POETSWEDNESDAY & More

Piecemeal Panorama by Boni Joi

 

 

Piecemeal Panorama

 

A one bedroom in Brooklyn is home for a city girl

friends from Manhattan seldom visit

it's noisy, studious pigeons roost on the school roof

refrigerator full of organic vegetables

I order Thai take-out and eat dinner alone

keep different work hours than my husband

and, in our apartment, what do we have?

Objects we've collected taking over the space.

 

                                                   --Boni Joi

 

 

Grove of Summer Trees by Laura Freedgood

GROVE OF SUMMER TREES

 

Here’s my dear friend Anne’s painting on the wall.

A shy watercolor, the pale leaves,

 

flecked with light,

a fine copy of what I see outside

 

my bedroom window

close to where I placed the picture,

 

as if offspring of the boughs

that catch my thin mesh screen.

 

No suggestion of pain in the canvas,

no suggestion of days spent sprawled

 

across her bed cloaked with sweat

in the delicate branches rising upward,

 

the ground beneath a wash of green.

How gracefully the trees grow skyward,

 

the foliage floating above faun-colored trunks

disappearing at the edge of the mat.

 

There is distance in this landscape.

Her careful brush strokes make sure of that.

 

 

Laura Freedgood

Boni Joi

Boni Joi was born in North Miami
Beach, Florida, raised in New Jersey, and recently discovered her lost lineage
in Salem, Massachusetts. She has a MFA from Columbia University and has read her
poetry at numerous venues in New Jersey, New York and elsewhere. Her first
collection Before During or After Rainstorms just hit the pavement.
Boston Review says: "Armed with an eye for the particular and a knack for gentle
satire, Joi writes from the front lines of a doomed fight for America's spirit,
but does so with a bright infectious gusto." She lives with her husband, musical
chef Tobi Joi, in Brooklyn.

 

Review of book in Boston Review:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.5/poetry_microreviews.php

Laura Freedgood

LAURA
FREEDGOOD’S third book
of poems, What I would Paint if I Could,
was released in December 2012 by Finishing Line Press. Her two previous books
include Slant of the Heart  (Pudding House Press, 2010), and Weather Report (Pudding House Press,
2007). Her work appears in Descant, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Euphony, Wisconsin Review, Lips, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Heliotrope,
Adanna, Meadowlands Review, and other print and online journals and
anthologies.  Nominated for The Pushcart Prize, she was
also awarded a three-year poetry grant from the City University of New York,
where she worked as an Assistant Professor until 2010.  Currently retired, she spends her time pursuing
her two passions: poetry and dance.

Open Mic to Follow

Boni Joi & Laura Freedgood at Barron Arts Center, Wednesday, 1/9/13, 8PM

PoetsWednesday

582 Rahway Ave., Woodbridge, NJ

732-634-0413

 

 

Wednesday, January 09, 2013, 8PM

Presents

Boni Joi

&

 

Laura Freedgood

*******

Open Mic to Follow

------

Workshop at 7PM

with

Deborah LaVeglia

*************************************************

Free

Refreshments
Supplied by Wegmans

Donations Are
Greatly Appreciated

Thanks to Cynthia
Knight, BAC Director, Brandon Powell, staff, and

The Woodbridge
Cultural Arts Commission with the

support of Mayor
John McCormac

 

PoetsWednesday
Site: http://wednesdaypoet.typepad.com/

 

Directions: http://www.twp.woodbridge.nj.us/Departments/BarronArtsCenter/BarronArtsCenterDirections/tabid/754/Default.aspx

Contact: Deborah
LaVeglia, Poetry Director, at [email protected]

Coming on February 13, 2013: Marilyn Mohr &
Adele Kenny