I am quite honored to be hosting Jeremy Bruno and Fernando Quijano III on July 10 at Essential Sundays, a reading series made possible by PoetryInBaltimore.com. You can find details here and here.

I am excited. My relationships with Jeremy and Fernando have in common one thread--I've met both through their writing. Not, "hey, you're cool, I want to read you," but rather, "I've read you and I know you, we should be real people to each other." All sorts of beratements roll through my brain as I make this connection--this day and age, damn young folk, don't be a creep, yadda yadda--but then it occurs to me that I know hundreds and hundreds of authors solely through their writing. The fact I haven't met most of them in person is just a minor note in a long acquaintance. All those books on my shelf? Friends. All the authors of those books? Friends. All the poets and writers I've listened to from the back of a reading? Friends, maybe even chums. Regardless of my probable star-struck gibbering were I ever to meet, say, Lorrie Moore, I still know an intimate part of each writer, bits and rocks and gems I wouldn't know in a handshake-meeting. And suddenly, I feel rich with life, and I want to hug my books and blogs and Facebook notes. And if I ever meet A.A. Milne in the Hundred-Acre-Woods, he gets a big life-long-friend-squeeze. And, just as suddenly, I feel guilt for the awful romance novel I once burned with relish on my parents patio. I didn't like you, but...oops. Sorry.

She's a year younger than you but don't think about that. Rub your palms on your jeans and your sweat turns gritty, you feel it yellowing on your back, ancient paper. She probably likes the sun more than you too. Your feet are smaller, you scuff your shoes against the driveway and you can hear him again, voice raised and bouncing off the plates they bought together during the winter sometime, maybe not last year. You know she's blond, her photo was in his wallet when you pulled it out of the jeans on your bedroom floor, because you wanted to find his middle name on his credit cards. He rubbed his eyes and shoulder and rolled over and you stuffed it back, photo slipping under your side of the mattress. Your side. His side. Maybe they're both his, like you and she, but really it's in your bedroom. Your roommates know, they don't talk to you, they avoid your stubby fingers when you both reach for the kitchen sink. You stand in the driveway and chew black hair damp with sweat. She probably knows you're here, she probably knew when you were in her house, dripping naked on her shell-blue bathmat. You knew you weren't Venus so you avoided the bathroom mirror but he came and stroked your skin and told you how pretty you were so you let him tell her.

We were paranoid and hid in the grass, it was dark out. The grass was shorn, recently mowed and sticky but we rolled over each time a car passed, headlights sweeping our backs. You had eaten mushrooms and wanted to curl in the curve of my neck, I pushed you away so we laid close enough to touch but not. I wouldn't eat the shrooms so you dared me to jump the fence into the lake, but another car came and we just rolled over again, turtles under the white city moon. A field cricket got lost in the folds of my shirt when I asked you about your apartment, you mumbled that it was hers now and didn't say where you'd be sleeping. I didn't ask. I expected fewer headlights as the sky got higher, but they came in streams and our clothes just grew damp in the dew.

Splash into summer with music, readings, raffles, snacks and a bake sale at Iraqi-palooza, a hoopla fundraiser for Baltimore chapter of The Iraqi Student Project!

Iraqi-palooza will feature local musicians and authors to benefit The Iraqi Student Project, a Baltimore-based nonprofit organization whose goal is to bring qualified war-displaced Iraqis to study without cost at U.S. colleges and universities so they can return and help rebuild Iraq.

Featured music includes A Cat Called Cricket, Cameron Blake, Midway Fair, Harwood, and MacGregor Burns. Two renowned authors, Manal Omar and Justin Sirois, will share some of their work and experience. Raffle items from local venues will be yours for winning, as well as snacks and a bake sale.

A Flamboyance of Flamingos - Featured poetry and music;

Benefit for Health Care for the Homeless

Saturday, December 4, 2010

7:00p.m. to 2:00a.m.

Frazier’s on the Avenue

919 West 36th Street

Baltimore, MD 21211

410-662-4914

http://www.fraziersontheavenue.com/

$5.00 at the door

 A Flamboyance of Flamingos will feature Baltimore poets who have written pieces centered on the Hampden flamingo icon, and will feature music by Midway Fair, the Baltimore String Felons, and Vib. A Flamingo-Calling contest will bring out the best ornithological vocalization talent the city has to offer. Featured readers include over a dozen poets from around the Baltimore area, with backgrounds in writing, editing, music, art, multimedia, videography, event organizing, playwriting, blogging, theater, and more.

 Midway Fair Midway Fair’s folk-rock sound and songwriting are influenced by British and American traditional styles, indie rock, pop, blues, jazz, country, and peripheral styles like music hall and stride. Well-loved in Baltimore and beyond, the band has released an album, Fireworks at the Carnival, and expects to release a second in Winter 2011.

 The Baltimore String Felons Sing. Stomp. Pluck. Family. The String Felons channel Appalachian bluegrass music with a modern stomp, combining banjo, violin, guitar, fiddle, mandolin, and various forms of percussion to create their own brand of high-spirited, energetic music.

 VibSince the late 1990s, Vib has been playing throughout the American underground music scene in bands like the Suburban Supergroup, rated among the top lives acts of 2001 by Maryland Music Monthly magazine, and the Greys. Vib combines acoustic and electric instruments to create original rock and roll. The solo release, Vib The Letter K, was released in 2008.

Angela Horner is a permissions editor, writer, event host and organizer, and co-host of the monthly open mic series Moaning Pipe Cabaret. 


Julie Fisher is the force behind PoetryInBaltimore.com, and hosts and organizes PerVerse, Essential Sundays and the B-More Erotic Performance Art Series.


Mark Sanders is an actor, freelance writer, graphic designer and voiceover artist, and is a contributing writer and songwriter to the internationally syndicated and multiple Emmy and Telly award-winning children's educational program “Aqua Kids.”


Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) was established in Baltimore in 1985 and is a nationally-recognized model for the delivery of care to underserved populations. HCH provides health-related services, education, and advocacy to reduce the incidence and burdens of homelessness. www.hchmd.org/


Frazier’s on the Avenue In the historic Hampden neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland, Frazier's offers a comfortable pub atmosphere, a full bar and live entertainment including weekly Open Mic and karaoke.

Dave K. (this is his other blog) runs a recording series called Orphans of Silence, for which he once-upon-a-time recorded me along with several great poets, including my dear friend Marie Abate. What an awkward feeling to hear yourself reading. Not my best reading by far, but "that'll do, pig." Listen to it here. 
http://orphansofsilence.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/episode-2/ 

You can frequently find Marie and Dave at the Moaning Pipe Cabaret, if you're interested. 

For the full schedule and info: http://www.artdromeda.com/artdromeda

PERFECTO COFFEEHOUSE
784 WASHINGTON BLVD

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2010
Black Shadow: 8:00pm
Jeff Brunell: 8:30pm
Barrett Warner: 9:00pm
Wesley Haines-Ynfante: 10:30pm
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 12, 2010
Matt Pless: 7:00pm
Angela Horner: 7:40pm
Andrew Luttrell / Shane Grimm: 8:00pm
Matthew Beale: 8:30pm
Jim Warner: 9:00pm
Barbara DeCesare: 9:30pm
Cliff Lynn:10:00pm
Bruce Jacobs: 10:30pm
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 13, 2010
Julie Fisher: 7:30pm
Liz Smith: 7:40pm
M. S. Sanders : 8:00pm
Matthew Beale: 8:30pm
Anthony Hayes: 9:00pm
Phillip White: 9:10pm
Maurice Whitehurst: 9:30pm

Four eggs, beaten, baby, beaten, she says, 

gimmie some sugar so he slides his finger on the table top

walks his index up to her lips and shush shush

keep whisking, no time for beater licking: she has eggs

to look after, she'll turn her rump, broad swish;

nutmeg hands dabbling the cream and hip

bumping the oven door til heat steams her eyebrows

to glisten, her dollop chin will tell him which side

of the wooden table to stand on, he's in the way while she stir-stir 

smacks and thumbs open jars, popping lip and hip cocked 

finger in the pot but it ain't done yet

fingers meant to be licked and salt sifting

onto buttersoft palms, sidestepping black-burnt eyes

til he knows he's done wrong

so she stops, fingertips swifting the sweet

up to his lips like a kiss. 

What better way to spend the night before Halloween than at a throw-down guts-out belly-up Literary Death Match? Actually I have no idea what is actually going to happen, here. All the more exciting.

Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), multi-media phenom Stephanie Barber (representing Publishing Genius), playwright/translator/fiction star James Magruder (Sugarless) and retired U.S. Navy vet/poet Cliff Lynn.

Literary Death Match
Saturday, October 30 · 9:30pm - 11:00pm
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Dr
Baltimore, MD