Wednesday, January 8, was very cold and windy, but there was a poetry reading happening at Taylor & Co. Books in Brooklyn that I wanted to get to. It was so bad that the wind coming from the north, as I crossed 10th Street along Avenue C, almost knocked me over and the clear garbage bags filled with recyclables from the Chinese Takeout came flying at me down the street. But I pushed against the wind and did not turn back.
Taylor & Co. Books is a very appealing bookstore and very compact. Quickly the place filled with chairs, listeners and readers. I was looking forward to hearing poets I knew and liked, Lonely Christopher, Reuben Gelley Newman, and Ryan Cook. And I had been wanting to hear Chris Campanioni read for a long time, and this was my chance.
Although seven poets read, each was succinct, leaving time for the next. I enjoyed every one of them.
Ryan Cook read a poem called “Mascara” that has just been published in The New Republic. It was a poem about a snake, I mean a sentence. It was so short and doable that I asked Ry if I could record them reading it when the reading was over. And that is what follows. Enjoy.
…
Mascara
Today I met
someone who
had a pet
snake named mas
cara. Ma
scara used
to be the
length of a
pencil. She
now takes up
their spare bed
room. A sen
tence grows like
a snake—feed her fro
zen mice and
watch it day by day.
Thaw the mouse in the microwave
so the sentence feels like she hunted.
from The New Republic:
https://newrepublic.com/article/189188/mascara
…
