Send us feedback anonymously or via email
Open Mic Highlights
• Former BPS graphic designer Jackie B opened up the mic with a poem about German clubbing, drugs, entropy, and the authenticity of the self vs who you are in a group
• Cantab veteran Julie River has moved back to the area, and brought us a scathing take on Mark Zuckerberg (“weasel-nosed meat pouch”) and Facebook’s loosening of content rules that has resulted in more unmoderated hate speech to the trans community
• Kyle wrote about driving in his father’s car and wearing his old clothes, and newcomer Ed wrote movingly about the recent Iran school bombing
• “Communism may be an opinion but rent is not” – from Phoenix’s poem on the validity and subjectivity of opinions
• Jennifer’s contrapuntal with the key line “Does a land remember a mother tongue like a body does?”
• The return of Sue Savoy and her poem that set out to curse the recipient, and Briana’s new poem where they “woke up on the roof of their mouth again”
• The smoking section was filled many staff tributes to our feature Aparna Paul, with Zeke writing about rivers, March writing about their mother, and Amy responding to the infamous “Wendy’s chili finger” poem that *shook* the room in such an off-kilter way that I don’t think anything I would say here could do it justice!!
Feature
After a couple of unexpected delays due to venue issues and other schedule mishaps, this week we finally got a full-length feature from staff member and five-time BPS team member Aparna Paul! Reading almost entirely from their new book, Home Free, Aparna started out with their extended “On waking up in bed and finding multiple snakes in it” piece and then deftly went through a series of well-loved open mic and slam favorites! We also got to hear a group piece where each line was read by a different member of the audience, a golden shovel based on a voicemail from Aparna’s mom (including a public airing of said voicemail) and their only-performed-once-before group piece with Myles Taylor about haunted cars. Aparna’s brazen creativity, lyrical precision, and ability to cut through uncomfortable situations with sharp insight and devasting turns are some of the cornerstones of our venue’s sound, and the audience was in rapt attention and appreciation throughout the entire feature. Thank you Aparna for your work!
Coming Up This Wednesday
This week we have a rare feature from local poet, organizer, and editor Kaleigh O’Keefe! Also, there will be some taxday shenanigans!
Bio: Kaleigh O’Keefe (they/them) is a gender outlaw, horror comic book enthusiast, and perpetual chess novice living in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Their poetry has appeared in In Between Spaces: an Anthology of Disabled Writers (Stillhouse Press, 2022), the VOX Unexplainable podcasts’ episode on endometriosis, won the PRIDE Poetry Prize in Passengers Journal, and is featured on indie music legend Ceschi’s album Sans Soleil. They are a contributor and editor for Liberation News, co-founder of Game Over Books, and co-organizer of the Liberation Open Mic at the Boston Liberation Center in Roxbury. Kaleigh is composed mostly of earl grey and has a measuring tape in their possession at all times. You can find them at www.kaleighokeefe.com and on social media @KaleighOKeefeOK.
See you later! 🐊
– MFG 🚪
Our upcoming features
First timer? Looking for show info? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions!
Sign up for our Newsletter
Boston Poetry Slam Online