Charm City, USA

"Anybody going to Baltimore?" yelled the Apex bus driver as we stood stopped for an indeterminate number of minutes at some anonymous weigh station off the Jersey turnpike. "Yes!" said Kyle. Most people were going to DC, but the driver was asking because he needed to tell the two of us and one other guy that there'd been an abrupt change in bus stops, so instead of somewhere on Odonnell street, we would be getting dropped on Cherry Hill. Here is Kyle, surveying the industrial waste of where that actually turned out to be: Luckily, we were not there long. My Rose Metal Press partner and all around amazing friend Abby Beckel came to pick us up and take us to Canton to meet Lauren Silberman and Matt Moffatt for lunch at Helen's Garden where I had one of the best sandwiches of my life, which supplanted the previous Best Sandwich Ever contender that I got in Chinatown in NYC and ate on the Fung Wah back in January 2007. Has it ever occurred to you to almond-encrust a tomato? Because that is what the Helen's Garden people do: Next we headed over to Hampden...
...to hon it up... ...before our reading in the 510 reading series at Minas Gallery. Michael Kimball and Jen Michalski were gracious and attentive hosts, the audience was standing-room only...
...and our co-readers Rahne Alexander, Shane Jones, and Blake Butler were uniformly entertaining to listen to. Be sure to check out all their books/projects.

Also, speaking of things to check out, be sure to get yourself a copy of Ellen Kennedy's forthcoming poetry collection, Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs, which Tao Lin is pictured artfully displaying here.. Tao let us do a tiny reading in his apartment as part of our day-long series of mini-readings all over NYC before our EARSHOT appearance on Friday. Thanks, Tao!

Today, I went to yoga with Abby and Caryn Lazzuri at the Willow Street Yoga Studio in Takoma Park, Maryland, which is located in a building so ugly it swings back around to pretty again:
During our first side-angle pose, the instructor instructed us to "weave [y]our bones in and out of the tapestry of the universal," which is not something I normally attempt, but I did my best. Now? We are doing our laundry. Super-glam. Tonight at 8 pm, we'll be reading in Washington, DC at the Marvin Center on the George Washington University Campus with Dan Gutstein. Eff the Oscars. Come hear us instead. We promise to be equally well-dressed, but way less bloated and excessively drawn out!