SaraEileen.com

My reading went fabulously.

My poem was the 4th excerpt of the night, and when I got up to read it the mic was too short for me. I had the words almost memorized, and I spent most of the poem looking up into the audience. My first line made the president of the Poet’s Union laugh. In the third stanza I looked down and realized my hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the booklet. Until I looked down I hadn’t felt it. It was good; when I sat down I knew it was good. I drank my wine and tried to beat my nerves back down.

I decided, halfway through the night, that there was nothing for the weakness of my fiction excerpt. I decided the only way it would work would be if I stood up and read it like it was amazing. That worked too. I still wish I’d gone for the sexier choice, but I’m proud of wrangling a laugh from the audience. All I remember, really, is shifting my weight to one hip and turning my toe as I spoke.

Afterward, a short man with a pink tie (a professor of poetry, I later learned) complimented me, told me I had the sort of voice that should be reading 50s radio dramas. I laughed, said thank you. That, I said, is a new one.

Then I came home and yelled a little in glee, dropped my dress on the floor, kissed my boy, and toasted my almost-but-not-quite masters degree.