Tag: Open Mic

The Williams Readings present
MICHAEL T. YOUNG

Wednesday, January 8, 2014, 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

Michael T. Young’s fourth collection, The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost, will be published in spring of 2014 by Poets Wear Prada Press. He received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His work has appeared in numerous journals including The Adirondack Review, Fogged Clarity, The Louisville Review, Off the Coast, The Potomac Review, and The Raintown Review. His work is also in the anthologies Phoenix Rising, Chance of a Ghost, In the Black/In the Red and forthcoming in Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. He lives with his wife and children in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Sage

None of my dictionaries define it as a color
and yet my wife tells me it’s the color
of our wedding—her dress, my tie.
I take her word for it, but feel no wiser.
I sometimes find it in the tiles of some mosaic
or fired into a mug now on clearance at the store
and I’m suddenly connected, rooted,
though it depends on the light, as color always does,
changing with air densities and angles,
shifting with the hours, aging
like the plant that is this color’s namesake,
its leaves like fingers pointing in every direction,
as if it knew something.

(originally published in Tribeca Poetry Review)

The Williams Readings present
MARISA FRASCA

Wednesday, December 4, 2013, 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

Marisa Frasca is a poet and translator whose work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. She was named first-runner up for the 2013 national Bordighera Poetry Prize for her manuscript Via Incanto: Poems from the Darkroom judged by distinguished poet Lia Purpura. Frasca holds a BA from The New School and an MFA in poetry from Drew University. She serves on the board of The Italian American Studies Association, The Italian American Writers’ Association, and the advisory board of Arba Sicula. Her fluency in Sicilian and Italian has highlighted her participation in bilingual poetry readings and festivals in and around New York City colleges and universities. She was born in Vittoria, Italy; her immigration experience informs much of her work.

Transforming the I (fragment)

The maple leaves danced hip-hop
in the breeze, birds spread their wings and interrogated
the expansive rose colored sky. I couldn’t understand
what they were asking. But for a little while
their song allowed heart to lift and empty its laments
before retracing my steps to a roach infested Brooklyn tenement
lowering my head, hand over my mouth I entered
the old dark and narrow hallway of the immigrant.