New Website

Metro Rhythm has a new home: http://metrorhythm.wordpress.com.

Metro Rhythm Reading III

Friends, Romans, Poets:

Join us once again at Blue Angel Wines in Brooklyn for another night of readings and drunken revelry. The reading will begin at 7:30 PM and last until all hours of the night.

Saturday, May 15th @ 7:30

Blue Angel Wines
638 Grand St
(between Leonard St & Manhattan Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Neighborhood: Williamsburg - South Side

This time our readers will include:

Monica Ferrell

Ben Mirov
Bianca Stone
Ben Pease
Anwyn Crawford

Admission is FREE, and since this event is at a wine SHOP rather than BAR, you can just buy a bottle of wine for $10 instead of paying $8 for a glass.

After-party chez Bianca Stone.

RSVP Here.

Become a fan on our facebook page.

Check out Monica Ferrell here.

Also, you can buy Mirov's new book here.

May Reading

Tentative date: May 7th

Not-so-tentative place: Blue Angel Wines, Brooklyn, NY

Line up: To be announced soon...

metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com

facebook

Metro Rhythm & Ugly Duckling Presse

Metro Rhythm is teaming up with Ugly Duckling Presse for a brilliant reading in Brooklyn this September. Details to come...

Metro Rhythm Still On

Okay, so there's a blizzard and all.  So what?  Metro Rhythm is still in full swing, and still on for this Friday night at Blue Angel Wines in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Metro Rhythm Reading Series

Friday, February 12th 

8:00 PM @ Blue Angel Wines

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC

Meghan O'Rourke

Mark Bibbins

Caitlin Dube

Christie Ann Reynolds

Eric Burg

RSVP on facebook.

Where is this place? 

Blue Angel Wines

Questions?  Shoot us an email at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com, or send a facebook message to John James and/or Keegan Lester.

Anyone interested in reading in the future should send 3-5 poems or up to 8 double-spaced pages of prose to metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.  Please address cover letters or comments to John & Keegan.  <3

J.D. Salinger

How about a moment of silence for one of the best American fiction writers of the 20th century?  R.I.P. J.D.

Mark Bibbins & Meghan O'Rourke @ Metro Rhtyhm 02.12.10

Metro-Rhythm's second reading will feature:

Meghan O'Rourke *

Mark Bibbins * 

Caitlin Dube
Christie Ann Reynolds *

Eric Burg

and also
a ton of wine and PBR.

Ps. it is also my b day, so there will be an after party in my apartment like last time! 

Please bring friends, and boy friends and girl friends, moms and dads and siblings are fine too. 


The venue is right off the L train, a few blocks from the Lorimer stop. Come down to Brooklyn and nestle in our cozy wine shop for some poems, then expect a lot of dancing in my kitchen.

Hope to see you there

♥ 
Keegan and John 



RSVP

Blue Angel Wines

The Facebook Group

Anyone interested in reading in the future, please send 3-5 poems or up to 8 double-spaced pages of your most brilliantly wrought prose to John James and Keegan Lester at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.

Metro Rhythm Reading 02.12.10

Metro Rhythm's first event of the new year is scheduled to take place on Friday, February 12, 2010.  More information to come soon...

Anyone interested in reading in the future should send 3-5 poems or up to 8 pages of double-spaced prose to John James and Keegan Lester at metrorhythmreadingseries@gmail.com.  

John James @ Cornelia Street Cafe 01.26.10

John James (me) will be reading at the Cornelia Street Cafe on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010. 

I realize that I am also reading at Earshot this coming Friday, January 22nd, so I'll try to read a different set. I would love it if my awesome friends could come to both!!!



Please come out and support me...

and enjoy some poems! ♥ 



Cornelia Street Cafe

6:00 PM
Tuesday, Jan. 22nd

29 Cornelia Street
Greenwich Village 
New York, NY 10014

Cafe: (212) 989-9319

Me: (502) 751-3502

http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/home.asp

Sample Poem:

For the Black Widow Spiders of Southern California

 

 

Because we go without a trace,

& there is sweetness in the mimicry

of transubstantiation, when I saw

a black widow dangling in the nursery dark,

her black belly, fat & red with the swivel

of an hourglass, reminded me of warm blood.

Someone called the teacher & she came

with a plastic shovel, scooped the spider

from the playhouse rafters

& stamped its lights out with her shoe.

 

At the chemical plant in L.A.

where my father worked maintenance,

he saw the spiders too. They bred in the hot dark – 

The male mounted the female from behind,

then lent his body to thrashing.

Once he was dead, the female would gorge herself,

nourishing the children with their father’s remains.

Finished, she would spin a sac of web,

plant the nest beneath the boiler

or behind the tool chest

in the maintenance closet.

There they would lie, incubating.

 

It is best to remain calm if bit.

When excited, the heart’s palpitations

distribute venom more quickly

through the bloodstream.

Soon the symptoms settle in –

Fever of 104°, violent twitching,

tightening of the jaw. I can almost hear

the molars grinding in the back row.

 

The last time I saw a black widow

was a hot day in Kentucky.

She had spun her web in the transom space

above the back door to our school.

Her legs were long & slender, & her abdomen thin,

not like the one years before whose thick bulb

of a belly appeared in the dark

as if she may have been pregnant.

I moved beneath her, scanning her under-belly

for a blood-lit patch of red.

But summers grow humid in Louisville,

& the spiders, they like a dry heat –

They fashion their threading in the San Fernando,

where the air is always hot, & the wind is arid.

Where smog grows thick, & the city spans for miles

beneath the missing & innumerable stars.

Columbia Gallery Reading 01.21.10

FIRST GALLERY READING OF THE SEMESTER

It's too cold to be clever, so we'll just tell you come out to the

first Gallery Reading of the new year, and hear these writers read

from their work:

Aaron Allen (Fiction)

Anwyn Crawford (Poetry)

Sasha Fletcher (Poetry)*

Harvest Henderson (Nonfiction)

Lauren Spohrer (Fiction)

Liz Topp (Nonfiction)

Thursday, January 21, 2010

8 PM

501 Dodge Hall

Columbia University

Broadway & 116th St.

Campus Map

John James (Me) Reading @ Earshot! 01.22.10

EARSHOT!

Friday, January 22nd @ 7:30 PM
@ Rose Live Music
Special Guest Host: Gregory Crosby
$5 + one free drink

Featuring:

Rachel Levitsky (Neighbor and Under the Sun)
Andrew Lundwall (klang and honorable mention)
John James (Columbia University)
Ryan Doyle May (The New School)
Jenna Telesca (Queens College)

Rose Live Music is located at 345 Grand Street in Brooklyn, between Havemeyer and Marcy. Visit their website for directions: http://roselivemusic.com.

Earshot NYC