Tonight I’ll be performing my poem “The Strip Search” at The Best of  the Best of No Shame Theatre, 8 p.m. at Mill Mountain Theatre’s Waldron Stage on Church Avenue in downtown Roanoke. The show is close to sold out already, but I believe there will still be $10 tickets at the door.

This poem, a TSA riff on Dante’s Inferno, was originally written to be performed on stage at No Shame. It went on to sell to Strange Horizons, and then to win the 2006 Rhysling Award. The print version, though, lacks the specific stage choreography I worked out. It’s always fun to dust this one off.

It will be a fun reunion, too — the show features a lot of people who, like me, were at one time regulars at No Shame but now don’t participate as much, if at all (though No Shame still continues.) For me, it’s a combination of several factors. One, Anita’s schedule rarely leaves her with time free to us to go as a pair. Two, and really much more important, my writing is now skewed much more heavily toward fiction, novels even, so I’m not producing many poems at all, and those much better suit No Shame’s 5-minutes-or-less format. Alas, alack.

Posted in Appearances, Poetry, Stage, Writing