POETRY READINGS

POETRY READINGS

Poems performed by professional actors.

Subscribe Share
POETRY READINGS
  • Poetry Reading: Essence, by Nancy Brashear

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    God took a wand
    Dipped it into the life-giving liquid
    And breathed this foam into
    A giant bubble.
    Surface tension growing and stretching
    Clusters of bubbles forming within.
    Stochastic processes
    Vacuum fluctuations
    Or genius planning?
    It swelled and stretched
    And und...

  • Poetry Reading: HOMESTEAD REFLECTIONS, by Duane L Herrmann

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    I. Prairie Roots

    Vast sky above, blue;
    sea all around, green
    waves of grass under wind,
    the grown man stood
    thinking of decades gone
    when he was young
    and another man who
    stood here too.
    Both linked by more
    than one can say:
    love and genes;
    one paved the way
    for ge...

  • Poetry Reading: Lament for a Monarch Butterfly, by Leslie Rwigyema

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    i love you.
    your orange hues amaze me.
    Please. Don’t die.

    i adore you.
    God blessed you with speckles
    of white in the rim of your wings.
    Please. Don’t go.

    Even though I laid eyes on you
    for a mere second,
    I was hypnotized by your beauty.
    All butterflies are unique...

  • Poetry Reading: PAGE(S), by Adam Farris (interview)

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    Ripping off a bandaid doesn’t paint the right picture. It’s more like taking a couple of perfectly unique pages from two completely different books – maybe one an intellectual mystery, and the other a soulful romance – and expending an entire hot glue stick binding ...

  • Poetry Reading: Rage, by Josie Mckenzie

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    You know… I believe we, as a collective, and as individuals forming that collective, should let injustice consume us just enough for us to care, just enough to feel a sense of fucking rage. Rage gets shit done. If everyone believed in not letting injustice’s consump...

  • Poetry Reading: Revolution Monologue, by Korby Rhodes

    Peformed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    First off I would like to say how wonderful it has been these many months. Although we are embroiled in a war, this group’s commitment never wavered. That is why here, today, we stand on the precipice of a truly extraordinary breakthrough.

    Gentleman, we know the tas...

  • Poetry Reading: DISSOLUTION OF MY FATHER, by Jesse Darnay

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    Inpatient Hospice

    You inhabit me; you narrow to flanks.
    Your spineless nerves sear my ventricles.
    The creative will will snap your cheekbone—
    hush, soil, remains.
    Look at the blank between us
    squeezing my shoulders.

    I breathed through your infamy
    at graduation,
    mi...

  • Poetry Reading: Fixing to Die, by Jason Ranieri

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    They put their finger to your lips
    And say it isn’t what it is
    As the journalist just wins a prize
    And the candidate is making speeches
    As the military reaches
    The borders of the other side
    History turns the corner
    The stories have grown taller
    And our memories are ...

  • Poetry Reading: Lady Liberty, by Jason Ranieri

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    Bright eyed lady, spin the thread, sew the flag
    Fife and drum marching across the land
    Hear the creed in far off places
    Democracy’s seed, Lady Liberty
    Needle skipped, would’ve cried for a penny
    Rain fell, the liberty tree, into the lock, the treasury key
    Out of mind...

  • Poetry Reading: I AM YOURS, YOU ARE MINE, by Jason Raneiri

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    We sat so still no one knew that I was beginning to come unglued
    I thought I should reach down to tie her shoe
    I stole a kiss from her cheek she caught a teardrop sipped a drink
    It froze in a place until she let her hair down
    We view the flowers growing outside each...

  • Poetry Reading: Unhappy Me, by Jason Ranieri

    Voice Over: Val Cole

    POEM:

    You have no spirit you have no warmth
    When you’ve heard the lock on the door
    Listen to what your sorrows are
    Tell me is it you that leads me from dying, rage and fiercest grief
    Be alert the snakes lie at your feet
    Is there any other who suffers so hard a fate?
    And si...

  • Poetry Reading: WHEN THEY LOOK AWAY, by Gabriella Niles-Ewen (interview)

    Poem by Val Cole

    POEM:

    They say,
    I should have been stronger —
    like bones aren’t meant to break
    under the weight of a stranger’s hands.

    Like I wasn’t already fighting to hold on
    while he took pieces of me,
    one by one,
    until the mirror became a place
    I could no longer stand to look.

    They say,...

  • Poetry Reading: WAR Poems by Elianne El-Amyouni

    Poetry by Val Cole

    POEM:

    I.

    How heavy the tires that drive you
    Through fireworks in the street.

    How plain the lies that hide you,
    The blood and myth behind you
    Is nothing new to me.

    Beautiful I find you,
    To wrap two legs around you,
    Surrounded by the safety of my fear.

    Steady, love reminds...

  • POETRY Reading: Romance Poem by Arrianna Gumbus

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    Your love isn’t something I would willingly give away.
    I wouldn’t dare make a mistake, so that your love would decay.
    They say I’m on a leash, but I wouldn’t care anyway.
    Your love is for me like a flower on a rainy day.

  • POETRY Reading: Game of Risk, by Richard Stimac

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    The rules are simple, and simplistic
    (but not as much as War).
    Each territory holds a name,
    descriptive and endearing:

    Central America; Ukraine,
    Middle East; Siam; Congo;
    each has a border with the other,
    colored and separate.

    The plastic men, with tiny guns,
    atta...

  • POETRY Reading: Siren, by Kathryn Davey

    Performed by Val Cole

    POEM:

    Give me wine and the ocean, and hyacinth hair
    A casket of flotsam and crystalline care.
    Speak of the currents in deep fluid blue and bring to the surface a mirror of you
    Hers is the wave and quickening tide, touched by the moon I secretly hide.
    Give me wine and hyac...

  • Short Story Video Reading: MISS NOTHING, by Wren Valentino

    Performed by Val Cole

    When broken-hearted Melody Notting comes face-to-face with her ex-boyfriend at a beach, she makes the moment a first step on her journey to
    independence.

    Women's Fiction/Contemporary Fiction

  • Poetry Video Reading: A HAIKU COLLECTION, by Jiel Narvekar

    Performed by Val Cole

    A Haiku Collection, by Jiel Narvekar

    1. Heart Shaped Box

    Once handled with care.
    For contents were prized treasures.
    Silly me, I laugh.

    2. Childhood’s end

    Childhood’s end looms near.
    Not quite adults nor children.
    On the cusp, waiting.

    3. Postcard

    Eagerly await
    The ar...

  • Poetry Video Reading: ARTISTS CANT DIE, by John Ganshaw

    Voice Over: Val Cole

    Artists Can’t Die, by John Ganshaw

    It is raining now as it was then
    The pitter-patter on the roof
    Will it never end
    Today is a rebirth of the man he is
    To leave the past, let a new life begin

    All had planned so much for this day
    When a devil wished for him to fail and go ...

  • Poetry Video Reading: Four Untitled Self-Help Sonnets, by K.D. Battle

  • Poetry Video Reading: I'M SCARED THAT IM A NARCISSIST, by Kailah Peters

    Voice Over: Val Cole

    POEM:

    I’m scared that I’m a narcissist, by Kailah Peters

    But really I think I just like myself
    For the first time in 25 years
    And this shit is wild

    Like I used to introduce myself with sadness first
    And now I lead with laughter
    Because I’m laughing all the time

    I stand ...

  • Poetry Video Reading: KINDNESS, by Rita McDermott

    Performed by Val Cole

  • Poetry Video Reading: LIFE AFTER BOB, by Roy Smith

    Voice Over by Val Cole

    Life after Bob, by Roy Smith

    I wish I had a bosom
    I would not put my fishing lures there
    Rather, money from a friend for dope or rent
    folded like an origami chicken so it would poke and itch
    not slide to my belly button
    A stash for Belle Lettres, you know, notes from fore...

  • Poetry Video Reading: THAT UNSPEAKABLE THING, by Daniel Thomas Moran

    That Unspeakable Thing, by Daniel Thomas Moran

    When, in good time, a thoughtful person reflects,
    There can be no subject to confound us like sex.
    Which had one singular apparent intention,
    But wound up with more than one can mention.

    We begin misconstruing the endless inferences,
    That day we re...