ship inside a bottle, if your body is the bottle

Today is a nice day. Cold outside in Texas enough for the black coat with the two buttons sewn back on with blue thread.

Four of my poems are featured this week at The Offending Adam, with a very nice introduction by Matthew Siegel.

Also up today is my short essay,"The Passing Word," at Gulf Coast.


Here is a song by my friend Anna:

let's not try to figure out everything at once

Dorothy took a picture of me at the pool this summer. Nobody much was there that day.

TO SPEAK IS TO RISK

Who says what and how and whose business is it anyway?

Is this especially true in my little corner of the internet? Yes, it damn well is. If I am not writing violent things along the lines of "I'm going to blow up XYZ with (insert explosive thing here) at X time, for sure," then at worst, my words should only be a danger to a reader's worldview or comfy perception of How Things Are.

As far as I am concerned, I can say anything I want. So can you. And so can that other guy. So can JSA Lowe, who is a poet and a PhD candidate here at the University of Houston. This is her blog, lycanthropia. and, to my complete surprise, THIS is what she wrote on HTMLGIANT after someone in her workshop at school read her blog, expressed concern to a workshop leader, and the workshop leader (I don't know who) confronted her saying something like this:

…people have come to me who are concerned…other students in the program… upset… distressed…compromising their experience of the program… haven’t read it myself, that would break boundaries for me…affects their perception of you…their sense of you as a professional…writing about very intimate matters… damage your standing with your colleagues…makes people uncomfortable…took it to the department chair [and here my brain made an almost audible shorting-out sound] and he agrees with me…run the risk of this having a real effect on your career…future employment…could jeopardize your standing in the program….really best that you not.. writing about such personal things so publicly…consider…think about the wisdom of… importance of being collegial…for your own sake….

Lowe continues:

"It’s still Monday morning. I’m sitting frozen in a strange office trying to scramble my resources for some sort of a response. And I’m pretty sure I have The Wrong Look on my face. I’m supposed to be—what, grateful for this intelligence? Contrite? I don’t know. Probably warring on my features instead: incredulity, disbelief, the deepest shame and anger. Of course I am ashamed. I was born ashamed. The blog is part of my attempt to counter some of that—

(Went to the department chair? Students are upset? Who? Why didn’t they approach me like grown-ass people? Why did they go to one of my professors, why this professor? What the fuck did I write that was so awful? If my blog is so distressing to them, why don’t they just not read it?)

(And is there any irony in the fact that my creative writing program apparently wants me to put a sock in my creative writing?)"


You can read the rest of the essay yourselves, if you are a blogger, or a writer or a parent or loved one of anyone who writes. Lowe is bringing up important issues with a lot of investigative clarity in a tone not quite as pissed off as mine. I am livid about the whole thing. I don't write much in this blog that is terrifically personal, but I have in the past. If you read the whole thing you could probably surmise some not terribly pretty things about me, but you might come to the same conclusions about me if you read my poetry. I work in a high school, teaching 14 year olds about poetry. If they're writing dark stuff, I don't tell them not to write it, I don't contact their parents, I talk to them. I use my judgement. I treat them like young adults. I use my judgement about what's a threat, what's a behavioral problem, and what's metaphor, what's creative expression, what's the sight of them processing a tough experience. For me to shut any of that down without talking directly to them would just be disrespectful.

Jennifer, yes, I "still cloak a lot of what (I) write in lyric incomprehensibility, just to be on the safe side, but also because that’s how (my) brain works," but if you don't want to, if the larger You doesn't want to, you shouldn't have to, and anyone who tells you otherwise can go marinate in their fear cave.

and i asked myself, don't you just love it? then, why don't you just love it?

It's that time of the year when I start to feel, well, terrible.

This year is different. There are Big Life Transitions that I'm not going to detail on the internet. I still feel terrible, but terrible in a way that pulses with placelessness, & possibilities, & love, & an odd overflow of hope / hopelessness which is somehow feeling like the same thing.

I have a big crush on dancing girl press & studio. How do people manage to keep things like this running? Are they independently wealthy? I would love to do something like this. Also, I would love to be independently wealthy. Also, I would love to own a little white llama and a patch of forest where he could live. All of the above is equally unlikely, so I will just keep my crush.

Back to Pittsburgh on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. Very excited, though I have to leave little cat for a few days. The Glee Adele mash-up is in my head on repeat. Was that scene devastating or was it just me?

Hop along, chickadees.

ἀποκάλυψις apokálypsis; "lifting of the veil"

ask me how

forgetting something


Try this—close / your eyes. No, wait, when—if—we see each other / again the first thing we should do is close our eyes—no, / first we should tie our hands to something / solid—bedpost, doorknob— otherwise they (wild birds) / might startle us / awake. Are we forgetting something? What about that / warehouse, the one beside the airport, that room / of black boxes, a man in each box? I hear / if you bring this one into the light he will not stop / crying, if you show this one a photo of his son / his eyes go dead. Turn up / the heat, turn up the song. First thing we should do / if we see each other again is to make / a cage of our bodies—inside we can place / whatever still shines.


--- nick flynn

i was a guest in the yoke / of my body

At Thirty

Whole years I knew only nights: automats
& damp streets, the Lower East Side steep

with narrow rooms where sleepers turn beneath
alien skies. I ran when doorways spoke

rife with smoke & zippers. But it was only the heart's
racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want

until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke
of my body by the last margin of land where the river

mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens,
a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as

barges loose glittering mineral freight
& behind me façades gleam with pigeons

folding iridescent wings. Their voices echo
in my voice naming what is lost, what remains.

-- Lynda Hull

To Friend

Facebook made "friend" a verb, which is a little unfortunate, since "befriend" was working just fine More unfortunate is the awkward verb "unfriend," but so it goes.

This is a post about friends, about poetfriends.

I really like this poem by my poetfriend Alexis Orgera at H_NGM_N.

If you are in Pittsburgh today (November 9th), you should go see the lovely and talented poetteacherfriend D.A. Powell read for free.

Today is the BIRTHDAY of my poetfriend Leigh Phillips, who is brilliant and endlessly inspiring. Sometimes she falls into despair about writing, but even the expression of her despair is poetry. Go say Happy Birthday to her on Twitter.


Our submissions are open at Gigantic Sequins for issue 3.2. This is included in a post about friends, because small journals are very friendly. They purr. Send us some writing on fire.

Unexpected Meeting

We are very polite to each other,
insist it’s nice meeting after all these years.
Our tigers drink milk.
Our hawks walk on the ground.
Our sharks drown in water.
Our wolves yawn in front of the open cage.
Our serpents have shaken off lightning,
monkeys---inspiration, peacocks---feathers.
The bats---long ago now---have flown out of our hair.
We fall silent in mid-phrase,
smiling beyond salvation.
Our people
have nothing to say.

--Wislawa Szymborska

you were there, and you, and you

CODA

And now I know what most deeply connects us

after that summer so many years ago,
and it isn’t poetry, although it is poetry,

and it isn’t illness, although we have that in common,

and it isn’t gratitude for every moment,
even the terrifying ones, even the physical pain,

though we are grateful, and it isn’t even death,

though we are halfway through
it, or even the way you describe the magnificence

of being alive, catching a glimpse,

in the store window, of your blowing hair and chapped lips,
though it is beautiful, it is; but it is

that you’re my friend out here on the far reaches

of what humans can find out about each other.

—Jason Shinder




go home go home go on get gone

thanksgiving's coming soon, thank god

next semester, if everything works out, I get to take a class with edward albee and go to the ocean as much as i want.

a friend sent me his new manuscript. it reminded me to pay attention; he'd somewhat fallen into victimhood. being a victim is easy. owning your stuff, your garbage, baggage, baloney - that's hard. owning the places you've really fucked up. cleaning up. packing up, unpacking. i understand that you can write a book about a garden without writing about the sweat it took to plant it, without the times you cursed the ground, but why would you? why write the real dark as something imagined? maybe it means you could write your way out of there, temporarily, while the lights flash and you sign your book, do interviews talking about your book; i understood that the phrase to re-write history, implied avoidance, choices. I think it means something much darker now.

i should be fair. be fare, be fine, be-yond. last month, in the back of my notebook, he wrote a note that made me cry, that i needed to press to my chest for awhile, to soothe what felt torn there. and then one day, i didn't need to. i walked into the present tense. the air was just cold enough, and the sun was out -- it is fall in texas and the monarchs are coming through on slow loping wings on their way to the gulf. today i'm writing a paper, going to workshop, tomorrow waking up at 3 a.m. to go to the ocean with zach and eric.

good morning, chickadees, get up. let's go.