River Red, Roundabouts 1st Sunday Readings; Isis Added to “Keep It Local”
While nearly a week after Halloween proper, I’d been invited to be one of the featured readers at the Bloomington Writers Guild’s November “First Sunday Prose and Open Mic” (cf. October 2) at Morgenstern Books. Also, with Joan Hawkins absent due to a conflicting obligation, Guild founding member Patsy Rahn served as substitute MC for a fairly crowded session — although, as we share space with the bookstore’s coffee shop, hard to judge exactly how many came just for us.
Be that as it may, they were well entertained, with the first scheduled reader Marian University (Indianapolis) adjunct professor of English, Dan Grossman, offering poetry and poetic prose from his book (with the first word partially mumbled due to possible listening children), MINDFUCKING ROUNDABOUTS OF CARMEL, INDIANA, inspired in part by his daughter, part by experiences as an at-one-time Uber driver, on roundabouts, black holes, alternate universes and fates, and . . . Indianapolis. Then, following, I pointed out (due to one of Dan’s just-read “alternate fates”) that the title of the book I would read from, THE TEARS OF ISIS, had nothing to do with terrorists or terrorism, but rather to the goddess Isis in her “weeping” aspect, and read the hybrid short-short “The Birdcatchers” with its following poem — also, I’d pointed out, one of the poems I’d read the week before at “Last Sunday Poetry” (see October 30) — along with the longer, far-future set/dying Earth tale “River Red.”
Then came the break, followed by four “open mic” volunteers, and one more thing concerning THE TEARS OF ISIS. As a featured reader this time, I’d contacted Morgenstern Books in advance about bringing copies for possible autographs. Not too surprisingly, fans didn’t exactly line up after (these sessions do end, too, at about time for thinking of supper), but the store will be adding copies to sell on their Local Authors shelf (look for the sign that says “Keep It Local”), and possibly later copies of my novel-in-stories, TOMBS: A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, as well.
