“Mmmm.” A dozen voices in unison. Heads nod, claps splatter, polite, but well intentioned. “Wooo, Jenny!” One guy does the snapping thing. By the third reader, I begin to anticipate the Mmmm, an exclamation of knowing approval. After every poem: Mmmm. By coincidence, this happened a couple of weeks ago during an interview. A strong candidate, great experience, but my brain hung up on her Mmmm. For every question we asked: “Mmmm, good question… Mmmm, let me see…” I missed her answers. I obsessed over the Mmmm.

Tonight, the Mmmm is deserved. The poems are great. Every one of them. The reading continues, my heart sinks. I’m out of my league. These guys can write! Happy I brought nothing to share. Mmmm, nods, clap, clap, clap.

~ ~ ~

This visit, for me, was years in the making. A night at a poetry event two decades old. The first Friday of every month, shops up and down the strip serve cheap chardonnay and cubed cheese in a communitywide effort to attract shoppers. People browse, drink, then move to the next store. We skipped that scene, went straight to the Ragged Edge. We bought our drinks, jasmine lime green tea for Susan, a decaf black eye for me.

Black eye: a cup of coffee laced with two shots of espresso. Baristas sometimes give me that look. ‘What’s the point of decaf espresso?’ I say fuck you, just give me my coffee, but silently, in my head. The girl behind the counter didn’t blink an eye. She only charged me for one shot.

I appreciate the coffee shop’s name. Ragged Edge, a clear visual to illustrate the effects of over-caffeination. When I was young and idealistic and abused caffeine for sport, I hoped to open a coffee joint called Jitters with flickering neon sign. An ode to being wired. This predated triple caramel macchiatos and skinny chai lattes. Shops served brewed coffee and espresso. But I never got beyond the name and couldn’t have ridden the coming specialty drink wave, anyway.

They packed them in at the Ragged Edge. Susan and I grabbed the last seats, two thirds of a couch not facing the stage, my head twisted ninety degrees for two hours. Mmmm. Clap, clap-clap, clap. Twice last year I printed a poem on Friday afternoon and stuck it in my pocket. By dinner time I chickened out. As nervous and embarrassed to tell Susan my plan as I was to stand on the stage and read.

I told Katy, one of the organizers, over and over, “Yeah, I’ll need to get in there some month to read.” Years ago, I asked if people ever snuck in prose. “What would happen if I showed up with a flash piece?”

She frowned, “I wouldn’t do that.” And I never did.

As the reading let out, Amy and Dave, friends we arrived with, insisted I should participate, that I could hold my own. Susan agreed. When we got home, I read the poems on my blog. I think I’m right. The First Friday crowd inhabits a higher level, but now I’ve got something to shoot for.

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