An open mic and three other events going on today.

First, at Elliott Bay Book Company, John Caddy reads from With Mouths Open Wide, which is a collection of poetry. Caddy also has a free daily poetry subscription service. here’s today’s:

Mama wood duck tells her ducklings to hurry,/ there’s a man on the pond. Two were midway/ through lunch, beaks covered with duckweed,/ did not feel her fear, so she flew twenty feet,/ left them to catch up. Their webs churned, she/ gives them what for when they group behind her,/ like mothers with feathers or fur learned to do/ in times before time began to be reckoned.

Um. So if you love that, there’s plenty more where that came from, I bet.

Up at Third Place Books, George Shaffner reads from The Widows of Eden, a book about a “mysterious traveling salesman” who is also an “occasional worker of miracles.” I guess it must be that kind of day.

And also at Elliott Bay, the bad-assedly-named Dagmar Herzog reads from Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics, which posits that there is “a war on sex in America, and the Religious Right is winning.” This wins the reading of the day award, but it wasn’t really a contest.

The full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.