LisaAnn LoBasso Reading at The Inspired Word Series

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MC/Host Marron Cox


LisaAnn LoBasso


Terri Muuss

The Inspired Word in NYC/June 29!

The Inspired Word: Passionate Readings of Poetry & Prose

When: Monday, June 29

Time: 7:00-10 pm (though you're welcome to stay until closing time)

Location: Tierra Sana Restaurant
http://www.tierrasana.com/
Click here
100-17 Queens Blvd & 67th Road
Forest Hills, Queens
New York City

By subway, take the local R or V to 67th Avenue stop (and it's right there between 67th Road and 67th Avenue along Queens Boulevard).

Free wine tasting and appetizers for the first hour! Awesome ambience and food! A great collection of writers and their work!

Performer Bios:

DubbleX has been writing & playing music his entire life. He has been published by Street Literature Review Magazine (paper) The Cartier Street Review, the Nov. 3rd Club, Polarity, Mad Swirl, and readerjack.com, and wheelhouse magazine. DubbleX teaches special education and writes & plays music to stay sane.

Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin leads workshops for people committed to using their creativity against the machine that incarcerates two million Black and Latino people a year. He has been teaching youth inside detention centers across the country for seven years. His work in Rikers Island has been featured in New York Times and Fortune Magazine articles.Tongo has published in the journal Roots and Culture. He ran a creative writing program for New York youth who have been incarcerated which resulted in those youth competing in the 2006 Brave New Voices international youth slam. A founding member of Black Fire, he regularly performs at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café and other venues. He also produces a monthly show at the Nuyorican called “Write from Wrong” that features survivors of the prison industrial complex.

Melissa Fadul is a native of Queens, New York. She received her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She teaches high school English literature full-time in Jamaica, New York. Along with poetry, she is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Patricia Spears Jones is a poet, playwright and cultural commentator. She is author of Femme du Monde and The Weather That Kills. Her work is anthologized in Bowery Women: Poems; broken land: Poems of Brooklyn, Poetry After 911; Best American Poetry, 2000 and in the journals: The Black Scholar, Bomb, TriQuarterly, Barrow Street, PMS: poemmemiorstory, Fifth Wednesday, Court Green, and Black Renaissance Noire. Reviews, interviews, and essays can be found in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Calabar, Black Issues Book Review, Bomb, Village Voice, Essence, The Brooklyn Rail, and www.tribes.org. She received awards from the NEA, NYFA, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Goethe Institute and was appointed to the Black Earth Institute, www.blackearthinstitute.org in 2008 and the VCCA Fellows Council in 2006.

Joy Leftow, is a poet, writer and editor of The Cartier Street Review, Smoke, and SLR Magazine. “Writing is breathing, I need it to live and survive – it’s my water, my air, my first love.” “Poet Laureate” of Washington Heights, Leftow is a double alumna at Columbia University and has her second Masters from CCNY in Creative Writing. She’s been featured on Rockland Internet Radio, Indie Feed, and Jazz Poetry Café, and Everything Goes. To date, her poetry and other types writing have published over 100 times.



Soraya Shalforoosh’s poems and reviews have appeared in journals such as the Marlboro Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Barrow Street, Columbia Poetry Review, Tribes.org, etc. Soraya Shalforoosh was featured as an Emerging Poet in the Academy of American Poet’s, emerging poet series.

Stephanie Sherman does things that are deemed useless in a capitalist society, like poetry-writing and dancing. She spent two years in Quito, Ecuador on a Fulbright scholarship, teaching and choreographing works that reflected the realities of Ecuadorian society. There, she published her first book of poems, Alucinando en Quito (Editorial Carishina, 2007), in Spanish. For the last two years, she has been writing poems simultaneously in both languages. This spring, she will graduate from Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, with an MFA in Dance. In 2001, she graduated from Vassar College with Phi Beta Kappa and high honors in Hispanic Studies.



Tantra-zawadi, an award-winning performance poet and author, has been spreading her spoken word message to global, standing-room-only audiences for some time now. Her poetry was featured in Essence Magazine and she is the host and founder of WORDSPACE - A Spoken Word Series. Some of her performance credits include Def Poetry-Plugged In at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Brooklyn Museum, Barnum Museum, Polk County Museum, Brooklyn NEXT, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the Guild Theatre, Trane Studios and When Sisters Speak in Toronto, and the Product(RED) video-wall. Latest CD: Love Planet EP with Collective Spirits. For more info, please visit her site: http://www.tantrasmasterwordplay.com/. Click here



MCs/Hosts: Marron Cox, Sherri Eldin, Vanessa Hollingshead.

All you need to bring is your love for the written word, but...PLEASE do your best to support the restaurant, your servers, and the performing writers.

Best,

Mike

Work from Our Inspired Word Poets

The Tongan (American) Creation Myth
For my American Tongan generation, For our youth
written by
vaimoana litia makakaufaki niumeitolu,
Harlem, NY
4.2009

MYTH:
We want Jesus, Our hair blown out, football and Paris Hilton
to save us
Britney, Miley, MTV and Hollywood dreams
to inspire us
We like that Urban Outfitters and Old Navy
steal our vivid, flower patterns
for their Summer Collections
So we can wear “our culture” and share it with “others”
We are a coooooooooooooooooool people
Shaaaaaaka Brada, Hang Loose
Come be with us!
Let’s have a Luau Office Party!
We are Hip and Laid back Folks
Chillllll, We are Sexy and Happy Natives

TRUTH is:
Our patterns are depressing
We have no collections or recollection
of our history
We hate ourselves
We hate our thickness
We hate our bigness
We hate our brownness
We hate you
We are tired and need a vacation
Somewhere else
We Laugh at FOBS
and hope and pray for
thin noses, thin thighs
thin lives
Hiding
we grew up on
spam, pork, corn beef, vienna sausages,
white wonder bread and
white is supreme wonderfulness
Forgetting
we were raised
on the strength & courage
of our parents
who are FOBS
our Aunties and Uncles
FOBS
our cousins, our sisters, our brothers,
FOBS
We are ashamed of who we are
with Pride

TRUTH is:
Our hair no longer grows long
We despise the curl, the thickness
The wideness, the broadness
We want to be lighter in all ways:
weight, skin tone, mind capacity
We think reading is the “Palangi way”
We think education is “not a part of us”
while Epeli Hau’ofa passes away

MYTH:
We are Exotic Fantasies
We like that “South Pacific” is a revival at Lincoln Center
We are Safe, Secure and Smiling
Our Future is so Bright

TRUTH is:
We are definitely not exotic Fantasies
but carry these myths in our palms
like its our reality
We are bored with each other
We still have blond dreams and blue eyed fantasies
We crave to be wrapped into George Washington--he excites us
We have attitude—not fierce or good
we got “I don’t want to be bothered, Leave me alone,
Who do you think you are?” attitude
We shoot each other down with guns and gossip
Smile and pretend we don’t see other or ever hear this
We sing other People’s Songs & satisfied with lipsynching
We are dying and need a revival
We are secure in not knowing
who we are

FACT:
We are actual facts
Look us up
Wikipedia got us
Yes, we do exist
even if no one has heard of us or met us in flesh
I am not the only one
This is where the real test in Faith should be in
Ourselves
We are real, live and direct
We are Rising Statistics in UN Conferences and Academic Papers
More Documentaries need to share this
Scientists and Economists can confirm this
Margaret Mead didn’t want to mention this
Jeffery Sachs can attest to this
Brangelina wishes they can adopt this
Gauguin was afraid to paint this

We are poor
We are hungry
We are poverty
We are AIDS/HIV, hidden and shhhhhushed
and other multiple STDs and diseases that are never discussed
We tell ourselves that no one has sex
yet We are rapes, teen pregnancies and whispered abortions
Diligently hoping, expecting and praying Churches to educate & forgive us
We are islands sinking, no clean ocean, no clean land yet We still want you to come here and we still live here
We are Paradise Burning, Welcome!
We are Fishmerman who don’t have any fish to fish,
there is no more Fish in the Sea, yet We are still Fisherman
We are Hurt, Lost and never found Navigators
We are broken inner compasses with no set maps or direction
We are just waiting for the next “Whale Rider “ movie to premier at Sundance and Cannes, So we CAN finally get some airtime on a major network, be written up in a magazine and say we got some “representation”
say we got sumtin because we are a “nothing people”
We are a “ What ARE our natural resources?” No oil can be found here, Our Leaders wish we had some—we only got coconuts, mangos, pineapples and sugarcane people
We are struggling to survive & wishing for American dollars and Euros to invest here, we want your money and will take it monarchy
We are Turtles with plastic soda rings around our necks and backs, We are deformed toxic reefs, seaweed and never ending waste and trash
We are the biggest Ocean--the Pacific Ocean--in the whole entire World!
with the largest dump Site on the Planet!
We want more and more countries to dump with us, it means more money for schools never built government
We are a “no one really knows us” people and we are “invisible in this world” visibly seen in friendly commercials and brochures, want one? Cleaning new hotels and condos
We go about our lives passing, never telling our stories, leave it for someone else to do and tell, Silent Storytellers
We are Oceania connected through our bloodlines with a high percentage of alcohol, diabeties and high blood pressure generation
We are a Paaaaaarty People, We praise Bob Marley and blast Reggae yet at anytime we sneer at Uliulis thinking we are better—Raise another drink and cheers to our next generation of the Pacific People in America!

TRUTH but not YET FACT:
Let us break the myths that hold us down, call us ugly
Betray each other and ourselves
Let us be our own Creators
of our own Lives
Let us re-definite and re-tattoo on our bodies and minds
the stories of where we once belonged
Let us create our own possibilities of
who we always wanted to be
Let us create our own powerful beginnings
and navigate through these treacherous times
So more of us can have happy, fulfilled endings
Let us be our most powerful, brilliant, greatest selves
and sail through this new land of opportunity
Together
Let us make and keep our own promises with each other
In this Promised land of broken promises
Let Us believe in our own
Natural Beauty and resources of
Generosity, Kindness, Strength, and Love
Let us exist
in who we truly are
Beautiful
Community
and
Divine
Let us
create
Ourselves
Let us create
Ourselves
now



The Designated Underpaid Office Manager

Job Description:

Work – Work – Work!

The office jackass of all trades and the master of none – your work, his work, her work, the boss’ work, the clerical’s work, the messenger’s work, the housekeeper’s work – everyone’s work. Your responsibility is to be a loyal member of the team. It doesn’t matter how many hours you put in as long as the work gets done.

Vacation and sick days are not included. Overtime is your time. Benefits include doing the job yourself since it would take longer to delegate, and at least the job would be done correctly. Training the office jerk would only make you sicker.

Why?

Because you have to do it and they won’t! You know that you are a valued worker with an honorary title and your coworkers and boss would only screw up and make a mess. It would be worse should you be out sick. Try to take vitamins and eat a more nutritious diet. Exercise more. Try jogging while running office errands. Do weightlifting with your paperwork, even with your computer. It’s good to burn up calories and cellulite; keeps the heart fit and could get you back into that bikini you’ve kept in your drawer for over five years. Get extra sleep. Instead of wasting time commuting, why not sleep at your desk? Every extra hour of sleep would benefit your mental ability and stamina, thus would give you the energy needed for new projects in the morning. Use the restroom for a quick wash-up. We would not appreciate our underpaid office manager to smell organic.

Complaining Isn’t Professional!

Be grateful that you still have a job. Think about the poor starving brokers who used to work on Wall Street. Don’t whine about some people having all the luck! They could be laid off and you would have the privilege of doing their jobs. It would be like a promotion, except we won’t be able to give you a raise due to the budget.

Smile More and Keep a Positive Attitude!

Your heart will tick longer and you would look more attractive, plus a harmonious office lifestyle is healthier for all of us. Our criterion for business ethics was built by teamwork. Think of work as a form of Zen and you’ll be a happier employee as long as whistling while you work doesn’t offend your coworkers’ ears.

Sincerely,

Your HR representative

- Patricia Carragon November 2008




You Ask Me Who Am I

You ask me who am I? I tell you that I am Anacaona the Kacike of the Tainos of Kiskeya. Again you ask me who am I? I tell you that I am the mother of those seeking refuge. I am the Earth Mountain for her children to rest their weary heads, I am the birthplace of all those who come to ask questions where they came from.

My name is Kiskeya. My name is Earth Mountain and Earth Mother the birthplace of my children the Tainos. My name symbolizes the Heart of our ancestry for those to understand. Feeling the hurt of my children, people and land,

When you fall, I am there to pick you up. When you’ve been cut, I am there to cover your wounds, when you need shelter; I am there to cover you from the cold and rain.

Who am I? There is no need to ask. I am you, you and you.
The people of yesterday, today and tomorrow the ancestry of all three that makes us complete. The Taino, African and Spaniard are the bloodlines that in the end were made to be.

Uniquely different that sets everyone apart,
So we can shout at the top of our lungs to the whole world.
That we still exist for you to acknowledge and see,
We give of ourselves but instead been mistreated,
We have been forgotten, used and abused for being different.
We are not a plague or disease; we are peaceful and loving people.

So tell me who are you?
Who are you to question your mother?
Tu cres que tú te manda?

Tell me how can you stand there and still wonder.
I gave of myself to make sure that our story lives on,
Hispaniola, Santo Domingo or Dominican Republic my name has been changed but I remain Kiskeya with a capital K.

- Reina M. Miranda





Riding the Wonder Wheel

we’d wait for a swinging car
smoke a joint on the way up
make out like maniacs
when we reached the top
the ride would end and we’d
tumble out in weak-kneed
passion, light cigarettes
with shaking hands
and hot fingers,
lay across benches
on the boardwalk
rats racing by
old men jerking off
we didn’t care
our skin was melting

september came
and the rides closed
we cut school,
climbed up the fire escape
your mother was sleeping
on the plastic covered couch
we stayed in your room
for hours, it felt like days
but fucking you in your bed
never even came close
to our Wonder Wheel kisses,
rocking in the clouds
as coney island roared
beneath our happy feet

© puma perl, 4/6/09

The Inspired Word on Monday, June 1st!

The Inspired Word: Passionate Readings of Poetry & Prose

When: Monday, June 1

Time: 7-10 PM

Where: Tierra Sana Restaurant
http://www.tierrasana.com/
100-17 Queens Blvd & 67th Road
Forest Hills, Queens
New York City

By subway, take the local R or V to 67th Avenue stop (and it's right there between 67th Road and 67th Avenue along Queens Boulevard).Time: 7:00-10 pm (though you're welcome to stay until closing time)

Free wine tasting and appetizers! Awesome ambience and food! A great collection of writers and their work!

Performer Bios:

Meghan Beresford is a New York-based writer, dancer and performance artist. She is a 2003-2004 US Fulbright Scholar in the area of Creative Writing (Fiction and Poetry). Her creative work has been granted by the University of Iowa, the State of Iowa, and the Newfoundland Arts Council. In her past lives, Meghan has been a columnist for Newfoundland alt publication CURRENT and co-founder/editor of the now-defunct Zeugma Literary Journal, a hand-bound small run lit magazine that published new talent alongside such literary luminaries as Mary Dalton, Monica Kidd and Alberto Manguel. Meghan’s newest project is Lookshelves: Bookshelves to Look At a website for literary voyeurs. You can check it out at www.lookshelves.com.

Patricia Carragon is a writer who also hosts and curates the Brooklyn-based Brownstone Poets Reading Series, as well as edits its annual anthology. Her pieces can be found on Poetz.com, Rogue Scholars, Mobius, CLWN WR, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Clockwise Cat, Luciole Press, Eviscerator Heaven 4, Flutter, Up the Staircase, Battered Suitcase, Kritya, Inscribed, Live Magazine, Tamarind, Riverfront, Soul Fountain, Stained Sheets and The Toronto Quarterly. Rogue Scholars Press published her book Journey to the Center of My Mind.

Comedian and writer Emily Epstein has been trapped in a self-cleaning toilet and has stitches from a treadmill accident. She performs all around New York City and the Northeast, (not to mention a boat in the middle of the Yangtze River in China). She has been a comedian in the New York Underground Comedy Festival and was on Good Morning America. Her writing has been featured in such publications as Travelistic.com, Gawker.com, and the Hartford Courant.

Jee Leong Koh is the author of "Payday Loans" and "Equal to the Earth" (both from Poets Wear Prada Press). His poetry has appeared in "Best New Poets 2007," and "Best Gay Poetry 2008," and has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Born in Singapore, he now lives in New York City, and blogs at Song of a Reformed Headhunter (http://jeeleong.blogspot.com).

Susan Maurer is a poet, writer, and educator. Her poetry books include By the Blue Light of the Morning Glory (Linear Arts), in2 with Mark Sonnenfeld (Marymark Press), Dream Addict (Backwood Broadsides), Raptor Rhapsody (Poets Wear Prada) and Maerchen (Maverick Duck Press). Her poetry was nominated four times for Pushcart, published in 14 countries, and has appeared in over 400 magazines and anthologies, including Off the Cuffs (Softskull Press), Help Yourself! (Autonomedia), Virgina Quarterly Review, Literary Imagination, Cross Connect and Orbis.

Reina M. Miranda was born in Washington Heights to immigrant parents who came to the United States to provide a better life for their children. Reina is the eldest of four, who first found her love for poetry at the age of 18. Reina has been performing spoken word/poetry for almost two years. Reina is also a member of The United Confederation of Taino People in which she has been learning a lot more about her Taino ancestors. She has learned to fuse her passion for the people she meets and her poetry together so she can help others get “Tainocated." After 23 years, Reina has emerged into the poetry scene and has been appearing at open mics events ever since. She has read at such events as 5C Cultural Club, Capicu Poetry/Notice Lounge, The NuyoRican Poet’s Café/ Taino Poetry, Cemi Underground's Taino Poetry Night and Erotic Poetry, Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen 2, and Rebel Art Collective's S.P.I.T.

Vaimoana (Moana) Niumeitolu is a Painter, Poet, Actor, Activist, Educator and the founder of Mahina Movement, a phenomenal, international, all female, multi-media, multi-cultural, powerful trio that has performed all over the Nation at over 500 stages sharing mics with Dead Prez, Amina & Amira Baraka, Suheir Hammad, Sonia Sanchez and countless others. Moana was born in Nuku’alofa, Tonga; raised in Hawa’ii and Utah and now lives, creates and loves in Harlem, USA. She has traveled and shared her poetry, paintings, and performances all over the US and in Fiji, Ireland, Italy, and South Africa. She graduated from NYU in painting, earned the full-scholarship, Ellen Stokel Fellowship from Yale University and attended the Graduate Theater Program at Columbia University in Acting. She has been seen acting at the Metropolitan Opera and acting 13 characters in her one woman show, Tongue-in Paint, which had it’s world premier in the Summer 2008 at terraNOVa collective’s soloNOVA festival at Performance Space 122. She loves that she is growing older. Life has just begun.

Puma Perl is a poet and fiction writer who believes strongly in the transformative power of the creative arts. Her work has been published in cause & effect, MadSwirl, Trespass ,Red Fez, Gloom Cupboard, Toronto Quarterly, The Oak Bend Review, and many other print and on-line publications. Her work has been published in several anthologies, including The Mom Egg and In Love. Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, was recently published by Erbacce Press. She performs her work in many venues, in and out of New York City. Upcoming features include Stain Bar, Cornelia Café , and the Riverwood Poetry Festival, Middleton CT – Outlaw Night.

MCs/Hosts: Sherri Eldin, Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick, Laura Moisin.

All you need to bring is your love for the written word, but...PLEASE do your best to support the restaurant, your servers, and the performing writers.

The Inspired Word Readings of Poetry & Prose in NYC/April 27th!

The Inspired Word Poetry & Prose Readings in Queens!

When: Monday, April 27th!

Time: 7:00-10 pm (though you're welcome to stay until closing time)

Location: Tierra Sana Restaurant
100-17 Queens Blvd & 67th Road
Forest Hills, Queens
New York City

By subway, take the local R or V to 67th Avenue stop (and it's right there between 67th Road and 67th Avenue along Queens Boulevard).


Free wine tasting and appetizers! Awesome ambience and food! A great collection of writers and their work!

Performer Bios:

Joel Chace has published poetry and prose poetry in print and electronic magazines such as 6ix, Tomorrow, Lost and Found Times, Coracle, xStream, Three Candles, 2River View, Joey & the Black Boots, Recursive Angel, and Veer. He has published more than a dozen print and electronic collections. Just out from BlazeVox Books is CLEANING THE MIRROR: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, and from Paper Kite Press is MATTER NO MATTER, another full-length collection. Just out from Country Valley Press is SCAFFOLD, the first part of an ongoing poetic sequence, and "(b)its," from Meritage Press. For many years, Chace has been Poetry Editor for the experimental electronic magazine 5_Trope.


Becky Froman is a wayward performer and a graduate student at The New School for Media Studies and Film. She obtained her Bachelors Degree from the University of Maryland, College Park in Women’s Studies and Afro-American Studies, with a minor in Music Performance. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY and hopes to one day have assets. She loves her tattoo and hates anything in bulk.


Sinje Ollen is a writer, knitwear designer, sculptor, and former actress. She has acted on Broadway, performed in the Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival , appeared in experimental theater productions in New York and Europe, and starred in "The Tourist", a docudrama which aired at Lincoln Center, at MoMA, and on PBS. Sinje’s knitwear designs have been featured in the Fashioning Brooklyn show at the Brooklyn Library, and on the cover of the New York Sun. Her blog http://www.knityoursocksoff.blogspot.com features an ongoing series of Sinje’s reviews of New York yarn shops. She is also rewriting (hopefully for the last time) a memoir about her German family’s Nazi past.


An 82nd Airborne Paratrooper (98-01), Naropa alumni (02-06) and Long Island University M.F.A.(06) candidate, Gary Parrish co-edited with Leann Bifoss, Poems From Penny Lane (farfalla press 03) an all inclusive anthology featuring over 70 poets chronicling 20 years of poetry in and around Naropa University. He co-curated the year long Bowery Broadside Reading Series 07 featuring original artwork by George Schneeman at the BPC in New York City. He is the 2006 Pedro Pietri Memorial Prize recipient, awarded by The Bowery Arts and Sciences, LTD and The Ester Hynamen Award winner for poetry given by Long Island University (08). Gary's poetry and commentary can be found in Pinstripe Fedora, Big Bridge, Trans-Mountain Poetry, The American Drivel Review, Downtown Brooklyn, Four-Quarter Review, Puppy Flowers and Bombay Gin among others. The Meek, a long poem was published in the Italian Journal, Ludwig (Torino Poesia Press 08). Gary is a co-founder and editor for Farfalla Press, McMillan, and Parrish located in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn where he lives.


Aja Mujinga Sherrard is a multi-cultural, multi-racial wanderer, daughter, artist and student who fell into spoken word by the inspiration of her peers and influence of artists like Saul Williams and Ella Fitzgerald.


For the last six years, Lorraine Rees lived in the rolling mountains of central Virginia where she trained horses and worked as a consultant for fine dining restaurants. She published her first book, Contents Under Pressure, in September of 2007. Lorraine currently resides in Manhattan and looks forward to publishing her second book, The Goodbye Zoo, in 2009.


Larissa Shmailo translated the Russian Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by A. Kruchenych; a DVD of the original English-language production is part of the collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Hirschhorn Museum of the Smithsonian Institute, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art. She also contributed translations to the recent anthology Contemporary Russian Poetry published by Dalkey Archive Press. Her poetry CDs, The No-Net World (SongCrew 2006) and Exorcism (2008) with music by Bobby Perfect are frequently heard on radio and Internet broadcasts. Her latest chapbook is A Cure for Suicide (Cervena Barva Press 2008). Larissa’s full-length collection of poetry, In Paran, will be published by BlazeVox Books in May, 2009. Larissa lives happily on the upper West Side of Manhattan.


Carrie VanDenburg has been writing poetry since the 8th grade. She has been an editor of and been published in two college creative writing journals: Revisions and She's Aloud and was involved in creative writing groups in her undergraduate colleges. Currently, she spends most of her energy in graduate school studying social work but hopes to someday combine her love of creative writing with her love of helping people. Carrie lives in Flatbush Brooklyn with her roommate and two cats.


MC/Host: Marron Cox

All you need to bring is your love for the written word, but...PLEASE do your best to support the restaurant, your servers, and the performing writers.


Best,

Mike Geffner
Founder/Organizer

The Inspired Word - Monday, March 30th!

The Inspired Word/Monday, March 30th!

Time: 7:00-9:00 pm (though you're welcome to stay until closing time!)

Free wine tasting! Free appetizers! Awesome ambience and food! A great collection of writers and their work!

Bios of Reading Writers:

Emily Crocker is a graduate of the Jack Karouac School Of Disembodied Poetics and the co-founder of a small experimental press called Black Lodge Press. Please check out her website at http://www.blacklodgepress.org.

Celia Ingrid Farber is a writer primarily of investigative and narrative journalism living in New York City. She has written for Harper's, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Salon and many other periodicals. She is the recipient of the 2008 Semmelweis "Clean Hands" Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for her 2006 article in Harper's: "Out of Control: AIDS And The Corruption of Medical Science." She has recently changed course and launched a literary website called The Truth Barrier, where her writings will appear, as well as the writings, (poetry, prose and fiction,) of many other known and unknown writers from around the world. She likes to quote Marina Tsvetaeva who wrote: "Naturally I prefer someone who feels but doesn't write to someone who writes but doesn't feel."

Leanna Renee Hieber is a professional actress (Member AEA, SAG, AFTRA) and award-winning playwright but her greatest loves are fantasy fiction, the 19th century and a spooky story. Graduating with BFA in Theatre and a minor in the Victorian Era, she adapted works of Victorian literature for the stage for Miami University and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. The dramatic, historic, spiritual and paranormal are the primary forces in her lyrical, eerie, atmospheric fiction. DARK NEST, a futuristic fantasy novella, debuted to critical acclaim and remains the Bestseller at Crescent Moon Press. THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER, the first in her Gothic Victorian fantasy series from Dorchester Publishing releases 9-9-09. She's the proud co-founder of NYC’s first reading series devoted to romance/women's fiction; Lady Jane’s Salon, which benefits the Share The Love charity for women in need. Please visit her at http://www.leannareneehieber.com.

Roxanne Hoffman, a former Wall Street banker who now answers a patient hotline for a major New York home healthcare provider, has had her poetry anthologized in The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology By Gang Members And Their Affiliates (Soft Skull Press) and can be heard during the independent film “Love & The Vampire,” directed by David Gold. She and her husband own the small press, POETS WEAR PRADA (http://poetswearpradanj.home.att.net), specializing in limited edition poetry chapbooks.

Lawrence E. Soehnel is a poet & publisher from the Hudson River Valley, who hosts the decade old Nyack Poetry Jam in Nyack, N.Y. He is the publisher, primary author and sole owner of the means of production at People's Pages - a publisher of broadsides and chapbooks. In March he will launch West Bank Poetry Review (http://westbankpoetryreview.blogspot.com), a blog about grassroots arts and activism. A former carpenter, Soehnel invites you to "roll up your sleeves, take a deep breath and make culture happen."

Christine Soria, an aspiring model and actress, is a new voice out of Brooklyn whose love for poetry is her "one escape from the world, soothing each day one line at a time," she says.

Christine Timm is a NYC performance poet who produces and co-hosts the NYC College Slam, the annual international Love Poetry Hate Racism event, and Bowery Kids - all at the Bowery Poetry Club. She also co-produces and co-hosts the Smalls Jazz Club Lit Series. She has a Ph.D. in English Lit with dissertation on the Beats and spoken word and teaches poetry, creative writing, and composition at Westchester Community College. Christine’s “Sleeping with . . .” series book is forthcoming on Smalls Book Press.

MCs: Foster Stevenson, Marron Cox

Location: Tierra Sana Restaurant
http://www.tierrasana.com/
100-17 Queens Blvd & 67th Road
Forest Hills, Queens
New York City

By subway, take the local R or V to 67th Avenue stop (and it's right there between 67th Road and 67th Avenue along Queens Boulevard).

All you need to bring is your love for the written word.

Best,

Mike

The Inspired Word - Monday, March 30th!

The Inspired Word: Passionate Readings of Poetry & Prose

When: Monday, March 30th
Time: 7:00-9:00 pm (though you're welcome to stay until closing time!)
Where: Tierra Sana Restaurant
http://www.tierrasana.com/
Click here
100-17 Queens Blvd & 67th Road
Forest Hills, Queens
New York City

Free wine tasting! Free appetizers! Awesome ambience and food! A great collection of writers and their work!

Writers Scheduled to Read:

Leanna Renee Hieber is a professional actress (Member AEA, SAG, AFTRA) and award-winning playwright but her greatest loves are fantasy fiction, the 19th century and a spooky story. Graduating with BFA in Theatre and a minor in the Victorian Era, she adapted works of Victorian literature for the stage for Miami University and the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. The dramatic, historic, spiritual and paranormal are the primary forces in her lyrical, eerie, atmospheric fiction. DARK NEST, a futuristic fantasy novella, debuted to critical acclaim and remains the Bestseller at Crescent Moon Press. THE STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL TALE OF MISS PERCY PARKER, the first in her Gothic Victorian fantasy series from Dorchester Publishing releases 9-9-09. She's the proud co-founder of NYC’s first reading series devoted to romance/women's fiction; Lady Jane’s Salon, which benefits the Share The Love charity for women in need. Visit her at www.leannareneehieber.com.

Lawrence E. Soehnel is a poet & publisher from the Hudson River Valley, who hosts the decade old Nyack Poetry Jam in Nyack, N.Y. He is the publisher, primary author and sole owner of the means of production at People's Pages - a publisher of broadsides and chapbooks. In March he will launch West Bank Poetry Review (http://westbankpoetryreview.blogspot.com), a blog about grassroots arts and activism. A former carpenter, Soehnel invites you to "roll up your sleeves, take a deep breath and make culture happen."

Christine Soria, an aspiring model and actress, is a new voice out of Brooklyn whose love for poetry is her "one escape from the world, soothing each day one line at a time," she says.

Christine Timm is a NYC performance poet who produces and co-hosts the NYC College Slam, the annual international Love Poetry Hate Racism event, and Bowery Kids - all at the Bowery Poetry Club. She also co-produces and co-hosts the Smalls Jazz Club Lit Series. She has a Ph.D. in English Lit with dissertation on the Beats and spoken word and teaches poetry, creative writing, and composition at Westchester Community College. Christine’s “Sleeping with . . .” series book is forthcoming on Smalls Book Press.

MCs: Foster Stevenson, Marron Cox

By subway, take the local R or V to 67th Avenue stop (and it's right there between 67th Road and 67th Avenue along Queens Boulevard).

All you need to bring is your love for the written word!

The Debut of The Inspired Word on Monday Night!

I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out:

Awesome poetry!

Wonderful spirits!

Delicious food and wine!

And a great chemistry between us all!

Thanks so much to our gracious and amazingly talented poets: Caroline Berger, Lea Graham, Amy Holman, and Alexandra Lukens.

and

Our MCs: Foster Stevenson and Marron Cox.

and

Vic Fiallo, the owner of our glorious venue, Tierra Sana Restaurant.

and

To all those who supported us by attending!

Below are a sampling of poems from our brilliant readers:

1,500 Parakeets Rescued from 2-room Apartment
By Amy Holman

In flight, the veterinarians said, nets
bulging with crossly chirping green and blue.
To see a parakeet in a dream bets
you lack initiative and spontaneity,
are immature and dependent, need a new
idea. That bored old retiree
bought and bred the birds until
the rooms were full; popcorn in a foil tent.
So close in flight their feathers frill
and down the floor -- what pastel loft
for pillows sadly spent
with acrid poo. Neighbors coughed
and called, but man was dependent
on the chirping flock of green and blue
crisscrossing his plaster firmament.
Still, breeding lovebirds breaks convention
when pals are playing golf. A foiled intent
for extra cash beyond his pension
stutters in the fluttering hearts of greeting.
It's immature to capture birds
in buildings, not to sweep, or hear their pleading,
yet, the vets said the parakeets were freely flying.
Seven hours of casting nets and foul words,
then releasing to shelters in Berlin and outlying.
I write in a 2-room apartment and find
all the perches parakeets take purchase
of from shelves to frames to cluttered mind
and the screeching has no volume control.
It has verses, beats, and searches
for more — a hole, or the sky to extol?
They must have flown in shifts.
Cops arrested the retiree for captured birds.
Think how many parakeets will be yuletide gifts
this year. Call them Budgies like in Down Under,
divided into pairs for special purchase.
Who decides with whom? Yet another blunder.
Wing tangled nets of blue and green
give way to days spent sadly
adjusting. Where's the man we've always seen?

Sea
By Caroline Berger

She and she are at the sea. The sea makes them shiver. The sea is the ocean, and the ocean is on their lips, and they drink tequila shots, suck on limes, suck on their lips, sit on the beach on the sand by the ocean. They are salted by the sea. They are limbs and limes and lips and sometimes they allow themselves to be washed out to sea. The taste of the sea, what is it? The first she talks of the first taste of the sea. Oh, she says she said, salt. Salt in the sea is surprising to she. This first sea of which she speaks was the warm, warm sea in the center between the south and the north, an El Salvador sea. The second she--she admits, most unabashedly--had a habit, as a small she, of drinking the sea. A hazard of swimming, said she. A hazard of breathing, said she. There is air, there is sea, it was all the same to me. And she did not only imbibe the sea, it seems any body of water would sate the she. The second she sipped lake, sipped pond, sipped ocean and river and creek and even chlorinated pool as she swam, such a swimmer was she. The second she took quite seriously the ninety-eight percent of her self that was—in essence—sea that, should the sea contain salt, or not, it hardly mattered to she. The sea was so much a part of the she that the she no longer noticed the sea she swallowed and swallowed endlessly. But back to the sea and the shes and the sun and the sand. Before the sand and the shots and the limbs and limes and salty lips, the shes were at sea. To be at sea, said the first she, is to be uncertain. Certainly, said the second she, swallowing more sea. Are you sure, said the first she, it is wise to contain so much sea? The second she was sure indeed. But since the sun did not warm the sea quite so thoroughly, this is when the shes came out of the sea. Now instead of sea there is sand. Now there is the sand underneath the shes, and above there are the limbs of the girls and the skin of the girls and the salty sandy youth of the girls scuttling into the sea. The she and the she watch the girls, are in love with the girls, want to suck out the youth of the girls just as they suck their limes and lips as they sit by the sea. The second she talks of the taste of youth. Oh, she says she said, youth. But not really. Because when youth was youth she couldn't say it was youth, only later did she know what it would be. Unlike the salt of the sea, you can't taste youth when you're in youth. Only later. Sitting by the sea with your she. See it go. There it goes. The youth, the shes, the salt, all into the sea, the sea, the sea.

A Crush for Lennie Briscoe
By Lea Graham

O finding comfort in Lennie Briscoe wisecracking
over dead bodies, an apartment in midtown, the city
buzzing, hurtling around him & Ed Green
or before that Rey Curtis & years before that delicious
Mike Logan played by Chris Noth whose eyebrows
we want to frame & hang on a blue wall

Desperation is a sexy rendition of sadness, a body walled
up & stinking, a smell that cracks
open a desire for romance, that girl’s eyebrows
arched just so like a body traced on a street, any city,
her hair splayed, a blue skirt hiked seductively, delicious,
we whisper to ourselves, envious as Green.

In his 69 year-old heart, Jerry Orbach as Briscoe is green,
youthful as Julian Marsh singing “42nd Street,” waltzing
his talent through the years into that ironically delicious
role, a swarthy grandpa growing up through the cracks
of New York, a city that sleeps with everyone, a city
whose eyes raise in circumspect uni-brow.

He would understand our malaise at browsing
the Times, lie waiting for a friend to stroll in strapped in green
fruit & blue flowers, the scoop and arteries of this city
like a painting we once admired on a dealer’s wall,
a moment of sun & motes, a confluence of feeling, a crack
in the horsehair beneath, her grizzled twang from the next room: deeeelish

On swollen days our mother would take us to Luscious Delite
an homage to that clown hugging the cone piercing blue, eyebrows
gummed in chocolate, we argued, wiggled & cracked wise
those summer Mays as if memory would always remain green,
our photos, gathered heights on the wall,
our parents’ shah-lah-lah, an innocence that was our city

spewing us unprepared as Briscoe answering a call from the city,
his daughter shot dead, the grief & delicious
ooh as he sags against Curtis, who invites him home to wallow
in sadness that will never, in following episodes, leave his eyes:
each girl arranged on the sidewalk, some father’s green
failure ripe for every scene’s wisecrack—

O Lenny Briscoe, our gaudy, sporty, wisecracking father, in this city
where we love you walled in green possibility on the blue avenue
your eyebrows take us skipping deliciously reeling to night’s dancing feet

and then it was just me and the 1975 Datsun 280z
By Alexandra Lukens

He and I had to pull off, legs fusing to hot vinyl seats
Sweating for liquor and bodies
Inside there, anonymous musicians, all mustached
Played comically oversized instruments
Music so filling the air, I could kiss it hello and goodbye as it passed all around me
Something like the hostess of a party touching your shoulder and a smile
Passing from guest to guest in greeting
On the floor in front of the makeshift stage
A cello was cracked wide open; its player lay dead inside
The corpse on ice with the beers
Someone dropped a coin into the mediated jukebox in the rear
Drawing themselves up as some unfulfilled caricature of constant starvation

So he and I swallowed down liquor
Dug our fingers through men in tuxedos and tails
Ladies burlesque and long, velvet gloves
Fingered through heavy curtains into an hourless outside
Settled back into sticky vinyl seats Gassing towards the next best show
And, oh, the car was quite the thing
Representation of an extreme state
His vision as driver was not privileged, flocking to view something different from the same
He and I, we knew desolation a diminishing resource
The places that harbored quiet, where nothing was happening
He and I exhausted from, terrified
These places could cause acclimation to stagnancy and fuse skin to vinyl

Those places made me feel sticky, him the same
Thus swearing to seek out some underbelly where the behind-the-times folks played
Where men wore too much, the women too little, and even better vice versa
And everyone wore powder on their cheeks
He and I sought those denied cabaret laws
Where men amused one another by tucking their genitals between their legs
Parading on makeshift stages lifting their petticoats and strutting
Music so loud one needn’t tongue for conversation, only liquor and sweat
Many nights he and I drove past barren into vehicular silence
Promising each other to never let thighs get too sweaty on the car seats
Until another curtained door appeared just before the sun broke ground
He and I fingered through heavy fabrics & birthed into a room

Hundreds shoulder to shoulder to crotch to crotch to hands & tongues &
silly hats & glittering masks, a piano played itself so loud
He and I ordered liquor through tin cans on string stretching from every corner
Even to the bartender, a dwarf in an exaggerated top hat
Sweat so thick in the air my lips chapped and cracked
I could feel the sodium in the space between my mouth and his
As if I had lost him at a crowded, sticky, salty beach and I heard a wave break somewhere
I reached for his hand among too many gloves laced and leather
I looked around and only saw masks and I called for him into the can but he answered in French
And soon I found him in the corner with a young pretty boy in his lap
his fingers in the boy’s mouth, the boy’s mask on his face, his hand lifting the boy’s petticoat
rubbing his tucked and hidden genitals

I knew he would not leave with me that night rather fused to the ass of this boy and here
Even amidst the music he dropped a coin into some jukebox
Succumbed to stagnancy but found it a pleasant sort of sticky
Stay here, I told him, I am going ahead
And took with me a pair of long lace gloves a sequined mask shining red slippers
Slid through the curtains and into the car removed all my clothes
Naked I pulled on the gloves slid on slippers fastened the mask
pulled needle and thread from the glove box Slowly carefully stitched each garment into my skin
The slippers first needle through satin through foot skin and back through satin until fused
Gloves sewn into the forearm skin crisscrossing to be sure of a strong hold against movement
Mask stitched into my cheeks around eyes thin forehead skin fused to my face eyes peeking

With the remaining thread sewed bare sticking leg skin into the hot vinyl seats
Vehicle and body completely fused by sweat and stitching
I would never again have to stand the discomforts of
Peeling my sticky thighs from these sticky seats
So I drove on bypassing curtained doorways
found facing dawn for the very first time
I came upon a deserted beach and drove onto the sand
vast abundance outside my windshield
Inside self-imposed deprivation unable to touch, car and I stitched to each other
This sand this water taste salt not of sweat but of sea
All day we sat parked and stitched with each other
Sweat and salt stinging the punctures where skin and hot vinyl fused with thread

Sun peaked and took time dipping as the water went out of our site
For miles it seemed we drove forward
as far we could to see where the water had gone
We found it two miles out from shore and sat with it
just touching our tires
Though the tide began swimming back in toward the shore
I did not move us
We sunk ourselves into the sand, fusing
The water rose on every side of us
It felt cool, soothed our stitches
Washed away the sticky sweat
Filled our engine then our lungs

The Inspired Word Debuts Monday Night!

The Inspired Word Debuts Monday Night!

Time: 6:30-8 pm (though you're welcome to stay until closing time!)

Location: Tierra Sana Restaurant
http://www.tierrasana.com/
100-17 Queens Blvd & 67th Road
Forest Hills, Queens
New York City

By subway, take the local R or V to 67th Avenue stop (and it's right there between 67th Road and 67th Avenue along Queens Boulevard).

Our Accomplished Poets: Caroline Berger, Lea Graham, Amy Holman, Alexandra Lukens

Caroline Berger is the assistant director of the Bachelor's Program at the New School for General Studies, where she has also taught writing. She is the co-curator of the Sunday Salon, a monthly reading series in Brooklyn, Chicago and Nairobi, and co-editor of the online journal SalonZine. She has read at various venues around New York, Chicago and Ohio. Her writing has appeared in La Petite Zine, Pindeldyboz, Barrow Street, Vibrant Gray, Hiram, U.S.A. Essays from the Hill and Best of Vibrant Gray Chapbook, volume 1. She has been an Artist in Residence at The Artists' Enclave at I-Park, a juror for the Scholastic Writing Awards, and an advisory board member for Girls Write Now, a nonprofit volunteer mentoring organization; she also serves as the coordinator for Girls Write Now Day, a local celebration of International Women's Day, which will be held at The New School this coming Sunday, March 8.

Lea Graham's poems, reviews, and articles, have been published in or are forthcoming in journals such as Sentence, Notre Dame Review, and American Letters & Commentary. Her collaborations with the poet, Rob Mclennan, were published in The Capilano Review in the spring of 2008. Her work was included in two recent anthologies, The City Visible: Chicago Poetry in the 21st Century, and The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel: Second Floor. Calendar Girls, her chapbook, was published in 2006 by above/ground Press. Recently, she and the visual artist, Kristina Dziedzic Wright, created a site-specific installation, Behind Your Velvet Elvis, which has shown in West Chicago and Poughkeepsie, NY (www.velvetelvis.biz). She has a Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Amy Holman writes poetry, fiction and essays. She has poetry recently in the Literal Latte anthology, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, New Verse News and the blog for The Best American Poetry. Her interview with ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman on his metal detecting hobby was published in last summer's Barrelhouse, and her essays have been in the anthologies, Knitting Through It and The Subway Chronicles. Her poetry chapbook, Wait For Me, I'm Gone, won the 2004 Dream Horse Press Annual prize. You find her stories online at The Cortland Review and Night Train Magazine. She is a literary consultant and teacher living in Brooklyn.

Alexandra Lukens is a former student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. Raised along Interstate 95, she currently attends Columbia University's Creative Writing program and lives in Manhattan. She has worked with such writers as Anne Waldman, Steven Taylor, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Jack Collom, Akilah Oliver, and Amiri Baraka and her work has appeared in Monkey Puzzle quarterly arts journal, The Beehive online magazine, and the Kerouac School Summer Writing Program magazine. She is currently the editor-in-chief of the Flaneur Foundry quarterly arts journal which premiers this spring.

MCs: Foster Stevenson, Marron Cox

Free wine tasting! Free appetizers! Awesome ambience and food! A great collection of writers and their work!

All you need to bring is your love for the written word.

See you there!

Mike