My and Gary’s reading for Rebecca Aronson’s Bad Mouth Poetry Series in Albuquerque, New Mexico on September 6, 2025 at the Q Staff Theater was a long time in the making.
We used to live in Albuquerque but relocated to Charleston, SC in July 2013 when Gary was hired as an Assistant Professor at the College of Charleston (and I was later hired as an adjunct) thus bringing to close my third and Gary’s second stint living in our favorite city so far.
Though I should not have been, I was surprised by how overwhelmed with emotion I became the moment I stepped off the plane. The mesa, the mountains, the endless sky, that particular ineffable light that I’ve only experienced in Albuquerque, all brought back a rush of deeply seated memories of my early childhood years. Having not been back to New Mexico since my mother’s passing in 2018, those past moments popped up like so many perky roadrunners alert to to every scampering lizard.
Anyway, we were delighted to read with our dear friend Christina Socorro Yovovich, whom we’d read with in at the UNM bookstore for National Poetry Month in 2008 (we think) and to have with us the talented musician Keith Brunstein.
If you ever get a chance to read for Bad Mouth, you should totally do it. The Q Staff venue is exceptional — theater style raised seating, great acoustics, and a darkened interior to contrast with the enchantingly hot, bright sun of the high desert. And there is plenty of room in the foyer for social gathering and book signing.
Many of our dearest friends and chosen family came out to exchange warm, genuine embraces, touch on recent griefs as a gesture of kinship, and share heartfelt anecdotes as a way to remove the sting from our collective recent troubles.
I honestly couldn’t see leaving again, except that, well, I am building a good life here in Pittsburgh where new friends embrace me with the same level of warmth as those in Burque and the literary community appears to have plenty of room for newcomers — and outsiders — like me.
Invitations for more readings have us making concrete plans to return to Albuquerque with more frequency and the many requests for virtual meetings and classroom visits will ensure our attentions are not so easily distracted from our Southwestern home this time.
We’ll be back soon, Albuquerque. As soon as we can.
The Zingara Project 