Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

Don McIver 1801 Gold Ave. SE Albuquerque, NM 87106 Rendition He never didn't address me as sir. It was always, "Can you stand, sir?" "Can you step over here, sir? "Can you lean forward a bit, sir?" He was short, stocky, built as if every muscle wanted to erupt from skin, covered by a shirt whose buttons were decoration, perfectly creased, not straining but sized perfectly. "I'm going to undo this, sir." "Good...sir." "Can you sign here, sir?' "Oh...very well sir." "That's a very strong hand, sir." "The rest of this will be more worthwhile, sir." The room seemed more like a grade school: a plastic, too small, chair a lone metal lamp with a 75 watt incandescent that erupted shadows across the room. "Sit here, sir." "Can you drape your arms over this, sir? "Now where were we sir?" "Did you know him......

Poetry & Beer:   September 7th. Wednesday marked another PnB, a full year of stirring up the format, trying to add community into the mix.  The format was basically an Open Mike, which we split into a group of 4 poets to kick off the show, and a group of 9 poets to end the show.   Sandwiched between that we had group reading of Dan Propper's " The Fable of the Final Hour " and a feature of David Rowe.    I'm not sure how I found Dan Propper's poem, but what immediately struck me was how the structure lent itself to a group reading.  Since it basically counts up to 60 with the following, "In the first minute of the final hour..." it was pretty easy to divide the poem up into 60 sections and pass out 2-3 slips of paper to everyone in the audience.   I screened out people who weren't going to stay for the whole time, so probably had 22+ reading the poem.   No one got to see the whole poem.   Whil...