On Thursday, August 25, host Leslie Gerber and New World Writers Night present poet and performer Elizabeth Gordon.
Readings take place at New World Home Cooking, 1411 Route 212, between Woodstock and Saugerties. This reading will begin promptly at 7, so please arrive by 6:30 for dinner. Readings include an open mic (5 minute limit) which can be poetry or prose. No admission charge; we take a voluntary collection for the writers. Attendees who wish to have dinner before the reading can call 246-0900 for reservations.
Elizabeth K Gordon was born in Queens and spent most of her childhood in the Sullivan County village of Wurtsboro. She lives now in Cohoes, New York and teaches writing at area colleges. She was a finalist in the national 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She is the author of the amazing nonfiction book Walk with Us: Triplet Boys, their Teen Parents and Two White Women who Tagged Along (CDD Books), and has had work appear at Salon, Viral Cat, Moonshot, Ithaca Lit, and elsewhere. Her collection Love Cohoes was published in Spring 2014.
She has recently returned from a performing tour which brought her halfway across the U.S.
A Hiding Place
Gay Bar Raided, read the headline.
My best friend Fred and I went bug to windshield
on that address.
This is before GPS. We found it by Gee Please
Let us find this place!
Alone in a field between Hialeah and North Miami.
Every decade since has dissed disco music
but I say singing “We are Fam i ly”
in a crowd of strangers no stranger than you
is a queer kind of joy.
If you stayed till dawn
they fed you theme amazing eggs.
Some nights lately
in this summer of deadly dancing
I lay awake remembering
those eggs, the peppery hash browns
that came with, possible
hiding places.
This is before assault rifles
were a symbol of freedom.
Whatever you class yourself today
remember your first gay bar.
Our witness is a headline,
our oneness the one
hiding place.
