On This Day in History:

I have been reading Howard Zinn's "A People's History of American Empire" a sort of companion to his People's History. It is in graphic novel form. Jeannine got it for me for Christmas. It cronicles America's conquests and rise to global superpower via the massacre and destruction of all in its path. It starts, of course, with the beginning of the American Empire at home, the Massacre at Wounded Knee. Today was the day the battle happened, in 1890. I dare you to go here to learn more.


Also, check out americanempireproject.com for more information about the series this Zinn comic is a part of. For some reason (and try not to read too much into this) the site is down right now, But check back periodically to see if it's up and running.

An Eore Day

Sometimes, oh, say for the last week or so for example, I get a bit blue because I feel what could amount to as post "I went to a top five grad school for my discipline and I now work part time in a grocery store" depression. I feel like I'm not on the right track, like I'm a disappointment to my community, inferior to my peers, and generally not good enough to convert oxygen to carbon dioxide.

During these times I have to remind myself that since the cancer I have had the realization that all that matters is that I make a difference in others' lives. That my day makes someone else's life better, easier, because life is generally so hard for most of us to bear is what should be the point of my life. This is true, I believe, since when I got the cancer all of a sudden little else mattered to me than making good in the world. Sometimes I get tangled in my post "iwtfgsmdinwptgs" depression and I forget what is important. I forget the world around me and become surrounded in my own pity. It is a deep well to trudge out of.

Poetry makes me happy. Making others happy or more comfortable makes me feel like I belong. Like I deserve to be here. Like converting oxygen to carbon dioxide is the least of my talents. Buddhism is a good avenue to walk down when trying to remember the important things in life: that this is all temporary, that everything you need is right here, in this moment, that to help others is the greatest achievement. We all live until one day we die. It sounds easy and sad but it's not: its hard to remember and so relieving when you believe it. I am here right now, if I, everyday, do something to make someone else's life easier to bear, happier, worth living, then everyday's passing is not something to mourn, it is a miracle, it is a place to exist in, the present, a place to be thankful for the recognition of. I spend too much time worrying about the future and regretting the past, those places don't exist. Just right now is real. It is the hardest thing to remember, to believe, especially when I live in the make-believe world of poetry. Maybe it isn't make-believe. If it isn't make-believe, what is it? I am asking you-my poets, what is it poetry to you? What is important and real?

This post is all loose ends and beginnings, don't try to tie it up, but I do wonder what you guys think of these things, of life and death and poetry and what makes waking up worth it to you.

Mr. Obama, What the Fuck?

I'm sure many of you by now have heard the rumblings about Obama's pick of Rick Warren to preform the invocation at the inaguration. Rick Warren isn't just the pastor at mega church Saddleback Church in southern California. He wrote the bestseller "The Purpose Driven Life." He's also a hateful prick.

Sure, it's very easy for me to be disappointed by Obama's choice, but I'm even more disappointed by his defense of his choice. Fisrt, for those of you uncertain of my problem with Rick Warren, some highlights of Warren's ideology and practice:

-Warren believes my marriage to Jeannine would be akin to my marriage to my father, or my 3 year old niece's marriage to my father.

-He claimed Prop 8 was important and good because if gays can get married Christians would have to endure hate speech and hate crimes.

-Saddleback Church prohibits gays from becoming members.

There are the obvious beefs:

--the irony of a Christian claiming hate crimes and speech against them by the very people the term was invented for. Boo fucking hoo, tell it to Matthew Shepard. However this presupposes that Warren is correct, that Christians would be attacked by wedded gays: are you out of your ever-loving mind? I would be too busy filing for joint health insurance and sending wedding invitations to Fred Phelp's website to set crosses on fire on Rick Warren's lawn.

--the lack of Christian compassion: aren't you supposed to welcome into the flock those who need you most, and in your estimation, Pastor Warren, wouldn't that be the godless gays?

--I'm not a fan of people who think I should burn in hell for all of eternity for loving my partner, who has the same genitals as me. No people in the history of civilization, nay, the history of bipedal existance have ever had so much gential interest as the gays. My vagina, I guarantee, looks very similar to straight women's vaginas. I should know, I've slept with straight women and the 'ginas look nearly identical, sans some hairstyle differences. I presume gay dudes would say the same. So can we stop talking about what's in my pants already. Christians are the perverts here, not the gays. I have never once discussed or been interested in or written pamphlets about or stated websites on or given public orations concerning Christian sex practices or genetalia.

But this isn't about the bigot Warren, this is about the savior of our people, the optimist, the sage, the one true and noble and mighty and fair and everything else his campaign overtly or covertly, explicitly or implicitly claimed: Obama is fair, sane, morally sound.

I do love Obama, but the pick of Warren is a slap in the face to the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the gay* minority who helped put him into office. I have to agree with Dan Savege here: you don't see an any anti-semites in Obama's cabinet, and there is no out and proud racist performing any function for him either. Why is it that the only people who are expected to "agree to disagree," to shut up and take it, to make nice with those who openly hate them, are the gays?

Consider for a moment, dear reader, someone who outwardly hated an intrinsic aspect of your identity, something immutible and ingrained. Who would that person be? Are they, and others like them, constantly given the benefit of the doubt by our leaders and society in general? Are they heralded for all their other good qualities, and is their hatred of you ignored or downplayed at every turn? What if they were then chosen by the president as someone to perform a sacred and historical ritual in front of the entire country, as an example of morality and good character?

Consistantly the hateful, bigoted, ignorant Christian pastors in America are praised by our political leaders for their intelligence, their kindness, their temperance, their good nature and will despite their open and proud hatred of a prominent minority group. On the same night the first black man was elected president of the United States, Prop 8 passed in California (Warren had a big hand in that, too). While that night will be remembered by many people as the night that equality finally prevailed in America, my memories of it will be very different. Where were all those equality-lovin' straight people who voted Obama in California when Prop 8 won? If you are straight, or god help you gay, and you voted for Obama and also for Prop 8, all I can muster at this moment is fuck you, equality for some is inherently unequal.

I know you're not perfect, Barack, and I'm not asking for it: I'm asking for follow through on that hope you banked on, that change you promised. I'm asking for some of that consistancy you're known for: if you're so smart, your plans and politics so transparent, why make such an ignorant and calculated choice as Warren? Mr. Obama you claim it was to bring people together, but you have only driven me further from you, and many of the other gays that fought so hard for you, believe in you, wrote four figure checks to you, further into the margins. It's the wrong foot to start on, it's a mistake, and for the first time you look like a politican to me. John Leo on the Huffington Post claims that "Prop. 8 and its aftermath are the first time in the four decades since Stonewall that the gay movement has started to look like an organized tantrum" and God willing he's right. Again, to reference Dan Savage, no more Mr. Nice Gay. We have had it, and are no longer interested in pretending bigotry is permissible, inequality is warranted, or that we're cool with you despite the fact that you wish we would just keep our mouths shut and play nice.


*I'm purposely ignoring the rest of the acronym, and just discussing the G and L in LGBT. I am not transgendered and therefore cannot speak to their needs or opinions. Nor am I bisexual, and the bisexuals can at least marry 50% of their dating pool. This issue is too complex to discuss all facets in one wee blog entry, so I have willingly chosen just the parts I am capable of discussing at least semi-coherently.

I've been busy

and surrounded myself with snakes and birds and all the things I missed about writing. I was on the train the other day and this really beautiful woman was sitting across from me. I couldn't stop looking at her, so before I got off at my stop I wrote a note to her, something to the effect of "you're beautiful, someone should tell you that today. So I will do it." I dropped it in her lap as I was leaving the train. I want to live in a world where strangers are honest and kind. Auden said "Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another." Was my moment on the train profound? No. But it was genuine, and genuine is a start. We have to make our own magic, you know.



Public Transit

A pauper’s burial insures you never have to be alone again.
Is that what you want? To spend you life unfettered by the problems
Of others, only in death to be surrounded by the naked stranger,
One thousand strong and unflinching?

ER

The Lark Swooping and Swift

Lithe and cut the air, wind tatters
Swirled around and hung on themselves,
Dissolved and dissipated back to
A roving sea of the particles we breathe.

Then, her wing feathers cupped this breeze,
She glided to a stop, perched on the bookcase
And considered my upturned palm. I called
To her with your name, my tone tempered
by loss. I wanted to know this bird was you.

I shut the door, locked us in, the sheer curtains
Beckoned and you watched them ripple around
The breeze. I called to you again, wanted to see
You see me but the body just flinched, in the bird’s eyes

There was no recognition. Its little head ticked,
Registered the waning pleas from this world
For you to come back to it, my lowering outstretched arm,
Cresting waves outside, loud knocking from the other
Side of the door, a bird inside the house finding its way out.

ER

I am coming back

I have been meaning to write on here for quite some time. I've had lots of ideas: I spend a lot of time on the train to work writing down bits of language I see that's evocative for me of one thing or another, strange connections we all make from a subway sign to something from a relationship we had years ago and then to the emotions that relationship brings up now, how it's different from then, how it reminds us of a season, or we wonder how that person is doing. A word misread opens up an idea for a poem, a reprise, something in an NPR podcast makes me think of how birds are all that matter, really.

I am done teaching and I am glad I am done. I will work at Trader Joe's four days a week, write the other three. Jeannine makes enough to support my habit.

I am all ideas and no follow through. I talked to a friend today, she said maybe it's ok to just have beginnings right now. I think she's on to something. I have been beating myself up about not writing: I start a poem, never finish it, I can't, it's like I've forgotten how. I have written three poems in almost a year and only one of them is done. And that one is not very good. Please don't leave comments of encouragement. I am not looking for sympathy. I'm not looking to be reprimanded either.

Now that I have time to devote to writing, I will write something really great. I know it is still in me, to take myself seriously. I don't know that I took myself seriously in grad school. I think I wrote funny poems because I didn't believe I could write good ones, ones that deserved to be serious. I wanted to believe I could be serious and funny. I couldn't. Or at least I wasn't.

It's time for me to take my writing seriously again, as though my life depends on it. I think it does. I see now that it does. If I'm not a writer, which I am, then what am I? A fucking grocery store clerk? A payment to my loan company? I am an oxygen converter. A cat feeder. An energy consumer. I am something to worry about or be indifferent to. That can't be all, that's not what I thought when I started writing 15 years ago. I was a writer then, even when I didn't know shit. I knew I was a writer. If I can't do that, I'm nothing.

It feels self-involved and pretentious because I keep listening to everyone else. I am going to stop doing that. I have to write for myself again. When I do that, I love it. When I do that, I'm good at it. I am really fucking good at it.

I am going to go write now, but I am back, and will be on more frequently, like before my absence. Let me know how you are, if you drop by.

Well Said:

A serious message to McCain.

Fuck! George Saunders!

That's it! He's right! Palin is so familiar to me because she sounds like my students.

McCain Fear of Palin Presidency Caught on Tape:

Listen:

Things I am qualified to do because of my proximity to them:

1. Major metropolitan public transit planning: because I can see the red line from my house.
2. Multi-million dollar real estate development: I live in the same city as the Sears Tower.
3. NASA administration: Buzz Aldrin was in Chicago once, and I met him. Additionally, Chicago has both sky and stars.
4. Determine the best course of action for the growing global warming issue: I live on planet Earth, unlike Sarah Palin, who lives in Fraggle Rock. John McCain is one of those big ogres who lives above and stomps around scaring Sarah, which is why no one ever sees her unless McCain is nowhere to be found.
5. I also have oceanographic expertise because I can see Lake Michigan from my house.

Stellar references are available upon request.

I can see Alaska from my house!

If only we could mismanage money this way:

National Endowment For The Arts Funds Construction Of $1.3 Billion Poem

From the Huffington Post:

Too little, too late? I hope not, or we're packing up the truck and moving to Toronto.

Go here for a more comprehensive and even hand about our current political situation. I've not got the stomach for it right now, after ingesting too much Palin.

Oh, and there's no 9/11 blog because I was at the hospital: it's also my new niece's birthday.

What's that Word?

It's Uncanny:

Some Stuff:

My initial problem with living here was largely encouraged by the alarming number of Ys being used as vowels at surrounding EL line stops: Berwyn, Bryn Mawr, Argyle all lead to feelings of instability and unfamiliarity when you're enveloped by them on your daily commute to anywhere.

I now hate the building I live in, only because my neighbors are inconsiderate assholes. Sure, I like The Cure and A Perfect Circle and Al Green, but I don't want to hear them loud as hell between the hours of 9am and 9pm every day of my life until I die. I look forward to moving a bit closer to the lake, a bit further south for a slightly shorter commute, and away from these fucking jerks.

I love working at Trader Joe's: the people are nice, the pay is reasonible, the benefits (when they kick in in a few months) are good, and I like manual labor. I pick up boxes, heavy ones, and walk quickly all day long. It is satisfying and the long bus ride home allows me to enjoy my exhaustion.

Teaching starts in a week or so. I am happy with my syllabus and look forward to being in the classroom again. I am super excited about their final: I'm having them write their own writing philosophy. I think it will be good for them to spend some time thinking deeply about what writing is to them, how it functions in their life, how they use it, and what about writing is good and bad to them, what it means for writing to exhibit subjective qualities. It will be good for them to argue their way into a position (and hopefully realize said position is inherently and necessarily malliable).

Dara (chair of my defense committee) sent me an email in response to an update I sent her in which I told her I had not been writing. And I quote, "And write more,
def. write more as soon as you can, you're a real poet with true work to do, do
it. I've felt most lucky to get to know you and your work."

She's the boss.

Off I go. But before that, here's one from Dara:

Elegy

That one's wicked smile, this one's shaded eye,
too many vanishing points, that one's crooked nose,
another's complex hands, that one who laughed
so hard he cried when his wit outwitted him,
too many vanishing points, as it always did,
that one's love of the mischief of cats, too
many vanishing points, that blue shoelace,
the orange wall, a collection of wishbones,
a collection of hands, too many vanishing points,
a tone of voice with nothing left standing
in its path, how he put his fork down, where
she looked away toward when she daydreamed,
too many vanishing points, how he shambled
down the road into where sunlight intersected
shade, [. . . .] at the end of the road where meadows hide
old apple trees, bluebirds and bees, too many
vanishing points, where her hand went away from
one last time, how he looked into lies with just
the mildest rebuke, where she hid the tooth,
how he wrapped a piece of string around and around
a broken doorlatch to keep the burglars out,
too many vanishing points, the way she crossed
herself every time she spoke a wicked thought,
the way he thought he wanted to think like a trout,
too many vanishing points, this one's watchband,
another's dress hat, a blanket a child pulls
across its face.

Employment Update

Well, it's been quite the harrowing four weeks. There were moments when I thought myself an utter failure, and believed I had utterly wasted the better part of the last six years and tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. But yesterday, finally, I was offered two jobs in one day, good jobs, one of which will provide me with health insurance (Trader Joe's!). And the other will let me teach (North Central College in Naperville).

North Central was initially promising, the chair sent me an email telling me how impressive my CV was, but no interview materialized. Well, yesterday Dr. Jackson called me and left me a message (I couldn't answer her call because I was busy being administered tiny electrical shocks for the good of science and my bank account, courtsey of UIC's behaviorial science department) explaining that they had an adjunct position open and would love to have me join them if I was still available. So, great news! I was concerned about being out of academia for an entire semester, I need the experience if I'm to get a full time teaching gig down the road. But I'm not sure I want that, I might want to do workshops and college prep/GED courses in the prison system, Trader Joe's and PT teaching would allow me to do that. The thing is, there will always be people to teach kids in college, but maybe not always people who want to work in the prison system.

In other news, The Green Flash, an online/print journal out of Chicago specializing in flash fiction took one of my poems. It should be up on the site soon, but isn't up yet because the previous issue is still up. But still, go check them out, God knows I'm not the best writer on there.

I think of you often, and want to write more soon.
xoem

Your New Depression

Your New Depression

an old
depression
one that
waged
embattered waves
on Babylon.

Your color
local
calling the stratus
to its quick
challenging

the universe
to justify
its questions
trembling

the loins
of cobblers bakers cannibals
businessmen and confectionists.

Our earth
an electric
alphabet
and the tease

you
get out
of it
an orchestration
of letters
throbbing

Tesla vines pulled and
cut and knotted
sloppily to form
a web a painting a flowering forgiveness
ocellated

with drips
of blood
and other evidences of love

but your wiles
still only
at a pinfeather
your fingers
erect
resplendent
giddy.

Abandon Concern, All Ye Who Enter Here:

No worries! I'm back! Jeannine and I have been settling in to our new digs on the North Side (Edgewater, for those of you interested and learned of Chicago neighborhoods) and trying not to spend any money, as neither of us have any jobs, yet. We both have leads, me a promising "your CV is a strong one, I hope to set up an interview soon" and Jeannine actually has an interview in August. But as of right now, we have enough to skim through next month, and that's it. But I am confident we will not perish. Some things that have happened in the city that make me happy:

1. I really love public transit. I know I'm seen as eccentric at best, deranged and socially mislead at worst for that comment, but it's true. I'm a big fan of sitting on the red line, listening to some Buddhist podcast, and looking at all the shops and sights along the way. I'm also a big fan of riding the express bus down Lake Shore Drive early Sunday morning: not many people are out and the lake is beautiful and it makes me feel good.

2. We were at a coffee shop a week ago and a pretty lady walked by the window and smiled at me.

3. Our apartment is big enough and affordable and has a courtyard. The windowsills are big enough for our cats to lounge on.

4. Our friends here have been really great: helping us move in in record time, inviting us for dinner and being willing to come here to hang out because we don't have any money to blow on entertainment. Thanks guys, it means a lot to us.


I'm not going to spend too much time going on about my trouble getting adjusted here: it centers around a new environment, no job, no routine. I am a creature of habit and change is hard for me, but I think I'm doing the best I can. Come fall, when I have a job and the leaves are changing and there's that great bite in the air I will be happy and not nearly as anxious as I am now. It's hard not to have the warm bosom of academia to nestle into after 6 years of its reassuring poverty. But once I get a teaching job, I'll be back!

Oh, and if you've made it this far, I have a poem in the new issue of Alba. Go check it out.

Over and out.

The Gay After

The universe: a question

I have been gone a long time, but am coming home soon. In the meantime, here is a really long and beautiful poem to tide you over:

Kenneth Koch
Sleeping with Women

Caruso: a voice.
Naples: sleeping with women.
Women: sleeping in the dark.
Voices: a music.
Pompeii: a ruin.
Pompeii: sleeping with women.
Men sleeping with women, women sleeping with women, sheep sleeping
with women, everything sleeping with women.
The guard: asking you for a light.
Women: asleep.
Yourself: asleep.
Everything south of Naples: asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women: as in the poems of Pascoli.
Sleeping with women: as in the rain, as in the snow.
Sleeping with women: by starlight, as if we were angels, sleeping on the train,
On the starry foam, asleep and sleeping with them — sleeping with women.
Mediterranean: a voice.
Mediterranean: a sea. Asleep and sleeping.
Streetcar in Oslo, sleeping with women, Toonerville Trolley
In Stockholm asleep and sleeping with them, in Skansen
Alone, alone with women,
The rain sleeping with women, the brain of the dog-eyed genius
Alone, sleeping with women, all he has wanted,
The dog-eyed fearless man.
Sleeping with them: as in The Perils of Pauline
Asleep with them: as in Tosca
Sleeping with women and causing all that trouble
As in Roumania, as in Yugoslavia
Asleep and sleeping with them
Anti-Semitic, and sleeping with women,
Pro-canary, Rashomon, Shakespeare, tonight, sleeping with women
A big guy sleeping with women
A black seacoast's sleeve, asleep with them
And sleeping with women, and sleeping with them
The Greek islands sleeping with women
The muddy sky, asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women, as in a scholarly design
Sleeping with women, as if green polarity were a line
Into the sea, sleeping with women
As if wolverines, in a street line, as if sheep harbors
Could come alive from sleeping with women, wolverines
Greek islands sleeping with women, Nassos, Naxos, Kos,
Asleep with women, Mykonos, miotis,
And myositis, sleeping with women, blue-eyed
Red-eyed, green-eyed, yellow reputed, white-eyed women
Asleep and sleeping with them, blue, sleeping with women
As in love, as at sea, the rabbi, asleep and sleeping with them
As if that could be, the stones, the restaurant, asleep and sleeping with them,
Sleeping with women, as if they were knee
Arm and thigh asleep and sleeping with them, sleeping with women.
And the iris peg of the sea
Sleeping with women
And the diet pill of the tree
Sleeping with women
And the apology the goon the candlelight
The groan: asking you for the night, sleeping with women
Asleep and sleeping with them, the green tree
The iris, the swan: the building with its mouth open
Asleep with women, awake with man,
The sunlight, asleep and sleeping with them, the moving gong
The abacus, the crab, asleep and sleeping with them
And moving, and the moving van, in London, asleep with women
And intentions, inventions for sleeping with them
Lands sleeping with women, ants sleeping with women, Italo-Greek or
Anglo-French orchestras
Asleep with women, asleep and sleeping with them,
The foam and the sleet, asleep and sleeping with them,
The schoolboy's poem, the crippled leg
Asleep and sleeping with them, sleeping with women
Sleeping with women, as if you were a purist
Asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women: there is no known form for the future
Of this undreamed-of view: sleeping with a chorus
Of highly tuned women, asleep and sleeping with them.
Bees, sleeping with women
And tourists, sleeping with them
Soap, sleeping with women; beds, sleeping with women
The universe: a choice
The headline: a voice, sleeping with women
At dawn, sleeping with women, asleep and sleeping with them.
Sleeping with women: a choice, as of a mule
As of an island, asleep or sleeping with them, as of a Russia,
As of an island, as of a drum: a choice of views: asleep and sleeping with
them, as of high noon, as of a choice, as of variety, as of the sunlight, red
student, asleep and sleeping with them,
As with an orchid, as with an oriole, at school, sleeping with women, and you
are the one
The one sleeping with women, in Mexico, sleeping with women
The ghost land, the vectors, sleeping with women
The motel man, the viaduct, the sun
The universe: a question
The moat: a cathexis
What have we done? On Rhodes, man
On Samos, dog
Sleeping with women
In the rain and in the sun
The dog has a red eye, it is November
Asleep and sleeping with them, sleeping with women
This June: a boy
October: sleeping with women
The motto: a sign; the bridge: a definition.
To the goat: destroy; to the rain: be a settee.
O rain of joy: sleeping with women, asleep and sleeping with them.
Volcano, Naples, Caruso, asleep and sleeping, asleep and sleeping with them
The window, the windrow, the hedgerow, irretrievable blue,
Sleeping with women, the haymow, asleep and sleeping with them, the canal
Asleep and sleeping with them, the eagle's feather, the dock's weather, and the
glue:
Sleeping with you; asleep and sleeping with you: sleeping with women.
Sleeping with women, charming aspirin, as in the rain, as in the snow,
Asleep and sleeping with you: as if the crossbow, as of the moonlight
Sleeping with women: as if the tractate, as if d'Annunzio
Asleep and sleeping with you, asleep with women
Asleep and sleeping with you, asleep with women, asleep and sleeping with
you, sleeping with women
As if the sun, as of Venice and the Middle Ages' "true
Renaissance had just barely walked by the yucca
Forest" asleep and sleeping with you
In China, on parade, sleeping with women
And in the sun, asleep and sleeping with you, sleeping with women,
Asleep with women, the docks, the alley, and the prude
Sleeping with women, asleep with them.
The dune god: sleeping with women
The dove: asleep and sleeping with them
Dials sleeping with women; cybernetic tiles asleep and sleeping with them
Naples: sleeping with women; the short of breath
Asleep and sleeping with you, sleeping with women
As if I were you — moon idealism
Sleeping with women, pieces of stageboard, sleeping with women
The silent bus ride, sleeping with you.
The chore: sleeping with women
The force of a disaster: sleeping with you
The organ grinder's daughter: asleep with bitumen, sunshine, sleeping with
women,
Sleeping with women: in Greece, in China, in Italy, sleeping with blue
Red green orange and white women, sleeping with two
Three four and five women, sleeping on the outside
And on the inside of women, a violin, like a vista, women, sleeping with
women
In the month of May, in June, in July
Sleeping with women, "I watched my life go by" sleeping with women
A door of pine, a stormfilled valentine asleep and sleeping with them
"This Sunday heart of mine" profoundly dormoozed with them
They running and laughing, asleep and sleeping with them
"This idle heart of mine" insanely "shlamoozed" asleep and sleeping with them,
They running in laughter
To the nearest time, oh doors of eternity
Oh young women's doors of my own time! sleeping with women
Asleep and sleeping with them, all Naples asleep and sleeping with them,
Venice sleeping with women, Burgos sleeping with women, Lausanne sleeping
with women, hail depth-divers
Sleeping with women, and there is the bonfire of Crete
Catching divorce in its fingers, purple sleeping with women
And the red lights of dawn, have you ever seen them, green ports sleeping with
women, acrobats and pawns,
You had not known it ere I told it you asleep with women
The Via Appia Antica asleep with women, asleep and sleeping with them
All beautiful objects, each ugly object, the intelligent world,
The arena of the spirits, the dietetic whisky, the storms
Sleeping with women, asleep and sleeping with them,
Sleeping with women. And the churches in Antigua, sleeping with women
The stone: a vow
The Nereid: a promise — to sleep with women
The cold — a convention: sleeping with women
The carriage: sleeping with women
The time: sometimes
The certainty: now
The soapbox: sleeping with women
The time and again nubile and time, sleeping with women, and the time now
Asleep and sleeping with them, asleep and asleep, sleeping with women, sleep
and sleeping with them, sleeping with women.

March of the Summer Comic-Book Movies:

There're so many comic-inspired movies coming out this summer, I need to sort them out. Let's start with a list, chronologically by release date:

1. We have a new, potentially improved, and the potential is huge here, since Ang Lee's version stunk to high hell, Hulk movie. (The Ice Storm? Sense and Sensibility? Tortilla Soup? Lee is obviously a great fit for a movie about a fucking comic book character.) The new trailer:


Release date: June 13th

2. We have Wanted, INCREDIBLY-LOOSELY based on this comic of the same name:


Release date: June 27th

3. Next is the totally stellar comic, Hellboy. This is a sequel to the 2004 release:


Release date: June 28th

4. Hancock, a seemingly peripheral character in a handful of comics, will be released on July 2nd:




5. Lastly, we also have the new Batman movie, thankfully more Miller than Burton. Don't get me wrong, I like Tim Burton, I just like my Batman a bit more serious, his villains a bit more deranged and dangerous:


Release date July 18th.

And now I have a serious concern to address, in order to stay true to the comic book fans:

Q: Comic book movies usually suck (read: are grossly commercial, highly inaccurate), how can I defend being excited by some of these trailers?

A: Well, anonymous comic book fan, the answer to that is simple: I don't care. I know, the fact that they had to use some minor, 3rd tier character to make a superhero movie with a black lead is really telling, and yes, Wanted is totally off-base and going to be just a huge load of shit. Really, Angelina Jolie is going to stand around being Angelina and there's nothing we can do to stop it. I love comics as much as the next nerd, and yes, I also was out of my mind pissed off that Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze, really that he got anywhere near the whole Batman thing, but there's not much we can do about it now. Actually, the worse injustice was letting Joel "Dying Young--Phantom of the Opera--St. Elmo's Fire" Schumacher anywhere near Batman. "Dying Young" for God's sake! It's the aforementioned Ang Lee syndrome: you just don't let men who believe they are capable of writing their own subtext near comic book movies: they end up believing there is no subtext and write their own terrible underpinnings that end up undermining the whole project: Batman: great, careful, complex subtext! He embodies both hero and villain! He is the Joker! He is Two Face! Classic! Hulk: full of nuclear war responsibility/free will commentary! Use the subtext already written, assholes!

But I digress, the point is comics are fun and smart and interesting and I like coupling the joy I get from reading them with the effects Hollywood has to offer. Does that forgive casting misappropriations and directors taking too much digression with story lines and characters? No, of course not. Do those digressions ruin all the excitement and discussion and fun that come out of viewing the films? Again, of course not.

Really, potentially the most exciting comic book to movie release is the furthest away, with no trailers to link to and a release date of sometime in 2009. In the meantime we can entertain ourselves by wondering, who watches the watchmen?

Of course this has potential for being terrible all over it...but c'mon, the Comedian looks awesome! Aren't you a little excited? Shed those cynical layers and disdain for the popular appropriation of your previously shunned genre and bask in the acceptance of loosely-related, commercialized versions of your heroes! It's the only way you'll ever see Night Owl decked out like Batman ready to kick more ass than his comic-book incarnation ever could (you know his comic-self is a bit eh, well, lame: his costume made him out to be more super gay bird watcher than superhero). I'm sure I'll catch hell for that last bit: I know, I know, that was the point of Watchmen, that they were un-heroes, but I always rooted for Night Owl, both of them, and wanted them to be, well, stronger characters than they were portrayed. Here is my chance to see it. And that's what comics often are all about, isn't it? They strive for the potential to transcend limitations, the imagination to overcome the boundaries of a medium, be it that of a mild-mannered alter-ego or an underrated art form.

Flamboyant Calligraphy:

FUCK: The Big Strip Tease

I cannot read Plath and resist kneeling.

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.



Does it not feel like the most satisfying middle finger you've ever been lucky enough to receive? I would lick her boots: she would be disgusted.

A Daydream Fulfilled:

Often times I find myself wondering, what would it look like if Jim Henson designed a chain of drag clubs in Ireland?


Ahhh. Now I know.

An Interview with Russell Edson:

Via Double Room, please enjoy this really terrific interview with Edson: I especially like the part where he refutes most everything the interviewer infers about his work. I don't think the interviewer is wrong in his conclusions about Edson's poetry (I would agree with him on a great deal of it) but I think Edson really despises when people try to position him within any sort of poetic tradition. It is a joy to watch him wiggle out of his own pinning down every time.

Because Looking for Teaching Jobs is Depressing:

I bring you a meme via the Seacoast:

1) Ten years ago I was:
Spending all my money on women and booze, spending all my time going to concerts and getting high.

2) Five things on tomorrow's to-do list:
1. price moving companies
2. revise my CV
3. enjoy my new haricut
4. go to the dentist
5. kiss Jeannine


3) Things I'd do if I were a billionaire:
I echo Emily: pay off debt, buy a house with room for a garden, donate tons to hungry people and liberals
and also: start a print journal, buy Jeannine stuff to make movies

4) Three bad habits:
1. biting my nails
2. procrastinating
3. writing in progressive tense


5) Five places I've lived:
1. Northampton, MA
2. Aurora, IL
3. Des Moines IA
4. Amherst, MA
5. North Aurora, IL


6) Six jobs I've had:
1. English Instructor
2. Writer for the Beacon News
3. Placement Exam Reader
4. Pizza Maker
5. Music Store Manager
6. Distribution Editor for a small press

From the English:

My new Grandfather:

China: Our new big brother

Thoughts?

Chris Jordan: Running the numbers

Thanks to Gina who posted this in her blog.

Thank you Denise Duhamel:

Denise on the difference between prose poetry and flash fiction:

"Prose poetry and flash fiction are kissing cousins. They are kissing on Jerry Springer, knowing they're cousins, and screaming "So what?" as the audience hisses."

--from Double Room

Please enjoy:

The wit of Amelie Gillette

Oh, and by the way:

Thank you so much to those of you who babysat me while Jeannine was gone. She is back now and we would love to see all of you as much as possible before we head back to the thick and humid Midwest. Especially those of you who I have just recently met and just hate leaving so soon into our friendship: Gabe, I'm looking in your direction...

Graduations:

It occurs to me that a lot of changes have been happening in my life lately. Some of them are listed below:

1. I am leaving Massachusetts in a month with a degree deeming me the "master" of something.

2. I have three years of teaching experience.

3. I have been receiving some pretty impressive rejection letters.

I would like to concentrate this post on #3.

So, I have received a lot of rejection in my life. I'm not complaining; I think it's good for all parties included: rejection gives those dolling them out a chance to work out their qualms with hurting others' feelings and gives them practice at saying "no" in kind and quick ways. Receiving rejection allows me to work on using it as a way to better myself, my work, and gives my ego a healthy, hard slap in the face.

I've been rejected by women, by universities, by chapbook contests, and by journals of all shapes and sizes. I've been rejected by youth basketball organizations and for grant funding. I've been rejected by Buzz Aldrin.

But let's go back to the lit mags. I've been rejected by the big dogs: The Iowa Review, Lit, The Paris Review, Northwestern Review, Tarpaulin Sky, Ploughshares, Pleadies (twice!), 3rd Bed, Mid-American Review, and Quick Fiction (every month since the beginning of the year!), plus a slew of others. But I've noticed a really pleasant trend with the rejection letters lately: I'm getting better ones! Personalized ones!

When I got rejected from Tarpaulin Sky's chapbook contest the editors wrote a note on the bottom of it stating that they, "really enjoyed my work" and "wished I would continue to submit." Me! They wanted Emily R., specifically and by name, to submit again to their magazine. This is common, a suggestion to "please submit again" as though it is them and not you that is problematic, for lit mags to print in their rejection letters. But the fact that they are hand writing some nice little bit at the end is truly, and without sarcasim, encouraging to me. Previously the letter would be something along the lines of:

Dear Emily,

While we are unable to print your work at this time because we are fresh out of ink and just love your poems minus the large parts we hate, we STRONGLY suggest you consider continual rejection by us in the future.

Love,
Every journal I've submitted work to in the last 3 years

But recently there is this trend of rejection letters with personalized notes at the bottom. Take the one I received yesterday from Mid-American Review. It was typical in its content until I saw the little note at the bottom from their poetry editor which read, "I LOVE the ending of 'Let's Make a Difference, Marie.'" It seems to me that if I wasn't close to getting something accepted, at least closer than I have been in the past with only pre-printed rejections, they wouldn't waste their time telling me that in some way something about some little part of what I wrote tripped their trigger. I just don't envision the poetry editors of major American literary journals hand writing notes to every jackass who thinks they're a poet in America; there's just not enough ink in India for that.

It may seem desperate and sad to write an entire post about rejection from lit journals, as if it is they who determine my writing's worth. Of course they do not. But in the field I presently find myself, where I am post-graduate, I need to continue to publish to have a chance of teaching again in the future. Plus, I am a writer and we have insatiable egos, the kind whose thirst is only quenched by the satisfaction of other people seeing your name in print.

In honor of MAR's compliment and my mention of "fields" in the last paragraph, below you will find my poem, "Let's Make a Difference, Marie."


Let’s Make a Difference, Marie

I read you a poem. You read out loud to me
A letter from the bank. You raise your voice.
My voice was even, disaffected, disinterested,
And held the tone of a read out loud poem.

The cat bites his feet. His feet are garden tools.
I should be cleaning. You are ripping up
The bank letter the way race cars take off.
Later, your nose is on my face; your nose is a

Troubled rose petal. You walk out of the
Room and your nose is with you but your
Cheek is left behind and resting on my
Cheek. You punch holes in papers. You

Stack and I count. We are a team. We are
Together in all of this nose trouble. It smells
in here. Who is the culprit? The cats. The piss

On the tile floor. They should be cleaning
I should be dancing. But I hate dancing
But I like what it represents: freedom, joy,
Carelessness, popularity. I have never been
Popular with those whom I would like to

Be popular. Let’s shoot for that. Let’s be
Popular with highly motivated individuals.
Everyone likes to be the best in their field.
Let’s all purchase different fields.

I hear there’s plenty of room in North
Dakota and I hear there’s a reason there’s
Plenty of room there. We can make it better.
Dance parties. I’ll hate them and call the cops.

ER

Le Sigh

I am officially done with all my work, teaching and learning, for the University of Massachusetts. More on this at a later date when I have more time to consider all this event implies. But now, I'm going to New Haven to get Jeannine!

Dear Blogger Templates,

I am unhappy with you. As someone who will frequently post poems, and a person keen on the retention of the poet's intended line breaks, why must I choose between a poem's original form and an aesthetically-pleasing blog? Look at all the white space you heap on me in the name of long-lined poems! Why am I being punished?

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is...

a new exciting find for me:

Small Murders

When Cleopatra received Antony on her cedarwood ship,
she made sure he would smell her in advance across the sea:
perfumed sails, nets sagging with rosehips and crocus
draped over her bed, her feet and hands rubbed in almond oil,
cinnamon, and henna. I knew I had you when you told me

you could not live without my scent, bought pink bottles of it,
creamy lotions, a tiny vial of parfume—one drop lasted all day.
They say Napoleon told Josephine not to bathe for two weeks
so he could savor her raw scent, but hardly any mention is ever
made of their love of violets. Her signature fragrance: a special blend

of these crushed purple blooms for wrist, cleavage, earlobe.
Some expected to discover a valuable painting inside
the locket around Napoleon’s neck when he died, but found
a powder of violet petals from his wife’s grave instead. And just
yesterday, a new boy leaned in close to whisper that he loved

the smell of my perfume, the one you handpicked years ago.
I could tell he wanted to kiss me, his breath heavy and slow
against my neck. My face lit blue from the movie screen—
I said nothing, only sat up and stared straight ahead. But
by evening’s end, I let him have it: twenty-seven kisses

on my neck, twenty-seven small murders of you. And the count
is correct, I know—each sweet press one less number to weigh
heavy in the next boy’s cupped hands. Your mark on me washed
away with each kiss. The last one so cold, so filled with mist
and tiny daggers, I already smelled blood on my hands.

Learn more about Aimee here. Read and hear her read her poems here.

"that life of helpless flight"

Tornado Crossing

They've followed me for years, the torqued
and humid pressures, the masses
of wrangling air. August afternoons
I found myself with a good pitching arm
and a first crop of acne, a boy among boys,

until they came, draining out of the wet
green belly of the sky. By the time
the sirens sounded, the air was full
of white lime and shredded yellow jerseys,
and I was weightless, whirling over the houses
of my fathers. It's been like this ever since:

lovers have lost me in the air, and great poems,
whole treatises of reason, have been ripped
from my hands to rain out over, I don't know,
Kansas, maybe. More than once
I've found myself turning to say something
beautiful, then suddenly looking far down

at someone waving a bewildered goodbye.
This is how I've moved through all my lives,
whipped up and torn apart, rained down
and remade, different clothes, new skin.
Only my voice has remained the same.
Sometimes I'd go to sleep and wake up

in a different timezone, on a rooftop
in North Dakota, Wisconsin, Nebraska,
anywhere a tornado has ever been. I ran
for days and years, deep into deserts
and forests, into places where, by virtue

of physics, tornadoes should not exist.
For awhile in California I was whirlwind-free,
and that life of helpless flight became
a running joke. By my front door

I posted a sign that read, "Tornado Crossing,"
in thick black letters. My neighbors laughed,
their perfect faces crinkling like plastic wrap.
The sign was levity and wit until the green sky,
the sirens, the perfect identical houses aloft

like stucco zeppelins, their windows popping
like balloons. And I woke to this life,
a displaced citizen, alone in a lonely city.
So far the weather is beautiful, all sun
and careless breezes, though lately I wake

with my ears popping and my tears staining
the ceiling. And just yesterday, down the street,
it rained baseballs. You should have seen it.
The damage was immense.

This Preston Mark Stone poem was taken from the lit journal Gravity. You can find lots more of Preston's work here.

I couldn't have said it better:

Oh, if you visit one blog today, please read Dan Savage's blog on Kay Barnes. The phrase, "black gay abortionists drunk on champagne" should be a part of everyone's day. And, for Christ and crackers, the commercial made me laugh out loud, for real, not LOL, in front of my computer.

A good reminder from Post Secret

There's nothing wrong with making a million dollars, there's just something wrong with keeping all of it.

Every Friday that I get paid, such as today, I give 10% of my gross (pre-tax) income to charity. I used to give money here and there to charities when I thought of it. That is not enough. But I thought I would miss the 10%. I thought, I'm a poor grad student, that maybe I should give 20 bucks a week or something like that. But I tried it, the 10%, and I don't miss it: I can pay my bills, I can buy groceries, I can go out on the weekends. I don't really feel it, so today I'm going to start giving 15% and see what happens.

I'm not writing about this to make myself feel good, or to make you feel bad for not giving. Well, that second part is kind of a lie. I am writing about this so you will think about giving up a percentage of your wages to charity. I don't want to guilt you into it, but if guilt makes you do it, then I am okay with that. I want you to see that's it's possible, that you don't have to be rich to give.

I don't think it matters who gets it: there is the argument that we should fix problems in our own country before we help others. Does anyone of you think all of the problems in America will be fixed in their lifetime? Will that be happening soon so you can justify helping people other than Americans, or justify waiting until they're all that's left to help?

I'm not saying it's bad to help starving Americans, I'm saying that I can't look at the pictures of people in China, in Burma, in India, and not give them money. Check out either of the two charities listed on my link list: they're reputable and I usually give to them. Want to find your own charity to give to? Check out Charity Navigator to give to something you're into. Too lazy? That's okay; enjoy the musical stylings of Sarah McLachlan and she can give you options too.

I see no reason to mince words here: If you are in an economic position to read my blog, you have the ability to give, nay the moral duty to give. Starvation and poverty are not only things we have the ability to change, but as the economically elite (globally speaking) we have the duty to help. This may sound preachy: I don't give a rusty fuck. Get off your ass and donate.

Some honesty in politics:

Go see the rest of the campaigns the candidates wish they could run here.

This creation story is much more plausible...

from The New Yorker
September 26, 2005
Shouts and Murmurs: Intelligent Design
by Paul Rudnick



Day No. 1:

And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?”

“I’m loving that,” said Buddha. “It’s new.”

“You should design a restaurant,” added Allah.


Day No. 2:

“Today,” the Lord God said, “let’s do land.” And lo, there was land.

“Well, it’s really not just land,” noted Vishnu. “You’ve got mountains and valleys and—is that lava?”

“It’s not a single statement,” said the Lord God. “I want it to say, ‘Yes, this is land, but it’s not afraid to ooze.’ ”

“It’s really a backdrop, a sort of blank canvas,” put in Apollo. “It’s, like, minimalism, only with scale.”

“But—brown?” Buddha asked.

“Brown with infinite variations,” said the Lord God. “Taupe, ochre, burnt umber—they’re called earth tones.”

“I wasn’t criticizing,” said Buddha. “I was just noticing.”


Day No. 3:

“Just to make everyone happy,” said the Lord God, “today I’m thinking oceans, for contrast.”

“It’s wet, it’s deep, yet it’s frothy; it’s design without dogma,” said Buddha, approvingly.

“Now, there’s movement,” agreed Allah. “It’s not just ‘Hi, I’m a planet—no splashing.’”

“But are those ice caps?” inquired Thor. “Is this a coherent vision, or a highball?”

“I can do ice caps if I want to,” sniffed the Lord God.

“It’s about a mood,” said the Angel Moroni, supportively.

“Thank you,” said the Lord God.


Day No. 4:

“One word,” said the Lord God. “Landscaping. But I want it to look natural, as if it all somehow just happened.”

“Do rain forests,” suggested a primitive tribal god, who was known only as a clicking noise.

“Rain forests here,” decreed the Lord God. “And deserts there. For a spa feeling.”

“Which is fresh, but let’s give it glow,” said Buddha. “Polished stones and bamboo, with a soothing trickle of something.”

“I know where you’re going,” said the Lord God. “But why am I seeing scented candles and a signature body wash?”

“Shut up,” said Buddha.

“You shut up,” said the Lord God.

“It’s all about the mix,” Allah declared in a calming voice. “Now let’s look at some swatches.”


Day No. 5:

“I’d like to design some creatures of the sea,” the Lord God said. “Sleek but not slick.”

“Yes, yes, and more yes—it’s a total gills moment,” said Apollo. “But what if you added wings?”

“Fussy,” whispered Buddha to Zeus. “Why not epaulets and a sash?”

“Legs,” said Allah. “Now let’s do legs.”

“Are we already doing dining-room tables?” asked the Lord God, confused.

“No, design some creatures with legs,” said Allah. So the Lord God, nodding, designed an ostrich.

“First draft,” everyone agreed, and so the Lord God designed an alligator.

“There’s gonna be a waiting list,” Zeus murmured appreciatively.

“Now do puppies!” pleaded Vishnu. “And kitties!”

“Ooooo!” all the gods cooed. Then, feeling a bit embarrassed, Zeus ventured, “Design something more practical, like a horse or a mule.”

“What about a koala?” asked the Lord God.

“Much better,” Zeus declared, cuddling the furry little animal. “I’m going to call him Buttons.”


Day No. 6:

“Today I’m really going out there,” said the Lord God. “And I know it won’t be popular at first, and you’re all gonna be saying, ‘Earth to Lord God,’ but in a few million years it’s going to be timeless. I’m going to design a man.”

And everyone looked upon the man that the Lord God designed.

“It has your eyes,” Zeus told the Lord God.

“Does it stack?” inquired Allah.

“It has a naïve, folk-artsy, I-made-it-myself vibe,” said Buddha. The Inca sun god, however, only scoffed. “Been there. Evolution,” he said. “It’s called a shaved monkey.”

“I like it,” protested Buddha. “But it can’t work a strapless dress.” Everyone agreed on this point, so the Lord God announced, “Well, what if I give it nice round breasts and lose the penis?”

“Yes,” the gods said immediately.

“Now it’s intelligent,” said Aphrodite.

“But what if I made it blond?” giggled the Lord God.

“And what if I made you a booming offscreen voice in a lot of bad movies?” asked Aphrodite.


Day No. 7:

“You know, I’m really feeling good about this whole intelligent-design deal,” said the Lord God. “But do you think that I could redo it, keeping the quality but making it at a price point we could all live with?”

“I’m not sure,” said Buddha. “You mean, what if you designed a really basic, no-frills planet? Like, do the man and the woman really need all those toes?”

“Hello!” said the Lord God. “Clean lines, no moving parts, functional but fun. Three bright, happy, wash ’n’ go colors.”

“Swedish meets Japanese, with maybe a Platinum Collector’s Edition for the geeks,” Buddha decided.

“Done,” said the Lord God. “Now let’s start thinking about Pluto. What if everything on Pluto was brushed aluminum?”

“You mean, let’s do Neptune again?” said Buddha.

Probing

I went to a dentist appointment, which normally is really uneventful, and this one mostly was too. But I met this really nice old guy (83, by his own admission) who used to be a carpenter and now is retired and runs a blacksmith museum in Westhampton...who wants to go check it out with me?

Also, this morning was the first time I had to fill out a medical form and check the cancer box. It was weird, I saw the box and my pen hovered over it for a minute...I was briefly unsure of whether or not to check it.

I thought, I'm young, people like me don't get cancer, I have never been an unhealthy person. But I did have cancer and a hysterectomy and sometimes, although I spent months recovering and am still not 100%, the whole ordeal seems unreal to me. In my mind sometimes it is as though I had something bad, something like cancer, but not cancer, because people like me, no I, I don't get cancer. But I did so I checked the box and felt like someone else sitting in that dentist office for a few minutes. I wasn't sad, just a bit alienated from my body and the identity I claimed I had of my self for the better part of three decades.

I am now someone who had cancer...I never think about it because I am confident I'm cured (although the Cancer society jerks will never call it that, I'll only always be in remission). Even as I type this, it's like I'm writing a story about someone I made up for a poem. But I'm pretty sure there was at least part of me in that office this morning, and that part of me used to have cancer, this really bad and well-known disease that I hear people unlike me talk about on t.v.

Like I said, this is not something that made me unhappy or scared, it was just a realization I didn't know I hadn't made until this morning. Or a realization I didn't know existed for me until this morning. It's strange to discover you aren't who you think you are, that this new label applies to you that you were so culturally familiar with but so personally foreign to...which is kinda like cancer anyway: cells thought of as foreign troublemakerers that are actually cells of your own body turning on you. And how weird is it that I began writing in the second person here? As though I still, after the diagnosis and the surgery and the recovery and the box-checking, don't believe it.

*Sigh*

I really miss Jeannine right now.

Some News:

1. I finished making my first chapbook: 8 little poems in a little orange book. There are only ten of them. There will be another run with some great cover art from one of my comic book students.

2. I passed my defense.

What is today, again?

Mother's day! Don't forget to call all the moms you know and thank them for squeezing babies out of holes no bigger than say, oh, your father's fist.

And go here for some neat M-Day art!

A Fortenight Date?

Hey you Northampton folks:

So, Jeannine is going out of town to Eastern Europe (I know, we're all jealous) for two solid weeks starting tonight. Any of you wanna keep me company while she's gone? I don't want this to sound like I only wanna hang out with you to occupy me while Jeannine's not here; it just coincides with the end of the semester and when I have time to do fun stuff: go to movies, play pool, do trivia, sit in silence and read (ok, maybe that last one's only a fun joint activity for me and my poet and fiction friends).

So call me! Let's hang out!

What an Exciting Morning!

I have had a really nice morning after a terrible two days: I was worrying about my defense, sleepless nights and all, but have decided to not worry about it, because I will not perish from it and even if I fail (worst and really, most unlikely scenario), I can always come back next semester and do it again; it's not like I have job offers dependent on my degree. Plus, I would get to see my friends!

So, this morning! I was looking at my friend Jackie's pictures on myspace, and came across a picture of Jackie in a bathroom somewhere in Chicago. In the foreground there is a flyer for a flash fiction lit mag called The Green Flash. This is exciting to me, a tiny new lit mag in Chicago all about flash fiction! For those of you who don't know, most of my manuscript was prose poems, which are just the more disjointed sibling of flash fiction. So I google The Green Flash and the only thing that comes up is a link to a blurb about a release party on the north side, but it also contains the names of the editors, Molly Tolsky and Ryan Duke.

It is at this point it occurs to me that I have come across Molly before. I recently read one of her stories in the online lit journal Pindeldyboz called "Stub." So this morning I sent Molly an email (her address is on the Pindeldyboz site) telling her about how I found her, her writing, The Green Flash. This is kinda neat and a nice thing to happen to me today, after all my worrying about my defense, because oh, I've just been really doubting my writing abilities and wondering how I might go about finding some writer friends when I move home. Molly may never answer my email, but it gave me hope when I needed it, and that is all I ask for, a little thread to hold onto when I'm down.

It also makes me rethink giving up on prose poetry. I haven't written any since finishing my manuscript, and this experience makes me want to revisit the form again. Not that I had given up on it forever, I just sorta turned my back on it after the whole cancer thing, like I couldn't look at prose poetry because that was all I was writing when I found out. It might be too early to go back in there, but really, it's not prose poetry's fault: it didn't give me cancer!

In any event, I've had a nice morning so here is a recent pic and a fun poem I wrote last week for my cat Violet who turned three on April 28th. Happy birthday Mrs. Beauregard!

Of Lost Whiskers and Fortuitous Assignations

Yesterday was my cat’s birthday.
All cats have questionable births:
On a lawn chair, under a bridge,

During the playoffs. Violet born
Behind a garbage can, her feral
Yowls interrupted by interactions

Of animals taller than her busy looking
For a place to resemble the nonchalant
Or drink coffee. Violet released from

The womb still in her amniotic sac—
The rough pressure of her mother’s
Tongue flushed her out, started

Respiration for a matted gelled mass.
I watch Violet lap water into her mouth,
Think of that thin membrane between

Water and air, between the harsh nature of
Survival and the tender love we ascribe to it.

The "Aboutness" of Poetry: A Billy Collins Manifesto

Many people have wondered about my hatred for Billy Collins. Well, like all well-worn rifts, this one started as a seamless plane: I used to love Billy. Way back, when I was at Drake and just learning about other poets, not how to critique their work, Billy was where it was the fuck at. I loved his playfulness, his clever nature, his tidy endings.

But as I got older I began to question his choices, and slowly, as the tide came in our previously impermeable beach gave way to the beginnings of that rift. Let's have a look at his "Introduction to Poetry":

Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Fine. It's nice on the surface, right? "press an ear against its hive" is a nice image, a commendable line. There are lots of nice images here, but that's where it stops, see? He has this calculated build-up to the last two stanzas, where, of course, the "they" turn on this poor, defenseless poem and beat it with a hose. There are lost of things wrong with this:

1. Why indict your readers? They have done no harm to you, Billy, they just don't know how to play with poetry. Can they be blamed? Look at the state of the American public educational system for your true villain. Much like a confused child with a complicated toy, they bang it on the ground when they can't figure out how to make it light up and sing. This isn't to say readers are children, but they are "child-like" when trying to read poetry if they have no experience with it.

2. I don't know about Mr. Collins, but I never send my poems out defenseless: it's called tension, Billy, and most of your poems lack it: there's no surprises, no push and pull to hold them together. There's no complications, no questions asked of the reader to get them to think before they act, and that's the writer's fault. No wonder your poems get assaulted, it's a harsh world out there, BC: if your poems can't take it, they only have one person to look for to place blame, and it's surely not the readers.

3. This gripe is more for the critics, the stay-at-home poets who like to tidy up the whole business and make labels and order us into boxes. They are constantly putting James Tate and Billy Collins in the same bracket. This pisses me off, mainly because the janitors of our genre, who claim to be so careful and concerned with the proper placement of us against each other, would then make so sloppy and grievous an error. Let's look at one of Jim's poems:

It Happens Like This

  I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat,"
I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking
my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat,"
one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon,"
I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty
fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire.
"It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back
three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning."
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked.
"Touching this goat will change your life," I said.
"It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's
called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery
and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you,
Officer," I said. "And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince." The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

Jim starts out doing the same thing Billy does, uses the same poetic structure in that they both begin by recounting an event. But Jim's poem has tension: multiple voices where Billy relied on an amorphous "they," Jim has questions where Billy has pat answers. Jim's poems frequently end, like this example also does, with a beginning where Billy's poems end, as his example does, in a way that traps the reader, doesn't allow us any way to move except out of the poem. Essentially, Billy ends where Jim would just be getting started. I recognize this position may just be a side effect from working with Jim, but really I'm not the only one who notices the transparency of Collins' work. Many people find that transparency refreshing, I do not.

Poetry for me has always been about possibility, about questions where other literary forms tried to give me answers. Billy doesn't want me to think, he wants me to listen, and I'm not interested in being told about an introduction to poetry. I'm interested in being asked about the possibilities of the introduction(s) to poetry.

No hard feelings, huh Billy? I just needed more. It's not me, it's you. Maybe poetry just isn't your thing, maybe construction of things that don't move is for you, things more stable than poetry, maybe you could be a load bearing post? As you appear to be enjoying here:



Am I being snarky? Yes, of course, just a little, but give me a break, huh? I work in an art form that has the widespread credibility of pantomiming. But I think all this racket raises an important issue: Billy makes a point about the state of poetry. Of course poems are misunderstood and under-read and well, irrelevant for most of society. But how can people outside penetrate into this world when we continually berate them for not "getting it" and then, out of frustration, they become (understandably if not beneficially) belligerent. I'm a fucking poet, for God's sake, with a degree that claims I am a "Master" of it, and I don't get it half the time. The other side of the poetry spectrum from Billy's paint-by-numbers, 1-2-3 poetry we find L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E POETRY. Come the fuck on! I'm trying to be respectful and I love Lyn Hejinian as much as the next red-blooded poetry enthusiast, but how does 86 semi-colons in a row make a poem? It's looks like the fucking page my printer shits out when I get an new ink cartridge. Alright, this post is getting ugly and unwieldy and must end: let's have a truce, shall we?

I will stop bitching about Billy Collins when his poems ask the reader to do more than read them, and we poets will make more of an effort to write "decipherable" poems (but we're a bit sore about the request, see, I can't even write the word without putting it in quotes) when more people than the poets themselves begin reading their work.

Fair?

MMM...Savage Love

I am a huge Savege Love fan. If you don't know who Dan Savage is, or have never read his column, go check it out here: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/78619.

He's a sex advice columnist and is hilarious and usually spot-on, in my limited and unprofessional opinion. He posts new columns every Wednesday and this was a particularly funny one this morning (the person writing in is in italics, Dan's response is below it):

I'm a 52-year-old male, divorced for the past eight years. I recently broke off a five-year relationship with a woman two years my senior. About six weeks ago, a new female worker started in our office. We're really hitting it off, and frankly, I've fallen for her—hard! However, she is 36, never married, and I have not asked her out yet, but I definitely want to. In fact, I want to marry her.

There are some of my coworkers who think I'm "robbing the cradle" in this situation. Given that we have two possible barriers to overcome, age and work situation, what do you advise? Go ahead slowly or full steam ahead?

Geezer In Love

I would advise you to stop wasting my time, GIL.

You've known this woman for six weeks—six weeks—and you haven't so much as been out on a date with her yet. It's not even appropriate to joke about marriage at this stage—marriage, GIL, which is so totally holy and sacred and between one man and one woman and wocka wocka wocka. And it's entirely possible that you've mistaken this woman's efforts to ingratiate herself with her new officemates as "hitting it off." For all you know, this woman, like your coworkers, thinks you're a creepy old lech, GIL.

And speaking of the so totally holy and super-sacred institution of marriage…

When two dudes get married, the marriage-is-between-one-man-and-one-woman brigades crap their collective pants, vomit up ten thousand press releases, and run in circles screaming about all the hurricanes and earthquakes and unattractive haircuts that Our Loving Father™ is gonna rain down on our heads if we don't pry Adam off Steve right fucking now.

Well, the one-man-and-one-woman crowd has been strangely silent about this polygamist sect in Texas that's been all over the news. It appears that the Fundamentalist Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints has been organizing marriages/statutory rapes between one man and dozens or more women and/or girls. "Where's the outrage?" writes a reader, which prompted me to go looking for some outrage at the reliably outraged website of Concerned Women for America (cwfa.org). There are more anti-gay-marriage press releases packed onto CWFA's website than there is fudge packed into all the homos in all the Sodoms in all of North America. But there's not one single word that I could find about these straight men in Texas violating the holy and sacred one-man-and-one-woman rule. What gives?

Glorified Version of a Pelican?

Tell me a story about you and your favorite nineties alternative* rock song**:


There are too many "favorites" for me to name. I was in high school in the mid-nineties and worked in a music store/managed one for 8 years, five of them falling in the nineties. Both of these experiences make for lots encounters with music. But, I will get the ball rolling so to speak and choose one song, one memory:

Not long after I graduated high school my best friend Reuben and I went to a Pearl Jam concert at Alpine Valley with our other buddy, Jesse. We had lawn "seats" and had a really good time: we heard the songs we wanted to hear, weren't surrounded by assholes, and the weather was nice (nevermind the torrential downpour that occurred on the way home that led to the car dying and us having to hitch a ride home, but that's another story entirely).

The best part of the evening, the most memorable, the thing that sticks out and as time passes turns from momentarily remarkable to permanently nostalgic was during the encore. PJ came out and played the song "Once" which just kicks so much ass all the way through. Well, at, "Once/ Upon a time/ I could love myself" I looked over at Reuben and he was bathed in orange stage lights, screaming along as hard as he could. His eyes were closed, he was sweaty and shirtless and sans irony or silliness or self awareness he was really rocking the fuck out. After that night, "Once" fast became my favorite PJ song, replacing "Corduroy." My favorite PJ has changed over time, one of the hallmarks, I believe, of a really good band: not only do they remain good, but what kind of good they are changes over time, just as their old songs are able to take new shapes for their fans. I wouldn't have one of their songs tattooed on my forearm if they weren't capable of the transcendent (Incidentally, it is neither "Corduroy" nor "Once" but yet another one).

What's really interesting to me about "Once" now, is how much the lyrics reflect so much of the turmoil between Reuben and I at the time:

The lyrics are as follows:

I admit it...what's to say...yeah...
I'll relive it...without pain...mmm...
Backseat lover on the side of the road
I got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode
I got a sixteen gauge buried under my clothes, I play...
Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself
Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah...

Oh, try and mimic what's insane...ooh, yeah...
I am in it...where do I stand?
Oh, Indian summer and I hate the heat
I got a backstreet lover on the passenger seat
I got my hand in my pocket, so determined, discreet...I pray...
Once upon a time I could CONTROL myself
Ooh, once upon a time I could LOSE myself, yeah, yeah...

You think I got my eyes closed
But I'm lookin' at you the whole fuckin' time...

Ooh, once upon a time I could control myself, yeah...
Once upon a time I could lose myself, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Once, upon a time I could love myself, yeah...
Once upon a time I could love you, yeah, yeah, yeah...

Once (4x)
Yeah...once, once...yeah, yeah...
Yeah...yeah, yeah...yeah, yeah...oww...

Mistakes were made, the innocent were hurt badly. But thinking back to Reuben that night reminds me of the indelible nature of music, especially for the young: it marks you up, scars you, and reminds you of the things you've done, for better or worse, of the things you've experienced, that make life worth remembering. I've always wanted to write a "memoir" of sorts, one all tangled up with that time in my life, and this memory makes me pine for it, this piece of writing I haven't written yet. I think Chicago, back home, is the place to start writing it.



*You know what I mean--the genre that was commonly known as "alternative" that became popular.

**Extra credit to the person whom can decipher the reference to a song title from said genre in the title to this post.

Weekend Productive, Frustrating

Well, this weekend I sent off submissions to five print lit journals (Missouri Review, Indiana Review, LIT, New Ohio Review, and Mid-American Review). This entails the following:

1. finding addresses to said journals
2. choosing poems
3. writing cover letters
4. filling out envelopes
5. printing out poems and letters
6. stuffing envelopes

This sounds easy. It sounds like it would take a half hour, tops. This is never the case. Why does this take up to four, maybe five hours?

Then, yesterday, I worked on the little book of poems I'm making. Why is Microsoft Word smarter than me? Why is it good for nothing other than printing letter after letter? Why can nothing else be expected of this program, such as consistent alternative margins? Why does it offer multiple columns options, but then won't allow pasting text into said columns? Fuck that fucking piece of shit. I give up. I have been forced to punch my computer in its stupid fucking face more than once while trying to make a wee little book. Fuck it. I surely have asked too much of my computer.

My Students, Do, This

Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere

WASHINGTON—In the midst of a crisis that may have reached a breaking, point Tuesday afternoon, linguists, and grammarians, everywhere say they...

Eat It!

Go to this link:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zIkOLQ8gpHE

It's cute and maybe you can save some of these poor, defenseless "creatures."

It's Nice to Be Loved:

This was the first online interaction I had today:

me: Gina!

Gina: emileeeeee!

me: It's 6.30, go back to bed!

Gina: i have to go to work!

i'm late!

i love you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

me: eek! go to work!

i love you too!

An Observation:

Unless you're one half of a couple of dykes who are simultaneously pregnant, or a dude who can squeeze a baby out of his pecker, the phrase, "we're pregnant!" should never escape your lips.

Obama/Clinton Debate

For those of us who missed the debate this week, I found a good recap of it here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2008/04/17/AR2008041700013.html

Apparently, it was horrendous. Not surprising, as we live in the gossipiest, fluffiest, most flippant of politically determined land masses on the planet earth.

Moving: You Can't Go Home

I've been worrying, or thinking, a lot about moving to Chicago lately. It's coming, whether I'm ready for it or not, in a few months. Initially this seems like an easy reassurance: moving to Chicago means moving home, near family, to the state I was born in, right? Well, the more I think about it, the more it's not so simple. I think about the person I was when I lived there, 7 long year ago, and notice how different I am now. I think about some of the things I said to people I work with, take classes with, when I first moved here and am embarrassed: I sounded like an ignorant Midwesterner, even when I thought I was so fucking smart. But I'm different now. I don't think I'm so fucking smart, but I know I'm wiser. I don't offer blind, unwavering advice. I just don't think some of the stupid shit that was funny then is funny now. In short, I grew the fuck up, and I like the person I am now, in a way I might not have liked myself then.

And, although I love them very much, how much change can high school friendships endure? How much should two people try to be friends when there just might not be anything left of the original bond? When I move home, will I be expected to be the same Emily I was when I left? I hope not, because I don't know her anymore. I am reassured when I remember that my friends and family have changed a lot too, and so if we all go into it not expecting too much of each other, I'm confident we can forge ahead, learning about each other anew. Plus, there is the added concern of realizing I'm moving away from an area highly concentrated with gay women, into one highly concentrated with heterosexuals. As an adult gay, this is something I can deal with, but also something that will take some adjusting to.

These last 7 years have been really great: I moved out, went to school, made tons of great friends, and kept the good friends I had back home. I became a better writer, a deeper thinker, and a better person because of the relationships I have made and the things I have survived. I broke someone's heart and we both survived it. I stuck it out in a program I now don't think was right for me. I lived in a state with no friends and no relatives for 6 months. I beat Cancer. But "going home" sometimes scares the shit out of me. Since my grandmother died, I just don't really feel like "home" as a concept exists anymore, and so for that reason and many others, I am deeply relieved I am moving to Chicago, not Aurora, the place where I was born.

I am looking forward to many things in this move, too, that I should hold fast to when traversing the rocky wares of self-doubt: a new apartment, using hammers, learning a trade, starting a writing workshop of my own, meeting my sister's children, hanging out with friends I didn't get to see too much when they lived in Chicago: Shawn and Jess! Let's read comic books!

And besides, there are many worse things than moving home: brain surgery, starving, infidelity.

Good Evening

Welcome to my new blog. The title of it come from the the poem The Ghost Trio, by Linda Bierds. An excerpt from it is below:

The Winter: 1748

A little satin like wind at the door.
My mother slips past in great side hoops,
arced like the ears of elephants
on her head a goat-white wig,
on her cheek a dollop of mole.

She has entered the evening, and I
her room with its hazel light.
Where her wig had rested is a leather head,
a stand, perfect in its shadow but
carrying in fact, where the face should be,
a swath of door. It cups

in its skull-curved closure
clay hair stays, a pouch of wig talc
that snows at random and lends to the table

a neck-shaped ring.
When I reach inside I am frosted,
my hand like a pond in winter, pale
fingers below of leaves or carp.

I have studied a painting from Holland,
where a village adjourns to a frozen river.
Skaters and sleighs, of course, but
ale tents, the musk of chestnuts,

someone thick on a chair with a lap robe.
I do not know what becomes of them
when the flow revisits. Or why
they have moved from their warm hearthstones
to settle there—except that one step

is a method of gliding,
the self for those moments
weightless and preened as my leather companion.
And I do not know if the fish there
have frozen, or wait in some stasis
like flowers. Perhaps they are stunned
by the strange heaven—dotted with

boot soles and chair legs
and are slumped on the mud-rich bottom—
waiting through time for a kind of shimmer,
an image perhaps, something
known and familiar, something

rushing above in their own likeness,
silver and blade-thin at the rim of the world.

LB

I took the title of my blog from this because I love this poem: "snow" as a verb is terrific and the whole poem has a nice quiet way abut itself that is so appealing.

I will probably post lots of different things on here: my poems, other's poems, bits of neat or sad or strange information I come across, things about comic books. Stop by and check in as your time allows. You are welcome here.

ER