October 24 @ 6 PM, at MOTR Pub 1345 Main Street
Feature-Open Reading
Proof of vax or negative test 72 hours prior to the event required for entrance
Featuring Mick Parsons
(Louisville, KY)
MICK PARSONS is the author of the poetry collection 92 Tanka, (2021, Basement Books.) and the chapbook 'God's Tired Plumbers' (2020). His work will or has appeared in Smokelong Quarterl; Impspired; The Moon City Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Unavoidable Disaster; Contemporary Haibun Online; Thimble Literary Magazine; Poetry Flash; The New Southerner; Pegasus; Antique Children;The Smoking Poet; The Dispatch LitaReview;The American Mythville Review; The Licking River Review;Inscape, and on semantikon.com. He also is the author of two other poetry collections, several otter chapbooks, a collection of short stories, and a novella. He’s organized open mics and readings all over the Midwest. He publishes new work often on Instagram (@dirtysacred). He is also the host and producer of the travel story podcast, Record of a Well-Worn Pair of Travel Boots.
Word of Mouth was founded in 2014 by poets Mark Flanigan and Jim Palmarini, inspired by the late poet and co-conspirator Aralee Strange. Word of Mouth asks poets of all persuasion to show up, mouth off, and listen |
Sometimes you miss the hangover
(because it’s a reasonable excuse for stupid) woke this morning with a headache not a hangover headache but there are times when I even miss those that earned retribution before an Alka Seltzer and a coffee the memory sits almost noble now having sore right a temple from being beaned by the bedroom window trying to close it without wearing pants behind shut blinds like a shy boy before his first skinny dip with a girl and I’m still too modest too much the small-town boy to be a proper nudist blinds up windows locked in the correct position always prepared with a towel to sit on * * * This is a personal poem because the moon rising at sunset is trite and honey bees won't make for good poetry until they're extinct because I should write how Dad kissed my forehead every night before bed told me he loved me but his temper still terrified me because I wrote that poem about the sunrise when I was 10 and clearly I don't need to visit that again because my dogs and cat aren't poetic because the Prozac my father took made him angrier and I saw the regret he was never good at articulating because I should write one more political statement and ignore how beautiful the moon is because the small town I grew in tried to typecast me and I had to leave because even as a kid it never felt like home because I'm supposed to stamp out / ignore my anger and call that enlightenment because home was always a television trope so is the moon and the sun and honey bees and the mysterious bird blight that struck robins blind like Saul of Tarsus because I'm frustrated by my phone camera's inability to simulate an optical illusion when I try and take a picture of the moon because I’m sure the blighted robins know more about God than any church leader because I've never understood hometown pride except as an intellectual concept I learned watching television because it's just another optical illusion and the sun and my dogs and the bees and the moon have been around longer |