NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, this month’s reading will take place over Zoom. Email christopherjluna@gmail.com by no later than 3 pm on August 13 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are “Reading” or “Just Listening.” You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting. Open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less.

If you are willing to donate to support the series, please use Christopher Luna’s PayPal (christopherjluna@gmail.com). Include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, & Morgan Paige
Featuring Maw Shein Win

7 pm
Thursday, August 13
On Zoom

$5 Suggested donation
No one turned away for lack of funds

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,
ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

Please support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, has provided a home for us since 2015: https://nichewinebar.com

Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 – 2018), and her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House will be published by Omnidawn in October 2020. Learn more at https://mawsheinwin.com

Preorder Storage Unit for the Spirit House here:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo68377474.html

On July 9 we celebrated the publication of Cosmic Pockets, the debut book of poetry from Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic regular Joann Renee Boswell. Joann was our featured reader, and she did not disappoint.

Along with a selection of poems from her new book, Joann shared this new piece dedicated to Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Colorado man murdered by police while walking home from the store on August 24, 2019. Elijah was a massage therapist who enjoyed playing guitar and violin.

His mother has set up a GoFundMe account.

Sign the petition calling for justice for Elijah McClain.

Printed Matter Vancouver is proud to present Joann’s poem because we believe the harassment, torture, and murder of Blacks by police must stop. Black Lives Matter.

Power

By Joann Renee Boswell

— for Elijah McClain

 

The Man sprays pepper

calls down twitter gods

becomes loudest voice

strangles sound from little birds

 

white hot rage froths

each bully feels bullied

by being called bully

retaliate with billy clubs

 

Oh country, my country

Peace is a power

Generosity is a power

Love is a power too

 

each a gift of glass

delicate sheets

transparent, deadly

when twisted to exclude

 

you are giddy

overconfident

numb to reason

silent to emotion

 

power is privilege and music

violin strings massaging biceps

sing sweet security by candlelight

—but you contort them, suffocate the gentle

 

walk back to work

every day. untouchable.

bear the weight of conscience.

bare the fragility of skin tone.

NOTE: Due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control, this month’s reading will take place over Zoom. Email christopherjluna@gmail.com by no later than 3 pm on July 9 to indicate your interest in participating. In the subject line, let us know if you are “Reading” or “Just Listening.” You will receive instructions for how to join the meeting. Open mic readers are invited to share one poem for three minutes or less.

If you are willing to donate to support the series, please use Christopher Luna’s PayPal (christopherjluna@gmail.com) and include a memo stating that the money is for Ghost Town Poetry.

Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic
Hosted by Christopher Luna, Toni Lumbrazo Luna, & Morgan Paige
Featuring Joann Boswell

7 pm
Thursday, July 9
On Zoom

$5 Suggested donation
No one turned away for lack of funds

LGBTQ+ FRIENDLY, PRO-SCIENCE, ANTI-FASCIST,
ALL AGES, AND UNCENSORED SINCE 2004

Please support Niche Wine Bar, whose owner, Leah Jackson, has provided a home for us since 2015, by ordering food to go: nichewinebar.com

About Cosmic Pockets: What if Mary wasn’t really a virgin? Could Jesus be an alien from another planet? How do we know we’re not all living inside of God? Poet and photographer Joann Renee Boswell invites us to travel with her into an encounter with the inconvenient complexities of earth-life and outer space, politics and religion, Bigfoot, feminism, Santa Claus, and spirituality – all tucked inside the Cosmic Pockets of life. Simultaneously whimsical and serious, Cosmic Pockets traces Joann’s personal journey out of evangelical Christianity and into an evolving understanding of faith – what if the universe is out to help us? Into motherhood – do my children exist when I’m not there? And into love – do I have a superpower? Unflinchingly honest and delightfully conflicted, the dense narrative of Cosmic Pockets will complicate your understanding of what the world is and gift you with narrow glimpses of what might be.

Cosmic Pockets is the thrilling manifesto of a goddess aflame with righteous fury at the misogyny and hypocrisy of Christianity’s Madonna-Whore double standard. Her radical feminist vision exposes the unrealistic expectations imposed upon women which results in an internalization of unwarranted shame. Joann Boswell’s heroic verse, sharp wit, and exquisite photos of everyday life become “sacraments of action” illuminating the actual romance to be found in marriage as well as the joys and challenges of motherhood. Marvel as I did at this candid and fearless poet determined “to say all the words, each holy.” Christopher Luna, inaugural Poet Laureate of Clark County, WA and founder of Ghost Town Poetry Open Mic

Joann Renee Boswell is a teacher, theater director, mother, photographer, and poet. She lives in Camas, Washington, with her partner and three children. Joann graduated with a Choose Your Own Adventure B.A., featuring music, theater, and writing/literature. Later she became a master at teaching (ask her former students!). Joann loves rainy days filled with coffee, books, handholding, moody music, and sci-fi shows. While her poetry has appeared in over a dozen journals, this is her first book.

Find out more at https://joannrenee.com/cosmic-pockets/

 

Order the book here: https://www.barclaypressbookstore.com/Cosmic-Pockets.html