Speakeasy at Will’s Pub

Tod Cavinass hosts a poets open mic every Tuesday night after 9PM at Will’s Pub located at 1040 North Mills Avenue. When I entered the bar I noticed one lone poet writing from his bar stool perch. Tod warned me that the event never starts on time. This evening there was some sort of community swap meet or market filling the room so I wandered around and looked at the old LPs, crafts and art. They started to break down their tables and by 10PM the market was gone. Tod worked diligently to fill the room with chairs and tables and soon the room was full of poets.
On the walls of the room were dark sinister paintings featuring skulls and nudity. Tod took to the stage and introduced the first poets. Two of the poets in this sketch, the one with the blue cap and the one with the orange shirt were a poet team.The poet with the ball cap took to the stage and periodically the fellow in the orange shirt would shout out “Rewind”from the back of the audience, and the poet on stage would back up his poem then continue forward again. Their energetic delivery was inspiring.
The young girl on the far left in the sketch had the amazing ability to bend herself up like a pretzel. She is disjointed and can fold her arms in inhuman ways. I was still sketching and didn’t notice her as she showed friends the first time and I was pleased when she was willing to demonstrate for me a second time.I will have to get a sketch of her some day if she is able to hold one of those uncomfortable looking poses.
A writer from the Orlando weekly read a poem about how he infected his work computer when he was researching a story about how some people surf porn sites while at work. So in the name of research he looked up some of these sites. One of them gave his computer a virus . The tech had to inform his boss that a malicious porn site was to blame.