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Open Mic Highlights 10/07
• Dan Malloy wrote about being descended from Salem witches, and how he owes his existence to the fact that one of them was not hanged at the stake
• Alia returned with a poem (“Grass that mirrors upon you, Birds”) that got them through a really tough winter, and per usual, they read it in both Greek and English
• Scott’s “I fell in love with a magician” poem that was “written in the parking lot of Planet Fitness” questioned how much of the said events in the poem actually happened, and how much was actually magic
• Abby M’s love poem between two trees, Shivank’s love poem that was actually the first thing they ever read on the open mic, and Mina’s lurid and romantic poem about “watching women eat” which was way more wholesome than it sounds on paper!
• Chaos in the last chance Haiku slam: Jack made it to the finals after accidentally signing up on the wrong list, and Sue Savoy won after this recapper convinced her to sign up at the last second!
Feature 10/07
This Wednesday was our qualification slam to select our VOXPOP representative this year! VOXPOP is a weekend-long slam tournament in New Hampshire, and this slam came with a slightly different set of rules: you have 7 minutes across all three rounds, with no cuts happening. Highlights include two WTF brain hallucination poem streams by Tim G, and great work by Len (“Inside me there are 2 seagulls fighting over 1 French fry, an endearing poem about looking for a partner who can love all the messy piles and unclean rooms in their life). In the end, Boston slam titans Jennifer Martinez and Will Leonard rose to the top of the scores, delivering tried and true work, with Jennifer winning and becoming our VOX POP representative this year!
Open Mic Highlights 10/14
• This was one of the coziest open mics of the year, with everyone going under 3 minutes (!) and nobody being left on the wait list / lacking the time to say what they wanted to say!
• For Bailey’s poem I have written down “sentient beef,” “folding yourself into packages,” and “Am I allowed to gnaw on your corroded artery? Maybe….”
• Only Nick Roberts would write a poem about the 960th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings!
• We’ve reached a point where I can no longer single out poems about wolves on the open mic, but noq have to choose which one to highlight! This week, Winston not only went meta about the location of their internal wolves but also invoked God joining the audience in the Cantab basement, and then painted a portrait of God going to therapy for their God complex. The wolves rabbit hole is deep, and not filled with rabbits.
• Isaiah read 9 haiku about how they would vote for all the ballot questions that are listed on the MA election next month!
Feature 10/14
This week it was the 4th annual HAIKU TOURNAMENT, a marathon stream of haiku that strikes fear in the hearts of all our poets who usually write three-minute poems on our open mics and open slams! 11 poets braved the gauntlet of multiple haiku suites, including themed rounds of Dirty Haiku and Experimental Haiku, in an attempt to get to the final round and win the grand prize of $200. In the running were March, Edie, Jack W, defending champion Jarvis, Briana, Kai, Len, Stevie S, Danielle, and Abbie L. As the host and curator of this event, I’m always met with pushback with getting people to write 20 haiku for this tournament, to the point where tonight had an actual HAICOUP D’ETAT by both the audience and slammers in the final round, demanding that the haiku madness must stop! The final round featured a death match of Len vs Briana vs Edie, with BRIANA finally emerging as our Haiku champion this year! Next year, the final round will be shorter, I promise :) :) :) :)
Coming Up This Wednesday
This week we are back with another extended open mic and a feature from poet leena aboutaleb!
BIO: leena aboutaleb is an Egyptian and Palestinian writer who asks you to commit to the Palestinian liberation struggle. She is the author of THALASSA (Game Over Books, 2026). Her pamphlet, Expeditions of Projection, was released in 2023 (VIBE). Her film, ‘Oracle,’ co-produced with Youssef ElNahas debuted in Venice, 2025. She is a Brooklyn Poets fellow, a Kundiman fellow and McCormick Writing Center scholar. Read her work at www.leenaboutaleb.onl.
– MFG 🚪
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