Readings

I remember readings.

They seem church services

Now—awestruck silence and

Grainy air. But once they were

Carnivals of the heart

With tinted lights winking

In ordered cadence, bass

Notes drumming as inside your

Bones, and the fat fryer

Scent of transformation,

Faint whiffs of the other

You might this minute be

Or become under the

Spell of these spoken words:

Price’s baritone thunder

In slow measured peels,

Spender’s thin-lipped whisper

Not masking his wry lisp,

Welty’s bashful yet sure

Ethereal humming,

And Dickey stalking his

Green-eyed feline across

This lesson-room stage as

We thirty-odd watchers

Breathlessly awaited

Its pounce.