Last First Sunday Plays with Matches

Once again it was time for the Bloomington Writers Guild’s “First Sunday Prose Reading and Open Mic,” presented in conjunction with Boxcar Books (cf. April 4, et al.), and as it happens the last such meeting prior to the Writers Guild’s summer hiatus.  It won’t seem like that — the Last Sunday Poetry will still occur on May 29th, four weeks from now, but that’s how it works.  And like last Last Sunday (see April 24), the house was packed on a beautiful  Sunday afternoon with a larger than usual crowd.

This month’s featured writers portion began with Alisa Alering who read from a YA novel in progress, including monsters; followed by Amy L. Cornell who offered a poem in the voice of Dopey of the “Seven Dwarves” and two flash prose pieces, the latter depicting a poet who’s called on to write a poem about Finland to read at the White House (“What’s a rhyme for Helsinki?”); and Dr. DL Mabbott who read an excerpt from his novel WINGMAN JESUS (in which, however, Jesus is not the point-of-view player).  This was followed by a relatively small contingent of walk-ons where I came second (of four) with a 650-word unpublished tale called “Matches” about a young man who has big dreams, and a vampire sister who’d once slept with Batman.

All in all today has been a lovely, lazy Sunday — but not too lazy!  The writing life continues on also, with some poetry proofreading at the library before and after the First Sunday program, more on which later when it’s finished (with any luck, perhaps Monday or Tuesday).