Nerf
Chicago
2012
The literary Death Match was held at Buddy Guy’s bar, and Mark Doty and I (somehow) were judges. I first met Mark 20 years before in Iowa when he was teaching at Drake and writing poems with Ruth as MR Doty. We remembered together in between making calls, shooting the losers (Jane Smiley, Major Jackson, Darin Strauss, and Roxane Gay—even though she turned out to be the winner) with spongy darts launched from Nerf guns. It was late by the time we made it out to the street to say goodnight. “We’ve come a long way from Iowa.” The streets of Chicago were filled with drunken poets and writers in town for the AWP convention.