Book Tour for Screed

Tuesday, January 26

The book tour for Screed was bicoastal. I read in Winter Park,

Florida, and Ellensburg, Washington. The reading in Winter Park was called

Visions of Florida: Seven Poets and a Sociologist. I was one of the poets.

I read in a beer joint called Uncle Waldo’s with David Bottoms, a PhD candidate

from FSU whose book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, won

the Walt Whitman Award. He is now the Poet Laureate of the State

of Georgia. He went first. There was a break. Then I read.

It was beginner’s luck, but I had them. The sugar feebs in the back

playing the pinball machines came down to the front to hear me.

They laughed, they cried, I had them eating out of my hand.

I killed them. After it was over, he slunk away, saying he had to get home,

he had a long drive, et cetera. I stayed with a guy from the English Department

at Rollins College. I slept on his floor. I was high. From the reading. The vibe.

I never did that good again. Ever. I was just on that night. I rose to the occasion.

I think I might have felt competitive. He was everything I wasn’t, and would not be.

He had everything I wanted. I could tell by now I wasn’t going to get it.

My career was launched, but it was stillborn.

It sank. I died. Except for my one triumph

at Uncle Waldo’s. Sic transit Gloria Monday.