It's true, they exist: Eduardo Corral, Simmons Buntin, Emmy Perez, Jonathan Mayhew, Jordan Davis, Tony Robinson, Anne Boyer, Joseph Massey, C. Dale Young, Reb Livingston, G.C. Waldrep. And then, later that night: Steven Cordova, Maria Melendez, and Francisco Aragon, all at once, and over big pink martini-shaped cosmos.

Yes, it did hurt. Later, the next morning before my reading.

But I did meet them, if briefly. Eduardo is sweet and just as funny as you'd expect, Jonathan is talkative, open, and thoughtful, Jordan is keen, amazingly sexy (if not a poetics then what?), Tony is modest and well spoken, Anne is shy but willing to point out that we own the same blouse, Joe is hot and reads like a lion (just wanted to say that), C. Dale was rushed but apologetic. Simmons is very very tall!

Reb--okay, Reb I saw from a distance, but I meant to meet her at the No Tell Motel table though I didn't manage to hit it when she was on--which I regret after reading her account of it, considering I might have offered volunteer table sitting (would've done it, Reb).

Steven is wonderfully Steven: emphatic, affectionate; Maria is brilliant and beautiful and warm. Francisco is full of curiosity and enthusiasm, and wants to see what others know.

And as you know, my crush on G.C. Waldrep is profound. My students were teasing me about approaching him when I saw him at the bookfair and couldn't find words to introduce myself. A close friend of mine would say that at my age, shyness is pathological. Okay. But I lucked out. In person, G.C. is generous, lovely. No photo of him, so here's a poem.

***

Deliverance

I realized I had read too many poems
about pulling the dead from the living:

ragged cry of cow or horse or pig straining
against the inanimate flesh in its gut,

the human urgency, greasy hands
reaching deep into unimaginable places,

groping around, arms stiff against the creature’s
useless labor, trying to hold on, trying

to bring out the fetal pieces already half-rotten
in the placenta’s wash. Sometimes the animal dies,

sometimes not, and everyone human
goes home thinking about the change in life,

what great mystery approached
in the palm’s proximity to alien heartbeat,

what small nation, vigorously defended.
But it’s only the dumb rhythm of begetting:

with or without us that poor carcass
would have found the air. The same tall grasses

grow in the rainy season. Late at night
we would still wake to find ourselves,

shivering for no reason, no reason at all,
fresh from that hard dream of safety.

G. C. Waldrep