Julia Gordon-Bramer Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, November 30

Julia Gordon-Bramer will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, November 30.

Also featured will be Phil Gounis and Ben Moeller-Gaa.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE. [Note: Tavern of Fine Arts opens at 5:00 p.m. for pre-reading dinner and drinks, which will also be served throughout the evening.]

Julia Gordon-Bramer is a professional tarot card reader, writer, and scholar of Sylvia Plath. Her book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath was published this year by Stephen F. Austin State University Press and can be ordered on Amazon. In 2013, the Riverfront Times called her St. Louis’ Best Local Poet.

Conscious Uncoupling

I’m sad about Gwyneth and Chris:
how mean the press presses
and paparazzi snap them running
through airports with hoods up,
sunglasses on, tears streaming.
The Star is on display
in my grocery stands, and its
journalists crucify Gwyn’s talk
show hyperbole, a down-
play of pain. I don’t listen
to Coldplay much and I don’t
have time for movies, but it isn’t
right. This public hunger to murder
the famous, just because
we are not. Maybe I’m sad
for Gwyneth and Chris because
every relationship is fragile, and we
are all searching through our acts
for story with substance, hoping
we are more than just how we look,
as we hide the wrinkles and seek
ripples in the water, a turn of words
to stay stuck in the brain. Something
lasting. To live and be
worth remembering. To teach our kids
what love looks like on and off
movie screens: sometimes breaking,
sometimes broken, occasionally healed,
and without Starbucks’ soundtracks.

-- Julia Gordon-Bramer

Ben Moeller-Gaa Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, November 30

Photo courtesy of Mike Schrand / St. Louis Public Radio
Ben Moeller-Gaa will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, November 30.

Also featured will be Phil Gounis and Julia Gordon-Bramer.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE. [Note: Tavern of Fine Arts opens at 5:00 p.m. for pre-reading dinner and drinks, which will also be served throughout the evening.]

Ben Moeller-Gaa is the author of two chapbooks, the Pushcart nominated Wasp Shadows (Folded Word 2014) and Blowing on a Hot Soup Spoon (poor metaphor design 2014). He has an English Writing degree from Knox College and has haiku published in Acorn, Modern Haiku, Simply Haiku, A Hundred Gourds, The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Shamrock, World Haiku Review and others. He currently is a contributing editor to River Styx, works for Sigma-Aldrich and resides in St. Louis, MO with is wife and cat. Visit Ben's web site here to learn more about Ben.

all day rain
the refrigerator's
ommmm

Modern Haiku 46.3


bumblebee
i, too, am drunk
with wild azaleas

Shamrock 32


twilight
losing count
of blackberries

tinywords 15:2

-- Ben Moeller-Gaa

Phil Gounis Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, November 30

Phil Gounis will be one of three featured reader at the •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, November 30.

Also featured will be Ben Moeller-Gaa and Julia Gordon-Bramer.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE. [Note: Tavern of Fine Arts opens at 5:00 p.m. for pre-reading dinner and drinks, which will also be served throughout the evening.]

Phil Gounis first came into public awareness in the early 1970s when he and several colleagues presented a series of experimental films in the Saint Louis region. During this period, Gounis also began to publish his poetry in several alternative press outlets and read on KDNA FM radio. Some of the participants in these readings later formed the nucleus of River Styx Magazine. In 1976, he initiated a weekly blues program on KCLC radio at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. His show featured recorded blues music spanning five decades and in studio performing artists. He also hosted and produced a monthly live poetry and jazz program entitled "Verbatim."

In the early 1980s, Gounis contributed to the work of the Soulard Culture Squad. This group of poets and musicians performed throughout the historic Soulard area and published several poetry collections.Later he co-founded a magazine of politics and popular culture called Steamshovel Press. At the end of the decade and into the ’90s he took part in radio programs such as Off The Beaten Path, Poetry Beat and Literature for the Halibut on KDHX FM in St. Louis, Missouri.

In 2005, Intangible Studios released his CD, Form Matters. Since then he has published two poetry collections Some Of These Have Appeared (Firecracker Press) and Upgrading the Allusion (JK Publishing).His work also appeared in Flood Stage: An Anthology of Saint Louis Poets.

Music In The Air

Keeps slept under the stairs
he did not speak
a word
in his mind
Keeps would repeat
the same Prayer
night after night
it was night most of the time
and freezing when it rained
which was all the time
still
Keeps was faithful
to the duty
of keeping hope
and bright expectation
intact

the day after Thanksgiving
as dawn cracked
Keeps awoke on his knees
and heard a commotion
up above his head
he reached upward and felt the belt
of an escalator
and knew
that his petitionary days
were over

-- Phil Gounis

Howard Schwartz Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, October 26

Howard Schwartz will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, October 26.

Other featured readers will be Allison Creighton and Jeff Friedman.

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

Howard Schwartz is the author of five books of poems, Library of Dreams, Vessels, Gathering the Sparks, Sleepwalking Beneath the Stars, and Breathing in the Dark. He is also the co-editor (with Anthony Rudolf) of Voices Within the Ark: The Modern Jewish Poets. His other books include Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 2005, and Leaves from the Garden of Eden: One Hundred Classic Jewish Tales, published in 2008. He is a professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Swimming to Jerusalem

The first time
I went on a quest
for forbidden fruit.

The second time
I built an ark
and tried to get there by sea.

The third time
I came in search of my ancestor,
Abraham.

If the sun was hidden
I let the stars
guide me.

If the tablets were broken
I carved
new ones.

In the future
my bones
will roll to that city.

Last night
I dreamed
I was swimming there.

-- Howard Schwartz

Allison Creighton Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, October 26

Allison Creighton will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, October 26.

Other featured readers will be Howard Schwartz and Jeff Friedman.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Allison Creighton holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She teaches part-time at Washington University in St. Louis and serves as a contributing editor for River Styx. Her work has appeared in Potomac Review, Natural Bridge, The Mochila Review, and two anthologies, and she received first prize in the 2010 Wednesday Club of St. Louis Original Poetry Contest. Her first book of poetry, Drawing Down the Moon, was published by Turning Point in 2015

On a Night Too Hot for a Sheet

Now that you have entered
the space that surrounds me,
we shall be as one.
I will pull you inside with such a touch
that the finest light will waver.
Your lips are bittersweet
as the root of love itself.

One by one
I hand you my secrets.
My fear of the color orange
and all its bold laughter.
A secret buried in a meadow
where no one goes.
How I tried to bind
two distant souls.
Each way I struggled
to force another to speak.
The stark night
when childhood vanished
in an instant.
Days my tires spun
in lost rotations
down a gravel road
far from home.
The shrinking blackout windows.
Shadows of a phantom figure.
The thorn caught in his beard.

A tremor shifts across my body
as I start to tell the secret
too scared to breathe.
Your eyes unblinking,
hover above me.
As you come closer,
for a kiss,
I can’t feel the soft wind
of your breath on my lips.

You wait and wait.

You press yourself
hard against me,
a ghost.

--Allison Creighton

(published in Winter Harvest: Jewish Writing in St. Louis, and in Drawing Down the Moon)

Jeff Friedman Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, October 26

Jeff Friedman will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, October 26.

Also featured will be Howard Schwartz, and Allison Creighton.

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

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Jeff Friedman has published six poetry collections, five with Carnegie Mellon University Press, including Pretenders (2014), Working in Flour (2011) and Black Threads (2008). His poems, mini stories and translations have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, The Antioch Review, Poetry International, Hotel Amerika, Flash Fiction Funny, Missouri Review, Agni Online, The New Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Poets, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Smokelong Quarterly, Boulevard, Natural Bridge, The Vestal Review, and The New Republic and many other literary magazines. He has won numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, the Milton Dorfman Poetry Prize, The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and two individual artist grants from the New Hampshire State Arts Council. Dzvinia Orlowsky’s and his translation of Memorials by Polish poet Mieczslaw Jastrun was published by Lavender Ink/Dialogos in August 2014.

Bear Fight

When Liza fell in with the bear, I was more than disappointed as I had been in love with her since childhood. “What’s he got that I don’t?” I asked as we walked past the diner together. “He’s a bear.” She let go of my hand. “He gets a little jealous when I’m out with my friends.” “Why do you want to be with a bear anyway?” Two teenagers pushed past us with their skateboards. Balloon floated above Main Street, announcing a sale at the furniture shop. “Why do you want to be with me?” she asked. We parted ways when the light changed, but later I went to her home dressed as a bear. She opened the door. “Come in,” she said, putting her arms around me. “You don’t smell like a bear,” she said, Then in walked the bear, with a fierce look on his face. He growled and so did I. He cuffed me, so I cuffed him back. Then we grappled with each other, bear hugging until Liza stepped in between us and held out her hands. “I’m sick of bears,” she said. “Get out of here.” I ripped off my bear mask. “I’m not a bear,” I said. The bear ripped off his. “I quit this game,” he said. “I’m not a bear either.” Liza removed her mask, and she wasn’t Liza. We ran away as fast as we could. I made it back to my place and locked the door, turning on the outside light, but all night I heard her huffing.

(Published in Spillway)

-- Jeff Friedman

Buzz Spector Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 28

Buzz Spector will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 28.

Also featured will be Eileen G'Sell and another reader still to be determined.

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

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Buzz Spector was born in Chicago and was educated at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and then the University of Chicago, where he received the master of fine arts. Internationally recognized as an artist and critic, his work has been exhibited in museums throughout the United States and Europe, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Mattress Factory Art Museum (Pittsburgh), and the Luigi Pecci Center for Contemporary Art (Prato, Italy).

Buzz is also a highly accomplished teacher who received the College Art Association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art Award in 2013. Having taught previously at Cornell University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he is currently Professor of Art at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The subject matter of Buzz’s art typically involves an exploration of the idea of the book, the text, and the individual experience of perception through wide-ranging media including sculpture, photography, the artists’ book, printmaking, and installation. In 2012 Sara Ranchouse Publishing issued Buzzwords, a collection of new page art and interviews with Spector spanning thirty years of his work and ideas.

Thread

for Ann Hamilton

Action’s auspices, to band or
Braid a chain of events;
Gossamer filaments of this story or that
Lanyard, holding the line,
Passing through in
Procession, a ribbon of events in a
Row, of greatening
Scale or sequence;
Set the track for
Trains of thought to travel
A way.

-- Buzz Spector

Eileen G'Sell Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 28

Eileen G'Sell will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 28.

Also featured will be Buzz Spector and another reader still to be determined.

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

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Eileen G'Sell's nonfiction and poetry have been published in Salon, the Boston Review, DIAGRAM, Conduit, Ninth Letter, and other journals. Her chapbook Portrait of My Ex with Giant Burrito is available from BOAAT Press. Since 2004, Eileen has mentored with Mentor St. Louis, now a division of Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club. She teaches writing and film at Washington University in St. Louis.

Portrait of My Ex with Giant Burrito

Men have died for less, and I, for one, never asked for more. In the Pacific Northwest are a thousand restaurants, healthy girls, and slutty food. Trees that shade new money humbly greet you on the interstate; intricate tattoos peek from sturdy cotton sleeves. “I consume five thousand calories a day,” he said the day he met me. We spoke about weddings and Sly Stallone; we ranked our favorite dogs by breed. In the morning he kissed my forehead before leaving me for hashbrowns. But he didn’t. Or he couldn’t. And the trees never changed a thing. “Endings are my expertise,” I whisper to the ushers. They are bored with their professions. They are picketing our aisle. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light.” It was the first—and best—joke ever told.

-- Eileen G'Sell

David A.N. Jackson Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, August 31

David A. N. Jackson will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, August 31.

Also featured will be Cheeraz Gormon and Treasure Shields Redmond.

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

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

David A. N. Jackson is a multidisciplinary performer who's graced local, regional and national stages at a number of venues. He is an actor, visual artist, wood carver, drum carver and percussionist as well as a poet.

Known around the city and throughout the region as D'Poet, David A. N. Jackson has long been appreciated as a profound and enlightened artist of multiple gifts, talents and abilities. He is an ever-evolving and accomplished percussionist, wood sculptor, artist, poet, and vocalist, just to list a few of his skills, as well as an avid community activist and teacher.

Imbalance of the Spirit

like the breath of stagnant water
family should not be
upbringing
And not just on memories
instantly sensed
It is not true, after all,
to be born.
toward evolution
listen with attention
for an initial rendezvous
This creature is called a
Heart Chakra
make very careful study
loosen heavy soil and leave it
Planted beside peach trees
Deep-rooting
at the heart

-- David A. N. Jackson
(c) D'POET 07.03.2015

Cheeraz Gormon Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, August 31

Cheeraz Gormon will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, August 31.

Also featured will be David A. N. Jackson and Treasure Shields Redmond.

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

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Cheeraz Gormon is a life-long activist, internationally touring spoken word artist and published poet, documentary photographer turned award-winning advertising copywriter. Cheeraz is currently founder, strategist and storyteller of Alchemy 7 Creative located in St. Louis, Missouri.

Click here to listen to "Words" by Cheeraz Gormon; music by Brothers Lazaroff (Maurice Mo Egeston remix of "I Could Stay Here For the Rest My Life."

Beautiful Boy

In loving memory of a young man I never met... for Terrence Sands

Beautiful boy
No one told you
That this world would be so cruel
That the cold would brush against your soul
And chafe it
Exposing you to pain
That your mother dreamed of protecting you from
As she watched her belly expand
And that your father
Upon seeing that you were a reflection of him
A manchild
Perhaps swallowed a deep breath
Held it for as long as he could
In hopes that the empty space would make a path for you

I am a stranger to you
But not to the ways of this world
That you faced
Until your eyes drifted

Beautiful boy
You have become an ancestor way too soon
Your meeting with manhood
Too short

Beautiful boy
I hope you know that your skin was Black
But you were never soiled
As this world may have made you believe
Know that you were beautiful, boy

You are now free
To be what you may have always known you were

Beautiful boy
Fly
And be
Beautiful

-- Cheeraz Gormon

Treasure Shields Redmond Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, August 31

Treasure Shields Redmond will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, August 31.

Also featured will be David A. N. Jackson and Cheeraz Gormon.

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

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

A Mississippi native, Treasure Shields Redmond is a St. Louis based poet, performer and educator. She has published poetry in such notable anthologies as Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Breaking Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade; and in journals that include the Sou'wester and the African American Review.

She has received a fellowship to the FineArts Works Center, and her poem, "around the time of medgar" was nominated for a 2011 Pushcart Prize. Treasure is a Cave Canem fellow and has received an MFA from the University of Memphis. Presently, she divides her time between being an assistant professor of English at Southwestern Illinois College, and doctoral studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

caveat

the celluloid vision of jackie o
reflexively reaching for kennedy's brains;
too fast for even her
aristocratic hands.
did she think
she could put it all back together?
her archival papers
(now cool to the touch)
reveal she knew of his philandering --
her mother counseled her to stay .
so maybe that reflexive jump
on the back of a motorcade
was not as mothers flinch,
watching deathless sons
in football games.
but more as a runner,
anticipating the crisp gun shot.

-- Treasure Shields Redmond

Marisol Ramirez Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, July 27

Marisol Ramirez will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, July 27.

Also featured will be Matthew Freeman and Jennifer Goldring.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Marisol Ramirez came to her sense in the fall of 2011 and found the courage to call herself a poet. Earlier, she had tentatively been the future lawyer, the future teacher, the future marketing manager—never the writer. She took her first-ever workshop senior year of undergrad simply for pleasure. The problem with dabbling in passionate hobbies is that they might become careers. After graduating from the University of Arizona with a Bachelors in English, she moved across country, away from her Arizona border town, taco stands, open range, rattlesnakes, chorizo con huevos, purple mountain ranges, and flaming sunsets to join the MFA writing program at the University of Missouri St. Louis. In 2014, Ramirez was named the third UMSL poet laureate.

Jennifer Goldring Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, July 27.

Jennifer Goldring will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, July 27.

Also featured will be Matthew Freeman and Marisol Ramirez.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Jennifer Goldring, originally from Arizona, received her MFA in Poetry at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.  She was the University of Missouri - St. Louis's Poet Laureate for 2013.  Jennifer has her BA 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.  When she isn’t writing or taking photos she is Managing Editor for december magazine.  She lives in St. Louis with her two children and their small menagerie of pets.  Her poetry can be found in Tar River Poetry, Architrave Press, and the anthology Poetry with a Dash of Salt.

Matthew Freeman Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, July 27

Matthew Freeman will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, July 27.

Also featured will be Jennifer Goldring and Marisol Ramirez.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Matthew Freeman woke up and found he was falling when as a teenager his football coach got him into Dylan Thomas and a dear girl friend introduced him to the romantics. So began a wild journey which would leave him expelled from school and committed to an asylum, and diagnosed with schizophrenia. After bouncing in and out of hospitals and drunk tanks he finally began his recovery. He has had four books published and has graduated from Saint Louis University, where he was awarded the Montesi prize, and is now an MFA student at the University of Missouri St. Louis, where he was awarded the Graduate Prize in poetry.

Finally I admit It: Yes, I Am a Bum 

Clear and terror filled my days I
walked as a living affront to realities
not bound,
a thousand miles from my home,
my cap pulled down over my eyes, 

watching the freight trains roll by.
(when you were sitting on the porch
you could vaguely hear your
father finally cry
from the front room
and you felt like—you
didn’t know—maybe like you
were made out of glass
and could be broken
by a conductor’s baton)

And now I sit all day with the innocents,
smokinging a cheap cigar,
strumming on my gay guitar,
singing with Cisco and Sonny and Leadbelly too,
when THAT GUY comes in
wearing a disguise
and it is the PHONE AGAIN
but star 69 does not work,
the yellow birds gather round me,
I look toward the dumpster for redemption
and only beg the Lord
to cast me out amongst the poor. 

-- Matthew Freeman

All Open-Mic at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, June 29

Open-mic readers will be featured at the •chance operations• reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, June 29.

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

Brett Underwood Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, May 25

Brett Underwood will be one of the featured readers at the Chance Operations reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, May 25.

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

Also featured will be Raphael Maurice and Cheeraz Gormon.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic throughout the evening.

Brett Underwood is a bartending gadabout who writes, promotes and produces happenings and mishaps in St. Louis, Missouri. He's quicker with the stink eye than verbal reprimands and favors the brushback pitch over preemptive warfare. He has the wingspan of an albatross and would prefer cash.

Autumnal Delusion

Funny racism or runny fascism while
ye prisoners of hope and fall colors eat
pumpkin-spiced cold meds and mucous to avoid
neti pot death hot dogs and waitresses flying
in every direction.

Put wastoids in your gravitas.
Load ether with lead-ladened muchmuck.
Cough up gravy into your designer tissue.
Oh, and Ichabod's head is off the top of the
visitor’s dugout and kagarooing up
the aisle in that horse's ass.
van hit the soybean head shoot dead boy.

Root for the one percent in your muumuu.
Chug aluminum –bottled water and hoot.
Live it up.
Toss lewd verses to garbage. Your days are few.
Your wool is worthless.
Replay these days and they’ll go back
and look at it stored on yourtube or
reflected in a mirror coffin or
another threat to the environment
babbling DADA in a six-wheeled stroller.

-- Brett Underwood

Raphael Maurice Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, May 25

Raphael Maurice will be one of the featured readers at the Chance Operations reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, May 25.

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

Also featured will be Brett Underwood and Cheeraz Gormon.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic throughout the evening.

Raphael Maurice is a translator and poet. His work appears in the UCity Review, Likestarlings, River Bluff Review, Piecrust, and Monkeybicycle. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, where he studied poetry. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, Jill Elizabeth Maurice.

Rectitude

The police caught me near these weeping willows
creeping up lakeside. I gave up under dawn’s
wrack and ribbon. They took what little I had.

And I was long gone, babbling my season’s luck
and miscarriages.

The county jail. Silent as a brick, stiller than God.

I crashed out on the bunk’s logic, its rectitude. Rectitude.
What a strange word for dead monks to thrash about.

And I dreamed the horse-faced sheriff was reading
from a sacred book. His boots propped on the desk.
His words scattered by an oscillating fan.

It was litany. It was the liturgy at my father’s funeral,
reverent as the edges of morning glories, a reckoning.

It was a catalogue of tender girls I’d loved,
their terrible fates blowing against these crooked trees.

-- Raphael Maurice

Cheeraz Gormon Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, May 25

Cheeraz Gormon will be one of the featured readers at the Chance Operations reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, May 25.

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

Also featured will be Brett Underwood and Raphael Maurice.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic throughout the evening.

Cheeraz Gormon is a North St. Louis native, life-long activist, internationally touring spoken word artist and published poet, documentary photographer turned award-winning advertising copywriter.

Her deep passion for humanity and issues affecting various communities provides the fuel for her dynamic spoken word performances, and in her first published book of poetry, In The Midst of Loving, a collection compiled and edited down over 14 years, Cheeraz opens her heart for the world to connect with her story.

Click here to listen to "Words" by Cheeraz Gormon; music by Brothers Lazaroff (Maurice Mo Egeston remix of "I Could Stay Here For the Rest My Life").

Beautiful Boy

In loving memory of a young man I never met... for Terrence Sands

Beautiful boy
No one told you
That this world would be so cruel
That the cold would brush against your soul
And chafe it
Exposing you to pain
That your mother dreamed of protecting you from
As she watched her belly expand
And that your father
Upon seeing that you were a reflection of him
A manchild
Perhaps swallowed a deep breath
Held it for as long as he could
In hopes that the empty space would make a path for you

I am a stranger to you
But not to the ways of this world
That you faced
Until your eyes drifted

Beautiful boy
You have become an ancestor way too soon
Your meeting with manhood
Too short

Beautiful boy
I hope you know that your skin was Black
But you were never soiled
As this world may have made you believe
Know that you were beautiful, boy

You are now free
To be what you may have always known you were

Beautiful boy
Fly
And be
Beautiful

-- Cheeraz Gormon

"Sandra Lee Scheuer" by Gary Geddes

(Killed by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, May 4, 1970.)

You might have met her on a Saturday night,
cutting precise circles, clockwise, at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, or walking with quick step

between the campus and a green two-storey house,
where the room was always tidy, the bed made,
the books in confraternity on the shelves.

She did not throw stones, major in philosophy
or set fire to buildings, though acquaintances say
she hated war, had heard of Cambodia.

In truth she wore a modicum of make-up, a brassiere,
and could no doubt more easily have married a guardsman
than cursed or put a flower in his rifle barrel.

While the armouries burned, she studied,
bent low over notes, speech therapy books, pages
open at sections on impairment, physiology.

And while they milled and shouted on the commons,
she helped a boy named Billy with his lisp, saying
Hiss, Billy, like a snake. That’s it, SSSSSSSS,

tongue well up and back behind your teeth.
Now buzz, Billy, like a bee. Feel the air
vibrating in my windpipe as I breathe?

As she walked in sunlight through the parking-lot
at noon, feeling the world a passing lovely place,
a young guardsman, who had his sights on her,

was going down on one knee, as if he might propose.
His declaration, unmistakable, articulate,
flowered within her, passed through her neck,

severed her trachea, taking her breath away.
Now who will burn the midnight oil for Billy,
ensure the perilous freedom of his speech;

and who will see her skating at the Moon-Glo
Roller Rink, the eight small wooden wheels
making their countless revolutions on the floor?

-- Gary Geddes

Tony Renner Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, April 27

Tony Renner will be one of the featured readers at Chance Operation's 5th anniversary reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, April 27. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Also featured will be Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer, and Stefene Russell.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic between our featured readers.

Tony Renner is a late bloomer. He returned to writing poetry in 2009 when, after he ran out of the poems he had written as a high school student in 1978 to post on a blog, he began writing new poems so that he could post a poem-a-day for National Poetry Month. He has been published in Bad Shoe, A Handful of Stones, and Troubadour 21.

The Wedding Dress

He had moved his mother's wedding dress
time after time, from apartment to
apartment, city to city

Friend to friend, lover to lover

Until we found him hanging
A white apparition in a candlelit room
Acrid myrrh failing to mask the death-stench of shit

"A fruit on a loop," the cop called him.

-- Tony Renner

Stefene Russell Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, April 27

,

Stefene Russell will be one of the featured readers at Chance Operation's 5th anniversary reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, April 27. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Also featured will be Sean Arnold, Julia Gordon-Bramer, and Tony Renner.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic between our featured readers.

Stefene Russell is St. Louis Magazine's Culture Editor and a member of Poetry Scores, an arts collective that translates poetry into other media. She is also the author of Go South For Animal Index (2007) and Inferna (2013).

Keyhole: Emergency Mockingbird

She sings one thousand songs a night.
She sings the blurry fretting of night doves.
She sings stuck hinges, worrying in their own way,
and the dog testing his bark in the cold dusk.

She’s all small gray birds, the ones you spy
peripheral
tail seesawing the fence-line
as you sift through mail on the porch.

When the summer climbs its sine curve
of heat, and the lawn begins to singe—
the season you can never sleep—she
sits on the roof, singing to you, the same tune
over and over: that one
about someone stealing your car.

She remembers your face, even on days
when you don’t. She is up on the phone pole,
watching you curse your garbagey life
when you lock keys in the car.
Maybe she cares. Maybe she’s afraid
you’ll trash the whole world,
and her, unlucky enough to be around
when you do it.

-- Stefene Russell

Julia Gordon-Bramer Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, April 27

Julia Gordon-Bramer will be one of the featured readers at Chance Operation's 5th anniversary reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, April 27. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Also featured will be Sean Arnold, Stef Russell, and Tony Renner.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic between our featured readers.

Julia Gordon-Bramer is a professional tarot card reader, writer, and scholar of Sylvia Plath. Her book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath will be out this year with Stephen F. Austin State University Press and can be ordered on Amazon now. In 2013, the Riverfront Times called her St. Louis’ Best Local Poet.

Anthony Bourdain, I hate you.

You, and your layovers, the sixty-
minute getaways to the farthest
limits of Somewhere with no reservations, surrounded
by all the hippest people I will never meet.
Dude, your steely curls are bringing me down,
mussed just right, you are a head and shoulders
higher than everyone, donning shiny
suits, or casually rumpled in Ralph Lauren.
Oh, Anthony, Arbiter of Taste, I hate
your punk rock background,
your Discovery budget, your street cred,
your throaty cleverness, the savage
similes off your tongue. I hate
your Boys’ Club as you bite
underbelly bits and parts unknown
of poor skewered beasts. You: flesh-eater,
bone slurper, booze sucking snob,
with your glory stories of hangovers
fueled by foolish foreign women
smiling from back in the kitchen, stirring
mixing bowls close against their ample hearts.
Anthony Bourdain, I hate
your cigarette smoke as it jets off and away
like curls of skywriting from your pouty lips.
You are not pretty, yet the world is your mirror,
flattering as you simulate your spicy jerk
chicken adventures. Oh, Satan of gravy,
grease, and cheese curd. Sipping scummy broth,
an oily smile hides those white shark teeth.
Goddamnit, Bourdain! Why do you fascinate me?

I am as guilty of watching as the rest, and yet
I have been on the other side of reality
TV. I see the cameramen coaching
its suave illusion toward the next visual lie:
I see the retakes with more oomph; the pretend
sleep and pseudo-conversations; the false
temporary friends. Let’s get confidential,
Anthony Bourdain: if I confess I love your life,
does this mean I must love you?
Will you tell me who you really are, and
am I cool enough
to come along too?

--Julia Gordon-Bramer

Sean Arnold Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, April 27

Sean Arnold will be one of the featured readers at Chance Operation's 5th anniversary reading at the Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, April 27. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Also featured will be Julia Gordon-Bramer, Stef Russell, and Tony Renner.

Open-mic readers will step up to the mic between our featured readers.

Sean Arnold lives in St. Louis across the street from the Botanical Gardens in an apartment with his lovely girlfriend and their dog and cat.

He recently published his fourth chapbook “Soliloquy From a Freight Yard: An Open Fall Window”. This is the final season/book in his “Soliloquy From a Freight Yard” series based around the seasons and freight yard romanticisms.

Sean is taking a final attempt at his undergrad in creative writing at Webster University. He is the former host and co-organizer of Voices From the Underground and Casinotown poetry readings. His poetics have been set to folk music, electronic music, hip-hop, and everything in between.

OH! The Wheat!

all those dates
and pictures
and apps.
-- weird the way myths have always reinforced and combated the hyperreal.
all those screenshots and toocool avatars
like bob marley playing from a youtube page
on a tv hooked up to a bluray player and
pandora.

and a department store in wichita kansas
with kevin kidwell
or a steak n shake in ofallon beside the blockbuster
across from the gasmart
with my old friend who joined the marines.

--and so i think, all
the st louis anarchists
were out of touch
with folks who ride motorcycles.

somewhere the wolves are howling
in an unfettered wilderness. i know,
for i have been there.

ill text you soon homie,
--here we stand

like germs of wheat
blown by the wind.

-- Sean Arnold

Mae Soule Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, March 30

Mae Soule will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, March 30.

Also featured will be Robert Earlywine, and Carole Cohen.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Mae Soule is a poet, singer, songwriter and single mother from St. Louis. Raised within the extended family of literary, musical and eclectic bohemian artists of 1970's inner city St. Louis, she was the youngest member of the Soulard Culture Squad literary group and attended CASA Midtown, St. Louis Conservatory and School for the Arts, for dance and drama. Mae received her BA in English, with an emphasis in creative writing from Coe College, where she was Poetry Editor of the Coe Review. Her poems have been published in several Midwestern and local journals and she has two poetry collections: As Blue As I Can Be and Wash Line. Additionally, she has performed her writing in spoken word modern dance compositions, multi-media performance art and slam poetry competitions in Iowa and New York City.

Pawn Shop Whore/Common Measure

There was a time when she swore
she'd never go back, but want
broke the spirit she had made her
hot back, shoot some and flaunt.

She thought she was cool brick
red as cherries, but she blew it
baked her brains on spoon sugar
lost out on faith, cashed blanks and lit.

Flew straight fast and blacked
found out she'd been fucked up the ass
she walks crooked, axed her neck
fat with blue swells, blood mass.

-- Mae Soule

Carole Cohen Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, March 30

Carole Cohen will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, March 30.

Also featured will be Robert Earlywine, and Mae Soule.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Carole Cohen graduated from University of Missouri St. Louis, and was former poetry editor for Boulevard. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, among which are Cape Rock, Madison Review, Ascent, Sou’wester, Margie, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She has also had her Door poem series featured a the Mary Tomas Gallery in Dallas, where artists interpreted her poems in mixed media. She has also appeared in several anthologies. She has published two books, Restless Beauty and The World Arranged.

Recital

Through the late afternoon fog,
I can see branches of trees
swaying, conducted by light breezes.
Thin, arthritic fingers
play clouds like a piano.
Falling leaves swirl,
musical notes fall gently,
calming the water.

A lake serene and intent
as an audience listening
to a Bach concerto, concentrating
on every note, absorbing
each fallen leaf onto its surface.

Night drops in, music fades out,
the concert over
until the next performance,
ushered in by the raucous calls
of morning herons.

-- Carole Cohen

Robert Earlywine Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, March 30

Robert Earlywine will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, March 30.

Also featured will be Carole Cohen, and Mae Soule.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Robert Earleywine earned his MFA in Fiction from Washington University in 1980 where he has been teaching fiction writing and literature since 1983. In 2001, he was awarded the Dean's Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Service to University College. During the Vietnam Era he served as an Air Police Sentrydog Handler, but in Southern California. He has worked as a shoe salesman, bartender, and high school teacher in the inner city. He has also taught at Forest Park Community College, Webster University, St.Louis University and Lindenwood University.

In 1972 he co-authored, with Edward James Scannell, a book of short stories and poems entitled In the Big Sky's Mouth. He has published fiction, non fiction and poetry. His short stories have appeared in Epoch, Webster Review, Delmar, Natural Bridge, and Scintilla Press. His story "Fido the Talking Dog" is included in an anthology of St. Louis writers called Under the Arch.

Children’s voices from the schoolyard
call me to my windows. High up here
from my third floor they look small and far,
all looking up and yelling
at the big dark cloud over their heads
as the wind spins fallen leaves up,
wind swooping dead leaves, swirling
together up from the ground
and the kids distant voices babbling
while they wait for the wind to
twirl them, too, up and away
while teachers’ voices call for order.

-- Robert Earlywine

Catherine Rankovic Featured Reader on Monday, February 23, at Tavern of Fine Arts

Catherine Rankovic will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, February 23.

Also featured will be Matthew Freeman.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Catherine Rankovic is the author of five books including Meet Me: Writers in St. Louis, Fierce Consent and Other Poems, and the new chapbook Hide and Sex, her first poetry collection in ten years. Catherine has an M.A. from Syracuse University and an M.F.A. from Washington University and has taught poetry and creative nonfiction writing in St. Louis since 1989, currently in the online M.F.A. program at Lindenwood University. Her essays and poems have appeared in December, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, Boulevard, River Styx, Umbrella, The Progressive, Natural Bridge, Gulf Coast, other journals, and four anthologies.

Micropenis

I pretended not to notice.
It wasn’t a lot to work with.
We worked with it insofar
And with energy and compensatory strategies
Already in his repertoire.
We worked the sheets off the bed.
Near checkout time when he wouldn’t be offended
I said, “This is Klaus. He was made in Germany.
This is Buzz. This is Skippy the Second,
And this is The Bunny. He was very expensive.”
He said, “Do you have a preference?”
I should have said right then
"Let's go out for fried catfish" and ended this.

-- Catherine Rankovic

Matthew Freeman Featured Reader on Monday, February 23, at Tavern of Fine Arts

Matthew Freeman will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, February 23.

Also featured will be Catherine Rankovic.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Matthew Freeman woke up and found he was falling when as a teenager his football coach got him into Dylan Thomas and a dear girl friend introduced him to the romantics. So began a wild journey which would leave him expelled from school and committed to an asylum, and diagnosed with schizophrenia. After bouncing in and out of hospitals and drunk tanks he finally began his recovery. He has had four books published and has graduated from Saint Louis University, where he was awarded the Montesi prize, and is now an MFA student at the University of Missouri St. Louis, where he was awarded the Graduate Prize in poetry.

Lake Woeishere

When I hear Garrison Keilor talk about Lutherans
in that light comedic kitsch
on pusillanimous public radio
amid the seemingly knowing chuckles
of fat farts in the audience—
oh my lord can you imagine someone
taking a date there?—I myself
don’t laugh but get ever angry
because this guy doesn’t know anything at all
about Martin Luther or Lutherans.

You’re not a real Lutheran until
you’ve walked on your knees up the stairs of a monastery
flagellating yourself with a bitter whip
on each step ten times
over guilt at having glimpsed
the subtle bare momentary wrist
of a heavily-clothed maiden
in a congregation of stone Catholics.

-- Matthew Freeman

Julia Gordon-Bramer Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, January 26

Julia Gordon-Bramer will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 26.

Also featured will be Jane Ellen Ibur and Robert Nazarene.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Julia Gordon-Bramer is a professional tarot card reader, writer, and scholar of Sylvia Plath. Her book, Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath will be out this year with Stephen F. Austin State University Press and can be ordered on Amazon now. In 2013, the Riverfront Times called her St. Louis’ Best Local Poet.

Anthony Bourdain, I hate you.

You, and your layovers, the sixty-
minute getaways to the farthest
limits of Somewhere with no reservations, surrounded
by all the hippest people I will never meet.
Dude, your steely curls are bringing me down,
mussed just right, you are a head and shoulders
higher than everyone, donning shiny
suits, or casually rumpled in Ralph Lauren.
Oh, Anthony, Arbiter of Taste, I hate
your punk rock background,
your Discovery budget, your street cred,
your throaty cleverness, the savage
similes off your tongue. I hate
your Boys’ Club as you bite
underbelly bits and parts unknown
of poor skewered beasts. You: flesh-eater,
bone slurper, booze sucking snob,
with your glory stories of hangovers
fueled by foolish foreign women
smiling from back in the kitchen, stirring
mixing bowls close against their ample hearts.
Anthony Bourdain, I hate
your cigarette smoke as it jets off and away
like curls of skywriting from your pouty lips.
You are not pretty, yet the world is your mirror,
flattering as you simulate your spicy jerk
chicken adventures. Oh, Satan of gravy,
grease, and cheese curd. Sipping scummy broth,
an oily smile hides those white shark teeth.
Goddamnit, Bourdain! Why do you fascinate me?

I am as guilty of watching as the rest, and yet
I have been on the other side of reality
TV. I see the cameramen coaching
its suave illusion toward the next visual lie:
I see the retakes with more oomph; the pretend
sleep and pseudo-conversations; the false
temporary friends. Let’s get confidential,
Anthony Bourdain: if I confess I love your life,
does this mean I must love you?
Will you tell me who you really are, and
am I cool enough
to come along too?

--Julia Gordon-Bramer

Jane Ellen Ibur Featured Reader on Monday, January 26, at Tavern of Fine Arts

Jane Ellen Ibur will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 26.

Also featured will be Robert Nazarene and Julia Gordon-Bramer.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Jane Ellen Ibur is the author of Both Wings Flappin’, Still Not Flyin’ published by PenUltimate Press. Her award winning poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She has won much recognition as an Arts Educator with over 30 years experience teaching writing in public schools, jails, museums, residential schools, social service agencies, veterans, homeless men. Lead Faculty for the Community Arts Training (CAT) Institute, she is one of its founders. She directs Poets & Writers Ink for emerging young writers. For 19 years she co-hosted and co-produced "Literature for the Halibut" on FM 88.1 KDHX.

Cancun

In Mexico, I see your face
waning, shaded by cataracts
you rise above me, a watchful eye,
lid nearly drawn, 25 years between
us now passed like so many waves
against the shore. I gather bits
of broken sand dollars or pieces
of moon you throw down to me,
lunar coins washed on the beach
for me to cash in at low tide.

-- Jane Ellen Ibur

Robert Nazarene Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, January 26

Robert Nazarene will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, January 26.

Also featured will be Jane Ellen Ibur and Julia Gordon-Bramer.

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

Open-mic follows the featured readers.

Robert Nazarene founded Margie/The American Journal and received a publishers' National Book Critics Circle award in poetry. His first book of poems is Church. A new collection, Idyll, is forthcoming in 2015. Educated at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, his work has appeared in Ploughshares, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Iowa Review, African American Review, Salmagundi and elsewhere.

Dolor

I have known the ineluctable grief of waiting,
the desolation of fluorescence and its quiet
accompanist: the low drone of vending machinery.

The sadness of the silent switchboard;
of sleeping pushcarts, empty reception areas;
the unending
tunnelry of immaculate public spaces; the odor
of antiseptic, the pale standard face of nightshift
workers; the grey duplication of mornings;
the quiet

clatter and clink of the cafeteria -- slowly
regaining consciousness.

Out the window,
on the street below, the clamor of children
filling the crosswalk, crowding the playground.

The baby got sick.
The baby
never woke up.

My baby: wrapped in linen,
stiff, still--
perfect,
in her box.

-- Robert Nazarene

Note: Originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.