Midnight Taco hosting community poetry nights

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You know that saying about assuming things (“It makes an a__ out of you and me”)? Theoretically I agree. But I’d be willing to bet that for most people, poetry isn’t the first thing that comes to mind while eating tacos. Yet I recently learned that poetry readings are soon to be added to the menu at Midnight Taco in Oak Bluffs.

Midnight Taco is a relatively new eat-in restaurant, and owner, chef, and bartender Jordan Wallace is finding ways to make the place not only his own, but one that honors the creative Oak Bluffs community.

“We opened on July 6 last year,” Wallace said. “I cooked on a food truck called the Midnight Train for six years, and my favorite cuisine to cook is Southern Californian–style Mexican. When the takeout location opened up at 6 Circuit Ave. Extension, I brought the Midnight name along when I moved from the food truck to the takeout restaurant, and then again last year when I moved the business from the takeout restaurant to the full-service, sit-down restaurant at 7 Circuit Ave. Extension.”

Aside from Southern Californian–style Mexican food, Wallace’s other love is poetry. “I’ve been writing poetry since I was a young kid. I was lucky. My mom put a lot of books in my hand,” he said. “I really love Rimbaud, Neruda, and I love Gabriel Garciá Márquez’s novels. These are all writers that don’t conform to the traditional mold of the Proustian-esque artist in the tower — or cork-lined room, in Proust’s case. T.S. Eliot worked in a bank while he wrote ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’ and Marquez was a working journalist when he wrote ‘100 Years of Solitude,’ showing that being an artist has less to do with where you work and what your day job is, and more to do with what you observe, and how you feel about what you observe.”

Wallace reached out to Featherstone Center for the Arts and M.V. Poet laureate Claudia Taylor to talk through his idea for poetry nights. “We have a great community of poets and poetry lovers on the Island, of course, but I think these readings will be a great opportunity to fold poetry into the summer nightlife scene, particularly in Oak Bluffs, and maybe get a different kind of crowd in a hip setting,” Taylor said. “I’m hoping it will be a good way to bring people together through poetry — younger and older folks, visitors and year-rounders. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and I’m glad I get to be a part of it.”

Wallace also invited two of his longtime friends, Collette Jordan and Isaac Hurwitz, to add their creative touches to the space. Jordan’s mad lettering skills are showcased on Midnight Taco’s sandwich boards. “I’m self-taught,” Jordan said. “My first piece was at the Aquinnah Shop. I was a waitress there for years, and I wound up doing their sandwich boards. I also did some work for the Carnegie, Back Door Donuts, for bars, and I’ve done weddings and reworked the game boards in the P.A. Club.”

In the taqueria, Jordan also beautifully penned a section from one of Wallace’s poems, “Tenderness,” which Wallace said he wrote when he was 18 while looking out over the jetty in Oak Bluffs Harbor.

Tonight everything is perfect.
The curve of the coast is enough for me, 
The fog, the horn, the jetty.
Different colors of different depths, green blue
and the pockets of the streetlights, humming in the silence.
Find sleep, find dreams, listen to my heart go
And pour my love all over you.

“This was my first mirror,” Jordan said. “I’ve done windows, but this is different.” What makes Jordan’s work more impressive is that she is left-handed, which means she has to write right to left. “Doing the mirror was hard. I’d barely touch it, and it would smudge, so I had to block it quickly and then carefully write right to left. But I was really happy to help an old friend, and it was a new experience.”

Visual artist Isaac Hurwitz contributed by painting a mural in the bathroom. The walls are black, and Hurwitz’s brightly colored mermaids, skeletons, fish, dragons, and horses pop against the dark. Hurwitz said some of his inspiration came from the film “Holy Mountain,” about a Mexican alchemist who leads a Christ figure and other disciples to a mountain of immortal wise men. “It covers a lot of surrealist imagery, but the books I’ve read recently are also kind of about the alchemical process — base metals into gold, or symbolically, any soul into a spiritually enlightened being,” he said. “So although the mural imagery was definitely not planned in totality, the themes are there — elements ultimately represent different states of being.”

Wallace is hoping the first poetry reading will take place in mid-June. “I’m excited about shifting the vibe in Oak Bluffs. There are a lot of great writers in town,” Wallace said. “Art and poetry is what living is for. This space is a business, but after all these years, I’m very proud to have built a place where people can come and connect. Poetry doesn’t just belong in the woods. It belongs on the streets.”

Midnight Taco, 7 Circuit Avenue Extension, 508-338-7376. Check out Midnight Taco’s menu at toasttab.com. Be sure to also visit their Instagram page at instagram.com/midnighttacomv.