Moon Over Baltimore

Just got back from the reading in Baltimore. Michael Ball does a fabulous job running the i.e. poetry series. There was a snafu with the original venue but he was able to secure a space last minute at Area 405 Gallery which was very cool. The uneven floors made it a little difficult to navigate in heels, but I managed not to fall on my ass.

Kevin Thurston (and a woman who's name unfortunately I didn't catch) kicked off the night with a performance piece that involved a ball of yarn soaking in a bowl of Hersey chocolate, some jogging, red tennis balls and a book about God wanting you to be fat. At the end of the performance everyone in the audience was tossing tennis balls. Then I read. Following a performance of chocolate, I truly was vanilla, but it went OK anyhow. I read half love poems and half anxiety poems. Some of the anxiety poems had lawyer stuff in them. I picked them because Tender Buttons was in attendance. Also in attendance was Kelly (Bennington chum) and hubby Brad. The third reader was performance poet Lauren Bender, first she read some funny found poems using the newspaper personals and after that was an on-the-spot audience interaction poem based on a game that if I remember correctly is called "My Grandmother's Trunk." It also involved jumping jacks, push ups and best of all, underwear flashing. If you just happened to walk in at that moment knowing the reading line-up, you might have thought that was me lying on the floor with my skirt hiked up to my waist. But it wasn't. Lauren is in much better shape than me. The last reader was Amy King and she was wearing a D I T C tee, which she explained stood for "Dykes in the City." She also shared an interesting "bet you didn't know that" piece of trivia about herself. She cuts her own hair. Amy read mostly new poems, not the ones in her new book, Antidotes for an Alibi. Two of the poems she read will be featured in No Tell Motel in August.

Afterwards Amy King, Amy's friend Amy, Mary who's running for office, Chris and I had a late supper at a diner called Paper Moon. Which was good because it reminded me that I had to take pictures of the full moon for Shafer Hall's "I'll Show You Mine" contest. I snapped some photos on the drive home and I don't think they turned out particularly well -- so let's just call them arty.