Poetry *SPOILERS*

I went to an open mic tonight at Pete's Candy Store, the Pete's Big Salmon Reading Series annual one. Three minute sets! An ingenious timeframe allowing little time to get seriously sick of anybody. It was excellent, thirteen performers and everybody was good. Like 90% poetry...or like 87%. This was the third event put on by Pete's Big Salmon that I've gone to, and they've all been terrific. Unfortunately, they're on hiatus now but will return in the fall.

One woman read an essay about Mayor Bloomberg, and a performer named Sean McNally did a sort of phantasmagorical work of humor erotica involving Gary Burghoff and Ronald McDonald. One of the poets, Jason Schneiderman, whose name I was briefly convinced was Paul, did a fantastic poem about Carmen Miranda. A woman called Maureen Thorson read an improbably beautiful piece about going to the movies with a ghostly drunken sailor. She invoked zombies. Susanne Lustig had one about American Idol that made me feel briefly better about my compulsion to watch it. I wish I could remember the other performers' names.

you can get on the series' e-mail list:
Pete's Big Salmon Reading Series

Here's a magazine with some great poetry in it:
Painted Bride Quarterly

Pete's Candy Store is a great venue over here in Williamsburg, it's a fun, comfy bar and their performance space feels like a vaudeville club car, or something.
Pete's Candy Store