RED WHEELBARROW 9 IS HERE!
The Red Wheelbarrow Poets will launch their ninth anthology at GainVille Café in Rutherford on Friday, Sept. 30. Copies of the book will be available for sale. Musical feature: The Electric Poets Gathering featuring George Pereny. Poetry feature: Poets will read from their work published in RWB9.
Gainville Cafe
17 Ames Ave., Rutherford. 7 PM
$8 donation at the door includes coffee/tea and dessert
(201) 507-1800
Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 9/14/2016
Janet Kolstein
Pound of Poems
I wish the piano
could gun the engine
under the hood,
and the choir could
raise the roof on
a fortress of words.
I wish the drums
could pound out
a pound of poems
without spilling
a drop of blood.
Let the theremin
quiver in my hands,
shaping a heart
with a dagger
written in it.
Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (192 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (325 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (82 followers)
Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/31/2016
Mark Fogarty
Thin Blooded
I don’t know if I’m thin skinned or not
But there isn’t any doubt I’m thin blooded.
In the hospital once the CNA roused me
As I was lying in a puddle of blood.
I’d slept on the IV works
And enough blood had started out
I thought someone had stabbed me,
Or put a horse’s head in my narrow bed.
The thin blood keeps the clots in place
So they don’t break away like Baltic republics
And steer for your heart, brain or lungs.
I netted two out of three, and it wasn’t good.
No razors on me, I tell the barber.
Be careful if you floss your teeth.
That blood bubble on your hand, beware.
I need to be more thick skinned,
If just to keep the allotted blood in.
Here’s my song on the internet:
I’m thin blooded, check it and see
I’ve got a fever of a hundred and three.
I’ve had a fever every day for three months
As my body wrestles down the invaders.
It’s nothing to sing about, really.
In narrow sleep I dream of Lara, and Zhivago,
Writing poetry with the wolves at the door,
The commies not far behind.
The wolf came to my door, growled a couple of times,
And settled for a bowl of blood.
My God, says the father.
They’ve killed the Czar and his family.
I think of the Czarevich, who bled
At every fall, and his sexy madman monk,
Whose blood was so thick they had to poison,
Shoot and drown him. Son, it doesn’t do
To be thinblooded in this world,
Where night brings the night horses,
The bloody sheets, the empty wells.
Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (189 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (325 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (80 followers)
Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/17/2016
Arthur Russell
Summer Solstice, 1974
On West 36th Street,
in the strange, back apartment
over the wholesale button shop
you took me home to,
and pissed with the bathroom door open,
and returned to bed when we
should have been dressing to go,
the dirty window blurred
the crazy view up the air shaft
to the top of the Empire State Building,
while the radio insisted
that its love was like a ship on the ocean,
and my cheek lay on your thigh.
Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (187 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (323 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (80 followers)
Red Wheelbarrow Poets
Poem of the Week 8/10/2016
Janet Kolstein
Zarafa
In captivity, she sailed down the Nile
far, far away from her home
and across the Mediterranean Sea,
Africa behind her, Marseille ahead,
the first giraffe ever seen in France.
A sight of wonder and delight
the moment her hooves touched land,
she walked to Paris to be
another jeune fille
in the king’s menagerie
in the Jardin des Plantes.
A star, an oddity, an obsession,
alone in her sphere,
she would live out her life
in solitude
among the hundreds of thousands
who came to stare
and buy wares with her likeness.
Was there a man, woman, or child
who pitied her plight,
looked into her unguarded gaze and wondered
if giraffes can dream of herds on savannas
and other long necks to nibble
and twine?
(A gift from Muhammed Ali Pasha to King Charles X, Zarafa (“lovely one”) landed in Marseille on October 1826 and inspired “giraffemania” until becoming passe. She died in 1845.)
Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (187 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (322 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (78 followers)
Wednesday, September 7, 2016, 7 p.m.
Williams Center for the Arts
Cinema 3
Plus the words of William Carlos Williams
and open readings from the floor
Free
Carmen-Francesca Banciu was born in Romania and studied religious painting and foreign trade in Bucharest. As a result of being awarded the International Short Story Award of the City of Arnsberg for the story “Das strahlende Ghetto” (“The Radiant Ghetto,” 1985), she was banned from publishing her work in Romania. In 1991, she accepted an invitation extended by the DAAD Berlin Artists-in-Residence program and came to Germany. She was a writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University (2004-2005) and at the University of Bath in 2009. Banciu currently lives in Berlin and works as a freelance author and co-editor of the multilingual e-magazine Levure Littéraire. She is the author of four novels and four collections of short stories. Her work draws from the experience of writing under Communist dictatorship and from geographic and linguistic migrations. Her new books, the poetry collection Leichter Wind im Paradies and Mother´s Day—Song of a Sad Mother, were both published in 2015 by PalmArtPress.
Homesick
Last night I forgot to close the lid of the rubbish bin.
The ants appeared in front of me.
They have built an ant road. They crawl up to
the rubbish in a thin line.
Still no road below.
I close the lid and break the road.
Some ants are locked inside. They
will be taken to the rubbish dump. On the other side
of the village. Where the rubbish containers sit.
Far away from here.
Will they find their way back to the house?
Will they create a new home?
Will other ants accept them?
Adopt them?
Or will they be lost in foreign lands?
I keep the lid closed.
Contact: John Barrale – john.barrale@gmail.com
Return to Eastern Europe
Claudia Serea
Come to Baba, little girl,
says the old hag
and spreads her flabby thighs,
revealing her vagina
equipped with three rows
of sharp teeth.
Blog – http://redwheelbarrowpoets.org (185 followers)
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/RWBPoets (317 likes)
Twitter – https://twitter.com/RWBPoets (78 followers)
EIGHTH POETRY/MUSIC YEAR AT GAINVILLE!
The Magic Circle returns to GainVille Café on Friday, July 29 at 7 PM as we continue our eighth year of great poetry and music. Exciting news: Rutherford’s own PETE McCULLOUGH will be bringing his standup bass to perform. Also exciting news: ANTON YAKOVLEV will be our featured poet and will debut his latest chapbook! Open mic follows.
Gainville Cafe
17 Ames Ave., Rutherford. 7 PM
$8 donation at the door includes coffee/tea and dessert
(201) 507-1800
Eulogy for Eleanor
John Barrale
I was twelve; she was eight.
My mother forced me to go— her funeral mass
was a sad storybook on a Sunday morning.
The night before her coffin floated
in a forest of flowers and ribbons.
Under its closed lid, I imagined her head
resting on a satin pillow—
jewel-like, exact
and delicate.
Black Plastic Bags
Wayne L. Miller
When my brother
and I emptied
our parents’ house,
we threw out most
of what we found.
My son will keep
2%. But as I work
under bare-bulb
light, I don’t know
which 2%.
The Red Wheelbarrow Poets 
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