snails are good for the environment, too

Cemetery Project

2012-01-17T12:26:00.000-06:00

This essay now appears in The Rumpus under the title "A Memorandum of Ghosts." Thank you for reading!

Photo by Rusty Clark

The Audible Snail

2012-01-15T17:34:00.002-06:00

The Chicago Independent Radio Project

The Audible Snail on CHIRPRadio.org every Sunday
from Noon-2pm.

Here is a sample playlist from today's show. Send
requests and condemnations to CHIRPDJ@gmail.

1PM Hour

1:59 PMThe Fall Laptop Dog from Ersatz GB (Cherry Red)
1:56 PMStephen Malkmus & The Jicks Dragonfly Pie from Real Emotional Trash (Matador)
1:49 PMRatatat Breakaway from Sun and Shade (XL)
1:45 PMThe Dutchess and the Duke Let It Die from Sunrise/Sunset (Hardly Art)
1:40 PMConor Oberst Milk Thistle from Conor Oberst (Merge)
1:36 PMKid Koala Music For Morning People from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tune)
1:32 PMFiona Apple Extraordinary Machine from Extraordinary Machine (Epic)
1:30 PMJEFF The Brotherhood Stay Up Late from We are the Champions (Stolen Recordings)
1:26 PMThe Riverdales Judy Go Home from The Riverdales (Lookout!)
1:20 PMZombi Time of Troubles from Escape Velocity (Relapse Records)
1:16 PMTom Waits In The Neighborhood from Swordfishtrombones (Island)
1:12 PMTori Amos Frog On My Toe from Talula (Atlantic)
1:07 PMJames Blake Measurements from James Blake (ATLAS)
1:03 PMDinosaur Jr. Ocean In The Way from Farm (Jagjaguwar)
1:01 PMNirvana Molly's Lips from Incesticide (DGC)
12PM Hour

12:58 PML7 Shove from Tank Girl Soundtrack (Warner Bros./Elektra)
12:51 PMRainer Maria Mystery and Misery from Long Knives Drawn (Polyvinyl)
12:46 PMSocial Distortion Winners and Losers from Sex, Love and Rock 'n' Roll (Time Bomb Recordings)
12:42 PMThe Mutts Pray For Rain from Real Bright (8eat8)
12:36 PMThe Kills The Last Goodbye from Blood Pressures (Domino)
12:33 PMAmon Tobin Piece of Paper from ISAM (Ninja Tune)
12:29 PMThe Roots The OtherSide (featuring Bilal Oliver & Greg Porn) from undum (Def Jam)
12:22 PMDaft Punk Human After All from Human After All (Virgin)
12:18 PMGogol Bordello Start Wearing Purple from Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike(SideOneDummy Records)
12:14 PMFeist Graveyard from Metals (Cherrytree)
12:10 PMWoods Be All Be Easy from Sun and Shade (Woodsist)
12:07 PMFleet Foxes White Winter Hymnal from Fleet Foxes (Sub Pop)
12:05 PMSarah and the Crosscuts Tighnioga from Gun Shopping With Clint Eastwood (Self-Released)

On Shortcomings & Poetry

2011-11-15T18:37:00.000-06:00

Photo by Matthew Williamson

I like to dream in small revolutions, small successes that support and give voice to a whole. These small revolutions are inspired by Dear Sugar #86 on the Rumpus.

The socio-economic demographic under which I was raised ingrained a temporary, yet useful, solution to attain upward class mobility: to move and to move fast. I did this academically, but when a person becomes so goal orientated that they forget whose goals they are actually achieving, they get lost. Somewhere in the last two years, I got pretty lost. I stopped looking at my life for what it was and obsessed over what it was not.

In recent months I have learned that small revolutions are equally as qualifying as large ones, if not more so. It is difficult to reconcile an old habit of survival, but in an attempt to do so I have made a pact with myself to be patient, to be kind, to honor my shortcomings and to appreciate what they are able to achieve.

In the past month, I'd say my shortcomings have been up to some pretty good business. Listed below is where they will appear, or have appeared, in November.

You should invite yours to join them.

November Poetry Readings

Chicago Stories - A Reading at the 2011 Chicago Book Expo
Presented by ACM and Cubside Splendor
Saturday, November 19, 5-6pm
Uptown Goldblatt's Building (former Borders Books)
4720 N. Broadway

Potluck 2.0
Mac 'n Cheese Productions
Wednesday, November 30, 7:30-9:30pm
(address will be provided once ticket transactions are complete)

November Radio Voices

Marketplace Interview with Kai Ryssdal
Thinking Optimistically And Realistically In Your Job Search
American Public Media
Aired Thursday, November 3, 2011

Take Up Your Arms

2011-10-18T08:54:00.000-05:00

When I dream of my future, I dream of a cottage and kin. I dream of a matriachy, a community of family and women and children. I don't dream of a husband. I dream the way this writer does. I out-intuit myself. I love openly and freely. I will tell you where you stand. I will ask you to leave when I need to. I will take care of those I love and recognize those who love me. I will not fault them for it, but commend their bravery. Women, take up your arms.

The Fantasy in Horror

2011-10-01T22:25:00.002-05:00

Spanish translation of Clive Barkers' Cabal.
Film adaption: Nightbreed.

From the age of six, I have been a fan of horror. It began with an old Jerrold cable converter box in a small living room in the small apartment of a small town. On weekends, my parents and I would snuggle up on the couch under blankets, switch the converter dial to HBO or Showtime, and watch a family movie.

Except sometimes my parents would fall asleep, and I would fall asleep.

Then I would wake up. It would be Midnight, the TV still on, the dial still set, and I would peek out from under the blankets. In these glimpses, I caught gruesome scenes from Child's Play, The Nightmare on Elm Street, some sick twisted movie in which a man is tied to table-saw in a meat packing plant, and a vague recollection of giant, frothing, rabid, killer rabbits.

I loved Jaws.

What I find curious about all of this is that, as a six-year-old girl, it never occurred to me to wake my parents during these films. Perhaps I was afraid of getting into trouble, but more I think I was fascinated by these horrifying worlds, somehow attracted to the fear of the unknown. I found pleasure in them, particularly the ones that portrayed a supernatural or fantasy element. The table-saw, honestly, I could do without, but the dream scapes and the ghost stories? Yes, please.

The way my mind compartmentalized terror manifested itself in a rather comic way: the first nightmare I remember took the form of a Woody the Woodpecker/Frankenstein-type character. In typical Looney Tunes fashion, I ran, terrified, through a Bugs Bunny animated forest, chased by the monster who wielded a machete. I awoke screaming, the only time I recall ever making the long trek down the dark hall to my parents' bedroom. I crawled into bed with them, but I don't think I ever told them why.

Until one evening, my mother and I sat on the couch and watched The Lost Boys. I hid under the blankets, disturbed by the Doors' song in the opening credits that lead to a creepy carnival in Santa Monica.

I never wanted to move to California.

Then a curious thing happened: my mother assured me that the movie was not scary and that I would like it, if I just watched. So I did.

Why my mother assured me this movie, in particular, was not scary, I can only guess. It is light horror, and what she gave me then was a respect for the genre, a profound understanding of the good in evil, the complicated, beautiful, fantastical realm of the undead.

I began to understand the macabre through an awareness that not all monsters are bad, a lesson I think every child should learn.

Now it is the 1st of October in 2011, and I am 29. It has been years since I indulged in horror (literary or film), but I am excited to embark on it again during the month of hallows. I will steer clear of the torture and horror porn - I have no time for senseless brutality and bodily disfigurement - but I do have time for ghosts, for tricksters, for the walking dead, for the misunderstood, for the monsters, for the gorgeous and complex story behind each tale of darkness.

For fun, I will tweet horror trivia each day until Halloween in order to summon what lurks under the bed at night. I will also embark on writing my first piece of horror fiction, inspired by the masters, Stephen King and Clive Barker, works by whom I have read nearly everything.

I will now attempt to turn off all the lights in my house without making a running leap to my bed. It is cold in here, and the chill in my bones convinces me that there is a spectre in every corner.

Read your child a ghost story tonight.

She will thank you later.

From The Orphanage

Poems About Radios

2011-09-16T18:26:00.026-05:00

So, many of you know that I appeared on NPR's Marketplace this past Wednesday in a segment about unemployment. What the segment failed to mention, however, is that I am a writer. Specifically, that I am a writer who has taken this time to write, to work on a project that focuses on the afterlife, and to further pursue a growing interest in women's health and gynecology.

I worry that the segment emphasizes a sense that something is lost, rather than a way of life that is being found.

I haven't listened to the series in full, so I do not if the realization of dreams in this market is in any way addressed, but my point and criticism that prompted the interview in the first place focused on the fact there is so much room for job growth and creation - it is simply not being assessed or reassembled in a way that is productive.

What I have found in the last several months is that I am leery of taking jobs I am overqualified for or jobs that are not fully invested in me. This is a hard game to play, but I go back to a firm belief in the inverse: that beggars can - nay, should - be choosers. Choosing is what enables a person to get to where they need to be in life while creating necessary boundaries of self-respect and integrity. What could be more important in a recessed economy than confidence?

And I am aware that I am lucky. I am lucky to have had my voice on public radio. I am lucky to have a father who has had the same job for 35 years. I am lucky to have such a beautiful, eclectic, supportive friend network.

What I think is that anyone collecting unemployment in this economy is lucky. Why? Because you get to choose. You get the option to change. You get the time and space to look at your life and find out what it is.

That is scary. That is a gift.

Here is a poem called Talk Radio. It is by the wonderful and contemporary poet Heather Christle. It, too, is about voice.

The jobs market to a 20-something

by the first of august / the invisible beetles began

2011-08-01T10:42:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 2, I will read poetry at the Tuesday Funk Reading Series at the Hopleaf in Andersonville at 7:30pm with writers: Tegan Jones, Eden M. Robins, Julie Rosenthal, Jerry Schwartz, and Karen Skalitzky.

It is something like coming home in that place, a dim-lit universe of first beers with Eric, writing battles, and first mussels of the Midwest. It is a place of good friends and laughter, of coyotes in prairies in winter.

August marks a month for warmth and renewal, for orange days that never turn into evening. It is the anchor and switch, it is canoes and cicadas. It is wearing a sun hat all day. I wait all year to get here, and in two days it will be my birthday. I never worry about growing old because it's been established that happens. I worry I am not taking the time to make and build the life I want. I worry there won't be enough tea in the kitchen or pastries for everyone. I worry I may become complacent in a place that has never made me feel at ease.

August is its own namesake. It is regal. I will live alone for the remainder of it, but for the first time in two years, in September I will live with housemates again.

Anne Sexton understands why.

I Remember
by Anne Sexton

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color—no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.

the trick is to use a primer of crushed pearls for a spectacular under-sheen

2011-07-23T11:41:00.018-05:00

Yesterday, my friend Sarah sent me this poem. It is disarming and reminiscent of Anne Sexton. It is a reminder that to be strong does not mean to harden the heart, but to learn how to pry it unapologetically open.

The Tired Mermaid

by Mathea Harvey

The Tired Mermaid wishes for once her horoscope would just read: hungover today, stay in bed. Instead it feeds her false futures and she starts each new day expecting to finally shine up her trident or compose a ship-sinking shanty. Too much Chianti and none of these things get done. The sun is a blade in the eye that hurts her seaweedy head and doesn’t help her stomach, roiling with bits of broken reef. While she’s contemplating brushing her teeth, the other mermaids go swishing off to Watercolor Class. The trick is to use a primer of crushed pearls for a spectacular under-sheen when the drawing’s dry. Later they’ll hold the paintings underwater and see which one fish try to swim into. Fish are efficient judges that way and no one holds it against them. If they’re fooled, they’re fooled. There’s always another day. The Tired Mermaid grimaces, then sneezes. Another day is precisely the problem. It’s time to get up. For a jolt of caffeine, she bites an electric eel, and the chill in her molars isn’t much, but it’s something.

Anne Sexton

List 4 : JUNE : THINGS THAT MAKE US HAPPY [or the extended demons I found in a used book]

2011-06-01T10:00:00.016-05:00

1. HEROES : LYNDA BARRY
___________________________________

2. GIFTS/PRESENTS : A CAFECITO STORY
___________________________________

3. TERMS OF ENDEARMENT : GETTING AROUND TO SAYING
___________________________________

4. KINDS OF DANCES : OBEREK
___________________________________

5. THINGS THAT ARE BLACK : HOLLY
___________________________________

6. VEHICLES : SOMETIMES I DREAM OF THESE
___________________________________

7. TROPICAL LOCATIONS : MALABAR
___________________________________

8. COLLEGE MAJORS : TAKE TIME
___________________________________

9. DAIRY PRODUCTS : RAW MILK
___________________________________

10. THINGS IN A SOUVENIR SHOP : SHOT GLASSES
___________________________________

11. ITEMS IN YOUR PURSE/WALLET
___________________________________

12. WORLD RECORDS : HULA HOOPS!
___________________________________

[please fill them in if you can]

What We Give

2011-05-15T15:55:00.031-05:00

It is no coincidence the last essay I posted occurred the day before my mother passed in mid-March. I have been trying to find the angle and energy through which to write and I am beginning to suspect that it involves nothing more than simply being.

That day was quiet, and I took the time to write and reflect on a book I had read the night before. I might have stayed in my pajamas all day. I am in my pajamas today. It is raining. I have made an early afternoon coffee. It is hard to type these words.

Today is the Buddha's birthday, or Hanamatsuri, and I attended the Zen Buddhist Temple in Chicago this morning, a practice I vowed to keep on Sundays once I returned to the city. That was two months ago. But I arrived at the temple wearing the old purple shirt Shannon had painted for me years before, Katie's running pants, a sports bra, no shoes, a new tattoo, and a slight disappointment at the loss of the zafus.

In those early moments of meditation, I wonder why I am there. Why I awoke so early to travel in the cold and the rain to sit in a room full of strangers, to quietly seek or to pray. After the second meditation sitting, after the chanting, after my mind twists and turns in its tangles into its high and dangerous places, the senior Buddhist begins the Dharma talk and wells at her own understanding of the importance of protection, of the importance of protecting what is cherished within us. The Buddha, the jewel, the being that is ours that stumbles and waffles and collapses and bears and gives and loves and nourishes and nurtures and needs.

What is not tradition on the Buddha's birthday is the recitation of a poem.

But the yellowed pages of an old book cracked open and I am grateful, relieved at what language I understand. The teacher read an excerpt from the poem I read in memory of my mother on the day of her funeral.

Because I don't know what else to say, and because what we find profound sometimes has no words, except for the ones that sneak up on us, and follow us, and remind us how right we are no matter how wrong we would have liked to have been.

What I can't forget, what I forgive, and what I can give, for my mother, on the day before spring.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Country of Cherry Blossoms

2011-03-18T13:37:00.005-05:00

Town of Evening Calm,
Country of Cherry Blossom by Fumiyo Kouno

My connection to politics is often found through literature, maybe more precisely: the graphic novel. In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan, I at first fell prey to what I believe is a very American ideology: that this is happening elsewhere. Not because it is happening elsewhere (it is), but because the immediate human connection and understanding of the catastrophe is lost in what becomes business as usual, and because Americans don't always do their best to portray what is actually lost, or what might possibly be needed. I don't think I am the only one, but it is also difficult for me to separate the tragedy that occurred in Japan this week from what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

When the rise of international disaster and human need extends its way to the west, and video footage documents homes that have been swept away by flooding, I find myself searching for a way to help.

I looked at the American Red Cross' website and wondered if five or ten dollars is worth it, or if there might be a better way to fund a school, a hospital, a town. I am considering donating blood, too, but I also wonder if there is a more direct way to support.

For me, specificity is important. It allows me to connect. While browsing Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago, I came across a graphic novel called Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Japanese writer and artist, Fumiyo Kouno. I read it last evening as the wind rustled through my apartment and as the days approach what will soon become spring. The manga in this graphic novel is astounding, and the voices resonate with those of Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi. When I purchased the book from the independent bookstore, I wondered if this was my way of contributing to Japan, by supporting a woman who - more so than national and international news media has been able - achieves by placing her readers on the shores of a fishing village outside of Hiroshima, with a family and a history that is traceable. This is literature at its most visceral, at its most crucial, and at its best. In the Japanese-English translation, the book is also read from right to left.

Maybe more so than the political connectedness this graphic novel allows, it is also not without its sense of humor, which pairs well with a traditional bent of what becomes the hope of resilience in the graphic novel and in good fiction. I can, and will, take myself to the American Red Cross and donate blood this week, and maybe I will donate five dollars to Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières, because I like them.

Mostly, I want to do something. I want to do something that will bring food to where it is needed and medical attention to where it is due. I want to buy more books by Japanese artists and writers because I understand, then.

I want Japan to know that it is not forgotten. I want the world to be bigger than that.

Here are some good resources that might help posit that need:

"To all the people who love this

world—in which lies Japan in

which lies Hiroshima."

-Fumiyo Kouno

The Bachelors & The Bowery Bums

2011-02-14T17:58:00.001-06:00

St. Brigid's Cross

In the ever looming dark underbelly of holidays we never look forward to, there is another side that reflects celebration and choice in matter. One would think today the celebration of St. Valentinus, the patron saint of lovers, but I look to the Julian calendar and I read A portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl, and I celebrate St. Brigid of Kildare:

"Brigid was the goddess of fire, whose manifestations were song, craftsmanship, and poetry, which the Irish considered the flame of knowledge."

I celebrate this in the Orthodox Christian tradition. I celebrate this because I can't bring myself to post The Saddest Mix Ever, a playlist compiled over years of heartache and song suggested by friends in pursuit of their own idea of ventriloquy and navigation of the heart's ventricles.

I celebrate this because I like celebrating.

What I think is that connection is endless. It is a chemical and physical and causal reaction of the emotive state wherein it is difficult to pin, and it is difficult to name.

I think what is important is that love is not expectation or reason to find fault. It is an extension of warmth. It is light in February.

I did send a few valentines today, because it feels good to send valentines. I sent them to people I am fond of and who warm my heart. I hope this gesture helps to warm theirs.

For the bachelors and the bowery bums, and for those who choose affinity, celebration, and poetry (because that is what they have) on this feast day:

Tom Waits looks very sexy in this photo.

Radical Snail Press Presents: An AWP Off-site Reading

2011-02-04T15:25:00.011-06:00

Much to do with the Snowpocolypse that hit Chicago this week that impeded my attendance to the 2011 AWP Annual Conference in Washington, DC, as with my own intrigue in sock puppetry and storytelling, this is what I did on my winter vacation:

But, damn! The moon!

2011-01-02T21:17:00.011-06:00

From my Inbox to you
(or what I get for not going to Temple this morning)

When Tired & Lonely

by Ven. Samu Sunim

When you’re tired and disappointed,

Write a poem.

If you can’t write a poem,

Be silent.

If your feelings are painful,

Go to the park.

Watch the vibrant eyes of squirrels

Listen to the chat of sparrows

And Stand in Line with the Homeless.

“There shall be no outcasts in the world!”

When you’re full of complaints,

Write a poem.

If you can’t write a poem,

Have a glass of cold water.

Go for a run

Watch your steps

Look up to the sky.

Complaints are but a taint,

They are uninvited guests.

When you’re angry and hateful,

Write a poem.

If you can’t write a poem,

Do 365 prostrations invoking compassion*

Lower your body-mind with each bow

and rise again as a true person.

Surrender yourself to the Buddha within

Empower yourself with love and compassion.

There shall be no scumbags in the world!

When you’re poor and miserable,

Write a poem.

If you can’t write a poem,

Remember you’re still among the living.

Be grateful!

Learn to be content with what is available.

Being poor hurts

It is a blessing in disguise if you don’t mind.

There shall be no poor and lost souls in the world!

When you lose hope and are in despair,

Write a poem.

If you can’t write a poem,

Watch your mind.

Plains and streams play together to entertain all beings.

Is this not good enough,

Is this not good enough?

Wake up early tomorrow

Go for the sunrise.

There shall be no helplessly abandoned in the world!

*If you don’t like to perform prostrations, then climb up a mountain.

_____________

And this:

Enlightenment is a Bitch
by Dane Cervine

At first it isn’t so bad — a taste of ecstasy,
the world covered in honey. Even snails
scrawl the names of buddhas with their silvery trails.

But then, too much. Pears become unbearable,
wet white flesh so tender one could perish
contemplating the first taste.

Meditation becomes oddly redundant,
attention now like water, absorbed in tree root,
plumbing; even fire hydrants with their red

stubby arms become mandalas, and, worse,
the police siren revving its wail behind
my slow-moving car sounds like a mantra.

Even my wife’s complaints about me finally
sound true. I just bow. Kiss her slender hands.
Carry the garbage outside, but, damn! The moon!

_____________

And this:

Dreaming of Long Ago
by Po Chu-i (China, 794-815 C.E.)

I've grown old since our farewell,
bitterly cultivating the Tao,
refining this irreconcilable heart
all the way into dead ash.

I thought I'd polished the memories
of a lifetime clean away —
so how is it you come stealing
into my dreams again last night?

_____________

I made a veggie lasagna this evening. It is good for the heart and for the things that ache. Love in comfort, and in sticking one's foot in one's mouth. Always.

Be good to one another, and be good to yourself.

Prairie Pods at Broadside Books in Northampton!

2010-12-07T22:11:00.020-06:00

Word gets around. My little chapbook makes an appearance at Broadside Books in Northampton, MA. It can be found in the Local Poetry section, right next to the Questionable Content characters.

Reasons to Survive November

2010-11-30T17:33:00.029-06:00

Milkweed, On Shoe Factory Road

During the month of November, I set out to list a reason each day to survive, in response to Tony Hoagland's poem Reasons to Survive November. Perhaps the poem is a bit harsh, but anyone from the North knows what it's like to feel hurtled out of Canada, crashed into a million trees. Here are my reasons:

Townes van Zandt
Eileen Myles
Train Wrecks
Writing Down the Bones
Listening to an old voice that says, "Don't compromise yourself. It's all you've got."
Conviction
Black boots with high heels
Cute dresses
Hair cuts on Mondays
Heavy hearts that backtrack
Dreams of road trips with poets
Dreams of my mother vacuuming in late afternoon
Early memories
Double shot lattes
Lists in Moleskins
Bette Midler
Lynda Barry
Two hours of slow moving cinematic coffee
Regina Spektor and old roommates
The comfort of hearing, "It occurred to me that this is something I just don't understand, and I never will."
Vigilantism
Reading
Duality in Zen practice
Being future oriented
Belinda Carlisle
Cosmic accompaniments
Winter hats
Being unable to find brown tights anywhere
The 83-year-old man on the train who shared with me a letter his wife had written him the year I was born because he thought I might know something about the importance of words. She died of breast cancer in 1994.
Rekindling December

Radical Snails at Women & Children First!

2010-11-21T20:11:00.011-06:00

Amidst all the wonder of another autumn that meanders on like summer, my little chapbook may now be found at Women & Children First Bookstore in Andersonville.

It is on the poetry shelf.

Because, sometimes.

2010-11-07T23:19:00.008-06:00

We forget what the hell we are supposed to be doing.

Inhabitat: Green Snail Design

The Poem in God's Silence

2010-10-24T17:10:00.003-05:00

Franz Wright, my hat is tipped.

The Poem

by Franz Wright in God's Silence

In morning rain a dark

vast rustling mass of lilacs

summons me (greener

than the dreams of God), it

troubles me

awake a

smemory—

Inviting the Expanse at The Boring Store & Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago!

2010-09-22T17:49:00.030-05:00

Please keep an eye out for my little chapbook, Inviting the Expanse, at The Boring Store (which is not a secret agent store) and at Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago! Each of these fabulous establishments are selling copies of the book for $5.00, as is Transistor Chicago in Andersonville.

Each book is hand bound and designed, which means each cover is slightly different. For now, there are only 5 copies in each store, however, if I hear word they have run out (I hope someone tries to catch them!), they will be restocked.

Until they run out again. And again.

And then? Well, we'll just have to see what happens then.

Much love and thanks, especially to those of you who have supported this project from the beginning. You have my heart and soul. Keep them in good hands.

Underwater Basket Weaving Orientation Reading

2010-09-12T18:39:00.023-05:00

I will be reading once again with Two With Water as part of their Rx Reading Series on Sunday, September 19th at Beauty Bar on West Chicago Avenue. The theme for the event is Orientation, and the writing concept as of now threads toward gender orientation and sexual identity. The form may arrive in essay, or perhaps erotic poetics or micro fictions, inspired by the 2009 Best Women's Erotica edited by Violet Blue.

Many thanks to Curbside Splendor Publishing and Beauty Bar for sponsoring the reading. One of my poems recently appears on Curbside Splendor's online journal.

On a silly note, as of late I have discovered the summer camp phenomenon of underwater basket weaving, which, honestly, sounds like one of the most ridiculous past-times someone neglected to impose upon me as a child. It is also, sadly, an idiom to describe boring higher education courses. A shame. Underwater basket weaving sounds like an excellent class on the outrageous, often out of date, though pleasantly mindful. Not unlike the pursuit and engagement of poetry.

Hard At Work On Handmade Capes

2010-07-22T21:10:00.041-05:00

I will be reading this Sunday at 7 p.m. at Center Portion as part of the Two With Water Rx Reading Series and the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival. The theme of the reading is Ten Years Gone, and I will be reading a short memoir that maps the movement of time wherein a series masquerades as a lifetime.

If you happen to be at the Festival during the day on Saturday, be sure to stop by the CHIRP Radio table and say hello. I will be there from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. promoting independent Low Power FM Radio, because that's important, too.

Oh, you will also find me here come August.

Makers

2010-07-05T14:48:00.289-05:00

The tops of the rufs skip down the alley as I search for a place to begin. The city, warped in brick & grid, steadies to word something more fluid than the banter I am afraid will spill through this post. There is part of me that wants to stay behind a closed curtain, a drapery my vision stays cloaked in because I am not yet ready to unveil.

But I think maybe that is what I learned at Juniper. That writing is a continuum and there is freedom in making, unmaking, and remaking in order to move forward, to free oneself from the confines of tradition or to break free from words and worlds we have too long professed our loyalty.

And my hesitancy may be that I want to write through Juniper, rather than about Juniper (and my craft session on syntax suggests I remove all prepositions entirely!). I guess I don't want to write about everything I learned because I am still learning, I am still navigating how to put this knowledge into practice, to take solace in the words of Thomas Sayers Ellis: "In the attempt is where closeness happens."

Or the complementary booster rockets and poetic diagrams of Matthew Zapruder's star chamber: "In poetry, we only care about the movement of the mind."

It is also always a relief to be in New England, a region that never fails to warm my heart and lighten what weight I carry. I stayed on two porches while visiting, my lovely friend Becca's (she took a hatchet to a couch for me!) and the fantastical abode of my friends Katy, Jed, and Dowd (who will soon live in the library!). I was given the gift of a tarot card reading from my dear friend Miss Embley Houk (she gave the gift, not the reading - god only knows what future an Embley would see for me! Probably more iPods in cereal bowls, I'm sure). I dug up and transplanted a giant iris while in town. The iris and I had quite the disagreement on the matter.

Now it is a hot and beautiful summer day in Chicago, and I spent the morning submitting poems to journals. I am also collaborating with Miss Embley on a zine, the contents, theme, and title of which are, as usual, secret (or entirely yet unknown). Tomorrow I am meeting with the designer to collate 70 copies of my chapbook so I can mail them soon. The ones remaining will find homes in bookstores in Western Massachusetts and Chicago. I will tell you exactly where and when they hit the shelves.

I am revising old poems, writing new poems, drawing silly stick-figure comics, working on a short story, and a cemetery project in prose vignettes.

I have titled this news update Makers after the novel by Cory Doctorow because I am interested in speculative fiction, social economics, and rebuilding America, straight from the underground. It is also a fine Kentucky Bourbon and a word used by fiction writer, Leni Zumas, to describe those who have inspired and informed her work.

It is also who are when we begin. We are makers.

Juniper Update

2010-06-20T13:42:00.006-05:00

A quick Juniper update before I launch into the writing program for six days. Thanks to an overwhelming amount of support from friends and family, I have raised the total cost of tuition for the Juniper Summer Writing Institute.

The total amount raised is $955.88 (.88 to cover the cost of postage, which is adorable). My goal was $844.00, an amount that covers the full tuition of the writing institute and will continue to support the growth of a community of poets and writers. Thank you for being part of that.

The remaining copies of my chapbook have been printed, and are currently in the hands of the designer for cover art and binding. Below is a photo of the title page of the second run. It is now all in Book Antiqua, a much classier font than Century Gothic. All copies will be mailed by mid-July.

Once again, thank you to all for the support and donations. Words and verse will be updated shortly, and a lengthier update of my travels and the Institute will be written soon.

But for now, down the rabbit hole!

The Anti-Snail Campaign!

2010-05-26T12:41:00.041-05:00

As many of you know, I have created The Anti-Snail Campaign to help offset some of the tuition costs for attending the Juniper Summer Writing Institute this June.

As many of you also know, I launched this campaign yesterday with an appeal to my closest friends and family, and by end of the day was able to raise $130.00 toward this endeavor. To those of you who generously donated on the first day, thank you! It is heartwarming and humbling to know that I have support for this project, and poems and books will be in the mail shortly, signed and stamped with love.

As a reminder, all donations to the campaign will receive a hand-written thank you letter in the mail, along with a poem in whatever form your donation level is in (donation levels are listed below), and any gift of $25.00 or more will receive a signed copy of my little chapbook, Inviting the Expanse, designed and hand-bound by Miss Adie Janci. The campaign will remain open until Wednesday, June 30th.

So again, I implore you:

Will you make a donation to The Anti-Snail Campaign this summer? Will you help a little snail attend the Juniper Summer Writing Institute?

Because snails are good for the environment, too.

Levels of Snail Giving

Haiku:

Short & Sweet

$10.00

Tanka:

Receive a Copy of Inviting the Expanse

$25.00

Ode:

Make a Gift in Honor of Something!

$50.00

Sonnet:

Because it Sounds Like Snail...

$100.00

Published Poet:

Someday!
$250.00

Free Verse:

Other Amount

$.____.00

The Women I Like Best

2010-05-09T20:43:00.020-05:00

The women I like best host large kitchen tables spread with cookies, cakes, pies, jams, coffees and teas, sugar bowls, ceramic milk jugs, and an invitation to indulge, so long as we are polite. They are thick-skinned, Irish and French-Canadian, and grew up on farms-turned-golf-courses, or in huddled, tipsy New England houses. They bore a child each year for eight years, kept milk farms, worked in factories, and married weather-worn men with drinking problems.

They died early from post-rheumatic fever aortic failure, sold acreage to Massachusetts Highway Departments, and baked minced meat pie on holidays. They have sharp tongues, quick wits, kind eyes, and quiet determination.

They are my mothers and grandmothers, and it takes them twenty-seven years to tell me anything. They smoke like chimneys, say never to marry, light wood stoves in winter, let hunting dogs curl around their feet, and finish crossword puzzles quickly. They have oxygen tanks trailing their movement and visit gravestones on anniversaries of weak hearts.

For my grandmother, Helen Mary Corey, who died thirty-two years ago today:

Small Talk
by Eleanor Lerman

It is a mild day in the suburbs Windy, a little gray. If there is sunlight, it enters through the kitchen window and spreads itself, thin as a napkin, beside the coffee cup, pie on a plate What am I describing? I am describing a dream in which nobody has died These are our mothers: your mother and mine It is an empty day; everyone else is gone. Our mothers are sitting in red chairs that look like metal hearts and they are smoking Your mother is wearing sandals and a skirt. My mother is thinking about dinner. The bread, the meat Later, there will be no reason to remember this, so remember it now: a safe day. Time passes into dim history. And we are their babies sleeping in the folds of the wind. Whatever our chances, these are the women. Such small talk before life begins

A Good Reminder

2010-05-07T21:06:00.021-05:00

Because I think sometimes we forget:

Invitation

by Shel Silverstein

If you are a dreamer, come in.
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer . . .
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire,
For we have some flax golden tales to spin.
Come in!
Come in!

This song helps, too:

This picture's good, too...

In other words, I am teaching myself the fine art of patience by applying an outrageous amount of distraction. I may now attempt my first ever self-portrait sketch.

Perhaps, just maybe, you will find it posted on my little blog later this evening?

Maybe...

Snails, Morels & Sonnets

2010-04-26T11:46:00.046-05:00

A fun little interview with me on Transistor Radio's live webcast, The Roundtable with Rani Woolpert (Sunday nights from 6:00-6:30 p.m.), where I talk about snails, morels, sonnets, and other silly things: (EDIT - It appears the Podcast has disappeared. This case is currently under investigation. Hopefully it will be back up soon. Sorry!).

Many thanks to Transistor Owner/Curator, Rani Woolpert, for inviting me on the show. I will likewise be reading poetry at Transistor this Friday, April 30th at 8 p.m. with writer and spoken word artist, Michelle Renae.

I will see you then!

In Any Language

2010-04-18T19:43:00.054-05:00

A very belated AWP recap. It has been a long two weeks. It is now Sunday evening, and mid-April is closing out a chilly, sunny day. First I must give props & thanks to my dear friend and poet, Jennifer Jabaily-Blackburn (Linebreak.org), for finding our bizarre Victorian Bed & Breakfast in the ghetto, and for piquing my intrigue in formalists. I worry I shall never become one, but I like them.

It was good to catch up with so many people at the conference, and my favorite panel was Poetry After the '00s: What Comes Next?, a very unexpected and brilliant afternoon find. One of the panelists was unable to attend, which resulted in a post-post-modern (?!) debate between Tony Hoagland and Donald Revell, two poets I was unfamiliar with, and now greatly admire. I'm not sure I could even begin to review their exchange with the fecundity it is due, but will say that it entailed a rather comedic, witty, existential banter (and a roller coaster head trip of wor(l)ds to follow).

Of course, if you were in Denver, I probably placed my little self-published chapbook in your hands, and many thanks to Adie Janci for lending her artistic talent to the project. There will be seventy more copies printed this summer, which will be available at independent bookstores, record stores, and spy shops in Chicago. One major difference in the second print will be the layout. The dinosaurs were rolling in their graves when I used the archaic and nearly useless Microsoft Word (I know, I know!), and the next round will be professionally formatted in a design program (I promise!). The second print will include one new poem, and the possible removal of 'November Summer'; Century Gothic will be converted to Bookman Old Style, where it should have begun to begin with.

Thank you to all who allowed me to share the book with you, and especially to those who asked for a signed copy. I blushed, and was graciously nervous every time. It is a small start, but a step toward what will hopefully become stronger work in the future.

I leave you with this heartbreaking, yet beautiful poem by Tony Hoagland, because if there is one thing I have learned so far this year, it is that we tend hurt the ones we love the most, and that forgiveness comes at best in waves (but sweet is sweet):

Lucky

by Tony Hoagland

If you are lucky in this life, 
you will get to help your enemy 
the way I got to help my mother
when she was weakened past the point of saying no.

Into the big enamel tub 
half-filled with water 
which I had made just right, 
I lowered the childish skeleton 
she had become.

Her eyelids fluttered as I soaped and rinsed 
her belly and her chest, 
the sorry ruin of her flanks 
and the frayed gray cloud 
between her legs.

Some nights, sitting by her bed 
book open in my lap 
while I listened to the air
move thickly in and out of her dark lungs, 
my mind filled up with praise 
as lush as music,

amazed at the symmetry and luck 
that would offer me the chance to pay 
my heavy debt of punishment and love 
with love and punishment.

And once I held her dripping wet 
in the uncomfortable air 
between the wheelchair and the tub, 
until she begged me like a child

to stop, 
an act of cruelty which we both understood
was the ancient irresistible rejoicing 
of power over weakness.

If you are lucky in this life, 
you will get to raise the spoon 
of pristine, frosty ice cream 
to the trusting creature mouth 
of your old enemy

because the tastebuds at least are not broken 
because there is a bond between you 
and sweet is sweet in any language.

Cover Art by Adrienne Janci - Carnival Prize

A Perfect Day for a Bike Ride

2010-03-31T19:42:00.012-05:00

In weather my friend Anders terms +23 C and sunny, I rode my bicycle fourteen miles today. It was the first long bike ride of the season, my upper back hurts from a sling bag (I need a backpack, or a basket), the birds are chirping outside my window (come on evening), and my back door is ajar. Someone has lit a grill down the alley.

This is the Chicago that convinces me to stay.

At the request of my good friend Eric Cartier, and in honor of winter ghosts and the bicycles we've abandoned, here are some images to remind everyone to take ownership of the things you love, no matter how rusty they become.

From Chicago's Abandoned Bicycles (with a little help from the western sun):

At Plymouth and Van Buren

By Ohio on Wells

Near Winchester on Chicago

We just won't talk about this one...

Ghost Rider, North and Clybourn

Springs Breaking Poetry Reading at Transistor

2010-03-24T14:56:00.016-05:00

I am excited and humbled to be reading at the Two With Water Rx Reading Series this Friday, March 26th, at Transistor in Andersonville with writers Bobby Evers and April Galarza. The theme is "Springs Breaking" and I will be speaking on behalf of the sound old squished couches make when one jumps on them.

I also look forward to seeing the 15-minute cabaretta by the Billy Goat Experiment Theatre Company, Trunk Full of Baby's Breath.

Please, come if you can!

Poster Design by Tracy Graham

Someday, I will know this poem by heart:

2010-03-18T19:10:00.032-05:00

Till human voices wake us and we drown.

__________________________________________________________________________________

And I still stand by this question:

"And in the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo."

Is that all we do?

Radical Snail

2010-03-11T18:19:00.006-06:00

In what one might consider a fancy, or one of my many delusions of grandeur, I have started a small press. Serendipitous of recent weeks, it is no surprise this endeavor occurs during March, Small Press Month. It is also not a project that will take full form in the immediate future, but rather will take quite a bit of time, and planning, to launch. But concept is always a good place to start.

This little shop will be called Radical Snail Press, or Poetry, and the name will come as no surprise to anyone who has been following this blog, or to anyone who has known me for any amount of time. The first production will be a short, self-published venture. Details, of course, are secret.

This is intimidating, but also necessary. In the world of small presses, micro-fictions, and independent arts, it is good to have courage to take form. Whether snail, or other.

I encourage you to do the same. I encourage you to generate.

Further Proof

2010-02-22T14:16:00.012-06:00

Found here.

The Girl in Selecting a Reader

2010-02-15T10:54:00.114-06:00

For Valentine's Day, she will pay off her library debt.
$36.27 for two works of fiction, one collection of poetry,
and a book of nonfiction, the poetry fee priced
two cents higher than the rest.

She will browse through A Field Guide to Hummingbirds
before placing it in her backpack (field work for future use).

She will do so carefully and cautiously, return
kind words to the circulation clerk
who will ask her if she is doing anything special
for the holiday. She will smile and say,

"I am paying my library debt."

Pascha on Palm Sunday

2010-02-05T23:53:00.026-06:00

For Easter, we are hiding our eggs in the dirt.
The prairie a sullen winter yellow,
sallow and sulking, the reds of their backs
cradled into puddles or palms, snow—
if it is March.

If April, then they will be Catholic, goddesses of spring,
lavender and sky blue, canary and crème filled,
rising to the same name, the same faith.

We are drummers, timid in the turmoil of reproach,
where laughter is what takes us around the bend,
lifting one more rock—one more tumble and collapse.

Because there, where we last expect it,
and are positive all the plastic colored putty
has been pocketed:

rounded, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slavic
ships cup the hull,
good faith, friendship, love,
frolicsome, labyrinthine, & allusion. –

It is ok. I have drawn a map.

It could have been otherwise.

2010-01-24T23:18:00.021-06:00

The best part about buying recycled books is finding a creased yellow clipping of your favorite poet's New York Times Book Review dated January 5, 1997, a commendation of the work, posthumously; and to find, a few pages later, while bathing, a small obituary fall blithely to the floor, and you watch, dumbfounded it didn't hit the water, before reading something as momentous as this:

What Came to Me
by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise

I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.

Publish Post

It was your gravy boat,
with a hard brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain cup.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.

Unveiling the Tofu Curtain

2010-01-17T18:35:00.038-06:00

I have memories of a summer in 2000, the Republican National Convention Unity March, the only time I've ever been to Philly. Traveling eight hours by bus with strangers to protest what would become the Bush Administration, the streets were littered with trash and homeless men and women. Their heads rested on arms curled around thick hardcover books. Evenly divided squares of concrete and the sparkle of mosaics panned as the sun danced around our bright yellow school bus.

Maybe I felt small, but for me, this was the first time I'd seen a person sleeping on a sidewalk, and the first urban art I'd admired.

I spent so much of that spring and summer traveling and protesting, that I can't quite remember where we stayed, or if we drove down for just the day. The march appeared smaller and less organized than the IMF/World Bank protest I attended the previous April. Or maybe it was the infiltration of police into organizers' offices during the days leading up to the convention, an attempt to break communications and stall the march. Perhaps to some degree it worked, because it was hard to remember why we were there, cracks in the infrastructure on every city block.

For some reason, before our bus made it to the city center, we stopped near a baseball field for an early lunch. We ate in the grass on a hazy Philadelphia morning. One of our fellow travelers brought rice cakes, void of nutrition and sustenance. Cardboard wafers that mocked the city we were in. Maybe there was a little league game going on behind us, and maybe I watched that.

Or maybe it was a vacant lot, yellow grass blanched by the oppressive heat, an unforgiving summer sun, and low budget landscaping. Maybe we were in the ghetto, and the bus driver didn't know where he was going. Maybe we were running out of gas. Maybe there was litter along the first base line, steel trash cans tipped by rats rummaging. Maybe I don't remember any of this, except for the lawn chairs and the rice cakes.

Who were we? With our Zone Bars and vegetarian diets? The thick hardcover books we curled our arms around were written by Howard Zinn, and we carried them in an idealism of entitlement.

We were young, mostly white, mostly middle-class, high school and college students who had no intention of addressing a city we knew little about, or hardly expected to find. We were there because we were going to vote for Nader in the fall, because we were from a Democratic state that could. We didn't know anything about rubber bullets or revolutions. We were thinkers, poli-sci majors and amateur academics, some of us witnessing urban poverty for the first time.

And we didn't even share our rice cakes.

Top 10 Highlights of a New England Christmas

2009-12-29T15:09:00.093-06:00

A sexy shower with two hot gay men.
Karaoke with my grandpa on Christmas Night. He wore a blue eighties sweatshirt with a reindeer embroidered on it and a red winter hat (We keep a close watch on these hearts of ours).
My other grandpa: "Now don't you take my new pillow case. I need it to dream on."
A very silly evening with Pom and Em, martinis, chardonnay, artichokes and eggplant, way too many iPhone photos, old writing friends, indecent exposure, purple paper crowns, Cole, hula hoops, impromptu dance parties and accuracies in astrology.
500 Days of Summer with my sister.
Scottie Dogs with my grandma.
My Tarot Cards read by Randy and being excited about hummingbirds.
Hope for my parents that they'll find their way.
A beautiful mason jar full of flour, chocolate chips, cane sugar and brown sugar.
Library dates, Amanouz and silliness with Becca, as always.

Stretched on the hoop where I stitched this adage...

2009-12-27T14:22:00.018-06:00

Embroidery by Embley Houk

It is just the thing!

2009-12-12T15:56:00.022-06:00

"A purposeful mutt / makes dark marks / in blue dew." That is the most poetic description of dog shit I have have read.

And, it is only the beginning.

I've carried around James Schuyler quotes and verses for years, and every time I go back to them, they never get old, they always resound, and they get better.

Other favorites include, first from the poem 'February', simply:

"It's a day like any other."

Or the loveliness of just saying, 'Freely Espousing':

"It is not so quiet and they
are a medium-sized couple who
when they fold each other up
well, thrill. That's their story."

Again, from 'In Earliest Morning', just after dark marks in blue dew:

"The day
offers so much, holds
so little or is it
simply you who
asking too much take
too little?"

Perhaps this line actually haunts me more so than encourages me. It often surfaces when I am feeling inactive or self-pitying (which is to say, not all that often, but on those occasions). When the quote arises, it essentially makes me feel like I'm not doing anything useful and need to get the hell on top of shit, quick. And sometimes it helps; and sometimes it is returned with a reactive Fuck you.

Or the entirety of:

In the round

bed the inter-
loping grass
is beaded
at the wrist
the petunias
show
a crumpled horn,
morn-
ing after
rain and light-
ning the
dirt
chewed
and chewy
wet, a
mocha sauce.
"How frail
are flowers
and frailer
still are
we!" What
a dumb idea,
Dora, you
pass, stone
deaf and happy
jabbering
(a screen
door
bangs;
the little dog
is Jessica
or Josephine:
it
all depends)
a greeting
in what may
be words
--can't tell--
deaf as a
post, happy
as a queen,
fat and in
abounding
health
on a morn-
ing of
(they weren't)
massacred
flowers
by medicinal
rain
in this
world of an
infinity--they
are finite--
of flowers:
infinite
flowers,
and only
seeming
so. "Good
morning--"
what's-
your-name.

The tension in this poem is fantastic, and very measured. Reading it is almost like hitting piano keys, each note precisely placed one after the other; and: it is judgementally angry, poking fun at another poet, perhaps? It also sounds like a song sung in the round, which is interesting, because nothing in it cycles except for the meter (the syllables? I haven't counted), but the words don't repeat themselves. They simply bounce off one another onto the next one quite playfully. And recently, I made a "mocha sauce". Which, of course, while preparing, only made me come back to where he writes: "dirt / chewed / and chewy / wet, a / mocha sauce."

Why is this important? I have no idea. It just is.

Another favorite is 'A Stone Knife', which is essentially a letter in poetic form:

A Stone Knife

December 26, 1969

Dear Kenward,
What a pearl
of a letter knife. It's just
the thing I needed, something
to rest my eyes on, and always
wanted, which is to say
it's that of which I
felt the lack but
didn't know of, of no
real use and yet
essential as a button
box, or maps, green
morning skies, islands and
canals in oatmeal, the steam
off oyster stew. Brown
agate, veined as a woods
by smoke that has to it
the watery twist of eel grass
in a quick, rust-discolored
cove. Undulating lines of
northern evening—a Munch
without the angst—a
hint of almost amber:
to the nose, a resinous
thought, to the eye, a
lacquered needle green
where no green is, a
present after-image.
Sleek as an ax, bare
and elegant as a tarn,
manly as a lingam,
November weather petrified,
it is just the thing
to do what with? To
open letters? No, it
is just the thing, an
object, dark, fierce
and beautiful in which
the surprise is that
the surprise, once
past, is always there:
which to enjoy is
not to consume. The un-
recapturable returns
in a brown world
made out of wood,
snow streaked, storm epi-
center still in stone.

In some places, this poem sounds almost mocking (such as in the opening) but as you move on in the lines, you realize (maybe he's convincing himself) that really, the letter opener is "just the thing". Though more importantly, the poem reminds the reader of gifts received that were just the thing. It also makes me want to send "just the thing" to someone, or to receive such an item myself.

Although, it is sort of funny that a few years ago I sent my best friend a battery operated letter opener for Christmas, in the guise of a small little book (about the size of a matchbox), which, quite frankly, was probably not the thing.

I digress. My point, really, is that these poems are fun, and he is fun.

In The Diary of James Schuyler, he exclaims:

"I will not be bossed around and yelled at by a bunch of sounds."

And every time I am working on, or revising, a poem, I remember this. In all the frustration and inability to control rhythms that want to be in a poem so badly (no matter how wrong they are), and the neuroses of daily battles with sound, I go back to this, and feel less crazy because of it.

Of course, you should never trust a poet.

a glimpse at what I do for a living

2009-12-08T18:39:00.014-06:00

from the words of a poet who can say it better than I can:

His Name Is Keshawn
by Adam Grabowski, from riding the margin

His name is Keshawn
and he is not a metaphor.

He was nine years old
and I sat with him
for five days, one hour a day
and kept him from using
his times table chart.

Then we played basketball.

And he is not Birmingham, Alabama.
And he is not temporary housing.
He is not his impossible teeth
and he is not the rule I broke
by taking his picture.

We just worked on fifth grade math
and played basketball,
and then I drove home.

After just five days, he said, "I love you."
The only other person I know
who does that is me.

Happy December

2009-12-02T12:02:00.009-06:00

Artwork by Embley Houk

Generate

2009-11-27T14:24:00.065-06:00

It seems November has been a low productivity month for writing, but really, it's been a month for re-creation and planning, a removal from the spatial tendencies of my attention and a step toward a more linear, logical mind.

July through October has been, for the most part, some weird adult phase of self reflection and development. It also marks the first time in my life that I live alone. Not necessarily "on my own" but singly, without the distractions and warmth of roommates, friends, or romantic partners.

I have wanted my own apartment for two years, but it wasn't until this past July that I secured a gorgeous studio (almost a one-bedroom) in Chicago's Ravenswood Neighborhood, overlooking Winnemac Park.

I am reminded of recurring themes as I type this, of walking through Colonial Village in Amherst, Massachusetts six years ago with Pomerantz, saying I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, dabbling with the idea of grad school for arts administration. What I didn't realize is that somewhere in the not too distant future, I would be working at The Chicago Academy of Sciences' Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, in arts administration. I no longer work there, but I bring this up because it represents the tangibility of a dream, a simple idea expressed one sunny morning over coffee.

Similarly, three years ago I played a softball game in Winnemac Park with the amazing staff and friends of Early to Bed, the best sex toy store in Chicago. My hair was pulled back in pig tails, excited my batter's stance remained as strong as it did when I was 12, probably the last time I hit a line drive to second base, and scored. While playing, I realized that I loved the area, loved the park, and imagined living in one of the surrounding buildings overlooking it. In this dreaming, my windows faced west; where I live now, the three main windows of my apartment face north, I have a back porch, and roller skate on clear days through the labyrinth of trails weaving through green space.

It's refreshing.

This is an exercise on the actualization of dreaming, or maybe even a microcosm of an American Dream as I figure out what I need to keep, and what I need to lose, to get to where I want to be, or the importance of honoring the opposite:

"that we can't always choose
what we keep and what we
lose" (Adam Grabowski, friend & poet, from 'Borrowing Books' in mid-moment).

I have heard many poets and mentors and teachers talk about balance, and I think as we, contemporary America, get older and move from the blinding excitement of our early twenties into our late twenties (and later, into our thirties and forties), our values become more defined, or should, and what we forgive and accept become a necessary defense of who we are, or who we would like to become.

My hope is that the economy comes with me on this one, or that I learn to actualize the creativity and innovation that would enable me to own up to the progressive, feminist, creative person I am.

This might be an early discourse for a new year resolution, but it's a good place to start.

Because right now, on the verge of winter and Nikki McClure's November instruction to Generate, living alone means more time to organize, and more time to play with dream cartography.

but most of all the world is a place where parts of wholes are combined

2009-11-09T19:29:00.028-06:00

The city never feels more urban than it does today, soft summer hum in the beginning of November, ruffled lace shirts and honey colored naked trees along side streets by highways. Gated stoops to doorways, floral blankets and my body rises to the warmth of exhibitionism, a solid place. Eyeliner pressed to natural creases, the dabble of friendship, charcoal pen damp to the touch of sleepy eyelids.

Women sip tea and coffee on Sunday in ceramic cups, the ones our grandmothers gave us, red berries and stained glass, sea glass.

Katie and I overlook Avondale, one of those city neighborhoods someone might live, but nobody ever goes. The day moves slowly, like the great molasses massacre, a tragedy so beautiful one can only reflect under the weight of something so sweet, so suffering.

We talk about personal defects, the ones we expect to find. The regrets that seep through our pores, the architecture of our mouths when we find the right words, settling, this time, on no reinvention or pussyfooting, we are clear.

We are the daughters our mothers never told us they would have, our hair the temporary color of auburn. Today we blend, beauty recognized not for its uniqueness, but for its ephemera, my grandmother as she lets me crawl into bed with her on rare November days.

Photo by Adie Janci

Pirouette

2009-11-02T12:24:00.045-06:00

The day we picked apples on Michigan Avenue, 
I wanted to kiss you. 
A pirouette of pre autumn, 
gawked at by the Galas, those friendly fellows,
or the tart little sluts you gave away.  

Silver backdrop against a cloudless sky, 
September is killing the pigeons, 
and every discourse leaves  
a breath 
of loquacious afternoons.  

Bursts of amber! Streets west 
of the water  
complement the architecture 
for any composure. 
I'm sure  

anything will break
levees never built
for hurricanes, anyway.
Too steep for climbing,
the steps to Eliasson’s

Take Your Time
pause in the center:

a colorful black jacket. 
You suggest aloe 
when I tell you I prefer the Sun,
pomegranate hearts 
on the wall.  

Have I told you the fire trucks 
are saving drowning swimmers?  

What I should tell you 
is I never did stop to find words 
but to see picture,
and I know  
I dream  

of a pulse so close, the moon,  
pressed against our bodies  
and the under voice laughs
a snow cloud 
goodbye.

Especially In a Dress

2009-10-27T17:37:00.002-05:00

Written in the summer or fall of 2007:

I fell off my bike on Saturday. It was a nose dive onto the pavement where Elston and Damen Avenues intersect. Nothing was broken except for maybe my ego, my bike, and the outfit I was wearing.

I learned how to ride a bike when I was six-years-old.
The first bike I owned was purple, and I won it at a Christmas party, unable to ride it until the snow melted in spring. It had training wheels and purple and white tassels hanging from handlebars. At age 25, sometimes I think it’d be fun to have tassels on my bike again (and after last week’s fall, I also have to wonder if maybe training wheels might be a good idea as well…).

As an adult, I’ve been commuter bicycling for nine years. In fact, I had begun doing so regularly since college. The semester I graduated, my car’s transmission died, and knowing that I was moving to Chicago the following fall, I opted to save money and bike around Western Massachusetts instead of buying a new car. It was great way to prepare myself for biking in a city. Sort of.

Certainly nervous about getting around Chicago and being unfamiliar with, not so much the train systems, but the bus routes (labyrinths I wasn’t ready to tackle), biking was the next best option. Before I found a job in the city, I would hop on my bike and take random rides down random streets, hoping to find new neighborhoods and fun places and parks. I quickly learned, however, that Boystown stopped at Belmont Avenue, and that riding the bike lane south down Halsted soon landed me in the Industrial West Loop, and at the first 6-way intersection I’d ever seen.

Needless to say, I was lost for an afternoon trying to figure out where the hell Haslted went, what the hell Milwaukee lead to, and if I even needed to bother with Chicago Avenue at all.

Since those first few fateful months as a bicyclist in a big city, I’ve learned my lesson more than a few times (falling off of my bike, having my bike run-over, getting hit by an SUV, finding myself biking in parts of the city unfamiliar and uninviting, or having my bike stolen), but I still somehow manage to maintain a passion and love for hopping on two wheels once the weather gets warm. There is nothing like the satisfaction of canceling my Chicago Transit Card every April, saving energy, the environment, and money.

The city of Chicago has encouraged and endorsed bicycling since the late 19^th century, and stands as a beacon in the American bicycling industry. Today, many amateur and commuter bicyclists can be seen cycling the city streets on predominant Schwinn models, a brand built and marketed in Chicago by German inventor, Ignaz Schwinn, in 1895.

The use of bicycles as public transportation fell during the rise and boom of the automobile (which Ignaz Schwinn took as an opportunity to manufacture motorcycles) but it regained demand during the great depression when the sale of motorbikes plummeted.

The Schwinn has been called “The Cadillac of American Bicycles”*, and often these are the bicycles you’ll see rebuilt and sold at many of Chicago’s used bicycle shops. Most notably, they can be found at the Working Bike Cooperative located near Roosevelt and Western Avenue, or Nearly New on North Broadway, just south of Uptown.

The Working Bikes Cooperative is a non profit organization that “diverts bicycles from the waste stream in Chicago by repairing them for sale and charity [to the]… Gulf Coast, Cuba, Guatemala, Ecuador, and many other places of need.”

A few years ago, during the city’s annual Bike to Work Week (BWW), a city-wide event sponsored by the Chicago Bicycle Federation, my bike got run over. Two years ago, during BWW, my tire skid on wet pavement and I walked away from the fall with a skinned elbow and bruised knees. One year ago, I was knocked off my bicycle by an SUV.

But because of the history, because it’s environmentally friendly, because of the exhilaration and freedom of getting to where you need to go on your own time, and because it’s always fun to get up after a fall, I continue to ride.

Every year.

Even in winter.

In a city.

Especially in a dress.

*Schwinn history from Wikipedia.

Hope

2009-10-22T06:38:00.009-05:00

is counting all the million kinds of possibilities

for dancing on this lazy afternoon

Casey at the Bat

2009-10-11T20:38:00.003-05:00

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to the hope which springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought, "If only Casey could but get a whack at that--
We'd put up even money now, with Casey at the bat."

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,
And the former was a hoodoo, while the latter was a cake;
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,
For there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat.

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,
And Blake, the much despisèd, tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;
It pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile lit Casey's face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt;
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance flashed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped--
"That ain't my style," said Casey. "Strike one!" the umpire said.

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;
"Kill him! Kill the umpire!" shouted someone on the stand;
And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the dun sphere flew;
But Casey still ignored it and the umpire said, "Strike two!"

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered "Fraud!"
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate,
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate;
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville--mighty Casey has struck out.

Contents of My Wallet

2009-10-06T15:20:00.017-05:00

Literary Magazine Contact
Physical Therapist Contact
Cupcake Contact
Dental Contact
Jewish Deli (now closed) Contact
Macedonian Hair Stylist Contact
New Englander Turned Wyoming Barista Contact
Bad Doctor Contact
Graphic Design Contact
Chicago Police Department - Area Five Detective Division Contact

These cupcakes look highly suspicious...

Where the Horseshoes Were

2009-09-27T13:51:00.015-05:00

My grandfather changes the subject,
talks about the sweet peppers, tells me,
“Never plant them near the hot peppers,”

talks about dominant hybridization,
teaches me the difference
between early and late tomatoes,

the grabbing beans and woodchucks
that can’t get to the carrots, tells me
the carrots have grown so much

since we weeded them last Saturday,
says, “You did that,” as I cower under stalks of rhubarb,
Watership Down everywhere.

Danger in every bud of radish, cabbage
a trap, we didn’t talk about the rains that week,
or the zucchini that should have blossomed

by now, or how many more summers
the soil will be tilled, how long
before the clover takes over –

Seventy-five years of gardening experience
and my grandfather looks at me and he says,
“Let me show you the pumpkins,”

      (blue eyes like mine in the sun)

“What are you staring at?” he asks.
“You won’t find them
standing there by the dill.”

*

“…And your mother tells me
            you have eaten all the sweet pickles
                  I canned for you last August….”

Hopscotch Remix

2009-09-23T19:24:00.005-05:00

sonds - Hopscotch (sibilant mix) by sibilant

Vermont is Summer

2009-09-19T11:27:00.024-05:00

Driving around in Solen’s Buick, waiting for a few months later when water would flood the engine, he and I were on speaking terms. We had just left his house after deciding his shower was the last place we’d see each other naked; until it became his friend's spare bedroom that evening, somewhere southeast of Montpelier; and even later, his bedroom somewhere between September and Halloween.

His car was littered with mixed tapes and poems and road maps and condom wrappers. My head was littered with all of these things and the illusion that they were mine. I was pregnant and from Canada, and so was he. We bummed cigarettes and never smoked them, wore large sweaters and drank martinis, sweet. I had just gotten over my phase of black coffee and he had just gotten over his depression. We were soaring through a state that is its own continent, bookstores with missing proprietors who left notes asking that we please figure in tax. So we did.

We found Lake Champlain after buying Nine Stories and Dubliners and dove in at two o’clock in the afternoon but still haven’t read them.

We ran naked, wondering if the cottages were empty this time of year as our hitchhiker took pictures. Solen developed them with white borders and I wondered if they were on purpose.

And when all of this was over, back in Massachusetts, after we kissed goodbye outside his house after photos, again, of me topless against water, I understood what he meant weeks prior when he said, "Lovers should be thrown in to ocean..."

"In the worst of weather."

Things to do to make things less boring:

2009-09-11T18:22:00.020-05:00

tell someone you like them
learn to play the ocarina
go to your favorite coffee shop and read a book for three hours
go to your favorite coffee shop and write a poem/play/story/novel for three hours
go for a bike ride
learn how to bake something new and complex
bake alaska
sell sex toys
go to yoga and don't get angry at the instructor
invite biddies over every sunday in winter to knit/craft/crochet
learn to sew
knit leg warmers
apply to graduate school
take a class in woodworking or pottery - something with your hands
write a letter to someone with only good news, because it's not always about you
send a book/cd/thank you card to someone you haven't seen
or spoken to in a long time
be a smart ass
read the Spiderwick Chronicles
carve a pumpkin
carve a gourd
put a snow cone on katie's doorstep
ring the doorbell
hide
(accidentally learn about dirt cones)

Logan Square (a photo blog for Diana)

2009-09-04T19:27:00.000-05:00

city berries

grape skeleton

a gaggle

pomegranate hearts

pomegranates ginger & lemon

they did it

fancy strappy suitcase found on the sidewalk

the rufs

edging

american bronze

a faulty string of blue christmas lights

city siding

tipsy house

Unspoken Hollows

2009-08-29T21:56:00.018-05:00

The furniture swelled like a knee hit on impact. Everything in the room a red balloon, imposing space. Nothing on the shelves ever asked permission to be there. Trinkets would just show up, brush some other, smaller object aside, set up shop, and bulldoze concern for any intentional placement. A snow bank regardless of meaning.

This is how the arrangement began, two battles: one of ease; one tactic. The fluidity between objects seemed unquestionable, even negotiable, until at night the kitchen cabinets would conspire against the vitamins; the vitamins would crouch in fear, doe-eyed.

They’d never find a home. One day they were in the basket, the next day sitting next to it, replaced by a hammock of bananas and oat bread. How were they supposed to know where they belonged? What right had they to maintain clout, let alone settle in a basket? Times were tough, and it took months before they settled on top of the fridge, unmoved unless popped open and swallowed, Vitamin A-Zinc for breakfast.

Finally, they knew their role.

Things were different in the entryway. The tapestry hung like a post-colonial British jacket, just so and ethnic enough to be cleansing: it claimed the entire region and was rumored to be Armenian. The coat rack had its doubts.

The Turkish icon in the dining hall was a gatekeeper, placed above an archway or door for protection. But it was strategically plotted without symbolism, hung on the wall to the left of the bookcase, alone, eye level, just an object. Its military assignment bent to fail. No one had the heart to tell it how awkward it looked, beady, helpless in the storm. Little did it know it had an army to back it. If only it could communicate freely, the little blue icon would find friends of variant sizes just outside the entry door, pinching pennies in a Mediterranean market.

Sadly, it never got the chance.

The candles in the bathroom were a whole other continent. Burned, rotated, moved, lit, spent, dropped, replaced, declined, forlorn, small flames of translucent orange and blue waning in the dimmed light of a drawn bath. They were comfort to no one, let alone themselves, pensive in every step beyond the door, a brisk movement swept them out.

Toilet paper became a backup plan, a gage of what wasn’t being done. Rolled, replaced, rolled, replaced, cardboard skeleton set on the back of the toilet, interrupting dialogue between hand lotion and exfoliant. “What the fuck are they doing here?” would be discussed by a waft of lavender. Sometimes it took weeks before the rolls found themselves moved to recycling, uncertain of the future, always treated as trash.

This is not to say these items were forgotten, more neglected. A pineapple could sit on the counter for more than a week before slaughter, squared and angled, thick skin like an armadillo’s shell, the frightened glisten of a blade. These were the afternoons, unforgivable, transitions objects never asked for, or prepared to face.

Picture frames drew such animosity on the walls, straight lined, trimmed with a modern frailty, a contemporary compliance. Nothing was to be guild. Shawls draped on reading chairs in the parlor scolded for being comfortable, for daring to intrude on the solitude of scarcity. After all, these were minimalist times, no matter how antique the furniture.

The radiators screeched all winter, pitying their immobility, suffocated the rooms with their stubbornness, their diligence – the only entities with history, omniscient as narrators come. They told nothing of their stories, but railed and banged when left quiet, the chill of frozen pangs unbearable.

They had no say in anything.

1950’s bulbs kept watch over the bedroom, held their shields with dignity and elegance, swore allegiance to the eastern wall. When the war broke out in the kitchen, they kept their post. Nothing would knock down their barrier, crush their spirit. They protected the shimmer of canvas, the ruby dress of a nightingale. Held strong against the bitterest of seasons, tasted the sweet caress of moisture and song. The light made love to the navy, silk blue of summer, flirtation of wind, dance of petals from the flesh of an orchid in the heart of a vulva, the heated pulse of a flower.

The day the rains came the spices were unruly. Packed and organized in baked goods and savory. They spilled themselves all over the counter and begged for mercy. Cabinet doors flew open and slammed shut, demanding attention, a tantrum fit for kings. The L’s were the worst. No one had anticipated their cunning, never mind their existence. Even the saffron had trouble keeping up with their tactics, a passive herb frailer than a vanilla bean.

The L’s had been quiet, laying in wait for a year, a human emblem possessing a species, claiming what vigilant anthropomorphists had been fighting to free for years – the angles of personality and perception, each object it’s own vision.

When the tensions erupted between the cinnamon, the sticks acted as bystanders – they wanted nothing to do with being ground. Still, the fury amounted when the pink container full of fresh cinnamon screamed it was for breast cancer, putting the room at a standstill.

“What did she say?” whispered the rosemary.

Everyone in the room was in disbelief. Even the mirrors had trouble reflecting what had just occurred. That’s when it happened. The pink strip label on the jar raising awareness for breast cancer pulled up its skirt and bared its undergarments, its curved bottom exposed to the air and there, in the middle of its base was scrawled a tiny symbol in permanent marker, scarred and claimed forever.

The shape was that of the aforementioned L, or flipped upside down, the western unit 7. When more of the spices began to expose themselves in a similar fashion, bare ass in the early morning, surrendering their tails as a pitiful last ditch effort of defense, the unmarked objects knew they had won. The war was over, and at last the hostages were able to secede to calmer the regions of generosity. The bolted door breezed open, and for the first time in a year, repression lifted and materialism ended.

None of the objects in any adjacent room knew quite what the horrible symbol stood for, or why it attacked the cinnamon first, then spread to the baking powder, basil, nutmeg, tarragon, lemon pepper, and oregano. The vitamins on the fridge counted their blessings the disgruntled cabinets had been such disagreeable hosts, lest they be marred by the tracking symbol themselves, “Thank Goodness!” they cried.

There was little talk of the human branding incident for years, till finally, when it was safe to tell the story as lore, variants of the tale traveled through pipes of old homes, scaring containers of discontented powders, keeping peace between apartment buildings as warning. No object ever thought it would happen to them, but then, there might be a reason radiators in aged buildings squeal louder than they used to, fearing the rivals of forced air so alarmingly, unable to keep their secrets much longer, wary of their own extinction, bracing corners, waiting.

A Primer

2009-08-24T01:49:00.009-05:00

by Bob Hicok

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”
can sincerely use the word “sincere.”
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we’re not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.
It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn’t ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. “What did we do?”
is the state motto. There’s a day in May
when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

August ~ October

2009-08-20T11:01:00.013-05:00

via chicago ~ wilco
from: some Blueberry Hill members having a good time in Chicago

Eppy's on Sunday

2009-08-11T11:10:00.024-05:00

Ghost store fronts, abandoned buildings & broken homes

cruise down Lake Shore Drive, imagine

limestone, brick, steel, blue glass facade of the skyline,

bright pink clouds behind a fluorescent orange peel pink Ferris Wheel,

the heated summer horizon.

We step into city streets, the sweat,

the condensation down a translucent brown glass bottle -

we are 12 again, overarching memory, a cool, humid day,

mauled by the scratch of nails along a window, a door frame:

"They are reconstructing disbelief in there."

Slack-jawed in front of scattered marbles, empty crates,

cans, stainless steel pots, hot burners,

a tornado of chairs, an economy of yellow, empty

walls, the register's chimed closed,

no discount or Matzo ball soup on Sunday -

In winter, -10 degrees meant free Tomato & Basil soup

at Eppy's, the owner kicked out anyone

caught red-handed with a Subway sandwich,

Reuben discount on St. Patty's Day, and the front page reads:

Family Owned Business Opposes Chain Corporate Culture.

Another beacon is renamed in a recession, and the tour guide

tells you "This has happened before," and the city reflected in itself,

struggles to keep ahead, selling fast, selling hard -

everything turns silver and the ditch is put on hold,

abandoned - every year. The view changes.

The water gets farther and farther from the land,

the land-like mass is exempt from environmental caution,

parking meters bagged and hanged, uprooted landfills, recycled dump,

crushed glass into someone else is taking care of this.

Outside, the parks and clank of baseball bats,

no gloves, the blue team's winning,

we water dying plants, spider mites, read books

and re-imagine decor, face boarded windows,

missing teeth, mourn our favorite small businesses,

about face, and move on.

2009 Pitchfork Recap

2009-07-20T12:53:00.047-05:00

Ok, so the subject link has absolutely nothing to do with the Pitchfork Music Festival, but holy crap! Mad collaboration. Atlas Sound/Panda Bear. I dig it, and am not surprised at all. Beautiful. Go listen.

I bailed on Pitchfork's Friday night performances (seen Yo La Tango too many times, Tortoise I'll see at the Bottle someday, Built to Spill has never enraptured me, and I am unfamiliar with The Jesus Lizard), however, Saturday and Sunday splashed Chicago's Union Park with the traditional indie-pop, garage rock, hipster flock, hip-hop, and astoundingly talented closers, as always. 2008 Animal Collective stole my heart, 2009 Flaming Lips hit the stage just as the sky turned violet and the green burst from the trees.

Old church steeples and broken roof slates to the West, the Sears tower (with whatever dignity it has left) to the East, the Green Line to the North (rumbling behind Connector), and the city's industrial South surrounds the small park off Ashland Avenue.

Disappears vanished on me for the second time this year on Saturday, as I arrived 30 seconds after their final song, definitely placing an annoying lull to the beginning of my day. Fucked Up's hardcore came to my rescue, caressing anger, guitar screams necessary for a pissed off start, soon followed by the soft vocals and violin of Final Fantasy. Yeasayer's rain soaked dance party opened my chest in late afternoon, refreshing the staggering agitation in the air: "I like this, though I have no idea where they are going with it," is an accurate sentiment.

Doom offered much needed hip-hop beats, though somehow my heart was never quite into it. Squished in the mob by the tree at the Balance stage offered no view of the pop-punk duo Matt & Kim, but their positive optimism held strong until I was just able to see them by the time Daylight ended. The National enveloped my evening, and as much as they get slack, I enjoy their ethereal rock ballads - lullabies for the night time, daydreams for the soul.

When I locked up my bike at the South end of Union Park on Sunday, I couldn't help but settle into the fence behind the Balance stage, sucked into Michael Columbia, an unexpected electronic exhilaration. If I had known, I might have arrived a little earlier in the day. I'm sad to have missed the memorial at Dianogah, opting for Frightened Rabbit, Chicago-loved Scottish rock band, instead. I'd had my heart set on some bad boys from Scotland since the morning, scratchy as Hutchison's voice was during the set.

The afternoon was awash with no direction, so I opted for the art tent and record fair, favorites include: Clothespin, Soapbox Soaps, Circa Ceramics, CHIRP, 826CHI, Threadless, and the Active Transportation Alliance. I sat down for the end set of DJ/Rupture, but missed out on the dance party. Next I hit the power punk three-chord jumps of The Thermals, though I'd had enough of them by the time they busted out their Nirvana and Green Day covers. Sorry 1994.

Rainbow slicks in a mud puddle, The Walkmen pitter-pattered our hearts as Katie and I fell closer and closer to the stage. Though I somehow missed their earlier debuts, In The New Year's "And my heart's in the strangest place/And that's how it started," or even better, "Oh I'm just like you/I'll never hear the bad news," are two of the best verses I have ever heard, and Leithauser's vocal delivery only adds to their profundity. M83 followed up with a good dance mix, however cut short due to my interest in the all woman punk/grunge trio, The Vivian Girls. It was good to see Ali Koehler rocking out on the drums, and simple, solid guitar, drum, bass riffs sail through the collective vocals of Cassie Ramone and Kickball Katy (that just sounds hot). Grizzly Bear neglect on my part early in their open soon led me to the trance understanding of why I napped to them last year, and why I followed my feet amicability this year - solid, seductive sound.

Finally the night turned to a surprising close as I was reluctant to stay for the Flaming Lips set, then enamored by their playfully ridiculous performance. You can't beat three dozen giant balloons and cannons of confetti amidst a colorful backdrop, Wayne's megalomania aside. I have also never seen them perform a disappointing show, so when song 25 on the request list was announced and I heard the beginning of Bad Days, my Pitchfork Festival $65 investment became immediately and undeniably worth it.

Eric and I settled on a 9:30 departure and headed toward the B stage to give a quick shout out to The Very Best, then fell into one of the most beautiful, unexpected moments of the entire weekend. For the first time since his death, I celebrated Michael Jackson's contribution to music history. In memory of the late singer/songwriter, The Very Best sampled "Will You Be There," pressing through the speakers and into our feet. We danced and pedaled to our bicycles, closing the 2009 Pitchfork gate behind us, reminding us -

In your dreams, show no mercy.

And to further extend my point:

2009-07-13T10:10:00.023-05:00

Slugs are good for the environment, too.

Many props to Pom-town for sending me the above link, and for her encouragement of my "gastropoddy ways."

Though, as of late, I've been thinking I should have focused my blog on pollywogs...

Why?

Because pollywog is the best word in the English language.

Pollywiggle is a close second:

"Middle English 'polwygle' (literally 'wiggle-head') was an alternate word for the tadpole, the larval stage of the frog.(3) A number of dialect and local variants existed e.g. porriwiggle, purwiggy, pollywiggle, pollywoggle. In his Dictionary Samuel Johnson cross referenced tadpole and 'porwigle'(4)" (OED Online).

And for those of you unfamiliar, Samuel Johnson's dictionary is awesome.

The Best Poem Written For Me Ever!

2009-07-09T16:36:00.005-05:00

Cereal by Mark Kenseth (yay!)

that box of puffin cereal
on top of the fridge
is for you

while you were on vacation
i snacked on your puffin cereal

it started with a handful
and then some more

and even though they
were a little stale
they were really good

so i finished them
and promised to buy you more

i bought two boxes last week,
one for me and one for you,
cause now i want them as a snack
while the other was for you

but i couldn't get a box to your place
since i ride my bike most of the time

now i have both boxes sitting in my pantry
but that's ok
because i like them so much

but i like you too
so that's why last night
while at whole foods
i picked up a box of puffin cereal
just for you
____________________________________________

And very similar to:

This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet and so cold
______________________________________________

Two amazing poets!

Matthew Zapruder's Exquisite Corpse

2009-07-06T21:54:00.003-05:00

Written by the students in Matthew Zapruder's Collaborative Craft Session at Juniper, Summer 2009

The tiger lilies sulked along the highway median in late morning.
The sky cracked its spine, shakes the morning off.
Beyond the waterfall, the deer watch us in silence.
Context concreted without spires.
Later, she said, Yes. Said, drive.
I think to myself, I really like baseball, it is a fair sport.
We picked our way through spider webs jeweled with dew.
The girl walking in the morning in the city had blue hair.
Did you notice the purification writ involved the senate.
Simple, thin pea soup.
Someone puts three flowers on Glass Road, for winter.
I don't know how to write a Breviary.
The beautiful bird becomes you.
The page arrives before me. Listening stops.
A house of cards is built card by card.
It's a lot like ennui.
Revolutionary squirrels are everywhere.
This makes no difference to a cat.
All active acrobats eat coed peaches for breakfast.
And you chewed the dry bread.
Oh sea, you eat me. You sneaky bastard sea.

The Confines of an Orbit

2009-06-24T15:18:00.028-05:00

The flood of azul against the core of the sun, a filtration system for calm. Miranda paints the gate, now mucked by mud at the bottom where splinters are most wet. Where here, a little dog lifts its leg to piss into a post that sinks into the crust. The grass is not tended, the earth trodden where heavy boots step. Where here, there is no relief, she carries baskets, plants roses, paces the confines of an orbit, the agitation of small space.

Inviting the Expanse

2009-06-11T08:37:00.007-05:00

This poem now appears on the online literary journal Curbside Splendor Publishing.

Thank you for reading!

My Ideal World

2009-06-03T13:23:00.001-05:00

Seriously.

Ars Poetica

2009-06-01T20:06:00.007-05:00

This poem now appears in the literary journal vis a tergo.

Thank you for reading!

snails are good for the environment, too

Cemetery Project

The Audible Snail

1PM Hour

1:59 PMThe Fall Laptop Dog from Ersatz GB (Cherry Red)1:56 PMStephen Malkmus & The Jicks Dragonfly Pie from Real Emotional Trash (Matador)1:49 PMRatatat Breakaway from Sun and Shade (XL)1:45 PMThe Dutchess and the Duke Let It Die from Sunrise/Sunset (Hardly Art)

On Shortcomings & Poetry

Take Up Your Arms

The Fantasy in Horror

Poems About Radios

by the first of august / the invisible beetles began

the trick is to use a primer of crushed pearls for a spectacular under-sheen

List 4 : JUNE : THINGS THAT MAKE US HAPPY [or the extended demons I found in a used book]

What We Give

Country of Cherry Blossoms

The Bachelors & The Bowery Bums

Radical Snail Press Presents: An AWP Off-site Reading

But, damn! The moon!

by Ven. Samu Sunim

_____________And this:

Enlightenment is a Bitchby Dane Cervine

_____________

Prairie Pods at Broadside Books in Northampton!

Reasons to Survive November

Radical Snails at Women & Children First!

Because, sometimes.

The Poem in God's Silence

Inviting the Expanse at The Boring Store & Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago!

Underwater Basket Weaving Orientation Reading

Hard At Work On Handmade Capes

Makers

Juniper Update

The Anti-Snail Campaign!

The Women I Like Best

A Good Reminder

Snails, Morels & Sonnets

In Any Language

A Perfect Day for a Bike Ride

Springs Breaking Poetry Reading at Transistor

Someday, I will know this poem by heart:

Radical Snail

Further Proof

The Girl in Selecting a Reader

Pascha on Palm Sunday

It could have been otherwise.

Unveiling the Tofu Curtain

Top 10 Highlights of a New England Christmas

Stretched on the hoop where I stitched this adage...

It is just the thing!

a glimpse at what I do for a living

Happy December

Generate

but most of all the world is a place where parts of wholes are combined

Pirouette

Especially In a Dress

Hope

Casey at the Bat

Contents of My Wallet

Where the Horseshoes Were

Hopscotch Remix

Vermont is Summer

Things to do to make things less boring:

Logan Square (a photo blog for Diana)

Unspoken Hollows

A Primer

August ~ October

Eppy's on Sunday

2009 Pitchfork Recap

And to further extend my point:

The Best Poem Written For Me Ever!

Matthew Zapruder's Exquisite Corpse

The Confines of an Orbit

Inviting the Expanse

My Ideal World

Ars Poetica

1:59 PMThe Fall Laptop Dog from Ersatz GB (Cherry Red)
1:56 PMStephen Malkmus & The Jicks Dragonfly Pie from Real Emotional Trash (Matador)
1:49 PMRatatat Breakaway from Sun and Shade (XL)
1:45 PMThe Dutchess and the Duke Let It Die from Sunrise/Sunset (Hardly Art)

_____________

And this:

Enlightenment is a Bitch
by Dane Cervine