Woodstock Poetry Society
Featured Reading and Open Mike
Saturday, June 11, 2022 at 2pm (eastern)

via Zoom

James Reitter
Jessica Cuello

Poets James Reitter and Jessica Cuello will be the featured readers, followed by an open mike when the Woodstock Poetry Society meets virtually via Zoom on Saturday, June 11, 2022 at 2pm (eastern).

WPS meetings are held the 2nd Saturday (2pm) of every month.

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike. Thank you.

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

Features:

James Reitter - James Reitter is an Associate Professor of English in New York and has been publishing poetry for almost three decades. He is the author of Scratched Records (2019), an ekphrastic collection of poetry and art, and is Editor In Chief of Masque and Spectacle, a biannual online journal or arts and literature. His poetry has recently been published in Forge, Moss Puppy Mag, and Green Ink Poetry.



Junkyard Gathering

Cars are beautiful in their decay of smashed windows,
popped hoods and trunks, open doors. They have no
secrets left to them. Instead, they bare their souls and
become naked to time. Flowering trees and wild greens
try to keep the scene polite, but the cars won’t have it.
Vinyl roofs have peeled away and tires have been
purposefully removed in an automotive orgy.
The cars hold an eternal, carnal attraction. Sagging parts,
wrinkles, dents and dings do not dissuade them. Size never
mattered: the wide, the narrow, the short, the long.
Indiscriminate as they lay on top of each other, sharing
their essence and copulating in the riddles of steel and rubber.

Most of my cars deserve such a fate, drunk with mangled sex
and rusted debauchery. The Nova would be deity in Sodom and the
Prelude, a sleek seductress despite the plastic surgery via bondo.
The Tercel is banished to Hell, but the Sentra would make a Ford or
Chevy very happy.

-James Reitter

*

Jessica Cuello - Jessica Cuello’s Liar was selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize and her manuscript Yours, Creature is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in spring of 2023. Cuello is also the author of Hunt (The Word Works, 2017) and Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Cuello has been awarded The 2017 CNY Book Award, The 2016 Washington Prize, The New Letters Poetry Prize, a Saltonstall Fellowship, and The New Ohio Review Poetry Prize. She is a poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review and teaches French in CNY.



My Babysitter Karen B Who Was Sent to Willard Asylum

There are only two photos of me as a child.
She took them, she had no child.

She had Kool Cigarettes and a job at the drugstore.
She gave me the Crayola box with the built-in sharpener.

Four hundred suitcases were stored in the attic
of Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane.

She joined her twin brother there.
She wore her black hair down.

A child could admire it.
She bought me an Easter basket,

a stuffed rabbit whose fur rubbed off.
She walked everywhere.

She painted circles of blush on her cheeks.
Loony, people said so,

I mean grown-ups who saw signs
who passed her on our street before she

started to call and say Remember,
on the phone she said Remember,

Remember the date we killed her brother,
forgetting he’d been committed.

I took her hand and tagged along like an animal.
She was perfect to a child.

In 1995, when the asylum closed,
an artist took photos of the 400 suitcases.

The photos were put online,
the contents laid out respectfully.

In the open suitcases: belts,
pocket knives, Lone Ranger cards,

keys, ribbons, shoe polish,
mirrors, pills, a fountain pen,

bottle of glycerine, a zither,
kit of needles, bread ration card,

The Gospel of John, a letter.
Each suitcase had a name:

Lena C, Lillian L, Mary T
Gloria P, Cassie M, Francis T

Marian R, Catherine S, Dmytre Z
Ruby C, Anthony C, FJL

Viola G, Alice T, Carrie L
Karen B, Remember

-Jessica Cuello

*

WPS 2022 Schedule - all readings are now HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
All of 2022 Events: Events

Due to the ongoing pandemic - for now, all meetings will be held virtually via Zoom
The Zoom app can be downloaded here: Zoom Download Center

To attend: contact phillip@woodstockpoetry.com to receive Zoom info
If attending, please indicate if you would like to be on the open mike following the featured readers. Thank you.

01/January 8th - Bruce Weber; Jerrice J. Baptiste via Zoom
02/February 12th - Leigh Ann Christain; Mike Jurkovic via Zoom
03/March 12th - Alison Koffler; Ken Holland via Zoom
04/April 9th - The Hudson Valley Women's Writing Group via Zoom
05/May 14th - Roger Hecht; Saida Agostini via Zoom
06/June 11th - James Reitter; Jessica Cuello via Zoom
07/July 9th - Alison Woods; Matthew Burns via Zoom
08/August 13th - Arden Levine; Marjorie Maddox via Zoom
09/September 10th - Dennis Rush; Robert Charles Basner HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
10/October 8th - Joann Deiudicibus; Thomas Festa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
11/November 12th - Cheryl Rice; Teresa Costa HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom
12/December 10th - Anique Sara Taylor; Cate McNider and Annual Business Meeting HYBRID: in-person & streamed via Zoom

Also, why not become a 2022 Member or donate to the Woodstock Poetry Society?

Membership is $20 a year. (To join or donate, 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 our upgraded Zoom account, 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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