Sunday, October 31, 2010
Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living they are moving among, or the dead.
From The Duino Elegies - R.M.Rilke
The First Elegy
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
rest of the elegy here, along with the second (i'm sorry about the mess this format's made of line breaks)
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Woman Walking On The Road - by Terrance Hayes
We were in the car. We were heading home when Christian
with his wholly American name & manic chatter told his
girlfriend
the woman we saw walking on the road with no umbrella
was a sign of torment. We were in the backseat⎯
you with that face making the windows & the black world
beyond the windows beautiful, the roadside figure of a woman
in the rain beautiful & I knew later I’d be writing these lines,
caught in that space between personal & public:
a woman’s torment or symbol of it & our love & goddamn
everybody’s sins scribbled here for show. We were in the car
heading home when Christian said the woman on the road
was probably fresh from a fight with her husband,
but he didn’t say his fists gave his last girlfriend bruises
& I didn’t say it either… The woman was walking alone
on the shoulder & meant something different & utterly the same
to each of us⎯ her lit up life & husband left looking
from a window, as I have looked from a window, guilty.
But Guilt ain’t nobody’s business. We were in the car, we saw
a woman walking on the road. There was a woman who,
after our quarrels, would steal my car, a little blue Datsun
with a dented fender. She’d drive from our dorm to the blank
streets
of the town we lived in; she’d drive past the empty classrooms,
the soccer field, to God knows where & I wanted her, then,
away from me⎯ two red lights, a tired engine leaving smoke.
But one night I groped in the darkness beneath my hood
until I disconnected something & if there is such a thing
as malice,
that was it⎯ a man sabotaging his own car so his lover
couldn’t run…
I’m shaking my head because I want to say I’m different now,
like Christian⎯ someone with a new face beside him & a pain
no one can see, perhaps, settled in his chest. Your new face
beside me. I am damaged, I have bruised. We fought over
something
stupid & she came so close I knew she could smell my blood.
Have I come far enough to say I hit her; to say my hand left
a cloud
on her cheek. Have I come far enough to say, I’m sorry?
We were
in the car, you with that face making the windows & the world
beyond the windows real; the figure of the woman on the road
telling the truth. Once in my small brutal past a woman left me,
walked from my lit up fingers to the street with a storm
on her face.
It was raining. I watched from the window & could not follow,
my car sat in the lot disconnected, unopened, unmoved.
with his wholly American name & manic chatter told his
girlfriend
the woman we saw walking on the road with no umbrella
was a sign of torment. We were in the backseat⎯
you with that face making the windows & the black world
beyond the windows beautiful, the roadside figure of a woman
in the rain beautiful & I knew later I’d be writing these lines,
caught in that space between personal & public:
a woman’s torment or symbol of it & our love & goddamn
everybody’s sins scribbled here for show. We were in the car
heading home when Christian said the woman on the road
was probably fresh from a fight with her husband,
but he didn’t say his fists gave his last girlfriend bruises
& I didn’t say it either… The woman was walking alone
on the shoulder & meant something different & utterly the same
to each of us⎯ her lit up life & husband left looking
from a window, as I have looked from a window, guilty.
But Guilt ain’t nobody’s business. We were in the car, we saw
a woman walking on the road. There was a woman who,
after our quarrels, would steal my car, a little blue Datsun
with a dented fender. She’d drive from our dorm to the blank
streets
of the town we lived in; she’d drive past the empty classrooms,
the soccer field, to God knows where & I wanted her, then,
away from me⎯ two red lights, a tired engine leaving smoke.
But one night I groped in the darkness beneath my hood
until I disconnected something & if there is such a thing
as malice,
that was it⎯ a man sabotaging his own car so his lover
couldn’t run…
I’m shaking my head because I want to say I’m different now,
like Christian⎯ someone with a new face beside him & a pain
no one can see, perhaps, settled in his chest. Your new face
beside me. I am damaged, I have bruised. We fought over
something
stupid & she came so close I knew she could smell my blood.
Have I come far enough to say I hit her; to say my hand left
a cloud
on her cheek. Have I come far enough to say, I’m sorry?
We were
in the car, you with that face making the windows & the world
beyond the windows real; the figure of the woman on the road
telling the truth. Once in my small brutal past a woman left me,
walked from my lit up fingers to the street with a storm
on her face.
It was raining. I watched from the window & could not follow,
my car sat in the lot disconnected, unopened, unmoved.
Monday, October 25, 2010
When It Don't Come Easy
Announcement: I am god-damn tired of all this slippage, all these moments of almost-gone. Once, before he disappeared Derek and I were talking about his frustrations surrounding the HIV positive community - a community he never felt quite comfortable with. Sometimes, you know, I'm just tired of all these damn gays with the HIV. He pronounced HIV like "Live," but without the L. I must have laughed, said something about being tired of all these damn drunks.
So Derek's gone now, not dead, I don't think, just done. I wrote "done" meaning "gone," but I'll keep it -- why not? "Done" is a lie though.
This month - we got word from D's family -facts- about just how crazy it seemed he's gone; my brother struggled harder, raged around, dropped out of college; J (at 27) had heart attack, a collapsed lung; R relapsed again. Again, but this time I wasn't there, this time it was two hospital trips.
All this distance, all these times I would've sat in hospitals, by beds, held the hand of someone barely there, or there, and scared. Maybe it's something in me that wants to be needed, and hearing all of this - these people I love fallen to pieces, and slow healing... you know, maybe it's that they don't need me, not like I thought they might have. Better this immersion than to live untouched, said Lynda Hull. But she died young.
So Derek's gone now, not dead, I don't think, just done. I wrote "done" meaning "gone," but I'll keep it -- why not? "Done" is a lie though.
This month - we got word from D's family -facts- about just how crazy it seemed he's gone; my brother struggled harder, raged around, dropped out of college; J (at 27) had heart attack, a collapsed lung; R relapsed again. Again, but this time I wasn't there, this time it was two hospital trips.
All this distance, all these times I would've sat in hospitals, by beds, held the hand of someone barely there, or there, and scared. Maybe it's something in me that wants to be needed, and hearing all of this - these people I love fallen to pieces, and slow healing... you know, maybe it's that they don't need me, not like I thought they might have. Better this immersion than to live untouched, said Lynda Hull. But she died young.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
This past weekend, very suddenly, I found myself in Boston -- Chickadees, I cannot tell you how giddy I was, when I stepped out of the airport, to have that Northern chill hit me. More awake than I'd been in months. So, I went because my dear dear friend Tom Johnston curated a really great event to tie up the Boston Book Festival titled The Book Revue, a great mix of writers who rock & rockers who write - but wait, first I should tell you about the concert we went to on Friday night, where Dean & Britta opened for Belle & Sebastian. Chris Colbourn (Buffalo Tom) was so kind as to give me one of his comp tickets (THANK YOU), which happened to be in something like the 10th row, center. AND he shared his junior mints. Belle & Sebastian were fabulous, but what's in my head is this song from Dean & Britta.
By the way, if you think you don't know who Buffalo Tom is, you do, maybe you just don't know that you know:
Belle & Sebastian put on a ridiculously fun show - I never would've guessed that B&S fans are...how shall I put it... headbangers? But apparently they are. Everybody dances like crazy.
Saturday was spent zipping around, Mike's Diner in the South End for breakfast, then to the Boston Public Library where our friend Nick Flynn was on a memoir panel along with Marianne Leone, and Jerald Walker. Afternoon, again, a flurry of running, and eventually getting over to John Hancock Hall in Back Bay, to basically hang around while some of the performers - Dean Wareham, Kristen Hersh, Joe Pernice, Steve Almond - got ready. Fast forward to Au Bon Pain, split pea soup, a nice BU professor whose name I forget reciting Hopkins, Steve Almond vaguely discussing truth through a story about Steven Elliot's expression of love. Spent half of the show backstage, watching next to Nick Zinner (guitarist of YYYs) and his book friends, and half in the audience.
Jumping into Tom's life is always wildly energizing, or, really, simply full of a crazed energy. It's so out of my hermetic, interior life, all that banging around, meeting rockers, running from venue to venue, staying up too late, eating meals in groups of eight or nine. There's more to tell, Chickadees, (about a great, great play called The Method Gun.. about how excited I am for New Year's Eve) but I have to go read some Wordsworth. More later perhaps...
By the way, if you think you don't know who Buffalo Tom is, you do, maybe you just don't know that you know:
Belle & Sebastian put on a ridiculously fun show - I never would've guessed that B&S fans are...how shall I put it... headbangers? But apparently they are. Everybody dances like crazy.
Saturday was spent zipping around, Mike's Diner in the South End for breakfast, then to the Boston Public Library where our friend Nick Flynn was on a memoir panel along with Marianne Leone, and Jerald Walker. Afternoon, again, a flurry of running, and eventually getting over to John Hancock Hall in Back Bay, to basically hang around while some of the performers - Dean Wareham, Kristen Hersh, Joe Pernice, Steve Almond - got ready. Fast forward to Au Bon Pain, split pea soup, a nice BU professor whose name I forget reciting Hopkins, Steve Almond vaguely discussing truth through a story about Steven Elliot's expression of love. Spent half of the show backstage, watching next to Nick Zinner (guitarist of YYYs) and his book friends, and half in the audience.
Jumping into Tom's life is always wildly energizing, or, really, simply full of a crazed energy. It's so out of my hermetic, interior life, all that banging around, meeting rockers, running from venue to venue, staying up too late, eating meals in groups of eight or nine. There's more to tell, Chickadees, (about a great, great play called The Method Gun.. about how excited I am for New Year's Eve) but I have to go read some Wordsworth. More later perhaps...
Monday, October 11, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
A Celebration of Fall
I am fairly sad that there is no real fall in Houston. Sure, it gets a bit cold at night, but the leaves are not falling, there is no nip in the air, no slightly sweet scent of decay, no buckeyes, no chunky sweaters or thick tights to wear. So, because I am sad, here are two funny fall-related things.
True Affection - THE BLOW
From McSweeney's, 2009 :
IT'S DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS. By Colin Nissan
- - - -
I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.
I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, "Aren't those gourds straining your neck?" And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, "It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not."
Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they're both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that's upsetting, but I'm not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.
The next thing I'm going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I'm going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it's not summer, it's not winter, and it's not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it's fall, fuckers.
Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you're going to fucking love my house. Just look where you're walking or you'll get KO'd by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you're going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.
For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.
Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!
True Affection - THE BLOW
From McSweeney's, 2009 :
IT'S DECORATIVE GOURD SEASON, MOTHERFUCKERS. By Colin Nissan
- - - -
I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.
I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I'm going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, "Aren't those gourds straining your neck?" And I'm just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, "It's fall, fuckfaces. You're either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you're not."
Carving orange pumpkins sounds like a pretty fitting way to ring in the season. You know what else does? Performing an all-gourd reenactment of an episode of Diff'rent Strokes—specifically the one when Arnold and Dudley experience a disturbing brush with sexual molestation. Well, this shit just got real, didn't it? Felonies and gourds have one very important commonality: they're both extremely fucking real. Sorry if that's upsetting, but I'm not doing you any favors by shielding you from this anymore.
The next thing I'm going to do is carve one of the longer gourds into a perfect replica of the Mayflower as a shout-out to our Pilgrim forefathers. Then I'm going to do lines of blow off its hull with a hooker. Why? Because it's not summer, it's not winter, and it's not spring. Grab a calendar and pull your fucking heads out of your asses; it's fall, fuckers.
Have you ever been in an Italian deli with salamis hanging from their ceiling? Well then you're going to fucking love my house. Just look where you're walking or you'll get KO'd by the gauntlet of misshapen, zucchini-descendant bastards swinging from above. And when you do, you're going to hear a very loud, very stereotypical Italian laugh coming from me. Consider yourself warned.
For now, all I plan to do is to throw on a flannel shirt, some tattered overalls, and a floppy fucking hat and stand in the middle of a cornfield for a few days. The first crow that tries to land on me is going to get his avian ass bitch-slapped all the way back to summer.
Welcome to autumn, fuckheads!
Friday, October 8, 2010
Venti Latte vs. A Chance to Win a 2010 Wave Books subscription?
Gigantic Sequins (the literary magazine I'm the poetry editor for) is holding a fund-raising raffle (that's right, I said RAFFLE!) to fund our future adventures in publishing.
And what can I win from this raffle? you ask. Well, says I, a lot of neat stuff. And, unlike a venti Starbucks latte, which probably costs around $5, your $5 raffle ticket might win you more lasting treats from places like Wave Books and ModCloth. Check out the link below to purchase a raffle ticket, find out more information on the drawing, and to see a more complete list of our prizes from musicians, small presses, etc. So so so much better than a latte!
Raffle Me, Baffle Me !
For more about Gigantic Sequins : we live here : http://giganticmagazine.wordpress.com/
More about Gigantic Sequins:
We're in the middle of our second season - issue 2.1 will be coming out towards the end of October, & 2.2 will be published likely in late winter. I'm excited to be publishing writers like Leigh Phillips, Jim Daniels, James Wagner, Jeremy Schmall, Anne Marie Rooney, and F. Daniel Rzicznek in our second season, and hope that some of you will send in work when we re-open submissions in the spring! If you are interested in submitting poetry, prose, or artwork in the future, look for our new submission guidelines within next month. Queries may be directed to giganticmagazine@gmail.com
And what can I win from this raffle? you ask. Well, says I, a lot of neat stuff. And, unlike a venti Starbucks latte, which probably costs around $5, your $5 raffle ticket might win you more lasting treats from places like Wave Books and ModCloth. Check out the link below to purchase a raffle ticket, find out more information on the drawing, and to see a more complete list of our prizes from musicians, small presses, etc. So so so much better than a latte!
Raffle Me, Baffle Me !
For more about Gigantic Sequins : we live here : http://giganticmagazine.wordpress.com/
More about Gigantic Sequins:
We're in the middle of our second season - issue 2.1 will be coming out towards the end of October, & 2.2 will be published likely in late winter. I'm excited to be publishing writers like Leigh Phillips, Jim Daniels, James Wagner, Jeremy Schmall, Anne Marie Rooney, and F. Daniel Rzicznek in our second season, and hope that some of you will send in work when we re-open submissions in the spring! If you are interested in submitting poetry, prose, or artwork in the future, look for our new submission guidelines within next month. Queries may be directed to giganticmagazine@gmail.com
Sunday, October 3, 2010
They cannot fix you. They try and try,
Days of perspective; let it lay, take leave, let up, get gone; go on.
Station
by Maria Hummel
Days you are sick, we get dressed slow,
find our hats, and ride the train.
We pass a junkyard and the bay,
then a dark tunnel, then a dark tunnel.
You lose your hat. I find it. The train
sighs open at Burlingame,
past dark tons of scrap and water.
I carry you down the black steps.
Burlingame is the size of joy:
a race past bakeries, gold rings
in open black cases. I don’t care
who sees my crooked smile
or what erases it, past the bakery,
when you tire. We ride the blades again
beside the crooked bay. You smile.
I hold you like a hole holds light.
We wear our hats and ride the knives.
They cannot fix you. They try and try.
Tunnel! Into the dark open we go.
Days you are sick, we get dressed slow.
Station
by Maria Hummel
Days you are sick, we get dressed slow,
find our hats, and ride the train.
We pass a junkyard and the bay,
then a dark tunnel, then a dark tunnel.
You lose your hat. I find it. The train
sighs open at Burlingame,
past dark tons of scrap and water.
I carry you down the black steps.
Burlingame is the size of joy:
a race past bakeries, gold rings
in open black cases. I don’t care
who sees my crooked smile
or what erases it, past the bakery,
when you tire. We ride the blades again
beside the crooked bay. You smile.
I hold you like a hole holds light.
We wear our hats and ride the knives.
They cannot fix you. They try and try.
Tunnel! Into the dark open we go.
Days you are sick, we get dressed slow.
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