WCW – Mark Fogarty

Wednesday, September 2, 2015, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

MARK FOGARTY believes, like Shelley, that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. He is a poet, musician, and journalist from Rutherford, NJ. He is the managing editor of The Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow and emcees the monthly poetry/music reading at GainVille Café, also in Rutherford. He has read his poetry extensively in New York and New Jersey and has had poetry in more than 20 publications. He is the author of five books of poetry from White Chickens Press: Myshkin’s Blues, Peninsula, Phantom Engineer, Sun Nets, and Continuum: The Jaco Poems.

from In Memory of Thomas Ortiz

This high pueblo is isinglass,
the water in the cistern freezes near the sky.
In the clouded ice you can see down a thousand years,
the padres, conquistadores, spirits of the dead.
The dead stay close, the wind tugs them,
they funnel down through rings
and collect in the kiva
on Catholic holy days.
St. Stephen winces but lets them through.
The bishop won’t like it but he’s not here.
Down a thousand years he remembers
how rain washed out the trail
and the stranded ones on top leapt to their death.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – August 12, 2015

Wayne L. Miller

Somewhere Else

I pick up a stick and dig a hole.
If I stand the stick straight up,

where on Earth does the bottom point to?
Google labels my fidget map tunneling.

An app calculates that I’m pointing
into the Indian Ocean, not far from Perth.

I learn that Tangier is opposite Christ Church,
and Hawaii is opposite a park in Botswana.

I swivel the stick, crossing cities and towns,
beaming Hey, I’m here, on the other side.

When my hand stills— where am I pointing?
What is the latest news? Who sings the popular songs?

Tracing a precise ellipse would sweep the equator,
but the app doesn’t have that feature.

Which circle’s diameter would intersect where the planet’s
mantle rests on the iron core, or the crust on soft mantle?

I think about pointing into the 32 Southern constellations,
starting with the Southern Ecliptic Pole in Dorado.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – July 29, 2015

Mark Fogarty

DIANA TAURASI KISSES SEIMONE AUGUSTUS
ON COURT DURING THE WNBA FINALS

When you’re your authentic self every single day, without shame — life sort of falls into place.
— Seimone Augustus

“She wanted to taste my deliciousness,” said Seimone
After the game, but there was more to it than that.
Taurasi’s team was going down, there’s nothing
In this world she hates more than to lose,
And this was the finals, for all the bright rings.
So instead of grabbing Seimone to foul, she kissed her.
On the cheek. Sweet, and not so sweet.
A kiss for the victor, Seimone wins this time.
But also a foul, maybe even a technical foul,
And a Judas kiss as well, marking Seimone
To go down the next time they met.

The following year, Diana made sure her team won.

I should dislike Diana Taurasi, but I can’t.
She went to UConn, and I went to Rutgers,
Enough said. But Diana is the fiercest competitor
On the entire planet, the one you pick first
When choosing teams. She’s the best
Female hooper to date. This year she’s sitting out,
Wooed away by Russian billionaries
Who pay her $1.5 million, a free apartment,
Rides to away games on the oligarch’s jet.
I never rooted for her team, but I kind of miss
The way she cuts my team up with her fiendish passes,
Her moves to the hole, her pullup and score.
I miss the bun of hair she pulls back so tightly
My head hurts. I want to taste her deliciousness again.

Seimone Augustus was engaged for a full five years.
No, she wasn’t dithering about it.
She couldn’t marry her wife until now.
I teared when I read her essay on marriage.
She loves her spouse like I loved my spouse,
Like you love your spouse. No different.
Sweet as the move to the hoop, the circle
All the energy flows through. I too
Want to kiss Seimone Augustus, chastely,
On her tender and triumphant cheek,
Now that the veil has been lifted,
Now that there is no gay marriage, just marriage.

RWB Poets at NYC Poetry Festival, July 26, 2015


Claudia Serea hosted. The readers were John Barrale, Wayne L. Miller, Zorida Mohammed, Mark Fogarty, and Anton Yakovlev.

Pictures on Facebook.

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – July 22, 2015

Janet Kolstein

Puffy’s

There were two ways to go,
and he stood to let me pass,
cigarette smoke swirling around
and above our heads
back in the days when it was so.

Should I face him?
Brush up against him missionary-style,
chest and loin,
swish, swish.

Should I politely turn my back on him?
My rear to his fly,
carefully trying not to topple
the glasses of wine and beer
making wet rings on wood
in the darkly-lit bar.
Swish.

The controlled cacophony was a smile,
late night music
of new beginnings.

What songs were played,
and what I heard,
lay chilled as chardonnay.

WCW – Geraldine Green

Wednesday, August 5, 2015, 7 p.m.

Williams Center for the Arts
One Williams Plaza, Rutherford NJ

Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor

Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com

Geraldine Green is a freelance creative writing tutor, mentor and published poet. She lives in Ulverston on the Furness Peninsula Cumbria, UK, where she was born. Her latest collection Salt Road was published in 2013 by Indigo Dreams. Geraldine is writer-in-residence at Swarthmoor Hall and a guest tutor at the Hall and also at Brantwood Coniston. In September 2011 she gained a PhD in creative writing titled: An Exploration of Identity and Environment through Poetry from Lancaster University. A frequent visitor to North America, she has a two-week poetry tour planned for August 2015 where she will read at a variety of venues in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Geraldine blogs at geraldinegreensaltroad.blogspot.co.uk.

from Salt Road into the Bay

I walk out into wind,
salt & flat-caked mud
baked white in the sun,
tread among samphire,
spiked as yet unplumped
shoots of bright green
small pockets of prayer
parcels of ozone and ask:
are you really samphire,
that bright jewel of
Shakespeare?
Picked, plucked,
remembered from Lear?

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – July 15, 2015

John Barrale

Grandmothers— like the Parrots
on the Wallpaper in My Room
When I Was Thirteen

They were older goddesses,
constant and there
like the sun
and the rain,

their faces rough sketches
in the weather of years
I hardly remember.

Each was a queen,
their feathers like jewels
and carefully formed,

the greens and yellows,
though faded,
still a clear idea

like the outline of birds
on a wallpaper’s pattern,

or the faces of the old
on porches I passed

where death was slowly sewing

and bones were threads
in October’s knots,

the claw-like hands of old friends
spread over a game of cards
and a bowl of seeds,

the truth hulled,
and picked over
in softening beaks,

the shells tossed in yards
where the sunflowers were dying
and no one walked.

GV – Seventh Year Poetry/Music Magic


The Magic Circle returns to GainVille Café on Thursday, July 30 to begin its seventh year with the poetry of RON BREMNER along with featured musician BRENDAN FOGARTY.

Ron’s work has appeared in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow anthology, International Poetry Review, Paterson Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Irish piper Brendan will be making a second encore for the group at GAINVILLE CAFE, 17 Ames Ave., Rutherford.

The Red Wheelbarrow Poets’ Bring-Your-A-Game open mic will follow, with generous reading times.

17 Ames Ave., 7 PM
$7 donation includes coffee/tea and dessert
(201) 507-1800
Note switch of days this month to Thursday!

RWB Workshop Poem of the Week – June 24, 2015

Zorida Mohammed

The Lost Parents

He rented her out
in the summer,
when no one would notice.

Always to a man,
a man with a car,
one of her father’s friends.

She’d been warned to heed the renter’s bidding.

They lived in the car,
and sometimes in a motel.

She was 13.

Her mother had disappeared early on.
Her siblings were “vipers.”

She searched and found her mother
in a mental hospital.
Or was it a an old folks home?

She forgave her everything.
The visit made her almost high

But the silence that followed
when her mother melted back into her world
plunged her into a wilderness.

Even her forgiveness
was not trick enough.

Blog – https://redwheelbarrowpoets.wordpress.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets

Robert Graham Stritch – My Own Things

Robert Graham Stritch performed at the Sixth Biennial Conference of the William Carlos Williams Society, held at William Paterson University. His song “My Own Things” uses lines from William’s poems as lyrics to a beautiful melody.