Eileen G'Sell Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 28

Eileen G'Sell will be a featured reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, September 28.

Also featured will be Buzz Spector and another reader still to be determined.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Advance sign-up for the open-mic following the featured readers is encouraged. Click here to sign-up via e-mail.

Eileen G'Sell's nonfiction and poetry have been published in Salon, the Boston Review, DIAGRAM, Conduit, Ninth Letter, and other journals. Her chapbook Portrait of My Ex with Giant Burrito is available from BOAAT Press. Since 2004, Eileen has mentored with Mentor St. Louis, now a division of Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club. She teaches writing and film at Washington University in St. Louis.

Portrait of My Ex with Giant Burrito

Men have died for less, and I, for one, never asked for more. In the Pacific Northwest are a thousand restaurants, healthy girls, and slutty food. Trees that shade new money humbly greet you on the interstate; intricate tattoos peek from sturdy cotton sleeves. “I consume five thousand calories a day,” he said the day he met me. We spoke about weddings and Sly Stallone; we ranked our favorite dogs by breed. In the morning he kissed my forehead before leaving me for hashbrowns. But he didn’t. Or he couldn’t. And the trees never changed a thing. “Endings are my expertise,” I whisper to the ushers. They are bored with their professions. They are picketing our aisle. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light.” It was the first—and best—joke ever told.

-- Eileen G'Sell