Jenny Xie

[ #tbt event review by Michael Shattuck ]

Organized and Hosted by Jenny Xie and Jessica Hudgins. Poetry by Suzie Doogan, Fiction by Courtney Sender and Khaliah Williams, at The Crown 2016 Thursday February 4, 20:00 EST.

Everything is wet outside. Crowd collects around the Blue Room’s L shaped bar, only 8:15, a clamor of welcoming. 2016 is a month old but a dimension slightly different, “everything stolen and replaced with an exact replica.”

Sole blond bartender gracefully orchestrates the simmering audience. Chain of rainbow Christmas sparks overhead, a hush a nanosecond long. Sullen artists hiding. “It happens so quickly” here to soak up the light and moisture in the glasses.

With an implication of swords the chatter cut quiet by a song – attention to time and sequence focuses the chaos and poets. Not flagless or united sitting in the ordered space of the hardwood lacquered floor, half-frown smiles and leg-shifts and question the integrity of our choices, like the “kitchen mug / our favorite / that our loved one broke” and that too replaced.

We listen like search engines filling in the previous entries before we hit enter / return and pay attention, lock the seat belt, we wait to hear what we’ve been waiting for our entire lives, “Welcome home.” And wait for the funny part please, please give or allow some distance as a part of this whole thing.

Recall ancient myths of ourselves, our friends, loves, families, are skeptical of ourselves, unsure that’s why we pull up a chair or sit on the floor and listen over a search engine that runs on fear, even the perfect, the objects of envy, maybe most of all. These are just the ground elements of one amplified “long goodbye.” Crowd is rapt in patience.

Fueled and ready for the wet web of sidewalks outside. Long suffering concrete split from the invading ice seeping into and stretching out the breaks.