Gratitude and...Waiting.

Before I forget, I need to offer a huge thanks to three journals--Coconut, 32 Poems, and the Blue Fifth Review--for nominating me for the Pushcart prize. That's pretty amazing.

Through a welcome but strange twist of fate, I am hosting a reading at my apartment tonight. The authors are Moikom Zeqo, an Albanian poet whose most recent book is I Don’t Believe in Ghosts (BOA Editions, 2007), and his translator, Wayne Miller, who is the author of Only the Senses Sleep (New Issues, 2006) and the co-editor of Pleiades. We had planned this as an intimate pit stop between much bigger readings in New York and Missouri.

Turns out, "Albanian poet" does not nearly capture Moikom's allure. He is a famous archaelogist. The former Minister of Culture. He is, in Albanian terms, pretty much a rockstar. Which means that I've been getting a steady stream of RSVPs for the last two days. I think every Albanian in DC is coming!

So we bought wine. More wine. Lined up as many chairs as we could borrow. I decided that if this turned out to be a candlelit affair in a crammed room, with people sitting on the floor to hear Moikom read...well, I only wish more poetry readings were like that.

But now it is snowing. And I am...waiting. Surely Albanians will not be daunted by a little cold weather?