Rigoberto Gonzalez gave a lovely reading last night at Open Books. He read poems from future third and fourth books(!), as well as several poems from his new Other Fugitives and Other Strangers, and a couple from So Often the Pitcher . . ., and he told great funny stories, including one about the mortician character who appears in many of his poems. He read "Papi Love" as a request (thank you!) and even signed my copy with a little butterfly drawing. I only wish more of the local poetry community had turned out, they missed a good reading!

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While I was there I picked up Eric McHenry's Potscrubber Lullabies, which looks terrific. Also Bruce Beasley's The Corpse Flower (I have a poem of the same title in What's Written on the Body) and Henri Cole's Blackbird and Wolf. Why is it interesting to me that the Cole and the McHenry both have a picture of waves on the cover?