On Thursday, November 17, host Leslie Gerber and New World Writers Night present poets Therese Broderick and Alifair Skebe as the featured readers.
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 845-246-0900 for reservations.
Therese L. Broderick, MFA, MLS, has served the community of writers in Albany, NY, for more than 15 years in numerous roles, including Board officer and contest judge. Her poems have been published in many venues, both paper (Poet Lore) and digital (Barzakh); and have received several awards, including an Intro Journals Project prize from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, and the Overall Winner prize from The Poetry Project with Poetry Ireland. Her new chapbook, Green-Weak, was released in October by Red Wolf Journal. Therese can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Linkedin, and at theresebroderick.wordpress.com
To The Flannel Belt
I no longer blame you for that last slackness
as he neared the unravelling end
of his capacity for fiddling with drawstrings,
I don’t blame you for undoing
the abiding troth of the forest-green bathrobe
your final gird of decorum un-cinched
just as I met up with my father’s
pumice kneecaps, his legs shambling
from the downstairs john, his hand
gone too limp to reach for
your drooping frond, snug it up,
fix it fast enough to stalemate
a child’s qualms. Deserving no further
mention, not another jot.
Alifair Skebe is a visual artist and author of the poetry collections Thin Matter; “El Agua Es La Sangre de la Tierra”(written in English), a long poem; and Love Letters: Les Cartes Postales, a book of poems and collaged, text-art postcards. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including (em), *eratio, Interim, The Cape Rock, and So to Speak. She is an English/Writing Lecturer in the Educational Opportunity Program at the University at Albany.
By the Riverbank
rivulets snake through the mind
like words like sand
turning lines of verse
in linear time undulating
reeds bend at a safe distance
from the edge some
growing against the current
words take courage
and crumple it up like an old paper bag
down in the river below
Mother curled her cursive
O’s in grade school
courage takes words
to make deeds
follow me down the riverbank
and we’ll put a few words together
