Surfacing

And on the seventh day, we rested. Kinda.

We have almost closed on the Summer issue of the Scholar. I have almost fully shaken off the cold I caught ten (10!) days ago. I almost picked up a hangover from last night's glorious wedding, but a huge bowl of oatmeal headed off any big headache. Steph's bachelorette thingamajig: done. Jessica's lovely going-away party, complete with gin, Sam Cooke, and green Gummi Bears: done.

So I was almost able to relax today. But not quite. I had a restlessness that reading the full Sunday paper, going to the Farmer's Market, and two episodes of The Wire just couldn't cure. I don't know what it is that I'm waiting for, but I'm waiting for...something.

Let me rewind by a week and say that I had the pleasure of two poetry readings last weekend, one at Iota (Mother's Day) and one at the Writer's Center, in celebration of 32 Poems magazine and with music from The Caribbean. For the latter, the poets got to hang with the cool kids for the evening: our "stage" was all set up with their amps and drums and red-hued lighting. Bernie and Deb both read great selections of their own work and work by past 32P contributors. It's a rare opportunity to read with people whose work you really KNOW, to hear something and to be able to recall an earlier draft or a workshop discussion. These friendships are really precious to me, both because they're cool chicks--the kind of people you can have a beer with and laugh, and laugh hard--but also because we are becoming part of the institutional history, the shared memory within the DC poetry scene. And that feels good.

We even won over a few people who turned out just for the music--which is the true compliment. I read the capybara poem. You can never go wrong with a capybara poem, right? Paging Jason Bredle?