Chris Davidson and Aimee Bender wow with words at the Broadlind Cafe

Fiction and poetry readings can be difficult—even for fans of literature and the spoken word, it takes a concentrated effort to simultaneously listen, digest and react to someone else’s speech. Last Sunday night at the Broadlind Cafe, it was easy: poet Chris Davidson opened with an Emily Dickinson poem (“A word is dead/When it is said,/Some say./I say it just/Begins to live/That day.”) and a blanket apology for unpreparedness (“little children”) before moving into a selection of his own, terrific poems. A few about childhood memories (skipping stones by the sea shore) and some about adulthood (“It Really Happened,” at once a vivid and quiet piece about walking into a dark apartment and cooking eggs on the range by the light of the refrigerator—it hadn’t really happened, Davidson noted, at the conclusion.) We non-poetry readers sometimes forget that selling point of the art is the sound of the words playing off one another. Davidson’s performance was a wonderful reminder.

UCI graduate Aimee Bender was next, and although I am a fan of her 1999 collection of short stories The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, it had been a while. The reasons why I—and why most everyone who enjoys solid storytelling—admire Bender came flowing back a few sentences into her short story (didn’t catch the name) about an older woman, her son, and the symmetry that flowed between the two—symmetry in the woman’s life (stops sleeping at 40, predicts she’ll die at 80) as passed on to the symmetry in her son’s face (too perfect, and no one will trust him because of it). Bender has always succeeded with her playful (and thrilling, and enchanting) takes on the ordinary triviality and strange neuroses of life and this story was no different, folding societal myths (that we can figure out and control our life path; that a symmetrical face is ideal, and thus beautiful, and thus can only hurt other people) into a complex and wholly entertaining story about, yes, love. Sadly, the night couldn’t quite end on a happy note: onetime local poet and singer Derrick Brown (since relocated to Nashville) was also scheduled on the bill, but (as I learned after the show) had fallen gravely ill Sunday morning and was in the ICU. Brown is much-loved by both the poetry and music community here, and we all wish for his speedy recovery.

Tags: aimee bender, chris davidson, Long Beach