out & a bout

Then it was going on, the MAKOR reading was reel fun! This here from the boon-docks and hill-billyness was very excited getting to read with Marc Jaffee, David Shapiro and David Lehman in Manhattan. Each poet read a poem by a poet they admired in BAP2004 and their own one plus more of their own ones. Marc Jaffee read John Ashbery's poem and then fiery wow fiery several more tenderly love poems, then I dedicated my share in giving the reading to all ye editors of independent magazines and reading series and in that spirit did read Danielle Pafunda's poem which--btw and as I said when I did read, I admires for its sense of form, verbal dexterity, sharp wit and general fiestiness--and then I did read some more and a few with lots of curse words which I does have to admit felt a bit untenable there in the well-lit gallery with everyone looking so nice and all and yes I did know and tell myselves it's just that sort of quiet and propriety I did intend to get carnival with and anyways 'twas a great audience, then David Shapiro read Aaron Fogel's ? ok ok ok so I was still reeling a bit in my own adrenaline and now can't remember for totally sure which poem he chose to read but anyways and then he's a wanderful reader rhythm and conversational and also tenderly love poems plus one by David Lehman and I wished I'd gone ahead and read the one I had thought to read one published this year in the Kenyon Review that really would have fit into the anthology well except David Lehman's never in the anthology because he's a conscientious editor:

Poem in the Manner of Vladimir Mayakovsky

Like a giant in slippers reading
the morning news of an event that
hasn't yet happened I wear my robe
of authority like the majestic girth
of a great detective my job
to puzzle out how we got to this
stalemate with its tragic
inevitability can I retrace
the moves the sacrifice of a pawn
to support the bishop's attack?
My backbone is my flute:
you play it, I sing, it hurts.
The words fly from my mouth
like people jumping off a bridge
in flames and in the city of my heart
that bridge is a temple
and I am a boy who sings in the choir
of the temple that is burning
so I cannot sing O mother forgive me

then David Lehman read James Tate's poem so well and we all laughed and several of his tenderly love humor conversational identity family history, then it was going on then, Marc Jaffee left before I could say bye, John and I lingered and met fantastic people and then I swapped books with David Shapiro and her hilly-billyness could not believe her lives, and then it was then.