MY KENNEDY CENTER (1982-2026)

by Robin Stevens Payes

Alvin Ailey Dancers * American Ballet Theatre * Beautiful * Book of Mormon * Cabaret * Cyrano de Bergerac * Dear Evan Hansen * Placido Domingo * Suzanne Farrell * Anthony Fauci * Renee Fleming * Ben Folds * Hair * Hamilton * Les Misérables * Long Day’s Journey Into Night * Millennium Stage * Moulin Rouge * National Symphony Orchestra * Noises Off * On Your Toes * Ragtime * REACH * Shear Madness * Side Show * You Can’t Take It with You 

I DREAMED A DREAM

the dance

the plays

the musicals

the orchestras

the opera

our brains on music

 

the costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props, the audience  that lifts you when you’re down

the rising talent, since 1997, free at 5 p.m. on the Millennium Stage

Not a REACH: Revelations

Come to the Cabaret, 

old chum, in The 

Room Where It Happens

Hello, you’re gonna die someday!

You Can’t Take It with You, they say. The KENNEDY CENTER canceled before our eyes. 

Shear Madness!

OPENING SOON: the madcap whodunnit you will definitely want to miss: 

DEMOLITION ON THE POTOMAC 

Author’s note: Having lived in the DMV since 1982, the survival of this treasured cultural institution feels personal to me and my family. I hope we can keep alive—in person and in print—the tragedy of what is happening there. Noted in the poem are KenCen highlights our family has experienced over the years.

Robin Stevens Payes is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet, storyteller, and cultural steward whose work braids ancestral memory, science, myth, and moral imagination. She is the author of the YA time-travel adventure series Edge of Yesterday and creator of [re]member the world, a multi-genre project retrieving and reweaving the silenced history of her grandmother’s flight from Ukraine’s Pale of Settlement. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. As the ancestor telling a new story so her grandchildren and theirs may thrive, she writes about memory—what is lost, what survives, and what we must carry forward—on her Substack, Releasing Memory.

TOTALITY

by Mary Turzillo

The Sun and the Moon

did a courtship dance

did a contrary dance

nearer come nearer

far dance away

till the Sun mocked his luna love

japing “cold, changeable she” 

and “you love the earth more than me”

and it’s true: she grew fat, she grew thin,

he was hot, she was cold

Apollo, Diana:

stag and the doe

till she danced right in front of him

close to him, over him

taking delicious gold bites of him

throwing her skirts quite over him

till she blotted him out

til the night crickets sang

the the birds went to sleep

a black handkerchief over the land.

She punched a hole in the sky

where her lover had been

left a necklace of fire, a sparkle of beads

a diamond ring

for a minute or two:

the lovers' bright band

the dusk bridal veil

dark covered light, cold kissed the gold

the ring hung a promise 

a wedding of midnight and fire.

Mary Turzillo's Nebula-winner "Mars Is no Place for Children" and her Analog novel An Old-Fashioned Martian Girl were recommended reading on the International Space Station. She has been a finalist on the British SFA, Pushcart, Stoker, Dwarf Stars, and Rhysling ballots. Her poetry collection Lovers & Killers won the 2013 Elgin Award for Best Collection. Her fourth collaboration with Marge Simon, Victims, also won an Elgin. Her latest two books are Cast from Darkness, also with Simon, and Cosmic Cats and Fantastic Furballs. Mary lives in Berea, Ohio, with her scientist-writer husband, Geoffrey Landis. Today’s eclipse is her third such experience.

LIKE A HURRICANE

by Mary K O’Melveny

She blew in like a Hurricane

A river deep    A mountain high

 

She ditched Ike   Took over the mike

Blew our minds   Broke our hearts

 

Tina Turner knew first hand 

What love’s got to do with it

 

She told us what we needed

Knew what we wanted

 

Tina stamped her feet   Released her hips  

Danced like unleashed wind

 

She defied age   Demanded respect

Broke the rules   Exposed the fools

 

Tina wore Stiletto heels   Spangled dresses

Split sexy skirts    Spiky blonde hair

 

She even taught Mick Jagger

How to dance   swivel   shake

 

Tina shouted loud   Made us proud

Said we’d better be good to her

 

She will keep on like a Hurricane   

Turning    Burning   Churning  

 

Tina was our Queen of Rock ‘n Roll 

Simply the best   Better than all the rest

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her most recent poetry collection is Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, just out from Kelsay Books. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

MARCH 27, 2023

by Alice Campbell Romano

Bronxville.

The rain is scant at this very moment, 

sky almost blue, but it comes and goes

in pelting drops. Here, just now, balls bounce 

against air: red, yellow, green, until I see

they decorate a transparent, plastic umbrella,

a dome of delight where safe from random drops

a child dances down the sidewalk. A skinny stick 

of a kid, maybe nine, in a long, silly raincoat 

mom must have insisted upon. But who cares.

School’s out now, the umbrella is fun and

soon I’ll be home to snacks and hugs. Oh,

such strong hugs.

Nashville.

One image stays. A face behind a school bus window.

A child, a little girl, the caption says. Yes, that’s right,

but when I first see the picture, she has no age. Her lips 

are bent, stretched open so wide side-to-side they eat 

into her cheeks. Her chin is a crinkled dimple squashed 

against the glass, her frown pulls a hard vee down 

between her eyes to her hot red nose. Her hand presses 

the glass, pushes away what she left outside. I don’t 

hear her scream. Of course not, I’m looking at a picture

taken from outside the bus. The child is frozen behind 

the window glass in the red heat of wordless pain. She 

may scream, may break down and cry, but not yet. 

The photographer—what astonishing luck—releases

this moment of unbearable distortion—her little face, 

the rest of her life. And now I notice, stenciled above 

the bus window, a descriptor—Emergency Exit. There 

are no emergency exits. Voice the scream for her. Take 

to the streets. Make it so children dance as they go home.

Editor's note: The photograph described in the second section of this poem accompanies Marsha Owens' March 27 prose poem in The New Verse News.

Alice Campbell Romano lived a dozen years in Italy where she adapted Italian movie scripts into English, married a dashing Italian movie-maker, made children, and moved with the family to the U.S., where they built, she wrote, and the children grew. Her poems have appeared in—among other venues—Prometheus Dreaming, Persimmon Tree, Pink Panther Magazine, Orchards Poetry, New Croton Review; Beyond Words, Writing in a Woman's Voice, Quartet Journal, Instant Noodles Devil's Press, Moon Shadow Sanctuary Press. In January, she was awarded HONORABLE MENTION in The Comstock Review's 2022 Chapbook contest, "...not an award that we give every year, but an honor set aside for a few manuscripts." Alice swooned. 

AIMING STRAIGHT

by David Radavich

The U.S. has surpassed 100 mass shootings in 2023 on Sunday, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), which defines mass shootings as situations in which at least four people are shot and either injured or killed, not including the shooter. Only 64 days have passed so far this year, meaning there have been more mass shootings than days in the U.S. thus far. The 100th mass shooting of the year left three people, including a child, dead and another person injured in Bolingbrook, Illinois. —Axios, March 7, 2023. Photo: A person sitting outside Berkey Hall at Michigan State University, the site of a mass shooting on Feb. 13. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images via Axios.

The last time I pulled
a gun I was a teenager.
 
And I was deadly accurate.
I could kill a can at 100 yards
 
knocking it into the field of dreams.
 
Everyone thought, “Who is this
kid?  Where does he get those eyes?”
 
From looking hard.  Studying
every angle and crease.
 
I don’t miss the accuracy these days.
Cans have become humans,
teens are now cops, and black
lives still don’t matter.
 
The .22 has become an AK-47
and war has become the everyday
in schools and churches, at the mall.
 
No wonder I want to forget.
No wonder we can’t cry anymore.
 
Death is what we signed up for.
Bullets are just the dance
we invite our partners to.

Among David Radavich's poetry collections are two epics, America Bound and America Abroad, as well as Middle-East Mezze and The Countries We Live In.  His plays have been performed across the U.S. and in Europe.  His latest book is Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun: German and English Poems (2022).

THE WATERS OF LAKE MEAD

by Alfred Fournier

Water levels at Lake Mead have fallen dramatically amid a record drought. Compare the satellite images of the lake in 2000 and in 2022, and you can see the stark decline. NASA Earth Observatory via Vox, August 17, 2022

shrunken by drought, 

reveal body by body our sins: 

missing children and sunken mob hits,

bricks heaved into once-deep water. 

Inch by inch, layers of strata denuded 

become sheets of ancient music 

played on instruments of doom. 

One last chorus for the climate scientists, 

our voices rising in thin atmosphere,

where far above the moon peers down. 

Is that a frown on the old man’s face, 

or does our willful dance with fate amuse him? 

Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer living in Phoenix, Arizona. His poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, International Times, The Main Street Rag, The American Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. 

RE-THINKING BASIC DANCE STEPS

by Mary K O’Melveny

Lately, I have been thinking a lot

about dancing. Not actually doing it

myself – I was never very good at it –

but how I always imagined it must feel.

Like freedom. Like a grand escape.

Gravity left behind, shaking its weary head,

as I spin, turn, shimmy, spiral away

from heavy hearts, from memory’s drumbeat.

As if one might tap tap tap far away

from troubled minds to discover a brand

new stage where a leap of faith takes flight

on one’s own command. Where the only

things waiting in the wings like wallflowers

are lengthening shadows of regret.

 

Today, I crumpled up my privileged

dance card as I stared at photographs from

Kabul’s airport. It is impossible to fathom

the despair that sends one racing on foot

down airplane runways, clinging to wings

of jumbo jets as if they were old friends.

With each trip, slip, stumble, tumble to ground,

one sees how certainty of death also

means escape, albeit with less fanfare

than was craved in yesterday’s richer light.

Even as they strained for the upward lift,

those stranded, earth-bound crowds likely

knew how fickle dance partners can be, how

we must become our own choreographers.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.

THE PARTY'S OVER

by Sara Sarna

It's time to call it a day.

We've waited four years

for the band to show up

so we could dance.

Now that the lights are on 

and chairs are stacked,

the dancing has finally begun.

To those whose invitations

were lost in the mail

the entire term,

Welcome.

There is safe space for you here.

The locked doors stand open,

the previous tenants moved on

to landscaping

or some such pursuit.

Sara Sarna is a poet and actress in southeastern Wisconsin. To support her artistic habits she works in healthcare. Her poems have appeared in print, online and onstage.

QUESTIONS TO THE ELECTORATE

by Jennifer Martelli

                        The Catholic Church is [not] monolithic in its teachings on abortion. 

— Geraldine Ferraro, 1984

Is a man a monolith?
Can you decorate a monolith with sprigs of nutmeg, rue,
            pennyroyal, a garden of abortifacients?
Can you grow savin, squills, ergot of rye around the monolith?
Can you dig down far enough so the roots will embed?

Can I rule as a monolith?
Can I rule as a woman who’s had not one but two,
two abortions? And still is not sad?
Can I rule as a woman who is not sad at all?

Can we drape the monolith with pearls, chunky fake gems?
Can we polish its flat dark marble surface until it shines
like the tombstones in the Italian cemetery? Will you circle the monolith?
Will you join hands with me and dance and dance and dance?

Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her chapbook After Bird was the winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work has appeared or will appear in Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), The Sycamore Review, and POETRY. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review and co-curates the Italian-American Writers Series.

CROSSING THE LINE

by Jill Crainshaw

Source: Inter-Korean Summit Press Corps/Pool via Bloomberg.

How do you cross a line
Drawn in nuclearized sand?

Lift one foot and then the other
From the bony grip of history

Even if movements are awkward and
Bodies petrified from standing still

Too long estranged from heart-beats
That keep muscles supple;

Ancient enemies hand in hand
With clumsy unfamiliarity

Step north and then south
Step south and then north

Limbering up and stretching out—
Dance.


Jill Crainshaw is a professor at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC.

DANCING THE COMPROMISE WALTZ

by George Salamon

Congressional Republicans: They more or less held their ground when the government shut down after Friday's midnight deadline passed, and in the end, Democrats compromised way more than Republicans to open the government back up. —Amber Phillips, The Washington Post, January 22, 2018. Photo: Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) clink glasses in a toast Monday on Capitol Hill after senators reached an agreement to advance a bill ending government shutdown. (Andrew Harnik/AP via The Washington Post, January 22, 2018)

Since the Reagan revolution
Bulls have been running our lives.
Swearing to uphold the Constitution,
They dance to a Wall Street beat.
Other political animals are squealing,
They march right up to the bulls
Grunting discreetly under their breath:
Let's make a little compromise,
Just a tiny little compromise,
This time on immigration,
So that just a tiny bit of decency dies.
Whenever you seek to banish the
Better aspirations of this nation,
We'll stand up and fight you
Until we make just a tiny little compromise,
So that we can be sure
Just a tiny bit of freedom vanishes,
A tiny bit of equality is thwarted,
A tiny bit of hope is dashed
Until you kill the people's dream.
For which there may be no compromise.

George Salamon remembers helping voters to the polls in Massachusetts to cast their ballots for Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Were those the days?

CHOSEN VENUES

by Joan Colby


Where you are dancing.
Where you celebrate.
Where the bands play.
Where you congregate for coffee
Or conversation. Or to view the match
Or the marathon.
Anywhere you go to enjoy
Invites the strike. The explosive vest
Or car aimed at the thick of things.
What they seek to destroy is this:
Free pleasure. The authoritarian shift
To beheadings in an arena
Where you learn what to expect.


Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has published 11 books including The Lonely Hearts Killers and How the Sky Begins to Fall (Spoon River Press), The Atrocity Book (Lynx House Press), Dead Horses and Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press), and Properties of Matter (Aldrich Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and FutureCycle Press.

BRIEFLY BOWIE

by Guillermo Filice Castro

Last
night
I was
Bowie

briefly

gliding
from
empty
office
to
empty
office

asking
each
time

where’s
the dance?

only to continue
bowie-ing
my way
through
transparent
walls

in a pearl
grey suit
that
was

more
Cohen
than
Bowie

more

femme
than
butch

never
finding
anybody

much less the dance

my eyes
under a wide-
brimmed
hat

stage-worn
& hushed

as Mars


Guillermo Filice Castro is the author of Agua, Fuego (Finishing Line Press, 2015). He’s a recipient of an Emerge-Surface-Be fellowship from the St. Mark’s Poetry Project. A native of Argentina, he now resides in New York City.

DOWN IN THE GRIT OF MUSIC NOTES

by Anna Hawthorne

Down in the grit of music notes, a drop of blood lay drying
though soon another concert would flow, becoming more than a tide
why did they shoot the messenger here
when all we wanted was to dance
a pitterpatter firecracker they thought, while glancing at their cell phones for news
of an impending storm . . . low pressure was sensed yet not obeyed
and they ran for the nearest door with a ringing sound delayed, a resonating hover over the empty stage


Anna Hawthorne is a conservationist, birder, and a painter working on a book about the extinction of birds.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman





streets and alleys flood with color
a confetti of noise
explodes into the night
yet we know all too well
the violence in the shadows
all we have left is our poverty
our fiesta
this is our courage
and we must dance—
it is in our blood


Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a member of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. She has been a teacher on all levels and she has worked in two libraries.  Presently she is a freelance writer as well as a spiritual director. Her poems and articles have been published in numerous magazines as well as a poem in After Shocks: Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events edited by Tom Lombardo and a poem in Down the Dark River edited by Philp Kolin. Her first book of poetry, she: robed and wordless, published by Press 53, was released September 1, 2015.

THE MAYOR WEDS THE ALLIGATOR PRINCESS

by Luisa A. Igloria

San Pedro Huamelula, Mexico

1

Know
that I do
not take
these vows
lightly—
To wed ‘s
a serious
undertaking
fraught  with
more than
what’s fleeting:
thrashing of
limbs and tails
in the nuptial
bed, as the whole
town erupts
in a chorus
of bells and
feasting—
Diplomacy
takes skill
and  just
the right
amount of
daring:
I’ll swing
you round
the plaza
in a dance
meant to
cajole your
benevolence:
and the gifts
of a year’s
good fishing
in our nets,
tax I pay for
your watery
reprieve.

2

Dear mortal
Bridegroom,
your human
wife and child
have dressed me
in a trousseau:
lace underskirt
and a coronet
of small white
flowers; and for
good measure,
a round of duct
tape fastening
my jaws. I do
not, technically,
therefore, give
my consent
but play along,
though I obey
a different
order—In
my world,
chance is not
a thing to be
propitiated—
It prowls
the shallows,
sometimes
small as
a passing
minnow;
other times
it breaks
the surface
just because
it can, maw
opening
to the sun,
teeth brighter
than a dowry
of diadems.


Luisa A. Igloria’s most recent publication credits include Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014) and Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014).

SING A SONG O' MIKE PENCE, A CHILDISH SONG AND DANCE

by D. Brian Craig

Song:

Sing a song of Mike Pence

he claims it's our mistake

to read into this Hoosier law

more than wedding cake.

Dance:

But Governor, yes or no,

will the law allow discrimination?

Could you make this about something else?

May I ask you seven more times?

Origins, Meaning, and Interpretation:

Some infer in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

a prognostication wherein Belch (no accident that) 

tells a clown (nor in that):

"Come on; there is Mike Pence for you: let's have a song."

Some, however, find the name a corruption, or at the very least

too great a price to pay. On this not all folios agree.

Other scholars find parallels in the 21st-century social amusement 

of placing live politicians on a hot plate, 

as a form of entremet (something to be enjoyed between 

servings of cute animal videos).

The recipe most often called for birds

of a uniform feather to be locked in an oven,

or statehouse, from which they would, after a time,

poke their heads out half-baked;

an uproar would ensue, after which they would be returned,

only to emerge finally

singing a different tune

to the great amusement and delight of the electorate.

No corroborative evidence supports either of the above,

though the earliest tradition, in one stanza,

clearly mentions Naughty Boys

from whom little is heard of afterward.

D. Brian Craig is a scientist, engineer, and writer, though not always in that order, nor separately. His writing has appeared most recently in The Pitkin Review and FEBS Letters.

MESSI'S DANCE

by Lori Desrosiers

Lionel Messi runs, legs leading,
dances the ball down the field
hops over other players’ feet,
perfect kick makes a goooooal!

Lanky bodies in yellow sneakers
leap into air almost in flight
trying to head the ball, the Spanish
announcer shouts y la cabeza!

These lovely young men with
their lovely bodies remind me
of the young woman I was

my body lithe and strong
I leapt after my children
climbed hills with them
and rolled down together

barely thinking of the future
only hoping to get them there
to help them discover their dreams
dance like Messi towards their goals.


Lori Desrosiers’ first book of poems, The Philosopher’s Daughter is from Salmon Poetry. A second book is due out in 2016. Her poems have appeared in New Millenium Review, Contemporary American Voices, BigCityLit, Concise Delights, Blue Fifth Review, Pirene's Fountain, The New Verse News, The Mom Egg and many more. She publishes Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry.

THE JOY OF SCIENCE

by Tricia Knoll

The Voyager-1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to leave the Solar System. "This is really a key milestone that we'd been hoping we would reach when we started this project over 40 years ago - that we would get a spacecraft into interstellar space," said Prof Ed Stone, the chief scientist on the venture. "Scientifically it's a major milestone, but also historically - this is one of those journeys of exploration like circumnavigating the globe for the first time or having a footprint on the Moon for the first time. This is the first time we've begun to explore the space between the stars," he told BBC News.

They deserve a dance
of joy, a cheer, a beer
these people who tracked
that small ship into the outer

limit of imagination, the caffeine,
the endless nights brought home
when science goes further,
goes better, does beyond

into the interstellar cloud
of stardust, the dark where
both goatherds and villains
have stared, wondering. 


Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet. The night sky in western Oregon is frequently obscured by cloud cover. When it's not, she too stares, wondering.

BANSHEE

by Carolyn Gregory

Image source: NASA

The banshee began to howl
near Halloween,
twisting branches in a dance
of wind and rain

She wore her necklace
of skulls and teeth,
slapping a tambourine
to a four four beat

Black cats scattered!

Her backup singers shimmeyed
and swayed,
tossing long green hair
and tapping on the window

It was an unholy dance,
full of screaming sirens.
Sequins of fire flashed by


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, will be published in 2012.
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