Lois P. Jones & Susan Rogers Headline Reading on April 26th, 2026

 

Spring will be in full swing when we welcome our feature poets, Lois P. Jones & Susan Rogers to Village Poets at Bolton Hall on Sunday, April 26th at 4:30 p.m.  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.

 

                                                 Three Poems from Lois P. Jones

Lois P. Jones is an award-winning poet and editor whose work spans poetry film, radio, and print. Since 2007, she has served as the poetry editor for the Kyoto Journal. For nearly 20 years, she hosted Poets Café on KPFK Pacifica Radio, featuring conversations with celebrated voices like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Julian Sands. Her debut collection, Night Ladder, was listed for several awards.Some honors include the Bristol Poetry Prize and the 2023 Alpine Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared in many journals including Academy of American Poets – Poem A Day, Poetry Wales, Plume, Image, RHINO and others. Lois continues to bridge text, sound, and image across global disciplines. In April 2026, she launched The Title Drop, a new podcast exploring the role of the title poem within a literary collection. She believes poetry exists to render the ineffable and find beauty in life’s stark contrasts, providing a spiritual and sensual guide to being in the world.

HOUSEKEEPING: Frida’s Future Kiss

After the palm reader told her no man would ever claim her, she asked to be claimed by the white horse she dreamt of each evening. It always began with a nuzzle, a warm breath, like a kiss made of clouds that hovered and finally released its rain. As if life only existed in the closed rooms of her eyes. And there, the scent of crushed grapes and the white shadow of a horse becoming human. Not a satyr but a transmogrification like a moon-impersonating streetlamp. A tenderness that lived inside the small of her waist, his hand, this gentleness, and the tongues that mixed their silence. She does not need her knees, fingers, thighs, saliva – only this window where she looks into the mind’s vanishing frame. A flutter like a valve opens and he turns to her. Their love like silk sheets toppling over the wicker basket.

 Published in Plume

 In Search of Rilke’s Ghost, She Visits her Last Life at Muzot

 It was all dirt in 1921, when the summer let out its last hot breath on the walk from Sierre and up the path leaving you covered in dust. If I squint, you might be there. Something moves but it’s a tall poplar wind has jostled into aliveness. See the white fence mostly grey and peeling all along the edge of the house and down to where I stand near the vineyard. The yellowed leaves after the last harvest. The roof-cast shadow over your balcony. How could I expect you would open the door. You, a one-hundred-year-old ghost, who are just as alive in your absence the same way you would like words to be — like the dark and light moving between your roses, their dried leaves curling in a rusted pot. If I listen, you might be there. This thrush sings so ecstatically, right now. When outside, the world is a stone immovable, lonely. I’m trying to shake the sun loose from your old watering can.

 Finalist published in Mslexia.

 Years After Rilke’s Death the Housekeeper is Asked How She Lived at Château de Muzot

            After Agha Shahid Ali

 What served for a young woman’s days? A life in silence?

This house was built with its own vow, a wife in silence.

 This quiet—a forest to shelter bellflower, elk, rose.

For years, we slept, we dreamt—the stars’ afterlife in silence.

 How did the Tower hold us–with ghosts? storm? and stone?

Do the gods have the will for a life in silence?

 Of our pear tree—only taste remains– summer left, a guest.

Memories rise—a kite, I hold its twine in silence.

 She who makes the bed and bathes the floor. She rubs the spot

of moonlight, irons the night in silence.

 do you feel the power/of your breath … to fill the space?

December severed all sound, forged a knife in silence.

 After candles were lit in the chapel—the wine drunk—

we watched the Rhone’s rush to stillness, stillness iced in silence.

What moved slowly in winter—the needles—the lace I knit.

A glass of rum to halt my cough, a bride price of silence.

 Whoever says I am less of a woman because I gave

my life to a man, has never held a life in silence.

 How the wind welcomed his death—the land its snow;

a body at the top of a hill, disguised as silence.

 All night is indigo, the rain too. It says Frida—

loss is incarnadine—death a valentine in silence.

Published in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature’

Copyright  © 2026 Lois P. Jones All Rights Reserved

Susan Rogers considers poetry a vehicle for positive energy. She is a practitioner of Sukyo Mahikari, a spiritual practice promoting positivity. Her poetry is included in numerous publications including The Best Poems of San Diego, Kyoto Journal, Tiferet and Saint Julian’s Press. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2013 and 2017 and was one of four international judges for the 8th Rabindranath Tagore Award. She was interviewed for KPFK’s Poets Café by Lois P. Jones. https://www.loispjones.com/susan-rogers. In 2023 she participated in the conference Sustainability and Spirituality in Assisi, Italy where she read her poem during the invocation and presented on the healing power of poetry.

Three Poems from Susan Rogers

Invocation for a Season of Connection

 Let all voices join, all kingdoms come,

all grievances be resolved.

All reach across the aisle, the pew,

the bench, crevices in stone

within temple and mosque,

the fissures in the floor of the cathedral.

Let the words we find wrong,

even blasphemous, be considered.

Our ideas welcomed by those we love

and do not love nor understand.

Let us skip the litany of loss, leap

chasms between lives so that

for just one season we can be

as trees, connected underground

by roots, celebrated equally

no matter the species, no matter

the number or nature of our leaves.

 published in the San Diego Poetry Annual, 2024

Territory

Two fallen hummingbirds

fire red and iridescent green

side by side on the sidewalk.

 

It seemed a small blasphemy

to admire the exquisite sheen

of their wings.

 

A river of pure color lit

by morning sun. What a waste

of beauty, I thought.

 

What could have been so important

to fight and fall?  Territory?

Some misdirected desire?

 

How my day lay caught between

red and green. How the best

of us becomes mired in such scenes.

 

How could the order of our universe allow

such a squandering of light, of life?

We carry each other’s wings.

 published in the Altadena Poetry Review:Anthology 2024

Interstellar

Father, I reach for you from inside a black hole. Do you remember

the bookcase scenes from Interstellar? How Cooper uses fallen books

to traverse time and communicate with Murphy? He was caught, as I am, between worlds,

yet he sent his daughter messages in code from the stillness

 of a tesseract. I speak to the spinning cloud of your dream where you're

fast asleep in a narrow bed. Your assisted living apartment, shrouded.

I repeat, I will come back.

 Even when I'm beside you, I try to bridge the gap. Sometimes in silence,

that wall of strangeness between us. I reach across, asking if you want water,

 place a bird of paradise by your bed, but you are angry, uncertain why I am

there. From your own country you try to push your side of things through.

 Love is the singularity within our black hole,

 a pearl, intentionally placed. You are my anomaly. Still, your voice holds gravity

that pulls me in. You plead with me. I can't hear you.

I don't understand.

These times I bring you photos from your bookshelf and ask,

Do you remember? You respond like I'm speaking in binary coordinates.

Last night, I visited the library in Memory Care, where they were showing

Interstellar. I said goodbye to you. I walked again past that room,

 where several books had scattered on the ground.

published in Poetry Goes to the Movies, 2025, edited by Suzanne Lummis 

 Copyright  © 2026 Susan Rogers All Rights Reserved

                                Landscape Photos from Descanso Gardens by Maja Trochimczyk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back at Bolton Hall: J. Verl Silvester and James Levin on September 27, 2015

Village Poets return to Bolton Hall Museum for the next three readings of 2015. On September 27, 2015, Sunday at 4:30 p.m., the two Featured Poets will be J. Verle Silvester, cowboy poet, and James Levin, host of Priscilla's Readings and those at Barnes & Noble in Burbank. There will be two segments for open mike poets, and refreshments. A donation of $3 is suggested.

James Levin. Photo by Beverly Collins. 

James Levin

James Levin has just completed his first book of poetry, “Where the Parrot Flies.” These poems are from 2003-2005. 2003 is the year he decided to focus on poetry, realizing he loved writing and reading poetry. He will begin his second book the summer of 2016. James is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, spent his junior year abroad in Aix-en-Provence, France and after graduation, two years in French-speaking Cameroon, Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer. James will begin his 31st year as a teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He has three grown sons and is married to his lovely wife, Susan.

                A.M. Ride

Pedaling on the bike,
early morning stars
study your behavior.
You power through
chilly air,
shift gears,
breathe in
nuanced ways.
You are perspiring,
panting
to the
thump thumping
of your knees.
You feel
increased resistance
up the rise,
then cruise
to a halt.
You dismount,
stretch,
alone
and fulfilled.

J. Verl Silvester

J. VERL SILVESTER was born on the east bank of the snake river and raised in the ranch country of southeastern Idaho and northern Utah when freedom allowed honesty, good manners and hard work as a way of life. Old-timers recognize the Code of the West from days gone by, but they don't hear much about it anymore. Youngsters have never heard about it, and need to. Foreigners should know why Americans are different than people in other parts of the world. Our citizens and leaders ought to be reminded what it was to be an American when cowboys still had freedoms.

The Code of the West was still important to the majority of people as J. worked the farms and ranches in the area - learning about his roots and the history of mountain men and cowboys. He graduated from Weber State College in Ogden, Utah with a Bachelors degree in geography and taught school for a short time. But his favorite times were traveling horseback, leading a pack horse, wearing buckskins, following the old trappers' trails. From that came a film opportunity, Frontier Fremont. He joined the Utah Stuntmen Association and Screen Actors Guild before moving to Los Angeles.

This book has been an on-going project for many years as he has expanded from cowboy to western historian, Hollywood actor and stuntman. He is past president of Chuck Wagon Trailers, an organization founded by cowboys who worked in the early Western movies. He has performed many live shows portraying Wild Bill Hickok, John Muir, Jim Bridger and Brigham Young. He also did stunt shows as well as cowboy poetry, all of which he has written himself. But it seems that everything he writes has one theme: The good ethics of the American Cowboy.

Cited from website of his publisher, Castle Knob Press.

____________________________________________

Photo Albums from Village Poets Readings

The Westside Women Writers' reading on August 23, 2015 was filled with poetic delights and insights. The photo album is now posted on Picasa Web Albums: https://picasaweb.google.com/Maja.Trochimczyk/VillagePoetsWestsideWomenWriters8232015

Village Poets after the reading. First row: Bo Kyoung Kim, Joe DeCenzo, Sonya Sabanac, Kathi Stafford, Mira Mataric, Ed Rosenthal. Second Row: Janet Nippell, Lois P. Jones, Pete Larsen, Susan Rogers, Maja Trochimczyk, Mari Werner, Judy Barrat, Marlene Hitt, and Dorothy Skiles.

Maja Trochimczyk, Susan Rogers, Lois P. Jones, Sonya Sabanac, Mira Mataric, 

Joe DeCenzo, Dorothy Skiles and Marlene Hitt

WWW: Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers and Maja Trochimczyk

WWW: Maja Trochimczyk and Sonya Sabanac

Westside Women Writers Go Eastside: McGroarty Arts Center, Tujunga, August 23, 2015

Village Poets of Sunland Tujunga will present the poetry by Westside Women Writers at the McGroarty Art Center in Tujunga, on Sunday, August 23, 2015, at 4:30 p.m. The reading will feature five poets (Millicent Borges Accardi, Lois P. Jones, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, and Maja Trochimczyk) and will include two segments of open mike and refreshments.  The Center is located at  7570 McGroarty Terrace, Tujunga, CA 91042, between McGroarty St. and Plainview Ave. (take Plainview exit off Foothill Blvd.), (818) 352-5285, mcgroartyartscenter.org. The regular readings at the Bolton Hall will resume in September. 

Westside Women Writers, L to R. Maja Trochimczyk, Susan Rogers, 

Lois P. Jones, Georgia Jonese Davis, Sonya Sabanac, Madeleine Butcher and 

Millicent Borges Accardi, at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 2014.

Westside Women Writers - WWW Writers Group is a small group of women writers working together to support each other with strong attention to craft, to grow as writers and as people in community. Founded by Millicent Borges Accardi in January 2009, WWW includes eight members: Millicent Borges Accardi, Madeleine Butcher, Lois P. Jones, Georgia Jones-Davis, Susan Rogers, Kathi Stafford, Sonya Sabanac, and Maja Trochimczyk. The group's anthology will be published in 2016 by Moonrise Press. 

MILLICENT BORGES ACCARDI

Millicent Borges Accardi

Millicent Borges Accardi has received fellowships from the NEA, the California Arts Council, the Barbara Deming Foundation, Canto Mundo, along with residencies at Jentel, Yaddo, Vermont Studio, Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, Milkwood in the Czech Republic and Disquiet in Portugal. Her books include Woman on a Shaky Bridge (chapbook), Injuring Eternity and Only More So (forthcoming with Salmon Press, Ireland).  Accardi’s poetry has appeared in over 50 publications, including Nimrod, Tampa Review, New Letters and Wallace Stevens Journal as well as in Boomer Girls (Iowa Press) and Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press) anthologies.  Her theater and book reviews can be found in print and online at The Topanga Messenger. She received degrees in English and writing from California State University Long Beach and holds a Masters in Professional Writing degree from the University of Southern California. She works as a freelance writer (theater reviews, grant writing and instructional design); this type of work leaves her with time to create and travel to poetry residences around the world.  She lives in Topanga and telecommutes as a technical writer and theater reviewer. http://www.MillicentBorgesAccardi.com. 

Cover art by Charles Accardi

Mourning Doves

Have such soulful
Eyes, their gray suit
Of feathers blurs and sinks
Them into the background
Like a creature in hiding.
They hover below the wild
Bird feeder set up for the finches
And harvest the shells, the thistle
Seed casings and what drops after
The finches and faux robins and phoebes 
Have feasted. The mourning
Doves huddle and nest in the mountains
Of seed shells and dirt and make circles
With their small bird bodies turning
Into the ground digging a place around
Them as if they were under a shrub with only
The black drops of ink from their tail feathers
Visible. In a group, they lie in wait, their dear gray
Eyes gloomy and sullen and innocent and they want
What the world desires, to be fed and comfortable
And consummated and happy.

(c) 2010 by Millicent Borges Accardi

LOIS P. JONES

Lois P. Jones by Alexis Francher.

Lois P. Jones has work published or forthcoming in Cultural Weekly and Pirene's Fountain, as well as several anthologies including The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear Publishing), Wide Awake:  Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond (The Pacific Coast Poetry Series) edited by Suzanne Lummis, 30 Days (Tupelo Press) and Good-Bye Mexico (Texas Review Press).  Some publications include Narrative, American Poetry Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, The Warwick Review, Tiferet, Cider Press Review and other journals in the U.S. and abroad. Lois’s poems have won honors under judges Kwame Dawes, Fiona Sampson, Ruth Ellen Kocher and others. New Yorker staff writer, Dana Goodyear selected “Ouija” as Poem of the Year in the 2010 competition sponsored by Web del Sol. She is the winner of the 2012 Tiferet Poetry Prize and the 2012 Liakoura Prize and a multiple Pushcart nominee.  Her poem was long-listed in the 2015 National Poetry Competition organized by The Poetry Society.  Lois is Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal, host of KPFK’s Poets Café (Pacifica Radio), co-host of Moonday Poetry, and an interviewer for American Micro Reviews and Interviews. See: moondaypoetry.com/lois-p-jones.html

Cherry Rainbow in Descanso Gardens by Lois P. Jones

Reading “Shadowlands” to a Friend At The Sepulveda Dam 

by Lois P. Jones

            Did my eyes avoid yours, Brother?
            ~ Johannes Bobrowski, German lyric poet and soldier


Mustard grass to our hips – sallow as Gauguin’s
Yellow Christ, it blows its seed, mixing

with the must of mule fat and sage. When the wind
is this strong, I remember the year branches twisted

from their trunks onto my path toward Terezin.
They were everywhere, needling the numbered graves.

I think of how anonymity makes war possible.
Otherwise you couldn’t look your brother in the eye –

become one of Bobrowski’s slavering wolves,
an SS who drove the Jews toward

the wild smell in the woods and the old house
running down to the water. And you know

what’s coming. Listening as if you are a part
of the descent – the river and its copper-

colored trail – the blood wall where nothing
is wet only driven in like nails. It tastes of rust

in our mouths, of shadowlands and a boot
in the snow and even in this dry heat

your cheeks are damp. You know what a home
looks like because you came from a land

of sheepherders and milk cows, where ovens
were meant to keep a back warm in winter

and wagons bore the day’s wheat.
What can we carry away but a chance

to remember how a man is a lantern
lowered into the earth.


Previously published in Tupelo Quarterly

SUSAN ROGERS

Susan Rogers considers poetry a vehicle for light and a tool for the exchange of positive energy. She is a licensed attorney, photographer and a practitioner of Sukyo Mahikari—a spiritual practice that promotes positive thoughts, words and action.  Susan has featured at Cypress College, The Phoenix House, the Moonday Poetry Reading Series, as well as other venues. Her poetry has been performed at museums and galleries in Southern California and was included as part of the award winning audio tour for the Pacific Asia Museum. Her work can be found in Chopin and Cherries, Meditations on Divine Names, A Blackbird Sings, Woman in Metaphor as well as numerous journals, anthologies and chapbooks including The Best Poems of San Diego 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 editions, Poets on Site booklets, Ribbons, Badlands, Phantom Seed, several Southern California Haiku anthologies and the 2015 Altadena Poetry Review. Her reflections on poetry were published in an essay on the national site Women’s Voices for Change. In 2012, she was a finalist in the Tiferet Poetry Competition. Her poem, “The Origin is One” was performed at the televised 2013 Akigami Ice Festival in Gifu, Japan. She was nominated for a Pushcart prize in 2013. Her work has appeared online in Kyoto Journal, Pirene’s Fountain, Tiferet as well as other online publications. Her poems are currently featured online at Saint Julian’s Press. She has been interviewed by Lois P. Jones for KPFK’s Poet’s Café. This interview is archived at www.timothy-green.org/blog/susan-rogers/.

Searching  (The Dove) - by Susan Dobay

The Origin Is One
for Kotama Okada

The dove knows the way
follow her.

Your heart knows the way
listen well.

Within your deepest self
are wings of light.

They cover the earth 
with waves of love.

Do you remember?
You once knew.

Stand in the warmth
of sunlight and recall.

The origin of the world
is one. 

The origin of religions
is one.

The origin of all
humankind is one.

Circle back.
Imagine the great will

of all things
stirring in your fingers.

Reach out your arms
and open your palms

to the sky.
It is time.

The Light that Finds

Within the miniature apple is the full-grown fruit;

within the pine cone is the giant pine.

Within your outstretched hand is your reaching love;

within our heart of prayer is god's design.

Within the symphony is a golden flute;

within your eyes is the light that finds.

Within the tree is the sap and root;

within your image are my singing lines.

Published in Meditations on Divine Names (Moonrise Press, 2012)                              

KATHI STAFFORD

     

Kathi Stafford's poetry, book reviews, and interviews have been published in numerous literary journals (Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Hard Row to Hoe, and so forth) and anthologies (Chopin with Cherries, anthologies by Poets on Site, and other volumes). She was the poetry editor and senior editor at Southern California Review for many years. Her forthcoming book, Blank Check, is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2015. 

Kathi Stafford at a Poetry reading from "Awakenings" - Beyond Baroque.

With Alice Pero, Just Kibbe, Susan Rogers and Maja Trochimczyk

Division                                 

by Kathi Stafford

We used to hold

hands near the bower. Now, we lean together,

quiet, and that is enough.

Evening came fast—too dark to look

for avocados any more.  The sprawling

tree filled the yard, its branches large

and smoky brown.  A tangy scent

floats at dusk as honeysuckle

trims along the fence.

Perhaps my cells split

sideways as I sat on the bench

in the silence.  I asked him to pick the

fruit, but the hour was late. A woman light

on her path keeps moving anyway.

SONYA SABANAC

Sonya Sabanac was born and raised in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina- Former Yugoslavia. She left her home town in 1992 due to the civil war and spent two refugee years in Denmark.  Growing up with poetry never did she imagine that one day poetry would disappear from her horizon.  Immigrating into USA in 1994, she was “silent” for more than a decade. Finding her way back to poetry was also finding a way back to her own self.  
Sonya is a poet and a photographer, with a particular interest in landscapes and wildlife. Her memoir “How Did I decide to Go a Little Crazy” was published in the Anthology about immigrant women “Shifting Balance Sheets.” 

Egret on the Beach, 2014 Photo by Sonya Sabanac

A Letter to My Ancestor

I was always curious about you,

but I  don’t even know your name,

I can only count

three generations back.

To learn about you, 

I imagine myself

where you were. 

Banat of Temeswar,

The Habsburgs’ Military Frontier

and ever changing 19th Century,

where one could fall asleep in

one country and wake up in another. 

How much of a good fruit

had fallen into your lap?

Your hands always nursing,

the land or the babies, 

must have wanted 

to fly away sometimes. 

Did you lay in the grass 

and travel with the clouds

when the lust for going far

would fill your heart?

And what did you do 

when darkness fell 

upon your world?

Frozen winter nights, 

vagabond soldiers

appearing out of nowhere,

my brave ancestor mother,

you secured a passage

for me to come. 

Distance of time

is between us,

but I feel you are not far.

Come into my dream and

tell me what I want 

to know most of all: 

what is yours that I carry on?

© Sonya Sabanac

April 26, 2014

MAJA TROCHIMCZYK

Maja Trochimczyk at Bolton Hall Museum, July 2012.

Maja Trochimczyk, PhD, is a Polish-born poet, music historian, photographer, and non-profit director. A former Poet Laureate of Sunland Tujunga she works with Village Poets on selecting poets to feature monthly. She wrote/edited six books on music (including Frederic Chopin: A Research and Information Guide, Routledge, 2015), and published five volumes of poetry - Rose Always (2011), Miriam’s Iris (2008) , Slicing the Bread (2014), and anthologies Chopin with Cherries (2010) and Meditations on Divine Names (2012). She serves as Communications Director and Board Secretary of the Polish American Historical Association, and is an author of hundreds of articles, book reviews and poems published in Poland, Canada, U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Sweden, Serbia, and China. As President of Moonrise Press, she is also a publisher of books on poetry, music and Polish culture. She received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and honors from the Polish government (medal for the promoton of Polish culture), PAHA, and local communities (ST Poet Laureate in 2010-2014). Visit  www.trochimczyk.net, and www.moonrisepress.com, or Maja's blogs: Poetry Laurels and Chopin with Cherries.

Slicing the Bread with Trochimczyk's cover design based on her photos

The Summer of Love

She would never be as beautiful again as she had been

that summer in Germany. Blue eyes shining 

from under the tightly-tied kerchief,  

blond curls, shorn short for work.

They planted potatoes side by side in the fields.

He was tall, kind, athletic, son of the Bauer.

She blushed a pretty shade of pink

when she caught his eye.

It was their first love, they were so shy

led side by side, with jeering cardboard signs,

noisy blasts of trombones. A feast for the whole village.

Kids ran in circles around them, laughing –

The Polish Pig. The Traitor of our Race.

Bronia and Hans. People poked them,

pushed them, shaved their heads. 

Identical, grotesque, bald puppets,

each with a single lock left hanging 

in the middle of the forehead.

She was sent to Auschwitz.

He – to the eastern front.

It was their last summer. 

(c) 2014 by Maja Trochimczyk Published in Slicing the Bread (Finishing Line Press, 2014).

Clouds and Leaves in Wilanow, Poland, July 2015. Photo by Maja Trochimczyk

__________________________________

The two members of the WWW Group that are travelling and will not appear at this reading are Georgia Jones-Davis and Madeline Butcher. 

GEORGIA JONES-DAVIS

        

Georgia Jones-Davis’s first collection of poems, Blue Poodle (Finishing Line Press), was published in 2011 and the second, Night School (also by Finishing Line Press) appeared in 2015. She grew up in Northern New Mexico and Southern California. It was as a student studying English at UCLA that Georgia first wrote and published poetry. She set poetry aside when she went into the news business for more than twenty years. Georgia worked as a literary reporter, sub-editor, book review editor and book reviewer. She was one of the founding editors of the Herald Examiner Book Review and an Assistant Book Editor at the Los Angeles Times Book Review for 14 years. Her critical essays have appeared in many publications including The Washington Post, New York Newsday, The Chicago Tribune and Salon.

After leaving the newspaper world, “Poetry,” Georgia says, “came back to me like a long, lost, muddy dog.” Her work has appeared in various publications including West Wind, The Bicycle Review, California Quarterly, Sam Hamill’s website, Poets Against War, Brevities, Nebo, South Bank Poetry, London, Ascent Aspirations, a Canadian journal, and Eclipse.  She also contributed to the Chopin with Cherries anthology. Georgia was honored as one of the Newer Poets 2010 by the Los Angeles Poetry Festival/Beyond Baroque and the Los Angeles County ALOUD Series. She is a former board member of Valley Contemporary Poets, a Los Angeles non-profit, and founder of the Poetry Group at the Grancell Village Jewish Home for the Aging. Georgia Jones-Davis is a member of PEN, California State Poetry Society and the Academy of American Poets.

Maja Trochimczyk, Georgia Jones-Davis and Lisa Cheby 

present their new books at Beyond Baroque, Spring 2015.

Chopin’s Sorrow

by Georgia Jones-Davis

Sorrow I love
more than any woman

So do not run your fingers
along my skin
countess
touch me
with white gloves
or I will break
like a minor chord

Polish, French, man, woman
I speak none of these languages
only that of rain and moonlight

Sex will kill me
with its gabardine trousers
cigars and gaudy novels
slashed ribbon of arguments
must of unmade beds

The other night
in the Salle Pleyel
the moon
her full face composed
edged close to the windows
to listen

I kiss her holy white dust
I press my lips to the purity
of her bloodless devotion

Published in  Chopin with Cherries (Moonrise Press, 2010)

MADELEINE S. BUTCHER

Madeleine S. Butcher has been writing since 1979.  An actress at that time, she wrote monologues, scenes and plays, later transitioning to short stories, guided by Merrill Joan Gerber.  Poetry was always cropping up on its own, from time to time. She is a graduate of NYU with a BFA in dance.  Besides her dance and acting, she has worked as an assistant picture and sound editor on feature films, She has taught ballet to small children, at risk teenagers and taught Pilates out of her home studio in Woodland Hills for ten years. Madeleine has been a member of Westside Women Writers for nearly three years.  Her first piece is due to be published in the West Marin Journal this year. She and her husband are retired and traveling.

How Do I Know Thee, John Lee?

He lies blinking in the dark,
his eight year old self listening to the crickets
to the creak of his bed,
to his parents' voices on the other side
of the slatted wall
and he hears his papa say -
he's got the boogie woogie in him
and it's got to come out -
yes he does, says his mama, 
yes he does.

His hands reach into the dark
he spreads his fingers -

the night lifts the ceiling off,
he sees plowed fields fall away,
a path into shining woods he's never seen -
he lies so still he hears his heart
beat his moving blood in the midnight darkness.

His heart so old and young,
looks back from the night
and he knows he has more
than that share-croppers cabin

can hold in all the world. 

(c) by Madeleine S. Butcher

Photo by Maja Trochimczyk with a Druid blessing