June schedule

Here is our June schedule!
6/3/13 Peter Dugan John Brennan Elizabeth Rowe Barbara Novack
6/10/13 Lloyd Abrams Roxanne Hoffman Robert Savino Vincent Casale
6/17/13 Barbara Reiher-Meyers Ron Baumbach Jared Harel Tom Phelan
6/24/13 Jane Ormerod Narges George Guida Ron Ross

Still working on July & August--will be out soon!

Sami LaRose

The Complex Brain

By:Sami LaRose

To love or not to love that is the question 

Do I tell him how I feel;

Do I tell him how he makes everything seem surreal? 

Or do I stand back? 

Close my mouth like I've been caught up in a trap

Or should I squeal?

You make life seem so unreal 

This is the way you make me feel

You make life so surreal until;

Reality hits me, that you are no longer mine 

And we had to say our goodbyes 

It was no longer our time to shine

But forever in my heart you remain

I try to keep my feelings domain,

But I cannot resist the urge 

Of how you make me feel.

You make life so unreal 

So surreal 

Just by how you make me feel 

Is this love 

Or is this tragedy

When will my fairly god mother come sprout

And talk to me what all my dreams are about?

Will she give me that glass slipper or will I have to ask her?

I am always scared that my life will end in disaster 

Holding on, not letting 

My hope begins to show.

You saw the vulnerability in my eyes,

You saw how easily I begin to cry 

So you took it further, and pretend as if it we're over 

Maybe some things are better for us than we think 

True love can make our hearts sink

And our souls grow bitter 

And our skin turns old

We were once

So brave and bold;

And now we don't even have a place to call home

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Pat Beckerman

For Mr. Goodyear
Pat Beckerman

On that sunny Easter Sunday,
the Living Girdle
did not consume my thighs
to keep itself alive
but merely contained them
voraciously
and shaped them to a narrowed gait

And I walked so proudly
in my celery-hued suit,
handmade, and so carefully
stitch by stitch by steady stitch,
down to its A-line skirt

Yes, I walked proudly
to church then home again
alone, but for one friend:
my living latex underling
the Playtex living underthing
that choked my pubescent thighs
with my passionate permission
to a meek yet firm submission.

Mimicking the flawless fawns
I’d seen in "Seventeen"
I was but thirteen, and yet
was vying with my close companion,
my Goodyear support system,
for my each and every breath.

I didn’t know that I was beautiful…
so ripe, so sensual….and so
alive!
within my blooming hips and thighs;
I didn’t know I could
BE beautiful
without compression!

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Matt Pasca

WHITE DOGWOOD

Matt Pasca

Late March, New York

sunrise blends the treetops,

trunks left naked like coy

cartoons, covering up.

The train station roof,

church steeple and Atlantic

sky stretch unabated, no bough

to block. Yet this morning

a white dogwood

blossomed proudly

over Union Boulevard, obscuring

air with cloven frills, doilied

petals, a tree so bold

it screamed a Whoville scream,

just loud enough to hear.

I am here! it echoed

in my tiny car

blistered with red

nodes from a lagging oak,

one of the millions

wishing to be quicker

and less cynical. Soon

the white dogwood

will be common:

abundant and green—

mere scenery for yellow

shocks of forsythia

and bursting stalks

of summer, though

today it commands us

to change what we think

possible.

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Sharon Anderson

Whimsy
Sharon Anderson

Drift, languid, a fairy's whisper...
linger, hovering
above lawns, meadows,
weaving to and fro.

Dance with abandon over fallow fields,
pirouette in breeze's sway.

Your course, not chosen.
An updraft, your whimsy,
a sudden squall your calamity.

Your final haven awaits the will
of nature's caprice.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Dd. Spungin

Solid Pistachio Shells

Dd. Spungin

At a moment’s notice, I can become The Hulk

So say my grandsons, unused to my scaly green outbursts

Nutcracker in hand, I conquer the almond

Its willingness to capitulate to my touch, a gift

In the supermarket aisle, needed items sit atop the highest shelf

Smaller now but caneless,

I need to choose:

Call for help or bypass my desire

It isn’t just the daily routines that turn me angry green

Ignorance can do it

Sometimes long lines of traffic

The late payment unforgiven

Talk of my patience has not been greatly exaggerated

But there is that limit:

The shell that refuses to crack

The burnt pot

Any declaration of war.

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Lynn Cohen

Nostalgia
Lynn Cohen

Watching “Midnight in Paris”
I suffer nostalgia:
live in my past;
you in times that never have been.

I travel back in your life;
remember another lover you found
years after she left
because she was too young
for the passion you wanted.

Wandering the Paris Pontes
I pass a miniature Statue of Liberty
see all join the banks of the Seine.

Paris in the rain
suits me well
I do not need a parapluie;
I just want another time:
The twenties of Eliot, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Stein.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

George Held

Under the Escalator
George Held

I want to go all the way
around on the escalator
to slip under the plate
at the bottom and turn
topsy-turvy in that
chamber below floor
level where it rolls
under itself and climbs
back to the top where
I’ll come out of the
crack under the plate
and start all over again
unless the trolls who
control the machinery
in that chamber under
the floor exact a toll
from me that I can’t
pay, since I’m upside
down and unable to
reach my bills or coin
and they imprison me
in that dark chamber
forever to hear those
metal stairs whine and
those rubber railings
sigh in their grooves
as all the customers
silently, sullenly ride
over me, my screams
drowned out by that
indifferent machinery.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Pat Roth

Finish Line

Pat Roth

 

Night at the Races-K of C

Need a winner-let it be me

Put my money on “Sandy’s Hope”

Did I win? – NOPE!

I have no luck but I have true wealth

‘cause I still have family, friends and health

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Maria Lisella

At last
Maria Lisella

we killed them, destroyed
the wasp nest, so formidable, dangerous.
So old I thought. The exterminator announced
the process complete. If the wasps had not
buzzed around my tiny 90-year-old mother,
they could have dwelled in peace.
Once they went into attack mode, they left me
no choice. Entwined by morning glories
twirling up the railings, tendrils tossing
from the roof, a lone wasp whips
so close to my cheek I feel its two pairs of wings,
a survivor searching for home.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Patricia Beckerman

WOMANDANCE

Patricia Beckerman

Through the sacred dance...

I will be still an instant, and go home.

Embattled hearts clash, bleed, and retreat....

Yet I can find a fountain flowing sweet, on this battleground!

The floods and quakes induce the Mother's labor

And I birth my

Self

And feel the birth pangs moving through my feet.

I will be still an instant, and go home.

And reach the sunlit eye of any storm.

A prison can imprison only form!

Let there be light!

While Mother Earth's sap pulses through my limbs this dancing night,

While sister-hearts are gathered

We are free to take a flight

Through ecstasy...

Into blissfulness!

As suns a billion bright

Might shine away the night!

We rise, we fall, we twirl

We whirl like dervishes...

And while we let the moonbeams spin us

Our planet spins within us

We celebrate this earth-space

And our dancing clears a birthplace

Of the spirit!

Let it dance,

Let it flow...

While it's flowing,

Let us know:

We are stillness in the center of a whirlwind of adverture!

In the center of you, I discover there's me!

Let us dance tonight, ladies,

Let us dance....

....and be free!

 

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!

Harriet Slaughter

Boston Marathon

Harriet Slaughter

They stood behind the barricades
Runners in motion, legs outstretched.
A tempest boom bursts upon the scene,
Another in quick succession.

Spattered blood, spreading limbs
Line the street of runner’s dreams,
A dark, ghostly finish.

Our hearts heave in pain for those who lost
In an endless cycle of violence
Harbored deep in crevices of twisted minds
Making another grandstand debut.

The Summer Gazebo Readings are held each Monday evening at 7pm in June, July & August. Each evening 4-5 authors and poets share their work from our Gazebo on Schoolhouse Green in Oceanside, NY. SGR is produced by the Kiwanis Club of Oceanside. Funds raised through sponsorships help send underprivileged kids to Kamp Kiwanis each summer. This summer marks our 7th season!