If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know it is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

—-Emily Dickinson

Bad Poetry Tonight

Craig arrived early and promptly fell asleep in one of the old overstuffed chairs in the reading area. He woke up drooling on himself when the reading began.

This month’s reader, Harriet Von Snapple, was introduced as not only a poet but an amateur hard rock singer and harpist that had recently come out with a solo CD, Smeebage and Mung, after a stint with bands Creamy Blue Cheese Undressing and Schlitz the Prophet. She was different than the usual poets in that she was attractive and confident.

Her poetry was awful, but Craig liked what she said before she read her first work, “I work long hours for this awful man and I look busy and stressed but I live with it because I’m really sitting there writing bad poetry all day.”