DISPATCH: The East River Amphitheater Marathon Reading at KGB Bar (Manhattan, NY)

All day people are calling me asking where the event is, what time it starts, did it happen already, how did the East River Amphitheater get rebuilt, if they can read me their piece and where they are in the lineup.

I finish my shift at the bookstore and bike home. I take a cold shower and sit on my window ledge to finish the poem I’m writing for the event. I’m the first of 43 readers, and what I write ends up being a sort of prayer for the night. I text India Rose Timpani, with whom I have co-hosted the marathon for the past three summers that I will probably cry tonight and she says Me Too.

No matter how many times I do this, it feels like throwing your own surprise birthday party and worrying that no one will show up. When I bump into Nicole Treska outside, she asks if it’s packed inside and I tell her that there are a few people. When I see her again later she says I was being bashful - that the place is stuffed - and when I finally take a breath and look around, I see that she’s right.

India and I get on stage and look at each other for what feels like the first time since we got there. She says - Should we take a moment? And then we have a very long hug. India introduces me to the room and I read my poem-prayer. In it I describe all the weather phenomena we’ve had this summer and a boy I just started falling in love with and the different things you can make happen in two minutes (the time limit for each reader tonight). It ends with the line:

I lit a candle us in the Church on Grand St

thank you all for coming

and i’ll see you all in the morning

And then it really starts.

Because there are so many readers there are no bios - everyone just yells out the name of whoever is next once they finish. So I introduce the second reader of the night and it is Daisy Cashin. He has a beautiful, unexpected voice - a delicious, low Southern drawl as he reads a piece about Waffle House and feeling like a fool submitting to the Paris Review and how sitting in the fast food establishment puts everything into perspective.

Next is Kelly Karivalis, who hosts the reading series Limitless Hangout. She reads from her novel and the notes I’ve written say “line cook,” “Chickie“ and “dead squirrel in a towel.”

“I’m jerking off into a cup,” starts the next reader, Eric Boyd, a new friend who I met this year because of the thoughtful dispatches he writes. He reads a story about his vasectomy, and has a heartbreaking line about how if he did have a son he would just want to watch old movies with him. At the end of his story, he meets his now impossible-child in the checkup room of the doctor’s office where they are making sure that the vasectomy worked.

Alec Mapes-Frances reads about sky writing.

Bronwen, host of the Patio series, who I always think is such a pleasure to watch read because she has a beautiful mouth and voice, reads about being stuck in a bad drug trip.

Sam Dahman giggles throughout his poems, which are really just notes app lists of things he’s overheard on the street. In between each bit he holds the mic and gongs it against a drum that’s sitting discarded on the side of the stage. There are several moments where he genuinely can’t get his words out, and it invites the rest of the room to laugh with him. The feeling I get is - nothing is so serious, New York City is one big poem and everyone is a writer.

Montana James Thomas, co-host of the Straight Girls series, reads three immaculately short poems. One is about tigers who lap at a frozen block of milk in the hot months of summer, and another is about the big mirror at Balthazar.

Laura-Sage Y. Marshall appears glowing on stage in a yellow slip dress. She told me that a few nights before she had a dream that she and my co-host both showed up wearing yellow dresses and that India made her change. Her piece is about the devotion of fisting.

Gail Greiner reads about college flings.

Daisaku Rei Hidaka reads a poem about the light in his bedroom. It’s called “Ms. Sunshine.”

Eric Rhinestone reads from memory. The only thing he has written down is “LIFE IS RICH” on his right palm and “LIFE’S A BITCH” on the left.

Felicia Urso reads about cam girl chatrooms.

James Hill gets on stage and prints his poem using a receipt machine, but the type is so small that India has to get on stage with him and hold a phone torch so that he can see. They look like a 2-headed, 4-armed, 4-legged poem monster the way they’re standing up there.

Anika Kaplan reads off a list of names of racehorses. “Assault & Battery” is followed by “Paul.”

David Potters reads about being broke. The piece starts: “As far as insufficient funds go, there’s down bad and then there’s whatever the fuck happened in July.” He somehow gesticulates with both hands while also holding his phone in one of them.

Jack Meriweather is about to read a diary entry written by a woman after her husband died in a journal that he found, but says he suddenly feels it is a huge invasion of privacy and reads something else instead.

And then we’ve hit the halfway point, which is when we take our intermission.

During the break most of us flood outside onto 4th Street to smoke and hug. I walk away from everyone to stand alone and look at the crowd from afar. Standing there, the KGB sign is glowing red and blue above everyone like a little halo, there’s a background hum of talking and laughing sounds and the floor is shiny and reflective from the rain.

People keep coming up to me asking me how I feel it’s going. I tell someone that I think it’s going to be rowdier in the second half. The first year we did this, one person tried to pee in a bag. The second year, someone pulled out a knife.

India opens the next half of the night. She reads a Frank O’Hara poem called “Steps” which she dedicates to me. The poems ends:

oh god it’s wonderful

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and love you so

And then she reads her own poem, titled “The Year.” It starts:

January

5-minute orgasm

I take a moment to remind myself that it’s the biggest dream come true to find myself in a room like this one.

Clayton Mednick reads about a magic forest he was led to while at an art residency.

Ray Wise reads about being at a reading, and how she has never known a bisexual poet who she didn’t love at least a little bit.

Then she introduces her own sister, Clara Wise - who reads a poem by the painter Agnes Martin.

Tasneem Sarkez, a painter herself, says she’s reading a poem about a book she had which broke in half. I like when writers introduce their piece in a vague way like that. She’s wearing a pair of satin Minnie Mouse ears, the kind you buy at Disney World and there is a line about the power of white Supreme boxers, which makes me giggle.

Blush Bullseye, the best erotica writer I have ever met, reads about a butch hot dog.

Tess Manhattan, who I used to run around with when I was a freshman in high school, reads about the kind of sex you have at the age we must have met. There’s a line that goes “I could be anything and that made me nothing.”

Next is Jimmy Cajoleas, who reads a beautiful story about pouring half of a Miller Highlife into the mouth of a young deer and drinking the rest himself. In my notes I’ve written down a line that goes “life is excruciating, even for beautiful things.” There is a transportive, dream-like quality to Jimmy’s writing.

Madison Kenny wears a gingham dress, a fascinator hat and a thick white French tip on her nails which transfix me.

Henry Bohan finishes his piece and says “...and that’s it.” Which I think is a funny and charming way that writers sometimes end their performance.

Rachel Willis, my favorite ex-boss, has a line about sleeping in a bedroom that is decorated like a Cheesecake Factory.

Then it’s Riley Mac’s turn. She reads one poem, and it’s titled “The East River Amphitheater.” There’s a string of repetition at the end that is demanding and borders on scary. Her delivery is angry and heartbroken and strong and something I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

It’s fitting that the next reader is the one who goes a bit too far, but it’s nothing like pulling a knife. Tom Kohler places a Chinatown vanity plate that says SEXY on the stage, strolls off into the crowd, plays a crackly voice recording through his phone into the mic, and is lightly heckled by an older gentleman in the audience. By the end we’ve lost the mic and India and I get on stage in an attempt to get the room back together after the somewhat uncomfortable few minutes are over.

Weston Priest is a very old friend of mine. His story is about a teenage boy’s summertime transfixion with a girl named Romy, for whom he will do anything. Towards the end of the piece, he is instructed by Romy to “steal Tuesday,” after which he goes into a City Hall-style building and meets the different days of the week. Monday is reading the newspaper. Wednesday has a busted lip. Friday was rolling a cigarette, and so on.

The more times I hear Tom Ianelli (who runs the Peter Books Lit Chat interview series) read, the more I realize how rooted in the most uncomfortable interpersonal dynamics his writing is. The tiny story he reads depicts two somewhat gross frat boys as one shares that his mother had died the week before. I watch Kennedy Wright, who hosts the Punisher reading series and is definitely not afraid of “taboo” work, as her face goes from jaw-dropped, to smiling, to pouting while she listens.

Yo Chill was a crowd pleaser from last year’s marathon and I was excited to have him back. The only thing I wrote down from his performance is “at this point I wanted to start twerking.” Which says it all really.

Nicole Sellew reads about having very good sex with a man in a Walmart parking lot.

Nicole Treska reads about getting fired.

Jake Diebler begins reading but then interrupts himself to take a pretend phone call from his mother. And then we’ve nearly made it.

The final reader is Olivia De Chiara. She reads a meta poem about different kinds of readers. I wonder for a moment if she wrote it in real time while the event transpired. She rattles off -

“...something experimental and nonsensical, personal story personal story, irrelevant, boring, too long, too short, speaking quietly, speaking loudly, a poem about how new york used to be much cooler, a poem about the future, the apocalypse, the end of the world….”

And then it’s done.