Sing out, Louise.

Day 2 of visiting my brother Josh's family in California. The strange sensation accompanying my days may be relaxation. I find myself at a loss for words, but remembering that Josh had asked what I was listening to these days, here is a tiny piece of an answer:

The Shivers | Just Didn't Need to Know


Beirut | Elephant Gun


Marina & the Diamonds | I Am Not A Robot

The artist Thommy Conroy introduced Beirut to me about a year ago and I have not stopped listening to them since. (Thommy is always inspiring to me - I think a poet needs painters and other visual artists to keep a whole perspective sometimes....by whole, I mean not confined by the limits of language.) The other two songs are picks from Miz Becca Darling's blog the bee charmer, which I recently rediscovered and just had to share with you, who ever you are.

a poetfriend

My dear friend, Matthew Siegel, has a new website. I met Matt about three and a half years ago, at the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, which I would highly recommend to any undergraduate who is serious about writing. Matt's poems have always been instructive to me, as a poet who often writes about pain. I love his sense of humor, the simple intimacy of his voice. There is some unwavering clarity to many of his poems, even when expressing that which is most uncertain, most difficult. Here is one such poem:


Blood Work

The white sky is a gauze pad pressed
over my vein as the needle slips out.

The woman who draws from me smiles, she always
remembers me, no matter how skinny I might get.

No matter how dark the circles under my eyes become,
she remembers me and how easy my veins are

so visible, so thick that she doesn’t even have to tie my arm,
but she does, and takes the smaller one

the bigger one too easy. I don’t tell her
the best to take my blood was a different woman

who used to take blood from animals,
part the fur, find their blue tap and drain.

She lets me play with the test tubes of my blood
can you feel how warm they are? That’s how warm you are inside

and I nod, think about condoms, tissues,
all the things that contain us but cannot.

Uncreate / Removement

A poem from my short series "Self-Portrait with Husk" is now up at 42opus.

I've been thinking a lot about over-exposure, image management, privacy, secrets, the reasons we lie. The difference in care between honesty & full disclosure. The notion of "values," the socially-constructed importance ascribed to having "values" that fit with the moral standard of the maladjusted mass. The superficiality of certainty and the things people do in the name of their belief system. I've been thinking about the idea of uncreation that my friend Anna talks about, in reference to old ideas & modes of being - my personal term for this might be removement.

Getting back into african dance.

Watching this movie again ASAP.

Hungry Sphinx Reading Series

Next week I'll be featured at the Hungry Sphinx Reading series alongside the poet Jerome Crooks. I've never been to the series, but it's run by Carlow University undergraduates & I've been informed the cafe's quite cozy.

Tuesday, November 17th
8 pm - 10 pm

Open Mic follows feature
(Bean, if you're reading this, WINKWINK)

No cover / one drink minimum

Sphinx Cafe
401 Atwood St. (corner of Bates & Atwood)
412-621-1153


In other news, for the past two weeks I have been reading a few John Ashbery poems every morning while eating breakfast, pre-coffee. The effect is delightful.