My AWP ended at the only off-site that mattered, the reading for Bruiser magazine, as tended by Mark Wadley— who also opened the show with musical gusto and a fantastic list of wrestling moves.

Relatedly:

To be completely honest, I came to hear Addison Zeller and to see cats and I owe his wife $15.

Intersectionally, at multiple points during the evening, I admired the elevated throne on a wooden platform which is designated as the restroom in the center of the courtyard and which reminded me of a really well-shaped sonnet corona.

Inadvertently, one of the teens kept me texting cat memes during the reading which made me feel very bad about myself, life, teens, cars, je-ne-sais-pas, and je-suis-un-oracle-médiocre.

Addison read about a pig, among other things.

It was intense and he was incredible.

I resented how often I laughed, especially as this laughter (ha ha ha ) occurred in tandem with others, our laughs mingling, cavorting, losing any sense of distinction and turning into a separate wave which then crowd-surfed itself across the room, edging dangerously close to where Addison stood on the stage.

Here’s what he wrote but didn’t read:

Birds Are Writing Now

The birds gave up singing: now they write short stories. In trees, in bushes, on power lines the sentences run from tersely direct to syntactically byzantine. If life was less complicated, it might be different—they might fly, nest, snatch worms from the dirt—but the wait goes on, the fantasizing, and the fantasies dry up, the wait feels endless. They break down what makes a piece tick. They concoct unanticipated similes. Their sentences are clean. Twig by twig, word by word—outlining, workshopping, then death: beaks parted, legs curled, a pile of blowing wings in a driveway. That’s how it is. Cars zoom by, feathers flutter. The stories are often samey.