Pass the Flask You Hag: Losing My Virginity at Bowery Poetry

This weekend, George Wallace made my month by allowing my up onstage for Beat Hour @ The Bowery [Poetry Club]. The bill also featured PHIL ASAPH, TED JONATHON and ROBERT GIBBONS and an impromptu finale by Russ Green. I am honored and thankful to have been allowed onstage with them.

It was my first public reading and I was absolutely fucking terrified.

Fortunately, someone got all my public onstage awkwardness on film.

I ramble about about old drunken aunties, divine relationship-enders on the Bayou, the importance of underscoring during blizzards...and about Mick Jagger's shirts. Because let's face it, they're the highlight of any closet. 

Kimberly Kaye at Bowery Poetry Club from Hannah Miet on Vimeo.



Hannah Miet at Bowery Poetry Club from Hannah Miet on Vimeo.

Be gentle. It was literally my first time. 

little awed sighs

With all the blizzarding lately it's been impossible not to look up. Or to click play, then get all sentimental.





Sixteen, sitting cross-legged on a beige suburban carpet,
thawing out two sets of hands and wearing wet wool socks.
You plopped us near the picture window in my parents' house
for front row seats to the lit blizzard falling from the sky.


At some point Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium"
started rivering out Dad's dusty stereo speakers--
a holy hail of voices too divine to be a hymn.


Neither of us could explain how frantic snowflakes synched to solemn notes,
or why our chatter suddenly melted into stares and tears.
We'd stumbled upon the alchemy of little awed sighs.
You clasped my hands silently, like sisters in a Bronte novel--


We thought we must be the only two in Jersey to ever see real magic. 


Now the snow's a fucking mess that ruins new suede shoes,
leaking into murky pools that turn subway steps to bear traps.
Still, I plop near gritty windowsills and stare out urban windows
matching our old spell again with anything falling slowly.
"Et admirabile sacramentum ut animalia viderent Dominum..."


I never could speak Latin.


When snow blows those words back to me I'll always think they mean:
"Little Girls never forget the time God let you see him."

Shameless Self-Promo Moment: THE ECONOMIST

I was published non-poetically in THE ECONOMIST. Happy New Year (except to you, former college econ professor, who gave me a D+ even though I passed all the tests because I never went to the class on lecture days. I TOLD you it was useless busy-work, but you just wouldn't listen...).