PORTRAIT OF JACK MICHELINE IN NORTH BEACH

We were gathered in a North Beach café after a reading.
I remember the black-and-white linoleum tile floors,
sand and grit from our boots scryed under terrazzo tables,
how the cane chairs scudded and groaned beneath our weight.
I remember it was late afternoon, how the slanted sunlight
streamed in long shards through high warped windows.
I’ve idea who was there, was I with a boyfriend,
or maybe it was Herman Berlandt, as I was his wheels.
But I was the only woman there, both visible and unseen,
circling the table with my old Pentax camera, 

paying homage to light and shadow, the ocular distance 

of lens and the alchemy of silver nitrate etched on film

was both a wall and a passport that gained entry to the club.
I was chronicler and eavesdropper, voyeur and witness.
I was new to poetry, but I was all in. I had found my tribe.
I still can’t find the negatives or remember what was said,

but I have an indelible memory, an image of that day,

with Jack Micheline holding court, leaning back in a chair,
black leather jacket creaking, leonine head thrown back, laughing.
I remember a half dozen poets crowded around the table,
drinking, conversing with myriad knees nearly touching.
But not what was said. Sometimes being there was enough.

4/18

In North Beach awaiting Neil Jordan and Roddy Doyle

11/17/ 2004  We’re in Myles O'Reilly's pub at 622 Green St. in North Beach awaiting Neil Jordan and Roddy Doyle. Ha, ha, ha, we're all drinking somebody's open swill – Pinot Noir for breakfast. Ugh. I was hoping for food. It’s Myles’s birthday. The jazz club band brings us in with a little swing, some Maria Callas, and the Tarantella and the Godfather meets the Irish in North Beach.

Nearly an hour later, Roddy Doyle saunters in and steps up to the microphone, taps it thunderously, and says he's now a Yank, having been in nine cities in 10 days. We laugh.

Doyle is bald as a skinhead, it takes some getting used to. He read from Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and a small bit on Henry Smart, an IRA volunteer, from A Star Called Henry, and some stray bits from a play he's been working on, and then he thanked Elgie Gillespie for making this so. There is a River of free flowing booze. By this point, we're all fairly toasted.

Neil Jordan, steps up, looking upscale and fashionably thuggish, wearing shades, having just returned from a TV interview, he's a rare bit of gloom, despite it being sunny, midday. Maybe the alcohol's wearing off. 

He begins with: I know when I died, May 1950. It was a rare whinge, the perspective is written from that woman. He ended on an upbeat note: George killed me... He reads from The Dream of a Beast, with a segue into Interview with the Vampire.

After they were finished reading, there was a Q&A. Someone asks: Would you like to write The Commitments today?

Roddy Doyle said, Well, I'd need to express the conditions along similar lines. The Irish, the blacks of Europe would figure into it.

Jordan said the USA has been good to me, re: The Crying Game.