Gripping a small stack of handwritten papers, Shannon Rogers, aka the Drunken Monk, walked timidly to the front of the room, under the stage lights and behind the microphone.
As the crowd whooped, she flashed an anxious smile and introduced her first poem, a tribute to her mother.
The soft-spoken 38-year-old scientist said she never intended to read her poems when she started attending the weekly Speak Easy poetry open-mike night at Mudpie. She sat alone in the back, always with a beer in hand, watching the mix of amateurs and academics spill their hearts out.
“I have kept (my poetry) a secret most of my life,” Ms. Rogers said in an interview. “I haven’t been very comfortable with what I write. But they told me, ‘If you want to be a part of this family, you have got to read.’ “
Like so many of the shoe-box poets that shuffle in and out of the Frazier Avenue restaurant each Monday night, Ms. Rogers is encouraged by the strangers, some now friends, who are willing to listen to her rhyme about family, pets and heartbreaks.