May 1st: Carol Weston Begins the Celebration of Stone Soup's 35th Anniversary


Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Monday, May First, is the exact date Stone Soup began as a venue thirty five years ago. Carol Weston, a longtime friend of Stone Soup founder Jack Powers and a Stone Soup Poetry fixture, will read with Nancy Dodson and Valerie Jayne to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Stone Soup Poetry.

Carol Weston's history as a poet is linked to such figures as Jack Powers, John Wieners, Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsburg, and Carl Solomon (to whom Allen Ginsburg's "Howl" was dedicated). Her credentials include being poetry editor of the Impressions Workshop. She was published in the Farleigh Dickinson Journal, alongside Donald Justice, Phillip Levine, and Anne Sexton. She is also the author of “What the Poet Expects of Himself,” an essay published in the Tufts Review. Married to John Galloway, science teacher at Endicott College, she taught for ten years at the Chesnut Hill School.

She read alongside Jack Powers and Allen Ginsberg in 1973 in the former Charles Street Universalist Church. In the Winter of 1983, she was asked by Powers to feature in Boston's City Hall along with John Wieners.

Her poetry credits include The Farleigh Literary Review, Bomb, Stone Soup Anthology 2003, and the anthology dedicated to John Wieners, The Blind See Only This World. Her chapbook, Spirals, Whorls Sutures, Septa, was published by Stone Soup.

Nancy Dodson has read her poem in the prisons and published in the Herald. She’s read her poems at Stone Soup at Out of The Blue and it's previous location at T.T. The Bear's. She has published in Greensboro Music and studed with Ottone Richio at the Boston Center.

Valerie Jayne works in watercolor and ink and has taught art and art history while studying Mandarin Chinese. She’s published poems in the Faculty Community Voice in Mass Bay Community College as well as Stone Soup.

Sample poems follow below, taken from Stone Soup Anthology 2003.


To John Wieners (April 15, 2002)

You are the shattered star.
choking on interstellar dust,
you have come through millenniums
crashed by a million
interplanetary bombs.
You leave us a calligraphy
of iron fillings
centered around
your personal magnet
and we are deciphering
those enigmatic stones.

--Carol Weston


Watching Carol Teaching The Wee Ones Science

A magnificent performance all for one
Entertainment is intellectual fun!
Perhaps humility-supremacy rolled into Carol
and never are you inadequate in life.
Dear, even with knife sayings you are kind
Blunt sayings are polite-minded
And full wisdom comes forth
with wide-eyed children
In your court
Their egos hold forth
Listen, egos have a right,
Listen, God with you
Carol, you listen!

--Nancy Dodson

About Tonight's Reading

Jack Powers is currently recovering from an illness, and he will not be able to read tonight. We hope you will be able to make tonight's readings with the remaining features, Margaret Nairn and Murray Denofsky.

April 24th: Jack Powers with Margaret Nairn and Murray Denofsky
Photos by Bil Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On the 24th, Stone Soup presents the perfect segue from National Poetry Month to Stone Soup's 35th Anniversary celebratory month with Jack Powers featuring, alongside Margaret Nairn and Murray Denofsky.



A recipient of the Ibbetson Street and Anne Bradstreet Lifetime Achievement Awards, Jack Powers is the founder of Stone Soup Poetry and the author of a number poetry books, the most recent being The Inacessibility of The Creator from Ibbetson Street Press. His work can also be found in the 2003 anthology from Stone Soup and the City of Poets anthology from Singing Bone Press. Stone Soup poetry has produced over 1,500 consecutive weeks of poetic performances. He has read in Europe, Russia, and the United States.



Margaret Nairn is a regular contributor to the Stone Soup Poetry open mike. At work on her first collection of poetry, she is also a curator of the International Community Church in Allston, where the list of featured artists whose works are displayed include Jack Powers.



Murray Denofsky was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in mathematics at MIT in 1965, and has an MA in psychology from Brandeis University. He has written feature articles for the Boston Phoenix, poetry (including 14 translations of Hermann Hesse, two of which were published in the Cumberland Poetry Review in 2004), children's stories, and plays (including the book and lyrics of a musical), several of the latter on the themes of mental illness and/or the sixties era. He also does independent research in mathematics, and in phonetic symbolism, a branch of linguistics, and is Secretary of ASLIP (The Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory).

April 17th: Four Poets Celebrat National Poetry Month

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On the 17th, we present our larges lineup for National Poetry Month with four excellent local poets, each differing in approach but similar in their drive to produce quality work and share it with an audience.



Patricia Fillingham is a celebrated regular at Stone Soup. Through her own imprint, Wart Hog Press, she has published a number of books by herself and others. Her most recent collection of poetry is Existential Blues.



Carolyn Gregory is a longtime member of the Jamaica Pond Poetry Workshop who has published poetry and clasical music criticism widely. She has also read widely, most recently as part of the Poetry In The Chapel series, a recent Hurricane Katrina benefit, and Stone Soup this past September.



Deborah Priestly is the co-curator of the Out of The blue Gallery, where Stone Soup has been meeting for years. The gallery has been in two locations and is now celebrating its ninth year in existence. In addition to her art work (her work is currenly on display at the gallery and the 1369 Coffee Shop) she is the author of The Woman Has A Voice with Ibbetson Street Press.



The hostess of the Namless Coffee House series Samantha Jane Scolamiero was a member of the 2004 Boston Cantab Slam Poetry Team attending nationals and has appeared throughout New England and at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. She is the author of a book of poetry and photography, The Nameless Collection. Her poem "Last Jazz" has been heard on the radio.

Click here for a sample poem by Carolyn Gregory.

Click here for a sample poem by Deb Priestly.

Samantha Jane Scolamiero's Nameless Coffee House series.

Samantha Jane Scolamiero's Website.

April 10th: Lee Litif and Chris Robbins Feature




Photos by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On April 10th, Lee Letif and Chris Robbins bring their own blend of poetry, performance art, and comedy to Stone Soup.

Lee Letif has been a regular contribution to the Stone Soup open mike since 1991. He's the author of several chapbooks, including Unpatriotic Flags and Abominating White Houses, Reckless Paella and Defecating Republicans, and his newest, Ultrasonic Amplifiers and Marshall Amps/Genital Wart Puking Rednecks.

Chris Robbins has volunteered for such causes as the Jane Doe Safety Fnd, the Cambridge International Women's Day celebration of 2005, and Brockton's Black History Month celebration. He has read his poetry in venues around Massachusetts and California. He is putting together a chapbook due out by the end of this year.

Sample poems are below.

The Vendemiating Obventional Metaloph

Jarvey and Slite in a nonferuled express sensory. ON that WEM dominator tube amplifying blisting. Impulsor ejectoring. Electric mistress deluxe flanger rebounding. Embolus evactoring. Jackplug socket linked. Truss rod chanel welded. Guitar patterned rewet. Energizing that oxycontincoalited bmw wagon. To rib thu the psychedelic freeways. The hard rock rampires. And the 3 chord punk turnpikes. In airy fairy hyphoid.

An appal in the ciricoid cartilage. Rickled in the tuberal part. Stooked in the capillary network dismayed in the vagus nerve. Doesn't palp a dorsal root. Doesn't sense a grey matter. Ultrasonc trangressing yeanling gamin. With blanch elytrons. Plus his codon wide open. Is streeling up and away in the prune labrador loft. Without valancing his medial epicondyles.

After a ganja interpeduncolar substance induced dullard. Sparks up 10 Micky Dolenz joints every 18 minutes. He takes out of his thermal brasero. A platter of what he imagines multiple seashoring oysters. Knicking flecking clicking zipping knacking and smacking. Like Spain Mexico Puerto Rico Argentina Columbia and Chile are annexing in fusion. Like a fiesta volk.

A coventina of her lyrics. Danu of her clavier. Avantia of her diathesis. Astiya of her corsaint. A phylum beyant the template. A decury forthby instead of ensuing the dharmamythicizing Mary Ellen Amos. Retains up preteritly. Her maxim renky trabal much gaucia manrent well tailored pants. While she surviews down brantly at your oosmical clad.

During a birth of pirene pernathian feast. A rotta of shandy untitled Randall Rendoun dottling wetty bacchic boon jovy gaudful gladful holidaying Jajuka tibe of Marrakech. Jopping about and faining the lifeway. Plus fivering each other on the solco del cingolo with glazy light bulbs. Which trenes on for many folded tittupy eras.

--Lee Litif

Egalitarian Angel
(dedicated to Sweet Honey in the Rock, Alice Walker and Helen Reddy)

The world
should be honored
to be adorned
by the elegant grace
of an egalitarian woman.
Regardless of whether she stands
three feet tall
or carries the banner
with statuesque poise,
she's a guiding light to follow
out of the dismal, mist-shrouded
dark ages.
With a gentle wave of her hands
in a rhythmic dance ritual,
she churns the air
like brew in a cauldron
to expel the stale scent of old-boy mildew
and bring in a long-awaited refreshing breeze.
She's an inspiration
to people who struggle
through hardship and pain
and never get a grain
of respect or recognition.
She adds a touch of red to our blues
to form the fragrant color of unity.
She searches through countless songs
and when she finds none that speak of her spirit,
she writes her own voice
and sends an angelic song
to the world on eagle's wings.
She holds the world
in a healing tender embrace,
an elixir to soothe over the pain
of pierced hearts and split skin,
and she inspires us to tear down
the barrier of restriction and ignorant ideals
known as the Gender Wall;
so called because it segregates men and women
as if they were separate governments
in the same war-torn European country.
With her inspiration,
perhaps one day
we will learn to love and respect one another
and to love and respect our guiding light,
our Egalitarian Angel.

--Chris Robbins

April 3rd: Afaa Michael Weaver Features


Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On April 3rd, featuring at the venue for the first time and beginning Stone Soup Poetry's celebration of National Poetry Month will be poet, playwright and Pulitzer nominee Afaa Michael Weaver.

In 1951, Afaa Michael Weaver was born Michael S. Weaver to working class parents in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from the Baltimore public schools in 1968 at sixteen as a National Merit Scholar and began studying at the University of Maryland. In 1970 he began a fifteen year career as a factory worker and also served as an army reservist.

In 1997 Tess Onwueme of the University of Wisconsin gave him the Ibo name "Afaa," and in 2002 Dr. Perng Chingsi of National Taiwan University gave him the name Wei Yafeng.

While a factory worker he wrote and published poetry, short fiction, and free lance journalism and founded 7th Son Press. Under 7th Son he published the journal Blind Alleys, which featured Andrei Codrescu, Frank Marshall Davis, Lucille Clifton, Nikky Finney, and other poets and writers. As a free lancer he has written for the Baltimore Sunpapers, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Chicago Tribune, and the Baltimore Afro-American.

In 1983 Weaver enrolled in Excelsior College, and in 1985 he received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Immediately upon receiving the NEA fellowship he retired from factory life to enter Brown University's graduate creative writing program on a full university fellowship. In that same year his first book, Water Song, was published by Callaloo Press at the University of Virginia. He received his B.A. from Excelsior in 1986 and in 1987 he received his M.A. (M.F.A.) from Brown. At Brown he studied poetry with Keith Waldrop, C.D. Wright, and Michael S. Harper. His focus was in playwriting and theater, and for those concentrations he studied with the late George H. Bass and Paula Vogel.

In 1985 Weaver was commissioned to write a poem in honor of Roy DeCarava. The poem entitled "The Dancing Veil" was presented to DeCarava at the annual conference of the Society for Photographic Education on March 20-23, 1986 in Baltimore, Maryland. The poem was subsequently published in Hanging Loose.

He began his teaching career as an adjunct in 1987, teaching at New York University, the City University of New York, Seton Hall Law School, and Essex County College. In 1990, he began at Rutgers Camden and received tenure with distinction there as an early candidate. In 1998, he took a full time position at Simmons College as the Alumnae Professor of English

In that same year he was named a Pew fellow in poetry.

Weaver was a member of the faculty of Cave Canem in 1997, and he was later given the honor of being the organization's Elder.

In the spring semester of 1997,he was named the sixteenth poet-in-residence at the Stadler Poetry Center of Bucknell University. He was the first poet of African descent to hold that position.

Between 1985 to 2005, he published nine collections of poetry, had two professional theater productions, published short fiction in journals and anthologies, and served as editor of Obsidian III, based at North Carolina State University. His short fiction appears in Gloria Naylor's Children of the Night, the sequel to Langston Hughes' anthology, Best Short Stories by Negro Writers. He has given several hundred readings in the U.S., Great Britain, France, China, and Taiwan.

The following bio was obtained from the author's web site. More information and links can be found by clicking here.

Click here for a sample of the author's work.

March 27th: Doug Holder Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to the venue on March 27th will be Ibbetson Street publisher Doug Holder, following a cancellation and a poor feature turn out unfortunately set after a post holiday date he volunteered to take at the last minute. Hopefully, the turnout will be better with more notice and less outside obligations for those those who appreciate both Holder's work and his publishing efforts.

After many years of publishing numerous small press poets through his own Ibbetson Street Press, including his own chapbooks (Dreams At The Au Bon Pan, On Either Side of The Charles, waking In A Cold Sweat), Doug Holder finally gets to sit back and enjoy simply being a published author, thanks to Yellow Pepper Press. On the 31st, Stone Soup Poetry will premiere Holder's new chapbook Wrestling With My Father, which has earned praise from poets such as Harris Gardner and Hugh Fox.

Most recently, Ibbetson Street Press published Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! by past Stone Soup feature Ann Carhart. Also The Somerville News Writers Festival, created by Holder and Heat City Literary Review Editor Tim Gager, took place on November 13 at the Somerville Theatre (see the link at the end of this post).

A sample poem of Holder's is included here.

Another...in a series of turning fifty poems.

My Life: In Contrast With Others.

There is no need for comparison.
Nor is there time.
What I wanted before
has been rendered to caricature.
The Phantom that pulls and pulls at me
I will never clearly see--

The only contrast
will be that short,
tenuous last breath
that will surely be,
the death
of me.


The Ibbetson Street Press website.

The Yellow Pepper Press Website.

The Somerville News Writers Festival.

Boston Zine Fair

The Boston Zine Fair takes place at the Massachusetts College of Art the weekend of March 18 and 19. A table has been reserved, and hopefully several Stone Soup poets will be represented.

Any poet involved with Stone Soup who wants to have their work included at the table or is willing to sit behind the table for one day or both days of the fair, email Chad Parenteau at freakmachinepress@yahoo.com

For more information on the fair, click here.

March 20th: Len Germinara Features


Photo by Sarah Oktay

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On March 20th, Len Germinara ventures from his Nantucket home to feature at Stone Soup for the first time in years.

Len Germinara has been a fixture on the poetry scene for the past 6 years. First as co-host of the Daily Grind, then Poetribe. He is also the founding member of the Brockton Library series. For the past 3 years Len has been hosting the Nantucket Poetry Slam. Len was recipient of the Cambridge Poetry Award for "Best Narrative Poem" in 2003. Author of three chapbooks, len lives on Nantucket with his wife Dr. Sarah Oktay.

Sample poems from Germinara's website, including the 2003 Cambridge Poetry Award winning "Brautigan."

The Nantucket Poetry Slam.

Future Readers

February 27th: Jacques "The Haitian Firefly" Fleury.

March 6th: Bill Perrault and Red.

March 13th: Ken Kohl.

March 20th: Len Germinara.

March 27th: Doug Holder .

Don't Forget

Tonight, Anna Birch and Chris Volpe feature.

March 13th: Jen Kohl Features


Photo by Ray Gasser

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On March 13th, Jen Kohl will feature at Stone Soup for the first time.

Jen Kohl's poems have appeared in Aegis, The Armenian Weekly, The Bitter Oleander, BlackWater Review, and Poetry East.

She works in Boston as an editor, and lives in Brighton with her husband. She has an MFA from Emerson College and a BA in English and French from the University of New Hampshire.

She enjoys her husband, friends, family, singing at church and making music, reading and writing, generating ideas, cooking, different sports, spending time with children, and inspiring and being inspired by people.

A sample poem, first published in The Bitter Oleander, is below.


Between Passion and Consequence

is a stage
where I emerge,
a soprano in a red dress,
biting air
with glass breath.

Then I am not her.
I am a bulb,
the underground moon.

The stalk
splitting
the avocado seed,
spotted scarlet
in a beige
living room.

I am shallow breath
unfurling on the rug

as I wake
from where I fell
into the Atlantic
with whales.

I swam through dreams,
knew the fin whale
intimately, his shadow,
when he cut
too close. I knew
when to leave
the water.

--Jen Kohl

Don't Forget

Tonight, Kevin Mahoney reads.

Mahoney's book, Serendipity is a Son of a Bitch, was thought to be sold out. However, we found a limited number of copies, and they will be made available for his reading.

March 6th: Bill Perrault and Red to Feature at Stone Soup


Photo by Chad Parenteau


Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring on March 6th, friends and Stone Soup regulars Bill Perrault and Red return to do a feature coinciding with Perrault's birthday.

Bill Perrault was born and lived in Biddeford ME until he finished college for which he had paid by working as a weaver in the textilemills. From 1958 to 1960, the U S Army sent him to Germany as a medic andEducational Counselor. He took the opportunity to tour Europe at that time. When his tour of duty was over, he came home and six weeks later,he married his wife, Lorraine. In 1964, the first of their four children was born and, to date, they are now the proud grandparents of seven. After he and Lorraine married, he began his career teaching high school French and Latin in Maine and upper New York State. He did graduate studies at University of Maine and wrote his masters thesis on Guillaume Apollinaire. In 1973, he moved to Massachusetts to work for Polaroid. Bill now lives in Lowell. Throughout his life, he has enjoyed poetry andphotography. Bill was always the one with a notebook with him to write and a camera to take a picture. He never knew when he might be inspired or find a picture that just needed to be taken. In his retirement, the free time allows him to take these passions to a new level. If it’s joining the Poets in Boston for the Stone Soup Poets or producing local TV programs in Cambridge and Lowell, he is enjoying his creative life. Bill Has been published in the Stone Soup Anthology 2003, Out of the BlueWriters Unite Anthology, and his poetry can be seen on theweb@www.mothwing.com/galleries/billperrault and if you are lucky enoughto be on his e-mail list, the poetry is Hot Off The Presses! Bill has featured, performed and sometimes hosted at open mikes all over NewEngland--including: COOL COFFEE in Biddeford, ME, Bestseller’s Cafe inMedford, MA his Walden Pond Series and, of course, Out Of the BlueGallery. Bill is a staple figure at the Gallery in Cambridge, MA and has faithfully supported the events they hold there every day/night of the week-- Stone Soup Poets, WordBeat, Open Bark and all.

Red is a twenty something Virgoian poetess, short story writer and jewelry maker living in Somerville, Mass. "May December" is her first and certainly not last book of poetry, which is available to purchase. She also
has out a short romance story titled "Room With A View", which is available in limited edition copies. Red grew up in northern New Jersey and didn’t start writing until after high school. She graduated fromVermont
College, Montpelier with a B.A. in poetry and creative writing. The focus of her thesis was Sylvia Plath’s poetry and how it was influenced by her turbulent relationship with Ted Hughes. The same emotional
intensity is visible in Red’s poems. She considers Sylvia a soul who guides her on her journeys, both creative and emotional. Upon moving to the Boston area, she began reading at the open mics at the Out of the Blue art gallery in Cambridge. She still frequents that venue as well as others in the New England area. Red’s handmade beaded jewelry is often available at Out of the Blue as well.

February 27th: Jacques "The Haitian Firefly" Fleury Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. On February 27th, Jacques "The Haitian Firefly" Fleury will feature at Stone Soup to celebrate the release of his first chapbook, Sparks In The Dark.

Born in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, Fleury is a poet, writer, and aesthete. He cruuently hosts the Live TV show "Dream Weavers w. Jacques" on Cambridge Community Television. His poetry and writings have been published in Spare Change News, Somerville News, The Bridge, Whats Up Magazine, and The Alewife. He has featured at Squawk Coffee House, The Harvard Epworth, TOAST, and elsewhere. He is presently working on a poetic memoir based on his journey from Haiti to America. A sample poem of Fleury's is included below.


Free!

Dock
we'll dock stones
roll andwe'll unroll
In my america
the big flying eagle
birds well done abroad.
Two groups of people
the rich and the poor
the young and the old
the white and the black
and three tons of fat
all in procession
silent tales are blooming
flowers growing shells
olive branches
climbing white house walls
two candles burning
shades of gray
itrustingod
holy bloody sunday comes
sunday morning
god bless those whose veins
bear none
twilight swallows the moon
darkness
descends
soldiers gone awol
run like panthers
here and gone
they've staged a snare
running rivers very dry mouths
Dutiful soldiers beat their drums
paragons of strengh and honor
mascarade balls
dinky shoots smack and
the dumb blond flunks
fall down stand up
walk the line
walk backwards
juggling well
will set you free.

--Jacques "The Haitian Firefly" Fleury

February 20th: Anna Birch and Chris Volpe Feature





Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring on the 20th of February, Anna Birch and Chris Volpe not only feature at Stone Soup for the first time, but they also have the pleasure of premiering the first book from their collaborative effort, Penhallow Press.

Anna Birch has successfully operated her own local one-woman art company, Queen Oscar Designs, for nearly a decade. Her poetry explores the absurdities and complexities of everyday life and relationships. Anna has been an active part of the seacoast poetry community for many years, participating in various school programs and workshops, as well as being a featured reader at both the Kittery Art Association Literary Series and Larry Simon’s Beat Night. She has been a member of Portsmouth’s City Hall Poets for ten years, and is currently compiling her first book manuscript.

Chris Volpe, a graduate of SUNY Stony Brook, received his M.A. in writing poetry at the University of New Hampshire, where he was awarded the Ann Pazo Mayberry Award and the Elizabeth Jones Scholarship for his poetry. His poems have appeared in The New Republic, New American Writing, The Antioch Review, The Prose Poem, Mudfish, Third Coast and The Bitter Oleander. His work has been featured on Poetry Daily and his book manuscript, “Night Traffic,” was a finalist for publication by Carnegie Mellon University Press in 2004. He works as a communications professional and teaches poetry workshops, literature, and the history of art at the University of New Hampshire and Franklin Pierce College.

Chris and Anna were introduced by a UNH poetry professor in 1999. They were married this past summer and live in Portsmouth, N.H. Together they operate Penhallow Press, an independent literary small press and letterpress printing company. The press’s first title, “Fistfuls of the Invisible,” poems by Exeter native James Rioux, has just been published, Sample poems from Birch and Volpe are included below.

Ventriloquist

I imagine the mothers held tight their children’s shoulders
the day you came to the fair,
traveling from Limerick to Galway to Ennis
you and the bearded lady, the palm-reading soothsayers
the velvet clad gypsies.

Voice thrower,
spell binder,
whiskey breathed man
with the empty wooden child on your lap.
You find your place on a makeshift crate turned upright,
the crowd forms a loose distant circle around you
as you wheeze life into the deadwood.

In Latin, your profession means
to speak from the belly
and so you must talk from inside and outside the center,
live inside two different heads,
hold the short future inside your throat.
You carry the conversation like a scared cat on a platter
that you tease and then comfort,
prod and snare.

You watch the children wrap their arms around their mothers knees,
curious enough to be yours for a moment,
spell bound enough to throw you money for food.

Still, the children do not trust your son of wood and wire,
of cloth and shadow,
its squeaky voice of hysteric invention
rings inside their ears, full of strain and delivery.

Nor do they trust you,
the lurch of your coupled sway,
your cheeks stiff and puckered,
smile oddly stuck.

Wooden child of transfer and trick
tottering bundle of backtalk and spook.

Who is that hungerless child you carry in a sack
who demands nothing,
and does not laugh or bleed or talk off cue?

The one on which you have
such a strange and secret reliance,
where your own voice
meets its smaller and more distant companion,
concealed half-child of your own making.

At night, he rests dangling on wooden pegs in the kitchen
and watches you off to bed,
his insistent, high-pitched questions, his vacant eyes
still hard at work in your dreams.

--Anna Birch


Testament

The shadow I should have worn proudly
Snuck off with bad company as soon as it could:

Waylaid by deep snow, half-light of long alleys,
Another distracted omen.

Crows rolled half asleep past my windows.
Bees carried the vernal wreath elsewhere.

Had to look twice for my sleeplessness.
So inept was my glamour.

Had to stand in front of the wind.
So divided was my resolve.

Had to lie down under the bridge of sky.
So uncertain of where I’d better be going.

All my life my mother had to wake me
Calling softly into the back seat, we’re home.


--Chris Volpe

Click here to visit the Penhallow Press site.

February 13th: Kevin Mahoney Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. February the 13th marks the first Stone Soup feature of open miker and author Kevin Mahoney.

Kevin Mahoney was born in the fall of 1965. Nothing special happened to him until the age of twelve. It was then he read the book A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
freshman year in High School. After reading that book, he wrote his first poem. The poem was awful, but he was determined to get better.

After a brief yet unbelievable sensual affair with his High School English teacher he went on to pursue careers in food service, emergency care, broadcasting, sea air rescue, carpet installing, clown balloon delivery service, chimney sweeping and ultimately Radiology Information Technology. He was a principle writer and occasional performer with the theater troupe Catbox Cabaret in the 1990's.

He has been reading poetry, in public, since 1992. He is a three time Cantab featured poet, a cross dresser (please don't tell his mom) and an all around swell guy. In the spring of 2005 he published his first collection of poetry, Serendipity is a Son of a Bitch. A sample poem is included below.

My Best Christmas Ever

I awoke tired, cold, naked and dirty
handcuffed to a nativity scene.
It was not the first time,
and, God forgive me, I was certain
that it would not be the last.
The villagers walked past me
some in awe, most in horror on their
way to midnight mass.
"I’m not mad," I screamed,
"I know the difference between a hawk and
a handsaw."
A light snow began to fall
creating a charming scene
unless of course if you were not looking at me
wallowing in the mud.
I did not know how I had come to be
handcuffed to that nativity scene
nor did any of the passerby’s ask
or offer to help.
For all they knew or I for that matter,
I was as happy as anyone could be in that
moment in time.
The church bell rang.
Midnight,
12 am,
Christmas morning,
Peace on earth, good will toward men.
A dog pissed on me.

Tonight and Upcoming

G. Emil Reutter reads tonight, January 23rd.

In the coming weeks.

January 30th: Open mike regular turned feature Adam Thielker.

February 6th: FN Wombat and Sidewalk Sam return to Stone Soup.

February 13th: Local poet and infamous open miker of many names Kevin Mahoney.

February 21st: Anna Birch and Chris Volpe of Penhallow Press.

February 6th: F.N. Wombat and Sidewalk Sam Perform


Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to the Out of The Blue to feature for the first time since 2001 will be Richard Jarrell and Robert Guillemin, otherwise known as F.N. Wombat and Sidewalk Sam.

The two performed their "Bob 'n' 'Bat Show" for Stone Soup on September 3rd, 2001, when the Out of The Blue Art Gallery had relocated to it's current location from Brookline Ave. Their performance for Stone Soup marked the first for the venue in that location. They have not been back until now, though their act--mostly comprising of Wombat reading from his collected quotations and Sidewalk Sam reacting to each quote--has been perfromed for Charlie's Tap and the State House over the past ten years.

Wombat has made 45 books of compiled quotations, 35 of which has been published. 25 of his "Remarkable Remarks" books are stored in the John Cage Archive.

Wombat's ebook, Sayings for Sidewalk Sam, will be available as an ebook for Art Street Inc., which was established as a non-profit organizaion by the well known street performer Sidewalk Sam in 1991.

Art Street Inc.'s goal, as explained on the web site, is "to develop collaborative, participatory art programs with communities, government agencies, businesses, schools and non-profit organizations."

Visit the Art Street Inc. web site.

January 30th: Adam Thielker Features

Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Making his debut feature at Stone Soup will be Adam Thielker.

Raised in 1950's New York City by a mid-sized party of New York Artists, he has been living in New England ever since.

He has always written poetry, but usually threw it away because he didn't like it.

A few years back, he moved to the Boston area and began to read out at the Cantab, Out of The Blue, and in Newburyport with the Pow Wow River Poets.

He has published an artice in Orion magazine recently, but no poetry until now. Adam Thielker also makes his debut publication credit on the Stone Soup web site below with his sample poem.

The Freeze

Shake dead leaves and hush
Still in the deep earth cold roots
Under empty beds

Come down snow

Now dark comes too soon
And winter taps my window
But I will not turn

To your heart

Black trees sit black birds
Fly high dry white icy sky
Sing far off wind words

--Adam Thielker

More Posting Soon

We at Stone Soup hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. Stone Soup has already started the new year with two well-received features. We apologize for not having posted any photos from past readers for some time. This will be rectified soon.

Stone Soup is looking for features to fill out the new year. A more detailed call will be sent out next week as well.

Please be sure to try and make it out to Stone Soup on Martin Luther King Day. Elizabeth Doran will read.

January 23rd: G. Emil Reutter Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Visiting Stone Soup from out of state for the first time will be poet, fiction writer, and essayist G. Emil Reutter.

G Emil Reutter is an author/poet from Lower Bucks County Pennsylvania. His home base is The Five Points Java Joint where he reads normally on the 3rd Friday of the month with the Madpoets Society. He currently has a chapbook of poetry entitled Asphalt Road (2004) and two collections of short stories/essays/poems entitled Life Views (2004), The Jonesville Collection (2004) available as ebooks at Stonegarden Publishing. A number of manuscripts are in submission status. His poetry/prose/essays have been published widely in the small and electronic press.

A sample poem of Reutter's is included below.

saturday night sinners

troubadours sing songs whose lyrics

have long lost their meaning

tina circles dave on the dance floor

as she eyes up johnny at the bar

who chugs another beer wondering

where his wife is

the band sings “born to run”

tina laughs at the crowd dancing

changing the lyric to “born to jog”

or “walk really fast”

dave scores a blond and leaves

tina saddles up next to johnny

listening to the cheat on me blues

waiting for him to take her

where she wants to go

sunday morning comes

as dave picks the tinted blue hair

from his pillow

johnny and his wife enter the church

tina walks by and winks

as johnny notices

the pastor eyeing up his wife

dave runs in sitting down

not noticing the blue haired lady

until she places her hand on his knee

cringing knowing he can’t get away

and here they all sit

saturday night sinners

in sunday morning forgiveness

--G. Emil Reutter

Click here to visit G. Emil Reutter's website.

January 16th: Elizabeth K. Doran Features


Photo by Bill Perrault

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to feature at Stone Soup is local poet and regular open miker Elizabeth K. Doran.

Elizabeth K. Doran has been influenced as a poet by modern women writers such as Sharon Olds and Louis Gluck. Although she would never want to be called a "nature poet" nature is always present in her work. "Nature is part of the environment we all share and informs my sensibility," she says. Elizabeth is drawn to syllabics and loves long syllabic lines. A major influence is Eugino Montale who in 1975 was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

She is published in Poises and Spare Change news and has read at many Venues in Boston and beyond. She is the former host of poetry at Gallery Diablo.

A sample poem of Doran's is included below.

The Sinners

A woman stands in the middle of the square
she is covered in layers of blue cloth her eyes are hidden.
Men begin to gather, collect stones.
Somewhere under the cloth a heart beats.
It is said those without sin should cast the first stone.
But a sinner picks up a rock and throws it
then there is a frenzy of sinners casting
stones until their rage subsides.
Her god surely heard her heart beat
until it stopped.

--Elizabeth K. Doran

January 9th: Tom Daley Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring for the first time at Stone Soup on January 9th will be poet, performer teacher, producer and recent chapbook author Tom Daley.

Tom Daley leads poetry writing workshops at the Boston Center for Adult Education and starting January 15, 2006 at Jeff Robinson's Online School of Poetry. His poetry has been published in a number of journals, including Prairie Schooner, can we have our ball back?, 32 Poems and Poetry Ireland Review. His chapbook, Canticles & Inventories was published in the fall of 2005.

Click here to read two poems by Tom Daley.

Click here for the home of Jeff Robinson's Online School of Poetry.

January 2nd: Raffi Wolf Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring for the very first Stone Soup gathering in the new year will be Raphael Wolf.

Raphael Wolf was Bill Barnum's editor in the mid '80's, Rent Free (about homelessness) and I Wish That My Room Had A Floor (about mental illness). He has also had poems, articles, and short stories printed in Spare Change.

December 26th: Doug Holder Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to the venue next after his unfortunate cancellation in October will be Ibbetson Street publisher Doug Holder.

After many years of publishing numerous small press poets through his own Ibbetson Street Press, including his own chapbooks (Dreams At The Au Bon Pan, On Either Side of The Charles, waking In A Cold Sweat), Doug Holder finally gets to sit back and enjoy simply being a published author, thanks to Yellow Pepper Press. On the 31st, Stone Soup Poetry will premiere Holder's new chapbook Wrestling With My Father, which has earned advance praise from poets such as Harris Gardner and Hugh Fox.

Most recently, Ibbetson Street Press published Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! by past Stone Soup feature Ann Carhart. Also The Somerville News Writers Festival, created by Holder and Heat City Literary Review Editor Tim Gager, took place on November 13 at the Somerville Theatre (see the link at the end of this post).

A sample poem of Holder's is included here.

Another...in a series of turning fifty poems.

My Life: In Contrast With Others.

There is no need for comparison.
Nor is there time.
What I wanted before
has been rendered to caricature.
The Phantom that pulls and pulls at me
I will never clearly see--

The only contrast
will be that short,
tenuous last breath
that will surely be,
the death
of me.


The Ibbetson Street Press website.

The Yellow Pepper Press Website.

The Somerville News Writers Festival.

December 19th: Philip E. Burnham, Jr. Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring December 19th will be poet Philip E. Burnham, Jr.

Philip E. Burnham, Jr. was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in New England. He is a graduate of Harvard College and served as American Vice Consul in Marseille, France. After receiving a doctorate in Medieval History from Tufts University, he taught in public and private secondary schools and colleges in the Boston area. He has published three books of poetry, My neighbor Adam (2003) and Sailing from Boston (2003), and his newest, Housekeeping (2005). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A sample poem is included below.


Voices of The Dead

From the radio, voices of the dead
Fill the kitchen like Christmas cinnamon
This low, late december, sun day pink red
Cloud, yellow morning, disembodied sounds

Of music for opera, concert stage
Performed as a lyric necrology,
A year's sum of loss, encore passages
To other shores, scores with these noteworthy

Musicians, their places left to the young
Who play muted instruments, the tempo
A reverence for keys, strings, brass, winds, drums
Voices untuned, unstrung, adagio.

But your songs for children and for love were
Never recorded to be replayed when
You were out of touch, time; their echoes bear
On my hearing as ocean waves wear through

The icy gates of great December's end
and winter's opening, songs whisper in
My heart's good ear where I may often spend
Time's purse to recall you as I listen.

December 12th: John Sturm Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Making his debut feature at Stone Soup is John Sturm, orator of great local renown, performing "The Raven," among other works by Edgar Allen Poe.

John Sturm has been performing at open mikes for the last few years at The Cantab, Club Passim, Out of The Blue and other venues. He has twice performed at Forsyth Chapel for e.e. cummings' birthday anniversary. Although he writes almost nothing of his own, he will include several haiku and at least one longer poem of his own. A sample sonnet and haiku are included below:



When our little pups stretch out for belly rubs
Or beg for Snaussages with pleading eyes
When our best exercise is walking them
Or throwing Frisbees till they tire us out

When we delight in all the tricks they do
Rewarding them with kibbles and with praise
Or watch them running free within a yard
Bringing sticks or rubber balls for us to throw

When in the living room they find the sun
Or in the winter lie before the fire
And seem asleep yet stay alert
For any sound which threatens us

They've added joy unto another day
And shown their loving in the way they play



No love poem has
the eloquence of lovers
Silent--eye to eye.

Tonight

Vicki Bosch Murray Features

Out Of The Blue Benefit Link

Click here for updates on the December 10th raffle to benefit the Out Of The Blue Art Gallery. More information on the pieces being raffled will be available by the end of the week.

You can also purchase raffle tickets via a PayPal link on the site.

Out of The Blue Holiday Raffle

When: Saturday, December 10^th, 12-5 p.m.

Where: Out of The Blue Art Gallery, 106 Prospect Street, Cambridge

Artists have donated various works like poetry books, framed photography, sculpture, and paintings for the benefit raffle. Come have food, drink, and see the entertainment. Enter to win an item, or purchase one of the many affordable pieces for sale.

Scheduled performers include:

Carolyn Gregory (poet)
Chad Parenteau (poet, co-host of Stone Soup Poetry)
Bill Perrault (poet, producer of Stone Soup TV series)
Deb Priestly (poet, Out of The Blue Sales Manager)
Meg Smith (poet, dancer)
Lynne Sticklor (The Prize Lady)

And an Open Mike as well.

Many ways to participate, whether or not you can attend the show:

$10 Two raffle tickets, and admission on December 10^th.
$7 One raffle ticket, plus admission.
$5 One raffle ticket.
$4 Suggested Donation Admission only.
$? Donation to Out of the Blue.
$!! Participates in the open mike will be eligible for an exclusive raffle!

All money for purchased raffle tickets and donations will solely benefit the Out of The Blue art gallery. All art, time and food have been donated (thanks to the Middle East Café and other local venders and peoples).

We will continue to accept donations of artwork until the day of the event.

Raffle tickets sales will be going on all day- up to the drawing.

You will be notified if you win and are not in attendance.

Admission and raffle tickets will be available at the Out of The Blue Art gallery. For more information on the event, call Out of The Blue at 617-354-5287 or email Chad Parenteau at freakmachinepress@yahoo.com for more information.

Poem of The Week

Due to a late entry, we were not able to have a featured poem last week. We apologize and hope this doesn't happen again.

This week, we have Dan Shanahan, a veteran poet and an associate of Janaka Stucky who came to Stucky's November 21st reading and impressed in the open mike. Hopefully, he will have his own feature sometime in 2006.


A Silk Moth In Holyoke, Massachusetts

There was a moth
from Koboke, Japan
Who it is said made thread
With lineage from China,
Three thousand years old.
When its eggs hatched
Stars were stitched upon thier backs.
As caterpillars they mused and grazed
At zero speed on green fields
Of Mulberry leaves.
In such idle ways
They dreamed themseves
Into cocoons,
Dangled in their solitudes,
Pupas pulsing with the moon.
when they woke
Their work began
Spinning silk for my mother,
Who sewed by hand
Buttonholes and linings
I recall, for a sweater
She made for me one fall.

Boxi moth, furry,
Plain khaki tan,
My city was spun
From your imaginings.
You threaded the river
Through the needles of canals
Dug out with immigrant hands.
In your sleep you turned the mills
The cogs and wheels
Spooling bobbins by the millions
To bind this world in silk
And pay for the shop-floor girl's
Bottle of milk.

--Dan Shanahan

Upcoming Features

Don't forget our future features for the month of December. The poet for December 26th will be announced soon.

November 28th: Ryk McIntyre
December 5th: Victoria Bosch Murray
December 12th: John Sturm
December 19th: Philip burnham, Jr.

Janaka Stucky's November 21st Reading

Photo by Bill Perrault

Thanks to Janaka Stucky for reading at Stone Soup Poetry and introducing new people to the venue.

December 5th: Victoria Bosch Murray Features

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Making her debut feature on December 5th will be poet and venue host Victoria Bosch Murray.

Victoria Bosch Murray, 2004 Cambridge Poetry Award recipient, has published poetry most recently in Poetic Voices Without Borders, Dos Pasos Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Wolf Moon Press Journal. Murray has also published two chapbooks: Running A Red, and her most recent, Not to Scale. She is host of Poetribe in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

A sample poem of Murray's from Wolf Moon Press Journal.

November 28th: Ryk McIntyre Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to Stone Soup on November 28th will be performance poet Ryk McIntyre.

Ryk McIntyre is a three-time National Poetry Slam Team member, as well as Co-host at The Cantab Poetry Reading. He has toured nationally and in Canada, opening for acts as varied as Leon Redbone and Jim Carroll, as well as appearing as part of Lollapalooza 1994. He has been published in Short-Fuse: an Anthology of New Fusion Poets, 100 Poets Against The New World Order, Nth Position Magazine and The Worcester Review. He is also the author of four chapbooks, including his most recent, Love Is A Flashlight. He is a known biped.

A sample poem from Nth Position.

The latest PDF version of 100 Poets Against The War.

Janaka Stucky reads on November 21st

Click here for more informaiton.

Future Readings

November 28: performance poet Ryk McIntyre

December 5th: Victoria Bosch Murray, poet and host of Poetribe venue in Bridgewater

December 12th: Orator extraordinaire John Sturm

More information on these features and those for the rest of December will appear soon on the site.

Recent Readings

Bill Perrault offersmore scenes from past readings.


Coleen Houlihan, reading a selection of her work, including her novel-in-progress, Beautiful Bastard


Lowell poet Meg Smith, from this past Monday

Meg Smith Tonight

Don't forget about Meg Smith's return to Stone Soup tonight.

Poem Of The Week

We continue our new weekly feature with a new poem by Melissa Bates, a newcomer to the open mike at Stone Soup Poetry.


Waste

Tonight, I knew
this is where
the dead and the dying go.
So I took a step back,
crouched down
into the black
crescent of your shadow,
steadied my arms,
waited for your fall.

I knew in the way
I used to love
the slowing
of my own pulse,
How even the blue
of my vein
became both beautiful
and dangerous
under moonlight,
How silver flat blades
tasted like candy
underneath my tongue,
How blood was the only
proof of potency,
Knew.

Knew in the way
I used to catch sight
of myself in strange bathroom stalls,
arms curled around porcelain,
slick forehead lightening smack
against toilet seats
with each involuntary seize
of my body,
Knew.

Maybe this is why
I wanted to slip
my fingers underneath
your ribs,
lift you right off the ground,
scream something
about cracks
and time
and life
needing to be more
than just a habit,
do something other than
listen to your breath leak
like air from a tire,
a slow hiss
before the final pop.

See, tonight,
I saw you
in the mirror,
parchment paper thin skin
merely draping over bones,
head hanging down,
hair the color of
Scotch whiskey spilling
over egg breasts,
and I knew.

--Melissa Bates

Poem of The Week

The Stone Soup Poetry Site will now start publishing poetry from those who frequent the venue, in addition to the highlighted features, with a emphasis on finding new voices. That being said, we already break away from tradition by selecting for our first poem, "Untitled" by Walter Howard, who featured earlier in October but was unable to provide us a sample poem for the web site.


Untitled

I measure the beat of the
tired world's heart
choked with sadness
count the broken dream's silent tears
catch the lost child's lamentations
torment of the wind cast in chains
Paof the bird that has broken its wing
Wimpers of the faithful old hound, mercilessly kicked
the murdered heart's strains.

Go! Place roses on the cold
On the saring eyes of the dead.

--Walter Howard

Don't Forget

Coleen Houlihan tonight.

Another Past Performance

Photo by Bill Perrault

Robert Milby's performance on October 24th was a great success, and appropriate for the Haloween season. We will be posting information on the New York venues he hosts soon.

October 31st Update

Due to unforseen circumstances, Doug Holder will not be able to read for his planned October 31st feature at Stone Soup Poetry. The reading will be scheduled for a later date.

Instead, Stone Soup Poetry on October 31st will hold a open mike dedicated to Doug Holder's own Ibbetson Street Press. All authors published under Doug Holder's imprint are invited to read and give tribute to his efforts as a publisher.

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

November 21st: Janaka Stucky Features


Photo by Q. Nuruzzaman.

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Making his debut feature on November 21st will be poet and publisher Janaka Stucky.

Janaka Stucky is the founder and managing editor of Black Ocean, an non-profit publishing and production company based out of Boston, New York, and Chicago. After receiving hs BFA in writing and literature from Emerson College, he went on to get an MFA in poetry from Vermont College.

Prior to founding Black Ocean, he was the co-founder of the Boston-based nationally touring group, the Guerilla Poets, a street-poetry collective of over 700 members internationally who devoted themselves to injecting poetry into public and commercial spaces on a weekly basis.

Stucky has been a guest lecturer at Vermont College's MFA in writing program. A wnner of several national Haiku competitions, his poems have also been published in a variety of journals, including North American Review, Blue Fifth Review, Frogpond, Elixir, and Volt.

Rooted in Boston, Stucky spends his life traveling, writing, and caring for the dead. He likes his whisky neat and his music dirty. He is developing the perfection of effort and is ever reading to serve you by word.

A sample poem is included below.


Eavesdropping My Funeral

I threw a funeral for myself
and invited all my friends
to see who would show and
who would not.

At the service, I remember
all my in-laws clearing their
throats.

I played a guessing game with
my eyes closed—who’s lips were
who’s upon my propped up
head.

And when someone asked,
“Did he suffer much?”
someone else said,
“Like the wings of a butterfly.”

I thought of jumping
up and laughing. I let them bury me
instead.


A recent Boston Phoenix article about Janaka Stucky.

The Black Ocean website.

November 14th: Meg Smith Features


Photo by Julia Cheng.

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Lowell Poet Meg Smith Returns to Feature on November 14th.

Meg Smith has published more than 200 poems, short stories and other works in a variety of literary journals, including many in the Gothic and horror genres. Recent publication credits include Renovation Journal, Poetry Bay, Pulse, The Cafe Review, Erosha, The Lowell Pearl, The Gothic Revue, Dreams of Decadence, and others.

She has published a book of poetry, The First Fire, and is working on a second book. She is a member of the board of directors of the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! Festival dedicated to Beat writer Jack Kerouac, and editor and publisher of Red Eft, an online literary journal. A sample poem is included below, originally published in The Gothic Revue.

Moons of Saturn: Cassini Probe

Now we approach
in the gray descent,
a landscape blurs like shapeless trowsers,
a body not inhabited or summarized.
but bodies we have found, and they
speak a distant code to our own cold white
single garnet.
One breathes its own swirl of gas,
presumptuous as to be almost planetary.
One speaks to canals of comic books
and radio shows.
They have much to give.
But our needs are few.
We wouldn't ask for granite or delusions of seas
that glow green
or trinkets in the atmosphere to form rings.
All we want is the truth of time.
All we want is the first dawn.

Meg Smith's web site.

Red Eft.

November 7th: Coleen Houlihan Features

Photo by Bill Perrault.

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Coleen T. Houlihan returns to us November 7th to feature.

Coleen T. Houlihan studied writing at Wellesley College and has been a writer for many years with poetry being her first love. Presently she is working on a novel. Her work has published in The Cambridge Alewife and the 2003 Stone Soup Anthology. She also has two chapbooks: This Human Heart and Desire's Burn.

She has always been attracted to the written form as a way of giving rise to emotions and disentangling them, both in herself and in others. Like any exercise, which involves two components, the writer and created piece work together to become the key that can unlock the door to the reader’s mind. Through slim picture books read to her as a child, Coleen first became that reader. She presently resides in Boston, MA. Below is a sample poem recently published in the Alewife.

The Elephants

Please understand me,
for I am mine tonight-

The ringmaster says the elephants
are all right
but as I passed their cage,
all metal and no sun,
I caught a glimpse of their eyes
and the way they were mashing
bars and tufts and chains,
the way they were biting their own skin
said to me
the elephants are wild tonight.

And he was so confident
as he lead them into the ring
with balls, hoops of fire and whips of hide-
I took a seat knowing what it would bring
and the elephants came running
around the tent as if they were sheep
deep grey and as large as submarines.
Yes, something will go down tonight.
Not me, not me, not me.

And one by one he introduced them,
names of Dolly, Sally, Pete-
and I remembered thinking,
right before the screams,
that these elephants were once from Africa-
distant, wild and free
and who did he think he was addressing,
what was it that he was choosing to see?
Not me, not me, not me.

They were beautiful
and the people screamed.
The woman next to me waved her arms
falling like brittle leaves-
clearly she did not see,
and as her head hit the floor
I thought,
“Not me.”

Dressed in red, crimson channels
that flowed down their flanks
and their wounds were the shapes of
deserts, lakes and trees
more powerful than the mark
of any hand that had touched
those wild, wild beasts…

And their cries reminded me
of my own.

But the ringmaster was shouting
foreign, bitter words.
Then the ringmaster was a decoration,
his body a blur
of white ivory and red skin
and the people were all screaming
as the hoops blazed yellow sun
and the balls burst and collapsed
and the woman on the floor was yelling,
“My god, my god what is this!”

I smiled when I saw her
looked her in the eye,
“It’s the elephants,” I said.
“They are wild tonight.”
And then I sank my teeth
into her flesh
and as the elephants thrashed,
as the elephants pressed,
I knew
they understood.

October 31st: Doug Holder Features



Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Returning to the venue next Monday will be local small press figure Doug Holder.

After many years of publishing numerous small press poets through his own Ibbetson Street Press, including his own chapbooks (Dreams At The Au Bon Pan, On Either Side of The Charles, waking In A Cold Sweat), Doug Holder finally gets to sit back and enjoy simply being a published author, thanks to Yellow Pepper Press. On the 31st, Stone Soup Poetry will premiere Holder's new chapbook Wrestling With My Father, which has earned advance praise from poets such as Harris Gardner and Hugh Fox.

Last month, Ibbetson Street Press published Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus! by recent Stone Soup feature Ann Carhart. Also The Somerville News Writers Festival, created by Holder and Heat City Literary Review Editor Tim Gager, will be taking place on November 13 at the Somerville Theatre (see the link at the end of this post).

A sample poem of Holder's is included here.

Another...in a series of turning fifty poems.

My Life: In Contrast With Others.

There is no need for comparison.
Nor is there time.
What I wanted before
has been rendered to caricature.
The Phantom that pulls and pulls at me
I will never clearly see--

The only contrast
will be that short,
tenuous last breath
that will surely be,
the death
of me.


The Ibbetson Street Press website.

The Yellow Pepper Press Website.

The Somerville News Writers Festival.

October 24th: Robert Milby Features

Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring this Monday for the first time will be New York poet Robert Milby.

Robert Milby has hosted poetry readings throughout the Hudson Valley since 1995. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks (his most recent, The Ruin of Camelot) and a spoken word CD (Revenant Echo). He has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies such as Hunger Magazine, Will Work for Peace, Hart, Fertile Ground, Chronogram, The Hudson Valley Literary Magazine, The Orange Voice, and Motivate a Mind.

Currently, Milby hosts a poetry series at Joey’s Café in Washingtonville, NY and at the Mudd Puddle Café in New Paltz, NY.

A sample poem from Milby is included below.

Summer Ghosts

The stench of rotting peat moss;
animals killed by ignominious drivers, last year’s onion casualties,
rises beneath an ominous,
humidity swollen August Moon.
Old Summer’s heavy ghosts sit nearby and watch.
Here is an elderly phantom,
leaning on a pretentious real-estate sign.
Another shade, merely glowing eyes,
screams from a frog dominated culvert
in a ditch near the quiet onion field.
How, then, can I walk during the death of purple ochre afterglow,
Along the access road, pavement still ornery, heat growling underfoot,
Of August’s sultry insanity?
She appears only when I remove my glasses to clean them…
Her forty years extinguished by technology.
The migrant worker’s shock would have risen through dimensions…
A mother, crushed beneath large, peat caked tires of an onion tractor.
Was it children who’d painted the memorial on the road, near the elementary school?
The swooning phantoms have sucked away grueling humidity,
to allow my word knitting on a cool back porch this morning.
Late August is a precarious time…ghosts do not wish to wean themselves of their Solar medication…
Summer has no desire to desiccate or to blush in cooler weather.
Summer knows…that having storms, only serves the kingdom of Autumn:
Frost fanfare, migrating flocks, insect funerals, and huddled animals…

October 17th: Walter Howard Features


Photo by Bill Perrault.

An Open Mike favorite who has read everywhere from Stone Soup to Word Beat to the Boston Public Library as part of the 5th Annual Poetry Month Festival, poet Walter Howard will now get a full 20-30 minute feature slot to entertain us.

As always, Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

Christopher Kain's Reading


Photo by Bill Perrault.

We'd like to thank Christopher Kain for reading as well as share news we were not privy to until his reading.

Kain's first chapbook, Homefront, will be available soon. To be informed when it comes out, you can email him at cdkain@yahoo.com.

Past Performances

The volunteers at Stone Soup Poetry will attempt to post these photos with more regularlity. All photos are by Bill Perrault.


Felipe Victor Martinez from October 3rd, reading from Alan Ginsberg's "Howl" while friend Timothy George accompanies with percussion.


Ala Khaki from September 24th, reading while Jack Powers Observes.


Carolyn Gregory from September 19th.

October 10: Christopher Kain Features




Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m. Featuring for the first time on October 10 will be Christopher Kain.

Christopher Kain first found poetry at a cafe inNorthampton, MA, in the early 90's and has been in love ever since. An English major from UMass Amherst, Kain later found areas to read in Connecticut and Virginia,where his poetry was included in two local anthologies. He has been featured at the Cantab Lounge Cambridge, MA where he still reads a new poem each week as part of the poetry venue's open mike. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in Library Science. A sample poem is below:

i meant to write you a poem
but the words fell out of rhyme
i meant to write you a book
but i lost track of time

i meant to write you a song
but the notes fell out of tune
i meant to write about you
so i wrote for the moon

Future Performers

October 10th: Local poet Christopher Kaine.

October 17th: Frequent Stone Soup open Miker Walter Howard.

October 24: New York Poet Robert Milby.

October 31: Ibbetson Street Press founder Doug Holder with his new book.

November 7th: Poet and novelist Coleen Houlihan.

November 14th: Lowell poet and activist Meg Smith.

November 21: Guerrilla Poet and Small Press Organizer Janaka Stucky.

October 3: Felipe Victor Martinez Features


Photo by Bill Perrault

A beat-influenced poet with strong ties to Stone Soup, Felipe Victor Martinez divides his time maintaining the successful business Astro Imaging, hosting the monthly Word Beat gathering at Out of The Blue, and co-fronting (with Lynne Sticklor) Cozmic Orange Press. The press recently put out a special limited editon of Poems by Bill Perrault by the fellow Stone Souper and plans to publish a new poetry journal. Martinez returns to us for a feature this Monday and hopes for yet another appearance by Jack Powers, having missed the birthday celebration of our founder last month.

Click here for sample poems by Martinez.

Click here for more information on Word Beat and the other Out Of The Blue Spoken word Events.

Click here for Martinez' Astro Imaging Page.