Ada’s First Mondays Open Mic Night celebrated two years of poetry, short stories, journal entries, notes, thoughts, essays, and abundant talent Monday, February 2, 2026 at the Ada Public Library.

“Richard will always read something from his journal.” ~Open Mic regular Samuel Baker

Cold Night by Richard R. Barron

It’s a cold night. Rain. Wind blows water onto the windows. Drafts fill the air.

Breath steaming on the front porch, I enter. I take off my leather jacket. The collar was turned up, stiff and slick from the cold.

I slide in behind her as she reads, huddled around her coffee. I wrap my arms around her. My chin slides over her right shoulder. The wool of my sweater presses into the cotton of her sweatshirt. My face brushes through her soft, sandy hair.

Her hands are stiff and slick from the cold.

Every part of me wraps around every part of her.

The tension of waiting is gone.

I was cold. She was cold. But together, we are warm.

Run and Hide by Richard R. Barron

Always a mountain
A mesa
A sky
A tree

The sky holds us down, the ground all around

For 10,000 years, the Zuni had nothing to do but to try to stay alive

When I tried to stay alive, the wires wrapped around me and choked me until I turned plum

Or jaundiced by my huge ego
And her blinding hatred
(which, by the way, blinded her to the grave)

To answer the as to whether to run or hide, it’s simple: close my eyes
If it escapes my eyes, it escapes reality

If I close my eyes and sleep, no one hates me in my dreams

I once dreamed I was hunting caribou, and was naked for the first time in my life
I was nakeder than the day I was born by a factor of five

I hunt the caribou with lightning bolts that seem to come from the sky, and at the same time, seem to come from me.

I am the sky, the nakedness, the hunt, the lightning