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.