Blake More hosts the Point Arena Third Thursday Poetry Zoom reading at 7pm on the dates below.
Thursday, July 21 – Melissa Elftherion-Carr with the Original Ensemble
On Thursday, July 21, at 7:30pm The Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series will feature Ukiah Poet Laureate Melissa Eleftherion. The reading will take place at the Arena Market cafe (as well as virtually via Zoom) and will begin with live improv jazz, followed by a featured reading with Melissa Eleftherion, then an open ... view more »
Blake More hosts the Point Arena Third Thursday Poetry Zoom reading at 7pm on the dates below.
Thursday, July 21 – Melissa Elftherion-Carr with the Original Ensemble
On Thursday, July 21, at 7:30pm The Third Thursday Poetry & Jazz Reading Series will feature Ukiah Poet Laureate Melissa Eleftherion. The reading will take place at the Arena Market cafe (as well as virtually via Zoom) and will begin with live improv jazz, followed by a featured reading with Melissa Eleftherion, then an open mic with jazz improve, and finally the reading will conclude with more live improv jazz.
Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & ten chapbooks: huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (Dusie, 2014), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), the leaves the leaves (poems-for-all, 2017), green glass asterisms (poems-for-all, 2017) little ditch(above/ground press, 2018), trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020), & abalone (poems-for-all, 2021).
Her poems & prose have been widely published in over 100 journals and anthologies, & nominated for various awards including the Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net. Most recently, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Berkeley Poetry Review, Paperbag, & On the Seawall.
Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa is an alumna of Brooklyn College (BA), Mills College (MFA), and San Jose State University (MLIS). She created, developed, and co-curates The San Francisco State University Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange with Elise Ficarra. Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.
The Empress / Being With
Into wild open space Rigor fades
We’re in the echo Sage & stone
We return to the trees to remember how to breathe
Beneath the redbud & over serpentinite
Understory & mapped by its leaves
A cast of veins across our cheek
Awake & rippling with light
There at mountain base A single buttercup
Blur of yellow across the sky A single buttercup
Bright and waxy flowers Stems eaten fresh
The Pomo gathered these seeds for pinole, left an offering
Acorns cast like stars
On a path is it
The right one
Toyon and tan oak Healed by the hush
Coast redwood Covered by your canopy
We have so much to learn We add another curious layer
Wave of the sword fern
On the cusp of wisdom and will we are summoned to withstand
This virus this mechanism of destruction alienation and catastrophe
Fear tries to eviscerate the heart of justice it is a calling to breathe into the
Soreness stoke the fire take in what’s broken & salve
& salve its fractures the work is ongoing there is no prize but the self Which is a world of healing
Eye of curious bark
Tough wonder of meaning
Might and bloom
Sedge of the gentle bristle heart
Mycelial ancestor
Hum to undo harm
Where we fold within
Xylem and phloem constellate
Mixing of absolute sugars
We are with the grasshopper the reindeer lichen the bee and opossum citrine & jasper apical meristem
the Manzanita – a bird in profile about to ascend
Cob & thorn
Gentle whistle of conifer
To be with the foliose to be with the crustose the seastar cockle & abalone
Angelica Amanita muscaria to be with its sadness
To be with the gray willow The California buckeye Blue Elderberry
Tarweed & Madrone Valley Oak & Wild Rose
The white root sedge the white root sedge (Carex Barbarea) how you continue Xylems and scars
White sage & black walnut
Bulrush (scirpus robustus) the dark rhizome may you continue (dig roots in fall)
In relation with The Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog The Alligator Lizard
The rattlesnake
In relation with redwood mixed evergreen oak woodland Douglas fir
Chaparral coastal scrub grassland & coastal strand
Yarrow and thistle sandstone and shale
a song and lyric both
We thrum and chortle
We are in and with
Fold in and be with
Thursday, August 18 — Dana Teen Lomax
Thursday, September 15 – John Cahn
Thursday, October 20 – Marilyn “Motherbear” Scott
Thursday, November 17 – Thomas Roberdeau
Thursday, December 15 (open mic solstice)
To watch or participate as an open mic reader, please email blake@snakelyone.com
Third Thursday Poetry Zoom made possible by the Arena Theater and continues to be supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.
View less