Kari Edwards at the City Museum in STL on Saturday, reading with local talent Jarek Steele, the latter accompanied by numerous friends and well-wishers, even a younger sister. I bought a copy of Kari's Iduma, with a wonderfully busy graphic design and some trenchant and memorable poems--one, a near faithful copy of a Dept. of Justice document, was frightening and hilarious at the same time. I enjoyed meeting her, since she is both funny and warm. (I haven't been to a reading this good since ... the last reading I went to at the City Museum a few months ago.) David Hess was there: no plans to bring back Heathens in Heat any time soon, he told me.

J. Steele, who works at Left Bank Books, read an effective autobiographical prose piece about growing up male in an ostensibly female body. I didn't get a complete sense of him as a poet, since he didn't read very many poems, but his reading worked well thematically with Kari's more indeterminate gender bending.

Aaron Belz, organizer of the series, read a poem by Arielle Greenberg, who is coming next month. There were fewer technical glitches this time--only a door propped against a door-frame that came down a few times for some welcome comic relief. There were no injuries.