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.