Free and open to the public

Inprint is proud to serve as the host for the First Fridays Reading Series. The First Fridays Reading Series is the oldest poetry series in Houston and was organized by Robert Clark from 1975-2019. Today, First Fridays are curated and hosted by local community members.

Readings are held on the first Friday of each month. The program will include a featured reader, followed by an open mic.

For more information about the First Fridays Reading Series, click here. To join the First Fridays Facebook group, click here.

REBECCA DANELLY completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Texas State University. She’s currently co-editor of poetry at “table//Feast Mag” and has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies, including Glass Mountain, The Ocotillo Review, and the Porter House Review. After serving eight years in the United States Air Force, Rebecca graduated with a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Houston in 1999. That year she won the Howard Moss Undergraduate Poetry Award. Since then she has taught, raised children, trained dogs, organized poetry and creative writing workshops, and worked on her craft. In 2016, she was chosen as a juried poet for the Houston Poetry Festival and was published in the Festival Anthology.

“That Boat Don’t Float”
by Rebecca Danelly

Certainly not the rowboat in the lake

at Camp Bluebonnet. It was well past floating,

half-sunk in the russet mud of what was not

much more than a cattle tank. Home to water

moccasins and box turtles, the bygone vessel

of Mad Pierre whose bygone stalking of

campers thrilled us around the bonfire when

Father Rich and counsellor Clyde mimed

with a pine branch wielded as a bloody axe

the horror the lumberjack wreaked from his cabin.

The story was Mad Pierre wrecked his boat fleeing

the sheriff. Its carcass was proof enough to believe

what was blatantly untrue.

That boat don’t float, I think, watching

the news. The governor asks us to believe

what is blatantly untrue. Some people say

you shouldn’t make the deaths of children

political. But, I’m going to. The Texas

governor asks us to be calm, to see reason,

to pray while passing laws that make the purchase

of assault rifles easy. Arguments

are made and forgotten; money and power

won’t listen. Listen, Mad Pierre’s boat

is still sunk in the mud. A snake skims its

jointless way into the murky lake, its pearly

mouth just above the swimmer’s wake.

“I’m not one to praise life’s little joys”
by Rebecca Danelly

I’m not one to praise life’s little joys,

those be here now moments that self-help books

I despise go on about, but today I walked

out on the balcony and the barn swallow

on the railing perched there unfluttered

and turned its head just so slightly as if

it deigned to acknowledge my presence, but

couldn’t be less bothered, then turned back

to keep watch on its demesne. I always think

of joy as grand, like the rain of confetti at a

ticker tape parade at the end of a war, not

the barn swallow’s nest on the fire sprinkler

where she sits proudly on her eggs. Today,

joy is birdshit bright white on a dull wall.