leader, Glendale news Press, North Valley Reporter, Sentinel, and Voicof the Village newspapers since 1998. Over the years she has  taught in elementary school, preschool, worked in a pharmacy, chaired committees, tap-danced, and played English Handbells in the Pasadena Rose Parade.  She is currently in a ukulele class and has been elected to the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council. Any success she has had she dedicates to her support group: husband Lloyd, children and grandchildren, her biggest fans.

BC PETRAKOS

Brenda Petrakos is a storyteller, performance artist, award-winning playwright and Pushcart–nominated writer.  Her dynamic, tell-it-all approach has won over audiences in California, Chicago, New York, London, and Edinburgh, Berlin & Sweden.  Petrakos is a widely published poet whose work can be found in literary magazines and anthologies including Poetic Diversity, Falling Star, Voices Of New Women Writers (Duke University Press), Magna Poets, Houston Literary Review, Red Fez, Three Rooms Press, Oakland Review, and many more. She has three books published by Sybaritic Press: The Book of This, Country Fixins, and Stories from the Inside Edge, which has been adapted for both stage and screen. Stories from the Edge, an evening of Petrakos’ stories directed by E. Amato featured performances by Los Angeles poets and actors and the short film “Cop.” 

ln 2007, Petrakos took Stories from the Edge to the Festival Fringe Edinburgh, performing with John Burton, Jr. “Cop” also screened at Cinema Slam, Park City, Utah. Several stories from the collection are under option, including “Too Tall Diane,” “Violet’s Bed,” “Indiscretions,” and “The Curtain.” “STANLEY”, a feature screenplay she co-wrote with Joel Sachs is currently in development.  From 2007 – 2012, Petrakos was a host of the venerable Los Angeles reading The Rapp Saloon. With a background in stand-up and writing sketch comedy for Showtime, CBS and Fox, she volunteers her experience and time leading comedy improv workshops for at-risk youth.  She is a founding member of International Word Bank Productions and CFO of Baxter Daniels Ink Press.

Awards / Honors:

Pushcart Prize Nomination

Winner of the ACT New Writer Award


The Arvada New Work Festival

Best Original Play Award


2006 National Poetry Month Palabra Press Anthology

Selected Publications:

The Book of This – Sybaritic Press; Country Fixins – Sybaritic Press; Stories from the Edge – Sybaritic Press; How Dirty Girls Get Clean – Anthology; Magna Poets; Houston Literary Review; Red Fez; Three Rooms Press; Oakland Review; Bicycle Review; DADA Journal; Voices Of New Women Writers (Duke University Press); Poetic Diversity; 

Literary Angels (Diversity Press); Falling Star Literary Magazine; Joy In Mudville: Hollywood Anthology (Metropolis Hopper Books); Afterwords (Really Big Show Productions); Everything About You Is Beautiful (Really Big Show Productions); Little Joy Hollywood 2007 (Nilesgrille Inkhouse Press); The Cobalt Poetry Series
; Valley Contemporary Poets Anthology

Media: 

World Wide Radio Network
, The Jane Crown Show
, Kill Radio
, Edinburgh Fringe Radio, London Calling Spoken Word Works, The Greenfield Report, Literary Review Television, The Larry Winfield Show, Chicago Theatre Today, Denver Art In Review, bc petrakos


Performances: 

World Theatre Festival, Festival Fringe Edinburgh, Beyond Baroque, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Las Vegas West Coast Physiologist Convention, The Rapp Saloon, Mary Wong – National Touring Company, Chicago’s Best
, Komic Kazi
, 

Second City, Comedy Store
, Improv, The Laugh Factory, Ice House
, Catch A Rising Star

Reviews:

“…the kind of writing one would expect from the spawn of William S. Burroughs and Virginia Woolf had the child been privy to frequent visits by favorite aunt, Nancy Spungen.”

                      ~Wenzel Jones/Hollywood Reporter

“… Petrakos clearly deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature. When I started reading Stories from the Inside Edge, I was blown away by their depth, their complexity, their exuberance and their pure genius. No one reflects and celebrates better or more poignantly, the highs and lows of life, love or loss in contemporary America. Her stories are emotional dynamite … with a psychological complexity that makes a reader feel that Dostoyevsky was a bit too shallow. Buy this book! Read this book! Keep this book close!

                     ~Dr. Edward J. Swanon

“The best of the selections … seem painfully, or beautifully, real. Nelson Algren wrote like this and I can think of absolutely no higher literary compliment or comparison to make.”

                      ~B. J. Merhol

Los Angeles Poet Society with Jessica Wilson at the McGroarty Arts Center on April 26, 2015

We are thrilled to announce that our Special Poetry Reading celebrating the Poetry Month will take place on April 26, 2015 at 4:30 p.m. at the McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga (NOT our usual venue, the Bolton Hall Museum!). We will feature

LAPS at LitCrawl in North Hollywood, 2014

THE LOS ANGELES POET SOCIETY 

With Jessica Wilson, President and Juan Cardenas, Vice-President in the company of many guest poets and musicians.  As usual, the event will include Open Mike slots for poets and refreshments. Suggested donation $3 to George Harris's hat, for the support of the McGroarty Arts Center.

Where? The McGroarty Arts Center,7570 McGroarty Terrace, Tujunga, CA 91042, mcgroartyartscenter.org. Free parking on the premises or local streets.

When? On Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.

LAPS at Beyond Baroque

Description:
Los Angeles Poet Society, (LAPS), is a not-for-profit community organization.  We work to create and bridge the creative community all over Los Angeles county and partner with literary LA. LAPS began in 2009 by East Los Angeles Poet, Jessica M. Wilson,  with a goal of uniting literary Los Angeles! It has created writing showcases to serve the many creative communities of Los Angeles county.  LAPS has currently served: Downtown Los Angeles, Venice Beach and Venice, CA,  North Hollywood and surrounding areas.

LAPS Mission
...is to create a bridge, fusing the communities of Los Angeles and Southern California Poets, poetry organizations, Writer groups, booksellers, publishers, literary enthusiasts and supporters into a unified social and literary network. LAPS' focal point is to publicize the events and achievements of its members. LAPS also organizes and promotes events, pulling from within its own community, to create and sustain Los Angeles’ literary anchor.

Website:  http://www.losangelespoetsociety.org/

LAPS at Catcher in the Rye

February 22 - Featured Poet B.D. Love for the Month of Love

Bolton Hall Museum, Photo by Teresa Mei Chuc

The Village Poets are pleased to invite poets and poetry lovers to the Monthly Reading at the Bolton Hall Museum on Sunday, February 22, 2015 at 4:30 p.m. Featured poet, B.D. Love, will be joined by those who wish to present their work at the Open Mike. Refreshments provided.

B.D. LOVE

B. D. Love grew up in rural Michigan, where he attended a typical rural Midwest high school.  That experience engendered a sublime love of poetry, through two wonderful teachers, and a severe distaste for authority, courtesy of a mindless Administration.  Old story.

Over the years since he has earned his M.A. in English/Creative Writing from Syracuse University, he has quite serious writing altogether, formed several punk inspired bands from Syacuse to Dallas to LA and once more Syracuse.  He returned to writing seriously after a freak accident shattered the elbow of his right arm, and he was told he’d never play guitar again.

Since resuming writing, he has published in a great many journals and literally magazines across the nation, and has shepherded six books to print, four full length fiction books, one full length poetry book, and two chapbooks.  He is currently “shopping' two new poetry books.   His most precious new project is a song cycle for which he as written lyrics, with the gorgeous, soaring melodies provided by the great Maura Kennedy, another Syracuse expatriate.  It’s called “Villanelle:  The Songs of Maura Kennedy and B.D. Love.”  Should appear this Spring.  Our holiday song, not really limited, is out on Amazon.com and iTunes and CD Baby.  There is a mutual photograph of us there.

This poem comes from my new book, “Hounds of Wonder:  Life in Dogs.”  It’s about rescue dogs and their special love.  And it is not sentimental.  This poem was featured in Nimrod International Journal, Lasting Matters…

Little Landers Declaration. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

Declan IV

I hold a photograph of you sitting in a box

Half-full of trim from the ancient pepper tree

Whose leaves would choke the eaves and drives and vex

The neighbor lady, who pleaded for the penalty

Of downing — this for a being much of her time.

She’d pass, pure white, beneath the “dirty” limbs.

“There’s a fungus among us,” my mom would chime

By way of warning.  Indeed, there was.  Death has her hymns.

But here you are, roots in the mulch, your face

Courting the camera’s heart.  The shutter clicks

And off you go to sniff all crones and grace

All trees with piss before a smaller box

Arrives to collect the last of the dust to fall.

Some old limbs creaked that night.  I heard their call.

__________________________________

(C) by B.D. Love

First published in Nimrod

Photo by Teresa Mei Chuc

Photos from the January Reading by Teresa Mei Chuc and Ross Canton will soon be available on Picasa Web Album. Here's our group at the end of the reading:

Front: Toti O'Brien, Alice Pero, Teresa Mei Cuc, Ross Canton, Joe DeCenzo and Maja Trochimczyk

For Halloween - Apryl Skies and Sean Hill at Bolton Hall on October 27, 2013

There is never too much of a good thing. Apryl Skies, the founder of Edgar Allan Poet publishing house, and a life-time Poe fan, has accepted our invitation to be the Featured Poet during Village Poets Monthly Reading at Bolton Hall Museum in Tujunga, on October 27, 2013, at 4:30 p.m.  Ms. Skies will be joined by poet Sean Hill as our second Feature. The reading will also include two sections of Open Mike and refreshments.

APRYL SKIES

Apryl Skies, an LA native, is a 2013 (PoeticDiversity) & 2014 (Sybaritic Press) Pushcart nominee and award-winning author of A Song Beneath Silence (Readers Favorite 2012), Skye the Troll & Other Fairy Tales (Best Poetrybook of 2010 by Muses Review.

Apryl Skies is founder and editor of Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House of Sherman Oaks and with several titles hitting the number one best-sellers list for Amazon she is currently building solid momentum in the publishing industry. Titles include: A Song Beneath Silence by Apryl Skies, Running on Fumes by Alicia Winski, Skye the Troll & Other Fairy Tales for Children by Apryl Skies, This Same Small Town in Each of Us by Wanda Morrow Clevenger, In the Company of Women: An Anthology of Wit & Wisdom Sass & Class, Dialect of Dahlias by Gloria J Wimberley, Actual Tigers by William Crawford, Men in the Company of Women: A Provocative Anthology of Praise & Persuasion, More titles forthcoming in 2013 are, Edgar Allan Poet Journal #1 , Art is Always an Impression of What an Artist Sees by Martin Willitts, Jr., & Back to Back: Two Poets Under One Roof by E.L. Freifeld & Lois Michal Unger.

 Skies' creativity is not exclusive to her passion for literary composition and is a natural talent with poetry, photography and canvas. Skies expresses her devotion to the written & spoken word with a quiet intensity; a superbly visual and telling writer, whose work holds merit among authors both classic and new. Whether with written or spoken word, art or design, Skies captures the sublime beauty of the world with a unique and lyrical voice. Creating her own greeting card line in May 2010, this poet proves she has few limitations. Inspired by a wide range of writers, Apryl has established a modest following of her own and has impressed readers worldwide, as well as by her performances throughout Los Angeles. While Skies is known mainly for her lyrical approach to poetry, her more light-hearted pieces include fairy tales, amphigories, fables and juvenile verse. Using whimsy, humor and colorful characters Skies speaks of hope and embraces the differences that make us all unique. 

Before entering the publishing world Apryl focused on film with Polyphony – Be You & Accept Me Too! Consisting of educational segments, puppet adventures, fairy tales, clay animation and poetry for children. Polyphony is now available worldwide and a huge hit in the Green Cinema at the 2008 Coachella Music & Arts Festival and in 2010 won the Gold Pixie Award for animation by The American Pixel Academy. Skye The Troll & Other Fairy Tales For Children,which launched October 2010 comes alive on the page and continues to enchant children of all ages. Inspired by the award-winning cartoon series, the charismatic debut of this feature film includes over a dozen original musings and an exciting array of four brilliant new artists, Brandon Morino, Emily McGregor, Takeshi Kata and Chris J. Miller. This collection sets the bar for children’s entertainment at a charming new level…a fresh, new anthology of poetry for both children and the young at heart. 

Publishing Credits: Skies work has been published internationally in US, Ireland, Canada, Australia, UK & Spain. Credits include the current or forthcoming publications; The Examiner, H Style Magazine, Carty’s Poetry Journal (Ireland), Target Audience Magazine (U.S. & Canada), Lit Chick Show (Austalia), Tremendously Two (U.K.), Beyond The Bookshelf, Poetry Super Highway (Poet of the Week –Dec. 2010, H.O.P.E. (Canada), The Woulds & Shoulds of Editing (U.K.), The Juice Bar, Botticelli Literary Magazine Issue: 3, Poetry Corner, Noho Arts District Magazine, Red Fez Issue #44, #50, #55, In The Company of Women: An Anthology of Wit & Wisdom Sass & Class, Marbella Marbella Adelante! (Spain), Alternate Lanes- Anthology - Sybaritic Press, Lummox Review, From the Four-chambered Heart: In Tribute to Anaïs Nin.

SEAN HILL

Living for 8 months in Beijing studying while performing Theater deeply impacted and enhanced the spoken word artistry and passion of living Sean Hill wishes to share with the world. His poetry embraces all people while reminding them of why we are beautifully fun beings regardless of what we go through or what we confront inside or out.

 He's featured at the LA Watts Riot anniversary festival Art and Music Festival sponsored by the Blue Dot Mission, opened for Diplo/BigSean at the last CSUN BIG Show because of the CSUN Slam Team's generosity, has twice hosted the Success is Our Future scholarship/graduation ceremony for all the youth homes across Southern California. He is part of the SketchCityTV comedy troupe, The Ki (which means "Energy" in Japanese) a musical ensemble that is a musical movement raising $25,000 in it's first kickstarter, and promotes wholeheartedly the open mic Soapbox Sessions, the Emblem 3 youth project called, "Team Inspire", and the UN Women Greater Los Angeles Chapter. He will be in a powerful Indie feature film called, "The Better Half" (2014 release).

 He released his first spoken word album last year via online/iTunes, giving/selling approximately 500 albums in New York & California while hosting & performing for open mics at colleges/schools while teaching afterschool poetry/theater as a SAG actor who aims at leaving this world so much better than he was fortunate enough to come in to it. "Peace worldwide starts from inside" - Luminaries. "They say it's better to light a candle than to curse the dark." - K'naan. Let's keep being the change we wish to see.

POEM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFyqIvkUN9o
 

Alex M. Frankel - Featured by Village Poets on June 23, 2013

Village Poets will present the next Monthly Poetry Reading at Bolton Hall Museum (10110 Commerce Avenue, Tujunga, CA 91342) on June 23, 2013 with Featured Poet, Alex M. Frankel. It appears we want to feature all hosts of poetry readings in Southern California. 

So far we presented: Debbie Kolodji (Southern California Haiku Study Group at Pacific Asia Museum), Rick Lupert (Cobalt Cafe), R. Murray Thomas (Barnes and Noble, Long Beach), Don Kingfisher Campbell (Emerging Urban Poets, Pasadena's Catalina Library), Elena Secota (Rapp Saloon), Alice Pero and Lois P. Jones (Moonday East and Moonday West), Xochitl Julisa Bermejo (Beyond Baroque's Splinter Generation), Kathabela Wilson and Rick Wilson (Poets on Site readings and events, in Pasadena, Torrance, and elsewhere), and others. 

On Sunday, June 23 at 4:30 p.m. we will present poet and host of the famous Cafe Alibi Readings in Pasadena, Alex M. Frankel. The Village Poets Reading will also include two open mike segments and refreshments. The old hat of George Harris (who built Bolton Hall 100 years ago) will be passed around for donations to support our historic venue, City of Los Angeles Historic Monument No. 2. 


ALEX M. FRANKEL

Alex M. Frankel was born in San Francisco in 1960.  He went to Columbia and studied with Kenneth Koch and lived in Spain for many years. Now he teaches at Cal State LA. His chapbook is called My Father's Lady, Wearing Black. 

He will have a full-length book out later this year, called Birth Mother Mercy.  His book reviews now appear regularly in The Antioch Review. He's been nominated by Judith Hall for "Best New Poet" for his poem "SoccerStud16 I Need to Leave This World Come Back as You."  
 
 


Nine Hundred Thousand Legs to Waterloo

Alex M. Frankel

 
Drab fury of trains.
Three hundred and forty-four thousand bodies
are being pressed into the Underground.
There are severe delays on the Picadilly Line.
There is a good service on all other lines.
Wind
and men and women rushing toward
men and women, a few falling.
Not one face like yours
and liquid Prozac on my jeans,
stains, stickiness. Warmth
of forty-four thousand travelers.
Eddie Jay Santos:
your brown skin
your young hands,
you did not like your hands.
Please keep your belongings safe.
The fine eyebrows and teeth.
Pickpockets operate at this station.
The steady, noxious watchfulness
of the surveillance cameras,
my jeans stained with Prozac,
juicy and pleasant.
Fifty thousand five hundred bodies
collected and expectant.
Would customers please use
the full length of the platform
to avoid congestion at the platform entrances.
Samoans with British accents:
it shouldn’t be allowed,
they should be speaking Samoan
or regular American.
There are severe delays on the Picadilly Line.
There is a good service on all other lines.
Six thousand people reading about knife crime.
Eddie: you left
and you never left.
The free paper says Pakistani youths
fight with knives.
Seventy-five thousand men, women and animals
are fighting
to reach Leicester Square.
Eddie: twice nearly expelled
from Hollywood High
for fighting.
A hundred bodies packed
into a single “carriage.”
Several grey men hunger
for a fragrant South Asian.
Your tattooed, hard arms
your stubby little hands.
This is Westminster.
Please change here for the Circle Line 
and the District Line.
Your fresh-smelling t-shirts
your cologne
your rugged tattoo soaking up
my spinster sperm.
Wind.
Thunder.
Another tunnel.
Americans should not say “cheers”
when they mean “thank you”!
The next tunnel is terribly smelly.
Travelers can’t stop looking
at a Turk.
The smelly tunnel leads
to a long, smelly tunnel.
Please stand to the right
when using the escalators.
Eddie Jay: your naïve, unkind face
your thumbs efficient and alive
on your little keypad.
Wind
and wind.
Any unattended bag
or other item of luggage
will be removed 
and may be destroyed.
And not one grey hair
skin around your eyes alarmingly fresh
your lips and tongue hardworking
“caring”
on my nipples—
if you had charged three hundred a night
I would’ve paid you
I would pay three hundred
for a single word from you now. . .
This is a security announcement.
Eight hundred and one
stale, stiff people
are trying to rush for their trains
in the warm wind
in the narrow white passageways
under London.
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Here are some pictures from the Judith Terzi reading in May 2013. She charmed and inspired us with her wit, intelligence and sensitivity.