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| Moonstone Poetry | |||
@ Toast
1201 Spruce Street
Philadelphia
Leonard
Gontarek &
Barrett
Warner
Monday, July 26, 6:30 PM
Hosted by
Shevaun
Brannigan
Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems, including, He Looked
Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs (2013), and Take Your Hand Out of My
Pocket, Shiva (2016), both published by Hanging Loose Press. His poems have appeared
in American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Verse, Blackbird, The Awl, Spinning Jenny,
and The Best American Poetry, among others. He coordinates Peace/Works,
Philly Poetry Day, The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, and hosts The Green Line
Reading & Interview Series. Gontarek has received Poetry fellowships from the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community
Service Award, and was a Literary Death Match Champion. His poem, 37 Photos
From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges MotionPoems project
and the basis for the award-winning film by Lori Ersolmaz sponsored by the
Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.
Barrett Warner’s poems and stories have appeared in paper, newsprint, and online since 1982. He covered stock car racing and fast horses as a freelance journalist. In 2011, the shy bookworm left the racetrack. Today he reviews books, writes essays, and lectures. Known for his witty touches, his recent work can be found in Coda Quarterly, Adroit Journal, Consequence Magazine, Tishman Review, Chiron Review, Entropy Magazine, and Cultural Weekly. In 2014 he received the Chris Toll Memorial Prize for his poetry chapbook My Friend Ken Harvey (Publishing Genius), the Salamander fiction prize for his story “Dimension,” and the Cloudbank poetry prize for his poem “Tanya, Tanya, Tanya.” His essay “My Thousand Year Old Disease” was selected by Ray Gonzalez for the Tucson Festival of Books Rising Star award.
The Maryland “hard boot” is the author of the chapbooks My Friend Ken Harvey (2014, Publishing Genius) and Til I’m Blue in the Face, (1994, Tropos Press) and holds an MFA degree from a small college in North Bennington, Vermont where he’s pretty sure he checked the Poetry Concentration box. Currently, he is compiling his seventh issue of Free State Review, a nonpartisan literary journal which he edits with Hal Burdett, J. Wesley Clark, and Bob Timberg. He is also an acquisitions editor for Galileo Books, a 501-C publisher of poetry and prose collections.
Twins Barrett Warner
The hand without feeling
resembles the hand that feels.
Both have sixty or so small bones
and five stocky fingers.
These hands have been friends
since either can remember.
Now, the good hand feels for both.
The bad hand waves,
as if to agree with every word.
One side holds forth, the other hopes
that doors will open without knobs.
This is how I go through life.
Falling on a muddy trail last week,
the bad hand broke the crash, cracking bones.
In spite of its strange new shape—
a valley cutting across my palm
and two fingers refusing to buddy-up—
it was entirely painless; the good hand
never stopped singing, nor once offered
to staunch the widening geranium of blood.
Bougainvillea Road Lit Mag 2015
Coincidence Leonard Gontarek
1
Covering Prince is a rare pleasure
like putting a blanket over him
when he falls asleep on your sofa.
What more can a fool say about the love of music and evening,.
2
I’m trying to lose myself, bury myself in music
and my band which keeps changing names,
DJ Crazy Mother Fucker, Leonard &
The Soul Suckers, Nice Knowing You, Elvis,
My Aunt Chrissie, Soldiers In God’s Army,
Leonard Gontarek & The Forensic Astronomers,
Smartphone Kickstand.
3
Think of covering yourself with a blanket, sitting down in dusk.
Think of returning to ennui and loosening and flying over and flying away.
Think of light as always on guard.
Nonetheless, we are ejected, one by one, through an exit at the back of the park, clutching books
of folk tales, into evening.
Think of death like a horror movie and strange coincidence.
Note the present tense.
Copyright 2015 Leonard Gontarek – Pine Hills Review
1201 Spruce Street
Philadelphia
Leonard
Gontarek &
Barrett
Warner
Monday, July 26, 6:30 PM
Hosted by
Shevaun
Brannigan
Leonard Gontarek is the author of six books of poems, including, He Looked
Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs (2013), and Take Your Hand Out of My
Pocket, Shiva (2016), both published by Hanging Loose Press. His poems have appeared
in American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Verse, Blackbird, The Awl, Spinning Jenny,
and The Best American Poetry, among others. He coordinates Peace/Works,
Philly Poetry Day, The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, and hosts The Green Line
Reading & Interview Series. Gontarek has received Poetry fellowships from the
Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Philadelphia Writers Conference Community
Service Award, and was a Literary Death Match Champion. His poem, 37 Photos
From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges MotionPoems project
and the basis for the award-winning film by Lori Ersolmaz sponsored by the
Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.
Barrett Warner’s poems and stories have appeared in paper, newsprint, and online since 1982. He covered stock car racing and fast horses as a freelance journalist. In 2011, the shy bookworm left the racetrack. Today he reviews books, writes essays, and lectures. Known for his witty touches, his recent work can be found in Coda Quarterly, Adroit Journal, Consequence Magazine, Tishman Review, Chiron Review, Entropy Magazine, and Cultural Weekly. In 2014 he received the Chris Toll Memorial Prize for his poetry chapbook My Friend Ken Harvey (Publishing Genius), the Salamander fiction prize for his story “Dimension,” and the Cloudbank poetry prize for his poem “Tanya, Tanya, Tanya.” His essay “My Thousand Year Old Disease” was selected by Ray Gonzalez for the Tucson Festival of Books Rising Star award.
The Maryland “hard boot” is the author of the chapbooks My Friend Ken Harvey (2014, Publishing Genius) and Til I’m Blue in the Face, (1994, Tropos Press) and holds an MFA degree from a small college in North Bennington, Vermont where he’s pretty sure he checked the Poetry Concentration box. Currently, he is compiling his seventh issue of Free State Review, a nonpartisan literary journal which he edits with Hal Burdett, J. Wesley Clark, and Bob Timberg. He is also an acquisitions editor for Galileo Books, a 501-C publisher of poetry and prose collections.
Twins Barrett Warner
The hand without feeling
resembles the hand that feels.
Both have sixty or so small bones
and five stocky fingers.
These hands have been friends
since either can remember.
Now, the good hand feels for both.
The bad hand waves,
as if to agree with every word.
One side holds forth, the other hopes
that doors will open without knobs.
This is how I go through life.
Falling on a muddy trail last week,
the bad hand broke the crash, cracking bones.
In spite of its strange new shape—
a valley cutting across my palm
and two fingers refusing to buddy-up—
it was entirely painless; the good hand
never stopped singing, nor once offered
to staunch the widening geranium of blood.
Bougainvillea Road Lit Mag 2015
Coincidence Leonard Gontarek
1
Covering Prince is a rare pleasure
like putting a blanket over him
when he falls asleep on your sofa.
What more can a fool say about the love of music and evening,.
2
I’m trying to lose myself, bury myself in music
and my band which keeps changing names,
DJ Crazy Mother Fucker, Leonard &
The Soul Suckers, Nice Knowing You, Elvis,
My Aunt Chrissie, Soldiers In God’s Army,
Leonard Gontarek & The Forensic Astronomers,
Smartphone Kickstand.
3
Think of covering yourself with a blanket, sitting down in dusk.
Think of returning to ennui and loosening and flying over and flying away.
Think of light as always on guard.
Nonetheless, we are ejected, one by one, through an exit at the back of the park, clutching books
of folk tales, into evening.
Think of death like a horror movie and strange coincidence.
Note the present tense.
Copyright 2015 Leonard Gontarek – Pine Hills Review
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