Dandy Note #7: Baby's First Buffalo

Last Christmas Eve I drove a rental truck through a Western New York snow squall so fierce the headlights lowered their gaze. Every star and flying sleigh ducked beneath a white table cloth, the winds whipping the flurries into a froth. Shook by their gusts literally – I only had enough stuff to fill a fifteen-footer halfway, but who can eyeball such a thing as one’s whole life? – suddenly it cleared. In seconds visibility returned as quickly as it left, and entering Erie County I understood why the best ice cream shop in town is called Lake Effect.

Welcome to Buffalo, baby, where football enthusiasts aren’t fans but mobsters and the difference between six feet of snow and six flurries is just a parking lot facing the other direction. Seriously.

After four years of living up against the Blue Ridge Mountains and the country’s oldest river, one of the few on this continent that flows north, I’ve come back this way, too. Ten-ish months into this adventure and the city of friendly neighbors, of Josh Allen enthusiasts and bumper stickers and yard signs stating “Bills Mafia” allegiance, does not disappoint. Though you won’t see me shoveling out any football stadiums, I do appreciate the steadfastness, the blessed chicken wing, the proximity to Canada.

It took a few months to get settled into a new apartment, a new job, and a new life. I waited until the cold lifted and the cherry blossoms fell to find the right place to take my typewriter. The first ask is always the clumsiest.

Over the summer – a truly terrible season, but since when has poetry minded emotional duress – I was given permission to set up my booth outside of Talking Leaves bookstore. The small, independent shop is on the corner of a popular street in Elmwood where an adjacent cafe hosts open mics on Wednesdays and a seasonal farmers’ market inhabits the park on Saturdays. (My Virginia farmers’ market was year-round, but comparing states does not make for a sound mental one. Onward.)

As summer became fall, I wrote poems next to the sale cart for well-loved books, met couples and mothers and pets, got rained out. The poems were about fresh starts in new apartments, friendships formed over chronic pain and college classes, hungry lovers sharing soft-baked pretzels, happy kids who only spent weekends with their fathers and so loved them the most.

“I hope it works,” the owner of Talking Leaves book store said during our first meeting.

Funny to think of something like my operation as “working” or not. When it comes to free poems, the line is as murky for failure as it is for success. Do I fail if no one comes? If everyone comes? If a crowd of children start throwing stone fruit? If God swoops down with a red pen and a pigeon steals my tips?

Next month will mark four years of pop-up poetry – a labor of love that seems to be working. In this next era of Dandy Line, a poetic occupation of the 7-1-6, I expect nothing, delight in everything, and appreciate you.

P.S. If you’re a Buffalonian who knows of a good indoor spot to partake in holiday crafts, let me know!