Award Winning Author Mary Troy Featured Reader on Monday, May 26, at Tavern of Fine Arts

Mary Troy will be one of three featured readers at •chance operations• at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, May 26.

Jennifer Goldring and John Dorroh will be the other featured readers.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Mary Troy is the author of the novel, Beauties, winner of the USA Book Award, and finalist for Forewords Book of the Year Award. Her previous three books are collections of short stories. Cookie Lily won the Devil’s Kitchen Award for best book of prose published in 2004; The Alibi Café and Other Stories earned a glowing review in the New York Times; and Joe Baker Is Dead was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner and other awards. A short story, “Do You Believe In The Chicken Hanger?’ won a Nelson Algren award, and her stories and essays have appeared in many anthologies. Mary’s MFA degree is from the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing.

Jennifer Goldring Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, May 26

Jennifer Goldring will be one of three featured readers at •chance operations• at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, May 26.

Mary Troy and John Dorroh will be the other featured readers.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Jennifer Goldring, originally from Arizona, is studying for her MFA in Poetry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Jennifer was the University of Missouri - St. Louis's Poet Laureate for 2013 and also serves on the Board of the St. Louis Poetry Center. Jennifer is a photographer and writer and holds a BA Degree in economics from Arizona State University. Despite her training she has given up on solving the world’s economic problems and now writes poetry, which she finds to be a much more meaningful endeavor. She has poetry forthcoming in Tar River Poetry and her photography can be found in Anti- an online poetry journal and in the spring issue of Natural Bridge.

Walking Along Euclid in Early Spring

Tonight the moon
hangs in the sky orange
and sliced like cantaloupe.

A woman stands on tiptoe
head tilted up, her tongue tip
on her lip, arms open
to that mysterious fruit in the sky.

She is trying to take a bite
and though she knows it is beyond
her reach she will always salivate
and ache for this juicy moon.

The moonlight draws the gnat
and lace-wing from the grass.
The small gray bats dart
above blooming dogwoods
and feast.

-- Jennifer Goldring

John Dorroh Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, May 26

John Dorroh will be one of three featured readers at •chance operations• at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, May 26.

Mary Troy and Jennifer Goldring will be the other featured readers.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. Admission is FREE.

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

John "J.D." Dorroh was a high school science teacher for more years than he can count. He fell in love with the writing process in the 8th grade when his English teacher assigned his class pen pals. J.D. went overboard, ending up with over 100 from 30+ countres. Four years ago he introduced his first white trash poem at a local coffeehouse and people began demanding that he write more. One man said, "You're writing about my kin folks." He writes flash-fiction and cheesy poetry and has published two books.

I Saw Your Follks Nekid

I saw your mama nekid twice last week,
     and she looked good, she looked fine,
     oh so fine. And talk about fit!
She has a better body than you
ever thought about having, Bobbie Sue.
Why is that, do you think?
Could be you drink too much beer?
Inquiring minds want and need to know.

Anyway,
When she saw me looking at her,
She did not get in a hurry to cover up;
She did not act surprised, no not one bit;
She did not tell me to leave;
She did not wink at me, either.
I’m the one who did that.
I saw your mama nekid twice last week.

I saw your daddy at the YMCA last week,
     and he was nekid in the dressing room,
     talkin’ to old weathered men about politics and war.
When he saw me, he asked,
“You seen my daughter lately?”
And I said, “No, sir, I haven’t, but I did see your wife
     twice last week, and she said to tell you hi
     because she knew that I’d see you here at the YMCA,
     sittin’ with old men on fart-covered benches,
     talkin’ to them about football, huntin’, and sex.”

-- John Dorroh