We had a delightful open mic at Johnny’s Gone Fishing in Carrboro last night. I got there early as I always do and scanned the menu for glasses of wine. Even though they sold bottles of wine and we were going to have a wine tasting they did not offer glasses for sale. We weren’t even sure if I could legally drink from a bottle I had purchased on the premises. So, during the wine tasting, I plied the sommelier to give me a little extra, for the good of the reading, of course.

Though I have felt more-or-less normal these past few weeks, I have been coughing frequently and sometimes my voice comes out raspy. This isn’t a problem in my day job since I rarely need to speak but with a poetry reading on the horizon I thought it best to see my doctor. Fortunately, he did not give me any antibiotics, just a prescription anti-histamine which is helping a little. I also got my annual flu shot a few hours before the reading and sucked down a honey-lemon flavored cough drop which did not go with the wine but all combined made for an interesting blood chemistry. None the less, I think my reading went well. I did two of my wine poems from Wednesday Night Regular and concluded with a longer multimedia piece I haven’t done in years about the glass armonica. The multimedia aspect was me playing a recording of some glass armonica music over my cell phone speaker during the second half of the poem.

After my bit was done we had twelve other poets read until our hostess, Write Naked’s Tara Lynne Groth, closed the show. Everyone did a great job and the evening flew by. I counted more than twenty people filling the front room at Johnny’s. Thanks to the audience and my fellow poets for a great time.