First Wednesday for Sept. Subs for August Short Session

It wasn’t supposed to be, this evening’s Bloomington Writers Guild’s First Wednesday Spoken Word (cf. July 5, May 3, et al.), due to the Labor Day weekend’s Annual Bloomington Arts Fair with its spoken word stage, except that a re-organization this year caused the spoken word stage part to not be held. There was still a Writers Guild booth at the Fair as well as its popular “Poetry on Demand” feature, but also as a result, the usually skipped otherwise-directly-following September Wednesday’s “Spoken Word” was reinstated in compensation, this time to be an all “Open Mic” session.

Following me so far? So also, in August, because of a later-evening event including Guild officers Joan Hawkins and Tony Brewer, the normal “First Wednesday” that month was cut short by omitting the Open Mic portion that evening (thus, also, no report here last month as I wasn’t a participant either).

So it evens out, sort of.

Or anyway, the”All Open-Mic Bloomington Writers Guild First Wednesday Spoken Word” session this evening at downtown Bloomington’s Backspace Gallery, perhaps in part due to its late-minute, cobbled-together nature drew only ten people, but of which eight were readers, which made for an appreciative if smallish crowd. And the smallness in turn meant that everyone had a chance to read twice which in my case, due to my having missed June’s regular session (a competing engagement) as well as the August non-session, and thus having two of my ongoing five-part “Casket Suite” tales of the plucky New Orleanian vampiresses, les filles à les caissettes a.k.a. “Casket Girls” still unread, I was able to read, first, a very-short part 4, “Shades of Difference” in which les filles discuss the color red and why it’s the vampiresses’ favorite color. And then in the “encore round.” the final fifth part, “What’s in a Name?” where Aimée laments that although she wishes to be loved by all, there are still some who insist on holding her being a vampire against her.

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(Note: Aimée, of course, takes pride in her raven-black hair; thus the illustration here perhaps being an informal portrait of Lo?)