ooh, shiny

The Five Women Poets reading last night went nicely, I think. The place was crowded and everybody seemed to be paying close attention. You can't ask for a whole lot more than that.

Today I found out the best way of curing post-performance letdown: drink a whole lot of coffee and write some new poems. This series I'm working on now really has my attention, though I've realized I need to learn more about sustaining a narrative, as it's starting to feel like a larger project than I'd originally anticipated. Yikes!

I'm going to post one of the new drafts from today, though this one may actually stay up for less than 24 hours. A little background: the main character (the lead singer) and the guitarist (who you've met already, if you've caught the last couple of drafts I've posted) have had a complicated, uneasy, but emotionally intimate relationship for years. The guitarist finally quits the band, which leads to all kinds of hard feelings on both sides and they mostly lose touch with one another. Eventually, the lead singer finds out that the guitarist is terminally ill, but doesn't get in touch or visit until it's almost too late -- which is where we come in. Also: the title refers to the curfew often imposed by a venue, specifying that the band has to finish by a certain time to avoid sending the union guys (stagehands and what-not) into overtime.


[gone]

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Looks like pretty much everybody else in the world was one too, but I'm still pleased to note that my manuscript was a semi-finalist in one of the contests I sent it out to. Yeah, there were about a billion semi-finalists in this one, but at least that means it didn't get laughed out of the room, which is always nice.