Just slightly weird

OK, wait, I take it back, not wacky, not enlightened. Old fashioned. Or maybe just old. I had already blocked out the poetry journal release party last weekend when running across an old email this morning reminded me. I had a poem published last week in a very nicely produced local journal and had promised before I knew much about it that I’d attend the release party for the new issue. I would’ve backed out when I got the details finally except that I really wanted to see the journal, and I knew I could pick up my contributor’s copies there.

The party was held at this private club/local dive, one of those places that are lighted only by the beer signs and the light over the pool table. The invitation tempted us to come “meet some real people” in a smoking-OK environment where we’d be listening to lo-fi and city jungle & down-temp trip-hop. I don’t even know what that is. When Chris and I got to the party, really it seemed like most folks were not too much younger, and quite a few were considerably older—but it still seemed like ages ago that I was that young. People were wearing either something cut to show off just about all your major attributes, or the standard poet black. I hate that.

The reading was fairly interesting, though—several poets who were really quite good, a couple who were (in my professional judgment) awful, and one woman who sounded just like me when I used to get really nervous reading—I recognized the quaver instantly. Chris had a beer and I toyed with the idea of getting food—but we decided to cut out early and go to the movies instead since we already had a babysitter. We went to see National Treasure, which I was interested in because of the similarities to The Da Vinci Code, but I didn’t know much about the movie and couldn’t believe it when the Walt Disney logo flashed up on the screen. Nobody truly cool or hip or yoga-inspired would really cut out of a poetry reading early to go to a dang Walt Disney movie.