The sole bartender is busy cracking open beers, mixing G&Ts, popping soda cans, almost to a rhythm. And she's smiling while doing so, too. Its her 10th year at the bar and she loves seeing and hearing the writers - new and old- come up and give their best performance.
“I love the poetry nights,” she shouts over the crowd and the groovy bassline. “Everyone who reads here is an icon, and yet it’s such a casual, chill event.”
The readings are always free, but there is a two drink minimum. I ask if that’s really enforced, and she says no, but most people do it anyway.
As she opens more tabs for those just arriving, someone walks up to the small podium in the corner and starts testing the mic by tapping it with the palm of their hand. The guests are still chatting and laughing and the crisp pop of the microphone is muffled by the din of the room.
Before one of the poets goes up to take the stage, I overhear a conversation.
“I’m so nervous, what if I mess up?” the poet says to her friends who then proceed to hug her from the side and reassure her that she’s going to do great, that she’s done this a million times.
When she goes up she begins to doubt herself, and tells this to the audience. The space is warm and so is the audience’s response. Soft, kind chuckles accompany the self-inflicting comedy.
“Emergency Chocolate Cake” is the title of the next poet’s first piece. So she takes the time to tell us what its’s about. She is witty, and the moment becomes a piece of stand-up comedy between such serious poems. Everyone laughs, again, and sips their second required drink of the night.
And then, towards the end of the night, in what became one of my favorite moments of the evening, the poet, Andrea Cohen, who read from her book “The Sorrow Apartments,” paused after reading a poem and prompted a conversation that sparked nostalgia among the older people in the room. She then closed with a poem she called “Sway.”