I went to my local Encore Books' regular monthly poetry reading last night. I've gone several times over the last months, mostly to lurk but once to read -- the moderator invited those who had appeared in his magazine (Beauty For Ashes) in 1998. That time I read the poem which had been published, as well as two others (all three available in my Sampler, but I won't bother to type the titles and provide the link -- chances are if you're reading this, you've read them!)

Things were a little off last night. The readings are usually Wednesdays -- I didn't know why it should be Monday this month. It's supposed to start at 7, but when I got there at five after there was no one I recognized (usually two dozen or so people attend these things), not even the moderator. But the chairs were set up, and three middle-aged men (one accompanied by a woman who was most likely his wife) and a young man sat there chatting about poetry.

I browsed for a while (I don't NEED any more books!) and checked the info table for some flyers I left (promoting an upcoming writing event I'm hosting -- they were all gone, which means either there's keen interest or the Encore management trashed them!). By 7:30 no one else had come. One of the men checked at the desk -- the manager said she had no idea what had happened, but we were welcome to go it on our own.

The two men who were there alone read, maybe three or four poems each. To be honest, I go to these things because I think I should, to establish myself as part of the local poetry community. But I'm not an auditory learner --poetry experienced this way often doesn't stay with me. So I can't report if the work I heard was good, fair, awful, whatever.

Then the young man got up. He had on corduroy slacks, a loose pullover shirt, and a cap that said "Indiana University of Pennsylvania Soccer." He introduced himself as a first-year law student recently arrived from Pittsburgh. He moved the lectern out of the way, pushed back the front row of empty chairs, took a deep breath, fixed his gaze on me, and said, really loud, "I am six feet one inch of pure phallus!"

And suddenly we were being taken through a performance that was part Mick Jagger and part Walt Whitman. The kid strutted, he pranced, his voice poured like honey over long catalogues lush with sensuality. I was mesmerized.(And I had no trouble remembering what he was saying.)

Within a minute, however, the manager had come bustling over. (We meet in the fifth alcove from the front of the store, between the end of the alphabetically-shelved sci-fi titles and the beginning of the mystery titles.)

"The customers are saying someone's swearing back here!" she said. The five of us listening sprang to his defense. "Well!" she said, "you have to stop because the customers shouldn't have to hear swearing!"

I pointed out that he had said "phallus," "testosterone," and "sex," and he hadn't used them in any obscene way. (I gave her the benefit of assuming that she was using "swearing" as a generic term for "language that upsets people.") She was a taken aback some, and said, "Well, whatever words they are you'll have to be more quiet." Then she left.

He did one more (quietly), and then sat down. Everyone looked at me -- I said I was NOT going to follow that. I was truly out of the mood to present my  traditional, girlie-girl stuff. He tried to persuade me, but I stood firm.

The remaining man, however, did read. He was heavy-set, wearing faded twill work pants and a flannel shirt. He said he was 52 (I would have taken him for 70), a custodian at an elementary school, and he had been gripped in recent months by a relentless need to write poetry -- everything he experienced was coming out of him as a poem.

His work was a little too sentimental for me, but I could tell his grasp of form was solid. One piece was about a dog whose owner died -- the dog spent the next year sitting at the end of the driveway, waiting, until it, too, passed away. The poet said he'd read the story in the newspaper. He began to cry while he was reading.

Afterward, the custodian, the law student, and I sat talking poetry for about half an hour. (The other two men had left right after they were finished. I think that's rude -- make people listen to your stuff but you don't stay to listen to others'.) The kid (for lack of a better term) gave the custodian some insightful critical observations and a lot of encouragement.

He managed to get me to let him read some of the material I had brought (in particular, "Rivers of Memory", a chick's poem if there ever was one!). His remarks were useful and gracious.

The law student said he was accustomed to a much more cosmopolitan, edgy poetry climate -- "slams," he called them. I told him this venue usually didn't attract performance artists and no one had ever used the word "phallus." The custodian said he'd never read in public before -- had actually never shared his work with anyone but his wife.

As people and as poets we couldn't be more different. Nevertheless, we found things to share. I wish them both well, and hope to see them at the next reading.