Clare tapped the microphone before her, heard the audible pop, pop, and nodded her head once, satisfied the typically temperamental piece of crap was actually functioning tonight—for now. She leaned in and looked out over the small crowd of people scattered throughout the bar, sitting in clusters of two, three. There were a few loners in the group too. Many of the faces Clare recognized as regulars to the Wednesday-night open mic. At the back of the bar, sitting at a table near the door, several of the other students from Donna’s MFA program had come to hear her read. They sat huddled, sipping their bottled beers, sharing silent expressions of barely constrained contempt as they sized up the other writers in the room.

Because practically everyone here was a writer, waiting for their own turn at the microphone to share a poem, a piece of micro fiction, or even their inner thoughts spilled in ink onto the trembling page in their hand. Whatever was brought, it needed to occupy less than six minutes of stage time—no exceptions.

Brian, the already balding thirty-something owner of the Blue Spruce Bar and Lounge in the middle of Brooklyn, sat on the corner barstool closest to the stage. With one unsympathetic eye on the reader and one calculating eye on the stopwatch in his hand, the moment that watch read 6:05, he swiped his hand over his throat, and Liz pulled the plug on the microphone power. He didn’t care how good, or more often bad, the work or the delivery was; he was a businessman trying to earn a buck. Open-mic Wednesday got business in the door with a five-dollar cover and a two-drink minimum.

“First up tonight,” Clare announced, “we have Donna Mehan, who will be reading a selection of new poetry this evening.”

To the right of the stage, Clare watched as Donna carefully ascended the sagging plywood steps that had once upon a time been spray-painted black but were now rubbed bare and showed the worn, pressed-together wood particles. As she crossed the tiny stage, she gave Clare a strained smile.

“Thanks, Clare,” she mouthed.

Clare had been working at the Blue Spruce for almost a year now, and from almost the day she started, Donna had been showing up to the Wednesday night open mics to read. Donna was good, or at least Clare thought so, which was why she often slated her into the first spot whenever she had anything new to read.

“Thank you,” Donna almost whispered into the microphone as she raised her rumpled pages into the light and began to read.