Loose Leaf Notes

In the end I’m like Rosa Parks … I don’t want to get up and go where I’m told … I work just as hard as any other poet … and I write from where I sit … Colleen
Mara and I performed our dueling punctuation poems as promised at this month’s Spoken Word open mic. The best part was that both our poems were work-shopped at our writer’s circle earlier in the week as poems, not as a poem with punctuation and one without. In the end, the irony was that the audience members listening couldn’t see the punctuation, or lack of it, and so the point was mute.
Refreshing newcomer to the open mic stage, June, read a poem about a dying squirrel. … even in this moment of anguish I admired his full tail and beautiful coat. It seemed the right thing to do … She’s also a new Floyd blogger and you can read her poem in its entirety on her blog HERE.
Greg brought a prop. No, I don’t mean the tattoos up and down his arms. I mean a painting he did. His poem was directed to all the art buyers who didn’t buy it at an art show he placed it in once.
Chelsea Adams loves coffee! Retired, for the time being, from teaching writing at Radford University, Chelsea has a new chapbook, called Java Poems. The tie in to the main feature of Café Del Sol was not lost on Sally, who introduced each reader. “You can come read your poems here anytime,” Sally said into the mic after Chelsea faced her addiction with odes to her dark potent master.
When she read one called “Seductress” written in the voice of coffee it made me think about vampires, the gory lure. .. You are afraid of your desire for me, the hold I have on you, my sultry depths, wary of the jittery feeling I sometimes create in you, leery of a night without sleep …
By the end of her java reading she was proclaiming “Hallelujah!” in a poem titled “Salvation.” Research proclaims drinking six cups a day prevents diabetes, cancer, a heart condition …
Janean wears red shoes and writes funny, sexy poems. The pieces she read ranged from poems about drag queens to those about her love of the opera. “I don’t know if I should believe a word you say,” I joked at the end of the night.

“It’s all true,” she insisted.
There were only six readers, but each brought a rich variety of good work to the mix. We started on time, ended early, and really appreciated the people who came out to listen. But we really didn’t end where we ended. Last month the café was closed when we arrived, and we ending up doing a sidewalk street performance. This month we stayed till the chairs were turned upside down on the tables and Sally gave us a tactful reminder that we didn’t live there.
Laurie and Rob, a couple from Roanoke arrived late. Mara, who knew Laurie from Hollins College, decided they deserved a private reading. Four of our six readers agreed to hang around and an impromptu round robin reading around the coffee table ensued. As the café staff cleaned up, we re-read our poems and broke out some other ones. Mara recited one for memory so naturally that Rob thought she was just talking and interrupted her. I wanted to correct the line I flubbed during the official reading. After that I read a poem about spooky sunflowers to ring in the beginning of fall, which seems to have arrived overnight.
I can’t stand to see them droop … Faces hung like lamps bent over … Their lights are out … Their shame is as drastic … as their joy was in August … They burn at both ends …
Maybe next month — October 20th from 7 -9 at Café Del Sol — we’ll read dueling ghoul poems.
Photos: 1. Greg reads 2. June 3. Chelsea 4. Janine 5. Left to right: Janine, Mara, June, Laure (can’t be seen), Rob, Colleen. Scroll down HERE for past Spoken Word entries.