Brenda Petrakos
What is it like to be a woman alone in the big city? What is it like to be a woman in her 40's or 50's standing at the supermarket checkout behind a bunch of image-conscious Hollywood wannabes texting away on their little keypads or loudly telling off their agents?  What is it like to struggle to be heard in this poetry-indifferent city that prefers to unwind in front of game shows or Animal Planet? What does it mean to have values and ideals so much at odds with all the soap opera glamour and sitcom inanity that surround us, assaults us, every day?  Find out by listening to Brenda Petrakos perform her work. She does not mostly call herself a "poet"--but what use are labels? Brenda is a poet, if by poetry we mean a heightened use of language, a paring down of form to include only the essentials, an unflinching examination of the writer's own life and perspective, an emphasis on anaphors and sad or exuberant lists; nor should I neglect to mention:  a dissatisfaction with the way things are, with conventional received ideas, that has been present in poetry for centuries. I'm sure you will not soon forget hearing the songs of Brenda Petrakos.  

Sight Unseen

Dark Energy, and Dark Matter
hide inside the black marker
squeaking on the whiteboard
smirking in the equations
wearing masks that flicker with light
sometime wave
sometime particle
depends on who is watching it
dance the two slit dance
they are tricksters
helpful in the way they fill in the blanks
silly and whimsical they fly
seen only by infants
tiny hands raise point at and laugh
Dark Matter smiles
Dark Energy spins
plays with the elements
Dark Matter is not matter at all
Dark Energy not dark
helpful
liars both

 

© 2014 Brenda Petrakos
Brenda Petrakos was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the August 2014 Second Sunday Poetry Series