Friday, February 23, 2024

One Minute Poems for 2024

 



 Berks Bards is looking for One-Minute Poems for broadcast between programming on BCTV.org for National Poetry Month in April.

For a $10 donation to Berks Bards, via PayPal, cash or check made out to Berks Bards, you can participate.

There are three options for recording a one-minute poem:
💻 Zoom
🎥 Submitting a self-produced video
🎙️ Recording a poem in-person at @bctv_org

Which ever option you choose, please schedule with Marilyn Klimcho at 💌 : klimcho@msn.com.



Sunday, February 18, 2024

Featured Poet for March is Shawn R. Jones


Join us for First Thursday Poetry 
Thursday, March 7th from 6:00 - 7:45 p.m. forFirst Thursday Poetry  
at Goggleworks Center for the Arts201 Washington St., Reading    berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/


The Featured Poet for March is
Shawn R. Jones


 Today My Cousin Brenda Would Have Been 50 


The woman we called Morning limped 

down Washington Street, asking for a dollar. 


Everyone knew it was just a matter of time. 

Government wasn’t an enabler. No Narcan 

  

to resurrect zombies. Folks dropped, 

leaving brown puddles. Heroin ate people. 

  

Every day a little thinner, disappearing 

into clothes like ghosts. Till they were ghosts 


on Washington forever, their nothingness enough 

to change moods of stray cats and dogs. 

  

Morning would be no different. Last time                                                         

I saw her, she swallowed her teeth 

  

before she opened her mouth to speak, 

You remember me? 

  

Did she mean from yesterday? 

I searched her eyes, tried to look inside her. 

  

We used to eat crayons together. I saw something 

familiar. Delightful. Plates full of crayons.  


Her sitting in a yellow romper.  

Legs, hardwood floor-brown.  


Two front teeth missing. 

Mouth full of colored wax, laughing. 


Sunday, December 17, 2023

Join us for Open Mics in 2024!




Join us for First Thursday Poetry Readings - Open Mic edition - 
on January 4th and February 1st at the GoggleWorks in Reading, PA. 



 

Sunday, December 3, 2023

If Only by Joseph Ross

 



December's Featured Poet is

Joseph Ross

If Only

For Elijah McClain, 1996-2019. Killed by police in Aurora, Colorado,

he was known as a gentle soul, who played his violin to soothe anxious

animals in shelters.

If only a violin could redeem

the world.

Your skin, glowing like the violin’s wood,

might still sing its humble lament.

Your fingers,

the supple dancers they were,

could skim across the violin’s

neck, could light each trembling

string. Your gentle

neck could guard the violin’s

shivering body, cradling its curves,

a lover.

If only we might be transformed,

to delight

in smallness, might cherish

a boy, a man, as whole as you.


Monday, November 27, 2023

Joseph Ross is December's Featured Poet


 

December's Featured Poet is

Joseph Ross

Joseph Ross is the author of five books of poetry: Crushed & Crowned (forthcoming, 2023), Raising King (2020), Ache (2017), Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). His poems appear in many publications including, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Poet Lore, The Langston Hughes Review, and the 2022 anthology, WHERE WE STAND: Poems of Black Resilience. He has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations and won the 2012 Pratt Library / Little Patuxent

Review Poetry Prize for his poem “If Mamie Till Was the Mother of God.” Recently, Ross served as judge for the 2021 Ken Ebert Poetry Prize from Iris G. Press. He currently serves on the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. where he teaches English and Creative Writing. Ross writes regularly at www.JosephRoss.net

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Lisa DeVuono is Featured Poet for November 2nd First Thursday Poetry Reading


 


Join us for First Thursday Poetry 
Thursday, November 2nd from 6-8:00 p.m. for1st Thursday Poetry Open Mic 
In Room Y117 at YOCUM LIBRARY Reading Area Community College  berksbards@gmail.com         https://berksbards.blogspot.com/



November's Featured Poet is
Lisa DeVuono


Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Feast by Jane Edna Mohler

 


October's Featured Poet isJane Edna Mohler


Feast

I love the fat of summer, flabby

green weeks when weeds lap

over the vague rims of back

roads, just as batter overtakes

a griddle. Poplar leaves wave

wide as cows’ tongues slurping

syrup-thick air. Here, summer spits

when it talks, gulps cold milk

and wipes a hand across its mouth.

I want to stuff myself full

with warm fields, hills tender

and round as yeast rolls bathed

in butter. Oh to scoop the ooze

of June’s soft eggs, consume

this season, lick its juices, chew

salty bacon days.

One Art: A Journal of Poetry first publication September 3, 2023Jane Edna Mohler  |   jane.e.mohler@gmail.com  |  www.janeednamohler.com