CANCELED
Please Stay Well

Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, April 11th, 2020 at 2pm
Golden Notebook (Upstairs)

CANCELED
Please Stay Well

Brett Bevell
Rebecca Schumejda

To be rescheduled.

Poets Brett Bevell and Rebecca Schumejda will be the featured readers, along with an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets at Golden Notebook (Upstairs), 29 Tinker Street on Saturday, April 11th, 2020 at 2pm. Brett Bevell and Rebecca Schumejda will be rescheduled at a later date.

Note: WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month at Golden Notebook (Upstairs).

Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
29 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY 12498
www.goldennotebook.com
845-679-8000

The reading will be hosted by poet Phillip X Levine. All meetings are free, open to the public, and include an open mike.

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Features:

Brett Bevell - A poet and performance artist, Brett is author of America Needs a Woman President, and America Needs a Buddhist President, a poem that initially aired nationwide on NPR’s All Things Considered. Bevell has electrified audiences around the world with his live oral recitations, and he has often been compared to the late poet Allen Ginsberg. Bevell’s poetry is featured in the anthology Chorus: A Literary Mixed Tape and he performed with Saul Williams and Aja Monet at Joe's Pub in New York City as part of the book’s release. Bevell’s work is also part NPR’s permanent website archives. He is also winner of the 1995 Paul Laurence Dunbar Poetry Prize.

Brett Bevell is also the author of several books on energy healing, including Psychic Reiki, The Wizard’s Guide to Energy Healing, The Reiki Magic Guide to Self-Attunement, and Reiki for Spiritual Healing. Brett is also a pioneer in the field of energy healing apps, first exploring this concept in 2013 through his book New Reiki Software for Divine Living, and also now offering his energy healing work through the Soulvana App by Mindvalley.



Sushi

Today you stretched my flesh beyond its limits
I watched as you took us all
into the moment of ourselves

I imagine yogi’s a thousand years before me
doing this same asana

Does our collective memory meet there
when in tree pose?

Can a druid find his way
back home in the tight body
like aged bark brittle yet still covering an immense life?

Once on the floor, a green cloth strap winding my leg out like a fin
on some prehistoric fish
my hips about to cramp…but I didn’t want anyone
to know
and just kept breathing

The laundry of the universe is strange
My girlfriend’s underwear is everywhere
My eyes peek at the infinity of starlight

And you stand teaching
before old men and women
ambitious yogini’s
wandering poets
and maybe even the rest of humanity is peeking in
on a sky cam
or web cam
How can we ever know these days?

Today I called myself up
on an imaginary cell phone
I remembered the grass I held in my palm
as a child
the dance that butterflies make
when gripping a young boy’s fingertip
How delicate and flexible I used to be
opening doors with my toes
as if I was born without hands

You spoke the other day
of a friend you once knew
her death hovering above your eyelids
as if you had the ability to keep her alive
by never shutting your eyes again
Sometimes it is those kinds of circumstances
that teach us how to see

Sometimes I borrow myself from other people
as if all humanity was a library
but you can never keep the books
not even the ones which are made of you

And so I return myself again and again
bending to the Earth
bowing to the Sun
I loan myself out in poems
and borrow myself back in trying to remember
who my body is
and why it grew coarse and tight
even though my heart has always remained tender
My eyes always glitter for the Sun to see itself again like a child

Today you stretched my flesh beyond its limits
and this poem came out of my sweat
I admit it…even though the workout was light
I should probably be ashamed of sweating
as if bending really is such a hard thing to do

I wondered if you, like Hanuman
have the name of God
written on the inside of your ribs
And does your prayer to God
begin with yourself
And in what language
do you write your inner most secrets:
the ones never made for human ears
For only the ears of Ram can understand such things

I wonder what church I wish to live in these days:
once it was my body
then poetry
then experiences I wore like rosary beads
chanting each one to friends in hope I would retain the wisdom

God is a reckless lover
And I have learned to be cautious of Her whisperings
And yet I cannot ignore Her words
If I do I will become blind

Most people always exist in corpse pose
never reaching for the sky
never stressing the perimeter of their being
until it feels like their insides will split
and the God within them will be released

How it always seems at those points
like the universe will vanish

And yet when you breathe into it
it doesn’t die
but only becomes new

Today you stretched my flesh beyond its limits
and I found myself curled up on the floor like a child
I waited for the final Om
and rolled up yoga straps like sushi
placing each one carefully into its wicker basket display case

I anointed myself
with the lessons of another
with the lessons of a thousand years
like a Guru calling me through time

“Go, go then, on to the other side:
Enlightenment
Yeah!”

-Brett Bevell

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Rebecca Schumejda - Rebecca Schumejda is the author of several full-length collections including Falling Forward (sunnyoutside press), Cadillac Men (NYQ Books), Waiting at the Dead End Diner (Bottom Dog Press) and most recently Our One-Way Street (NYQ Books). Her latest book, Something Like Forgiveness, a single epic poem accompanied by collage art by Hosho McCreesh is out from Stubborn Mule Press. She is the co-editor at Trailer Park Quarterly. She received her MA in Poetics from San Francisco State University and her BA from SUNY New Paltz. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family. www.rebecca-schumejda.com



A Nest

My daughter brings a fallen bird’s nest,
points at kite tails woven in with twigs
and leaves. Look! she says, and I see how
those long colorful streamers left tangled in
branches became useful again. I think of
my brother flying kites from cell to cell
looking for companionship, all the tales
caught up in between steel bars. You don’t
understand the power of words scribbled
on the backs of prison request forms,
he’s told me time and time again,
the difference a small offering makes.
She writes long letters to her uncle, but
I don’t let her read his incoherent responses,
he’s busy, I tell her. She wants to bring
the nest inside; she wants to hatch
the one undamaged egg. It doesn’t work
like that, I tell her, but she’s stubborn.
She fills a Ziploc baggie with warm water
covers it with a washcloth to place atop the egg.

-Rebecca Schumejda

published in FRIGG

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Developing WPS 2020 Schedule - all readings at Golden Notebook (Upstairs)
All of 2020 Events: Events

01/January 11th - Elizabeth J. Coleman; Lee Slonimsky
02/February 8th - Andrea Mitchell; Bruce Weber
03/March 14th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan Canceled
04/April 11th - Brett Bevell; Rebecca Schumejda Canceled
05/May 9th - Judith Saunders; Raphael Kosek Canceled
06/June 13th - Elizabethanne Spiotta; William Seaton Canceled
07/July 11th - Barbara Ungar; Stuart Bartow Canceled
08/August 8th - Irene Sipos; Perry S. Nicholas Canceled
09/September 12th - Elizabeth Cohen; Lisa Rhoades Canceled
10/October 10th - Philip Pardi; Sparrow Canceled
11/November 14th - Anique Taylor; Mary Leonard Canceled
12/December 12th - Guy Reed; Victoria Sullivan and Annual Business Meeting Canceled

Also, why not become a 2020 Member of the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join, send your check to the Woodstock Poetry Society, P.O. Box 531, Woodstock, NY 12498. Include your email address as well as your mailing address and phone number. Or join online at: www.woodstockpoetry.com/become.html). Your membership helps pay for meeting space rental, post-office-box rental, the WPS website, and costs associated with publicizing the monthly events. One benefit of membership is the opportunity to have a brief biography and several of your poems appear on this website.

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