Limes with Orange

And now for a little blurb about how the open mike night went. There are a couple of performers who really impressed me, but I'm going to talk about them in future posts. This particular post is mainly about my "performance." I got up and read "Hunger" which I chose partly because it sounds good when read aloud and partly because I wrote it almost 20 years ago and it was never very deeply personal anyway. In any case, it seemed to be fairly well received.

I glanced over at Jadesong, who organized the event, and mentioned that I had more poems if she wanted more. She said yes, as did the audience, so I turned the page and the next poem was "When your body betrays you." I had decided that one was too personal for me to be able to read at an open mike night and I made the mistake of saying, "I don't think I can read this one out loud." At which point, Jadesong said to read it... that raw was good. And it seemed as though many of the audience members agreed.

So I went to start reading... and I just froze, with tears springing to my eyes before I even got one word out. I looked to Jadesong in desperation; she offered to sing a song while I composed myself. Not quite the complete out that I was looking for, but a brief reprieve, in any case. So I tried to listen to her and compose myself and thought I was ready. I got up, got halfway through the poem, read the "I believe I could do anything" line and choked again. Jadesong didn't miss a beat, jumped right back up and started singing while I turned my back to the audience trying to find some composure... I don't cry in public, I hate it, I refuse to... yet here I was... a woman on the verge.

But I took a couple of deep breaths and stepped back up to the mike and delivered the rest of it, building the momentum and not thinking too much about the meaning. Did I receive pity applause? I'm not sure. I had a lot of people come up to me afterwards to compliment me on my reading, which was nice, but I think it's mostly because everyone remembers the girl who cries, or almost cries, on stage. Tends to make an impression, y'know.

Labels: poetry