Open Mic Recap

If you missed the Prohibition Night Open Mic event- sucks for you because it was great. A lot of people showed up and I took a lot of pictures (majority posted on FB). D. Tuchman (pictured above as himself) did a great job hosting, reading, and not wearing his glasses. I was impressed.
While I don't know Milena personally, I do like her work. She read wonderfully. I remember she read an Audre Lorde poem last year.
Steve D. and Dubbs had a skit that I only somewhat understood. It was a monologue piece but I was half in the bag and trying to crawl out at this point. Needless to say, my inner monologue was battling theirs.
Reuben and Sal did the whole Who's on first dealie. It was hilarious. There's a recording on FB somewhere. Why don't guys dress like this all the time? I wrote something a while back called "When Men Wore Hats" and my friend Brian totally ripped it from me and titled his painting that. THEN some guy came over and saw it and decided to write about it and publish it and eventually I read this guy's talking about Brian's painting and the title and I was pissed for a quarter second until I reconciled that Brian is brilliant and we both failed out of art school at the same time in Fall 03. Brian also constantly wears interesting hats. I wanted Brian to come to this even but being from the 914 is hard. He lives pretty far up, too. Anyway, When Men Wore Hats. William Frawley.
Shakti, Meg, Irina D, Jess, some dude with a striped shirt that I like because it is collared. I'm glad I went on a photo quest because I can't handle people demanding things. Especially booze. Some guy asked for rose and I mixed a little red and white and got the hep out. Hey- have a sense of humor...you're drinking cheap free wine. Also some middle aged woman- clearly not a prof.- came up to me and said something like "darling this is simply wonderful what you all do here" hand on arm. Cool.
Kim. Reading from her book. Our office did represent.
Shakti being awesome. I totally stole some soul with this capture. She can't have it back, but I'm sure it regenerates.

All in all, the event went really well. We had sandwiches and scones from some dainty tea joint down the street. Everything ran out because people were ON that. Everyone who read was wonderful and brave. It's hard to read in public. I think the first time I read I was chewing gum. I dont do that anymore, but I still get the all eyez on me feeling.
I read something really simple. A realtime journal entry and a poem I wrote and reworked a bit that day. I didn't want to lay it on thick. I have this real fear of fucking up things that are too serious. When I read in public last I had this poem I had written about someone I loved that was on the backburner. It was on deck because if he came to the event then I couldn't read it, he'd figure it out. It wasn't really a sexual poem or anything just more of a "you have no idea how deeply the little things we do together mean to me" sort of thing. He didn't come (it was a passive invitation, natch) and I read it to a small and intimate group of people. It felt amazingly good to be able to get those words on paper and then get them into ears.

I always admire people who read things they've written about different abuse situations, etc. There's no judgment at school sponsored stuff like OTR open-mics. You won't find litteratti and such, just people who want honest, funny, intense, and personal.

The Olivetree Review thanks all the people who came out for the Open Mic. Building a literary community at Hunter and making connections remains high on the priority list.

Thanks for reading and thanks for listening. Thanks for Spring 2009.