A Monday Night with Mindy

A Monday Night with Mindy

 

I don’t remember if I first found the Saturn Series poetry readings when my mother passed, but it seems to touch that spot for me.  I know it is largely Su Polo (and past co-hosts) that makes everyone feel so welcome at her weekly reading series (in its 19^th year!).  I feel able to be somewhat emotionally naked there.  I feel understood.  And I tend to share my tumultuous inner world.  I was very happy to have been asked to feature, and to top it off, she had asked me who I’d like to feature with.  I picked Mindy Levokove who agreed, and I called it the night of two Mindys.  Su began calling it Mindy Squared.

Before leaving home, my dog had an unexpected need for another walk, so I was late.  Su begins with open-mic readers, so it was fine.  I was given such a welcome when I arrived that I almost felt like a movie star. 

I was particularly disorganized in gathering material to read this time.  It reflects my paper clutter at home.  I had to remind myself that the audience does not know any of that and just knows what I present.  It was a strange combination of older poems and rough drafts of new stuff.  I was still revising drafts on the train ride from the Bronx to Union Square.  So when I arrived, I still didn’t have things in the order I wanted to read them.  I felt bad to be organizing my papers while people were sharing their work.  Then when we had to work out who goes first, Mindy Levokove was fine with going first which gave me the time I needed.  She sang her work and played a shruti box for some of it.  I never heard that before.  Mindy Levokove is full of surprises, and this night was no exception.

Patricia Carragon was there and gave me my complimentary copy of the 2013

Brownstone Poets Anthology.  It is beautiful and was such a nice surprise.  I read

the poem I have in there, “Brown Leaf in February.” Some of the people there know me to be amusing, so I had to read something deserving of that reputation.  I read, “Divorce, Poor American Style.”  It amused.  I got to meet a Facebook friend in person, Gabriel Levicky.  It means so much to me that Jay Chollick was there.  I wasn’t too late to hear him and Evie Ivy and Pete Dolack and others I enjoy.  Bernard Block dedicated his open mic contribution to me.  My playwright friend and co-worker, Richard Ploetz, attended the reading.  Some people I thought would be there were not there.

By the end of my set, I read a rough draft about where schizophrenia grows in a poem called, “When One Is the Filler for the Other’s Fractures.”

I was back in my neighborhood at about 11:30pm.  The humidity was high.  Under a tree at one end of my block, four people were playing dominoes.  Down the block and across the street, there were many police vehicles and traffic was blocked.  I thought there must’ve been a traffic accident.  I think that corner merits an episode on “Survivor.”  Later, when I went to the all-night store, I learned from someone who lives in that corner building that a man who was sitting at home was shot dead.