DISPATCH: Sophie Appel's Tour Diary for 'The World's Largest Cherry Pie'

Sophie Appel drove a truck full of loose fiberglass and a leaky roof from LA to NYC

3/31: David Horvitz’s 7th Ave Garden

My whole apartment is packed up and I’m in my truck which is also packed up, realizing I have nowhere to get ready for the reading. All I have to do is put on a slip, a dress, some shoes, and lipstick but I don’t have keys to the gallery or my apartment anymore because I gave those both back yesterday, so I text David and ask if I can come get ready at his studio.

I get dressed in the bathroom that’s covered with books & leftover toilet paper and paper towels from the gallery. The LA Times are supposed be coming but they are late so maybe they won’t show. I start at 3:30 because I said I’d start at 3:30. Early howls to each applause. Hannah reads a poem about me and I read a poem about Hannah- and Zara, and Emmett, and David, and Lizzie, and Angelyne. It’s a short reading, and frankly, I wanted to see Dennis Cooper read that night so everyone got 5 minutes.

I have to kick out everyone out who was late to the reading so I can leave but now I’m worried about driving my truck full of belongings downtown. I go to the reading that I wanted to go to which was very, very long, too long & I knock over an empty bottle of wine while Frank is reading.

After, I go to Soho House with David, Zara, Moses, and Ali for dinner. We share a steak and fries, salad, and cauliflower. I have a dirty martini that’s way too strong so I order more olive juice. We walk down the stairs and say goodbye. I drive to Hannah’s house to sleep over since I have nowhere to sleep, which is perfect because we wanted to have a sleepover before I left. I sleep deeply for the first time in weeks. I wake up in the morning and all my stuff is soaked in the truck because it was pouring rain in Echo Park that morning & my camper shell has a leak. I throw out my mattress pad in a dumpster and drive to Santa Monica.

4/1: Broken marbles, apple pan, no pillow

4/2: Virgin Jail, black silicone caulk

4/3: Field of Dreams, elote, laundromat, sunset, motel

4/4: Sunrise, snowball, 3 figures in the canyon, raven

4/5: Love, arches, pancakes, seahorses

4/6: Dragonflies, ice, fluorite, lithium, sulfur, potassium, calcium, manganese, magnesium, sabbath in his mouth

4/7: Alternate burger in Durango, horses, hot tub, fake honey

4/8: Althea, trailer, trampoline sex dream

4/9 Reading in Albuquerque

I get to Albuquerque covered in fiberglass. I've been showering and washing my clothes for days, trying to get it all out of the truck but I’m just vaguely itchy forever now and that’s that. My camper shell is a disaster. Althea and I go to a coffee shop and get drinks and I write & she works and then we get burritos and drive to the Rio Grande. It’s hot all the time in Albuquerque. We walk across Rat River to the Rio with a bag of food and a copy of Utopia to read to each other but as soon as we get there, I start talking about my psyche and romance and all kinds of things. Althea talks about hers too, we get wrapped up in it all, lying in the sand with willow trees sending out their first leaves and watching ducks across the moon. I’m beyond. We enter some world together. We read Utopia and go to the bar that night where we eat chips and drink beer and discover we are both just animals and that’s all.

The reading is the next day and when I arrive to the reading, I have to get in the fiberglass disaster that is the back of my truck to grab books so I enter the scene itchy. Itchy and so hot. I meet everyone who’s there & they are setting up, it’s a very beautiful home. More people arrive who I get the sense some are preparing for battle, it’s the type of scenario I hadn’t been in for a long time. For a reading in someone’s backyard with babies and dogs running around the entire time, things were beginning to get a little tense. The readings were really good, which is a relief. Then it’s my turn and a dog brings me a stick & I start the poem and throw the stick.

Then my suede boots with kitten heels are sinking into the grass, so I stop in the middle of the first poem and grab a chair and sit down to read. After the reading I feel at ease, the babies and dogs leave, the battle is over.

We go home to discuss strategies that night with Mattan over mezcal and lime. We all sat on the little couch making assessments, Mattan and Althea are easy to listen to, they make me laugh. Then the baby cries and we all go to sleep. I sleep in the living room with the cats so I could watch over my truck because Mr. Bill said that some guys had tried to steal it the night before.

4/10: Blue hole, semi truck, fly violins, modelo, sing, anthill

4/11: Sunrise over the lake, gojo supro max cherry, DQ

4/12: Rollie pollie, frogs, warts all over her toes, full moon

4/13 Houston Basket Books & Art

I arrive to Houston on the 12th (Passover) to some girl's apartment that Sarah Matthes, who I’d never met, told me to come to so we could do a Seder. I don’t know any of these people and I don’t have anything to contribute so naturally I feel guilt, but also I’m on the road so I also feel gracious for a home-cooked meal. Everyone is kind and nice and friendly, comforting, exactly what I needed after having driven alone so far all the way across Texas. It felt like Texas would never end, and I am really coming off a crazy one since I went to the Branch Dividian’s Mount Carmel earlier that day. I saw a lot of printed fabric with flames and pictures of David Koresh and plaques about death, confusing deep state stuff which contradicted itself.

We do our liberation ceremony all the way through, which I haven’t done for a few years & then we eat perfect brisket, matzo ball soup, salad, and kugel made by Sarah and Jana. When we go to light the yartzeit candles, we figured out that all of our dads are dead, all four of us. I love these people by the end of the night, we all washed one another’s hands in ritual. Sarah and I stay up to gab and then sleep at the apartment we rented. I sleep in a room with windows facing the truck since I’m traumatized by the attempted robbery. We wake up, have breakfast, talk about demons, get our nails done & go to the reading.

My new Jewish community from the previous night’s seder is there. The reading begins & we all read about demons in some way or another, so it’s the day for demons. I keep making eye contact with the same girl over and over while I’m reading and it’s making me feel uncomfortable but I don’t wear my glasses so I can’t really see what’s going on.

The reading was good, poetry and memoir- memoir is so intense, I think if I write a memoir, people would go so crazy there would be a war in my personal life. We go to a bar after & I drank mezcal again and ate a giant burger & we talked about some guy that asked Sarah out to get a milkshake and then when they went out for milkshakes she ordered a milkshake and he ordered a water and then wrote a poem about a woman giving a lecture and all he could do the entire time was fantasize about watching her eat ice cream and I can’t stop thinking about it.

4/17 Nashville COOP gallery

I arrive to Nashville covered in the leftover humidity of 3 days in New Orleans, Mississippi, & Alabama. I go to Walgreens, then to Jared’s apartment. A row of bungalows like my place in Silver Lake but cuter, but still with paper thin walls.

I have to shower and I have to eat soon. But I end up just sitting down and we talk and I tell him about how I kept thinking I was camping in Alabama the last two days but really I was in camping in Mississippi and then I was camping in Tennessee. I can’t stop focusing on Alabama, I guess. It really was beautiful, all the sunburnt men in their little fishing boats floating around these little islands.

We go to get a gyro and then it costs like 35 dollars for 2 gyros and I’m so confused but the food is alright. We go to the gallery and I meet Zach who is playing music while I read poems, he said he was going to use a synth and a 12-string guitar, he introduces Jared and I to his friend Billy. They are sweet, they remind me of a Linklater movie, they remind me of high school, sitting in a parking lot for a long time and talking til the sun goes down. We end up talking about music, as musicians love to do: “what do you listen to and what have you been listening to on the road?” I said I was listening to the mixtape Althea gave me in Albuquerque and that it had a lot of Misfits on it, and that I had a Beatles CD in my car, and a Paul Simon CD, and a Portishead CD but that I wasn’t sure how much I like Portishead. Zach asked me which Beatles CD and I said Hard Day’s Night. We end up talking for a long time about music and eventually I bring up Judee Sill as I always do, and my obsession with her and her life and her music and her relationships. They also like Judee and I am going on and on about her and then I tell Zach that because we were talking about Judee so much, I would read my poem about her. Jared read and was so funny as always, and I went up after, and Zach and I performed, it was intuitive and moody, dreamy and atmospheric. We hung out for a little outside and then went home because Jared had his final day of teaching writing to students at Vanderbilt in the morning, he told me one of them buys and sells jewels.

4/18 Nashville Random Sample

Jared and I wake up and go for lunch at Edessa, a Kurdish restaurant, because I was told Nashville has the largest Kurdish population in the United States. On the way to lunch, Jared was driving me in his golden Ford, a magnificent vehicle. He smokes cigarettes and we talk about my fated experiences with both the book Siddhartha and then the writing of Bernadette Mayer. Jared asked me who the next person would be that I would bring into this spiritually repetitive circular cycle, and I made the joke it would be “this guy” pointing to the Ed Atkins book that he brought in the car with us. Then Ed keeps coming up and up and up in other places, so I guess he actually might be.

We eat lamb and vegetables and talk, then we go back to his apartment so I can get dressed and then we head to Random Sample. First we meet Dan for a beer at the bar directly around the corner from the reading, it was a beer bar with loud live jazz, we couldn’t talk over it. We finish up quickly. It was Miranda, Dan, Jared, and I reading. Dan and Jared are the funniest writers in America, it’s such a joy to be able to listen to them read. My friends from the night before are there, Zach and Billy and Taylor. After the reading we all go outside and Z & B are passing back and forth a joint and offer me some and I actually take a hit, I am telling you they really remind me of high school. After we hang outside on the sidewalk a while Dan, Jared, and Jared’s sister Corey and I all decide to go to a bar a short drive away called The Nation. We arrive and I don’t want to drink. There’s a band playing, a lot of them are really young like maybe high school kids. It moves me to tears, they’re trading off singing while playing country music. Sometimes during the songs, the guitarist doesn’t know the song so the stand-up bassist is walking him through it in real time while they’re playing the song. It’s so precious, I still can’t get over it.

4/19 Lexington Kentucky 193 Institute

I had to wake up early and give myself an extra hour because I would lose an hour on the way there, on top of it being 3 hours away. I got there after 2 so I was really just in time for it all. I arrived and saw Keelan and just chatted for a little until Dianna showed up, so beautiful and pregnant, I can’t believe how time moves. To see people begin to form their families. Nana showed up with her mom and I get to ask her about everything and where she’s been and she just visited family in Ghana and its so good to see her because she’s such a sweetheart and a good listener. Then more and more people arrive. There was a really big protest with like hundreds of people and we all watched them for a while, its the 4th or so protest I’ve seen on the road, absolutely the biggest. I cried so much when I saw an old man holding a cardboard sign at the protest in Moab that read “LOVE.” It’s Jonathan Greene’s 82nd birthday today so we are celebrating him. Lots more people came than I anticipated and I even saw V who showed up after the reading but showed up nonetheless. Jonathan’s reading was excellent, Dianna has a good heart and mind for bringing people together. I bought a book from Jonathan that is entirely made up of quotes, it’s wonderful. I get to Dianna’s and park my truck outside her and Keelan’s place to sleep in my truck. I shower in their bathroom where everything is perfectly placed, then I sit on the couch with her, across from Keelan and the dog who is completely protective of her since her pregnancy that all she does is growl at me. I understand. We talk about Dianna’s food aversions and I ask questions and she generously answers them and I get to connect for just a bit before I go outside to go to bed. I get a call from my little brother that our grandpa has died so I get ready to wake up and drive to Nashville again so I can fly on bereavement fare back to LA for the funeral.

4/20: Sunrise, Abraham Lincoln's birthplace, Amalia, airplane

4/21: Jackass, mum’s hand, hospital bed in the bedroom

4/22: PCH, national guard, bogus pass, funeral, Hillcrest

4/23: Stairs lead into the Caney Fork River

4/24: Big leak, the book of questions, Angel

4/25 Asheville NC Bagatelle Books

Angel and I go for a walk with the dog, we see a crow walking on a grass lawn all the way from the front of the lawn toward a house, it reminds me of the time I saw a crow walk all the way across a crosswalk once. I took a shower and took photos of myself naked in the mirror with steam and watch my body appear more and more as the steam evaporates. We get tacos with the dog and chat and then get ready for the reading and go to Bagatelle to meet Patrick. Patrick is setting up chairs when we arrive and we go to set down drinks in the coffee shop attached to the bookstore. I make a phone call in the coffee shop that felt like the forest version of what the Bourgeois Pig used to be.

Shenandoah gets there and then Julia and Ashleigh. I wrote a new poem that I sort of had gotten to a good point that day so I decide I want to read it while Shenandoah plays “Knockin’ on Heavens Door” on the hammer dulcimer. This was inspired by Angel’s birthday when we sang “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” for like 2 hours inside a hotel room in Ojai while the fires crept closer and the smoke got thicker outside.

Ashleigh is a total knockout, gives an incredible reading in her strange southern accent like none I have ever heard. Then is Julia whose reading is totally haunting and intense and takes me all in (I think everyone was), which is such a gift. Angel did good with putting this one together. Then I go. Then Angel goes and reads some secret poems I have never heard that totally emerge in their complete shape in a way that gives me chills. Amanda Ray is our emcee, a dream. The whole thing’s a dream, we go out for some food and drinks down the street after and then Angel and I go home to sleep. Max gets into town tomorrow.

4/26: Dedication menu, neng jr’s, Sharon, Amanda Ray, Angel, Brother, brother

4/27: Snake in the river, tadpoles, pizza, deer can eat more than 100 acorns each day

4/28: Camper shell, Mount Olympus fried chicken, my goat, fireflies

4/29: Caesar, pizza, Syd cannot sleep through the night

4/30: MJ, feral cat, Blythe, nails, Star Trek

4/31: No sleep, laptop charger

5/1 Mood Ring NYC

I show up to Mood Ring and I sit down at the table in the red room with Carson and Nola, it’s this feeling of eternity, picking up where you left off, the whole night is like this. Jen arrives and it’s the first time we meet in person which feels as though it can’t be true because I love her completely and feel as though I’ve known her for lifetimes. We get drinks at the bar and are talking about her travels and my travels and everything she’s been up to with canvassing for Zohran Mamdani and that basically she really wasn’t supposed to be reading because she’s focusing on the election.

Carson put together a stellar reading, it’s meaningful to me that I got to read with Chariot and Jen. They’re both stars. Their readings were intense, it was May Day. I read from Utopia before I read love poems.

We all stand outside together and people smoke and laugh and talk about love and whatever else. I feel like some sense of completion because the tour I planned has ended, but I still have a slew of readings to do and host while I am in New York for the next month so it doesn’t exactly feel like an ending, more like the beginning. I go back to MJ’s after on the train with Blythe, Anais, MJ, and Ben then I lay down to fall asleep while MJ starts preparing his focaccia, then I wake up again and again and again.

---

Sophie Appel is a poet, curator, and historical map archivist in Los Angeles. She tends to Melrose Botanical Garden in its various forms and iterations. Her work has been published through SPECTRA, Dunce Codex, Car Crash Collective/ Metalabel & Bruiser Mag. Her debut collection of poetry, The World’s Largest Cherry Pie, was published by Dream Boy Book Club.