More Poetry in Transit

Heather Haley opened the second set with her poem, “Remain” – advice on eating would be one way to describe it. Her story about guns on the SF transit system made all of us glad to be BC’ers.

After reminding us of the honesty of 13-year-old sons (“Mom, can’t you change the picture on the back of your book?”), Diane Tucker read the aptly-titled “Waiting for the Bus.”

Margo Button told a bittersweet story about schizophrenia – as always, she made us think. She went on to read a poem set in New Zealand. Made me almost smell the frangipani.

Leona Gom read “Our Mothers” – a piece she referred to as ‘an old poem’ – but one that held just as true today, with this: “embroidered pillowcases still accuse us on the shelves of our modern lives.”

Gena Thompson’s poem about the sign on East Hastings (“Is it nothing to you?”) ended with: “It’s so real, I don’t even have to take a picture.”

Not only did she read her poem, “Nun in Heaven” – about a nun who arrives to find heaven empty – Winona Baker told us she’s been included in Haiku Journey, a video game!

Terence Young is always so brainily entertaining. Here’s a bit of dialogue from the piece he read: “That’s terrible Latin. No wonder you have no friends!”

Because Marusya Bociurkiw was out of town, her friend and publisher, Penny Goldsmith, read on her behalf. Check out Marusya's website – ‘network'.

And lucky me, I got to close, with my funny little poem that rode around on the buses all through 2004.