Poetry North of the Orange Circle

Posted on December 8, 2004 in Poetry

I went back to a poetry reading that I hadn’t attended since November. Usual faces that I see at all the north county readings. I sat in the barber’s chair in the corner. Tonight I conducted an experiment. I’d sit down and see who talked to me. One woman asked where Lynn was. Other than that, I sat in the chair, an apatosaurus who took up space but disappeared into the mud. Think of the visitor center at Dinosaur National Monument except instead of chipping off the sedimentary matrix, they slathered the mud back on top of me.

Everyone’s been talking about how they’ve been either accepted or rejected for a local poetry anthology. I have received no notice of what was done with my contribution. Perhaps it has been lost. Perhaps nobody cared. Perhaps they’ve decided that I am a front for my wife who is the real poet like some speculate that Einstein’s wife is the real author of the theory of relativity and they are waiting for me to come out and admit it. I’ve decided not to ask.