Ink and Vein

I read poetry to an audience on Sunday, June 14th, for nearly 30 minutes.

Earlier that day, I almost scrapped all of it, because I read it through and hated it all.

Most of the work was new, generated and edited in the past few months while I was in a poetry workshop with Suzi Q. Smith. This workshop, titled “There Will Probably Be Crying” helped me tap into parts of myself that I’ve been working to access, and parts of myself I often avoid.

I had grand plans for my poetry feature – I signed up to do it in January (or February? I can’t remember), and imagined I would have a mix of poems and stories, memorized, ready to perform. I pictured myself as a spoken word poet, like Andrea Gibson, the words flowing from my lips, my eyes on the audience instead of the paper in my hands.

That vision didn’t come to fruition, because I didn’t take the time I needed to work on it. I finished organizing and revising the poems about a week before the feature, which did not give me the time I needed to memorize – my memory is just shit these days, and that combined with nerves means that I would’ve needed a lot more time than a week to work from memory.

I decided to be fine with that – it was a pretty busy week since I was also working on producing the zine I co-edit/curate/produce with Allison Cruse. It had been a pretty busy week, before that, with a full week at the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative where we got new shelves installed and reorganized our collection of books. It had been a pretty busy few weeks, months, always, it seems, and the same story repeats: I don’t have time to write. I don’t take time to write. When I do have time to write, I don’t use the time to write.

But I did write. I wrote several new poems while in the writing workshop with Suzi Q., and I revised them into something I wanted to share. I initially had 12 new poems, 3 older poems, and the prose piece, “Graveside Birthday” that I planned to read. That ended up being exactly 30 minutes, and felt too tight for time, so I cut 2 of the new poems and condensed Graveside Birthday down to a short explanation about losing my twin at birth and coping with suicidal ideation for my whole life. 13 poems was a nice number, too, and gave me a little room to talk between poems, to give a little backstory.

Saturday was the release party for the latest issue of the HeartThrob zine, and come Sunday morning, I was incredibly tired after a week of work at the bookstore, of printing and assembling zines, and, honestly, just the struggle of existing in the world. I was feeling the ways I’m lacking pretty heavily that morning, and as I read through my performance, again, trying to at least do the introduction and the graveside birthday part from memory, I started deleting everything from the set.

I stopped myself because I didn’t have time to start over. I stopped myself because I realized that my feelings were not rooted in my real perception of my writing, but in my frustration with myself – the frustration because of the gap between what I wanted and what I was going to deliver, frustration because of completely unrelated occurrences from the weeks before.

Thankfully, my friend Kate and her partner James came into town for the zine release and for my feature, and were going to bring sushi over for lunch. Their presence kept me from scrapping the whole thing, and instead encouraged me to take a walk and a shower, and just relax for the afternoon.

I put on the green dress I’d planned to wear, and then changed into jeans, a tank top, and boots. I wore mismatched earrings: a semicolon and an ampersand.

People I invited showed up to hear me read, and people who were just there for the open mic gave me their attention. Kevin introduced me by reading a poem I wrote for him in 2023 when I was working my “poems-to-go” booth. The poem, “Fall into Hope” is one I had almost forgotten that I wrote – a poem I was proud of at the time.

I was so very tired, and nervous beyond the ability to feel nervous. It was time to perform, and if there’s something I’m good at, it’s doing what I said I would, when the moment comes.

I read my words, and I didn’t cry – I thought I might. There were a couple poems I didn’t know if I’d be able to get through.

I did, though, and then I sat and listened to others share their work.

Bothe recorded my set and then sampled it to play back “Wall of Jean.” Lares read poetry – some of which she wrote in the same workshop I was in – and she said the beautiful words, “community is rest” because we were both so very tired, and yet so very glad to be there to support each other. Allison and Brad sang a lovely song that they performed for the first time for an audience, and Brad recited a poem – because I had asked him to, because I didn’t want to be the only person sharing poetry. Hanna and Nathan and Sarah were all there to hear me. Macey and Dustin and Kevin and Maddy and Purple.

I cried a little that night, cried with relief that this very difficult thing was done, cried because I felt loved and supported and embraced by community at the same time that I felt very much outside of community. The paradox that consistently wounds my spirit: apart from and alone even when I am not, even when I long to be a part of.

Some of the poems I read were about holding contradictions in tension – about holding the pain and the comfort that exist in memories from childhood, about living while I want to die, about forgiving while still grieving, about finding my true self while being unable to face her.

I cried when I got home, and a lot for the following days, too – because I was tired, and because my emotions needed somewhere to go.

I didn’t cry during my performance, though. I opened my heart and shared my pain, made into something somewhat beautiful for others to experience, for others to take in.

I said the words. I didn’t cry. I said the words.