a publication & a passing

I have a poem in the now out-in-the-world Spring issue of Ploughshares. It's a true true pleasure to be included, and alongside so many people I like and admire. Go order the issue - it will be well worth it. also: We will miss you, Adrienne Rich (1929-2012). from The Dream of a Common Language 1. My body opens over San Francisco like the day – light raining down each pore crying the change of light I am not with her I have been waking off and on all night to that pain not simply absence but the presence of the past destructive to living here and now Yet if I could instruct myself, if we could learn to learn from pain even as it grasps us if the mind, the mind that lives in this body could refuse to let itself be crushed in that grasp it would loosen Pain would have to stand off from me and listen its dark breath still on me but the mind could begin to speak to pain and pain would have to answer: We are older now we have met before these are my hands before your eyes my figure blotting out all that is not mine I am the pain of division creator of divisions it is I who blot your lover from you and not the time-zones or the miles It is not separation calls me forth but I who am separation And remember I have no existence apart from you 2. I believe I am choosing something now not to suffer uselessly yet still to feel Does the infant memorize the body of the mother and create her in absence? or simply cry primordial loneliness? does the bed of the stream once diverted mourning remember the wetness? But we, we live so much in these configurations of the past I choose to separate her from my past we have not shared I choose not to suffer uselessly to detect primordial pain as it stalks toward me flashing its bleak torch in my eyes blotting out her particular being the details of her love I will not be divided from her or from myself by myths of separation while her mind and body in Manhattan are more with me than the smell of eucalyptus coolly burning on these hills 3. The world tells me I am its creature I am raked by eyes brushed by hands I want to crawl into her for refuge lay my head in the space between her breast and shoulder abnegating power for love as women have done or hiding from power in her love like a man I refuse these givens the splitting between love and action I am choosing not to suffer uselessly and not to use her I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence. ( via Natalie Jabbar)

I wrote my name in yr book / only God knows where

my poem Say When is up at Pank Magazine.


We are still open for submissions at Gigantic Sequins until March 10th.


The song today is Laura Marling's Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)

i should learn to be your type / of thief

my poem houdini dog is at TYPO.

the artist is tim etchells.

the song is glass from field mouse via beecharmer, as always.

& learns by breaking

My poem Against Desire appears in the latest issue of Pebble Lake Review. There's a recording there too, of me reading the poem. I think it turned out nicely. Ploughshares just send me proofs last week, as did TYPO. A nice winter/spring publishing.


If you didn't know, Gigantic Sequins is still open for submission. The other day in workshop, Tony Hoagland said that he wanted "wet blood poems." Fresh kill. Send me some bloody poems.

Gigantic Sequins will be at AWP, at the bookfair, right next to Wave Books, which is amazing for so many reasons, including the fact that they've supported us via raffle donations for the past two years. We're having a reading too, on Saturday night. More about that later.


I am feeling quiet today, chickadees. Holding stillness. I taught my kids a little about syntax and discursive poetry and Carl Phillips and there's just so much I do not know. Off to read Transtromer and Moore and more and more.

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:

Very happy that yes, The Rumpus did publish my little essay on Gregory Orr. You can read it here.

Dreamy Sunday; after swimming, late lunch in a dimly lit Thai place with one of my oldest friends. I remember when he came out to me. We were 14 or 15, and he took me slowly by the wrist out of our friend's old mansion to stand in the dusk on the gravel driveway. I'd already known, of course, so it wasn't the information was the revelation, it was how much he trusted me.

Went to see Tree of Life last night. This is the summer of movies alone. Very needed. Writing a lot about movies these days. Tonight I'm watching A Prophet, directed by Jacques Audiard. Audiard has directed two beautiful movies in the past ten years, Read My Lips, and The Beat That My Heart Skipped -- I think I'm going to see the latter again soon, as I saw it in the theatre in Boston when it came out in 2005. I think Audiard is fascinated by brutality and beauty, how they can live so tightly knit together. He's a terrifically sensitive director.

Here are 9 poems Terrance Hayes thinks you should read, and he's right.

My fortune cookie today said "Necessity is the mother of risk."

So pleased to have two poems in the most current issue of The Normal School. (Saw it at Borders today!) Aannd extra-pleased too be in the same issue as D.A. Powell - great poet & teacher & a sweet friend.



From an interview with Gerald Stern, at The Rumpus :

"...there are hundreds of prisons—sexual, political, cultural. But being a prisoner also gives you impetus. The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don’t seem to have a subject. I don’t totally understand that. I did a reading recently at The New School for Best American Poetry; I published a poem there this year. Anyway, there were some very good poets at this reading, but there were also some who seemed more interested in being funny and making cute jokes and writing endlessly about nothing. It was narcissism, indulgence, no social consciousness, no sense of… We’re destroying the earth! We live in a country that’s governed by confusion and lies and that operates through greed and selfishness and cruelty. We’ve killed or forced into exile two million Iraqis. Where is the poetry? What are our important poets doing?"


Hope you're enjoying your weekend, chickadees.

Oh No ? Oh Yes!

Yesterday I received my contributor's copy of Oh No magazine. A great looking magazine for a first issue. While it's the habit of some writers to send young magazines writing they consider to be of a lesser quality, saving the big guns for more established publications, I have to speak up for the benefits of submitting work you really like to newly born magazines. They may, in fact, be more likely publish darlings that you'd be surprised to place anywhere else. I'm super pleased that Oh No has published my poem "River-heart Radio" which came out to 8 (count it, 8) pages. The poem is an experiment of 100 fragments after Michael Palmer, but that's all I'll say. If you want to know more, you can keep an eye out on the Oh No website - magazines will soon be available for purchase online.

Hope all of you chickadees are having a pleasant Tuesday. I'm off to a new coffee shop in the neighborhood to read Emerson. Houston is kind this season, open windows, the air with a slight warm wind. I'm filling my apartment with plants. It finally feels a little bit like I live here.

It wasn't just that you were just waving to me, but that we were waving to each other

Good afternoon, Chickadees, I'm on spring break and have spent the entire day so far indoors making art and thinking about art.

Example 1: new page in "The Humanity of Words," the collage book I have been making for almost ten years:




example 2:
This poem Anastasia and Sandman by Larry Levis makes me stop breathing a little bit.

example 3:
Listening to a very disembodying track by Patti Smith from Wave.



Here's the latest poetnews:

-- You can now order the latest copy of Lo-Ball, in which my work appears alongside that of folks like Steve Almond, Bob Hicok, Fanny Howe, Honorée Jeffers, Paul Lisicky, Cate Marvin, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Matthew Siegel, and David Trinidad. Honored to be in such good company.

-- Next Friday I'm driving to Louisiana to be part of a small literary festival called Delta Mouth, hosted by LSU. I'll be reading at Highland Coffee, after sitting on a panel discussing small journal publishing, alongside Adam Atkinson (OH NO books), Johannes Goransson & Joyelle McSweeney (Action Books), Blake Stephens (Delta Magazine), and Lauren Tussing-White (New Delta Review). And then I might drive to New Orleans for a night, if someone will feed my cat.

That's all. Hope you're having a good weekend.

so it goes

The new issue of Matchbook, in which I have a tiny Batman poem, is now available for purchase.


I have a new post up at the Gulf Coast blog, entitled When We Were Very Young. This may be the most purely sweet piece of prose I have written in years.



Last night I was sitting on a curb with my transgender friend E., bemoaning some of what's going on in my life. E. said that he is broke, so he can't complete the transition yet from F to M, which he's been wanting to do for years. I think I'll make a funny-looking guy, he says, I'm so short. I have to look at him like he's crazy, because he'll be attractive no matter what. It's his spirit that's attractive, his faith. I talk a little more about my issues & start to cry out of frustration, even though I'm also somehow calmed by the warm night, the little dot of the moon. E. asks me if I want to trade problems. I don't even think about saying Yes. We hug and say goodnight. He gets on his little yellow scooter and zips off. I get in my silver car and count my blessings. As tangled as they may be.

often he reckons, in the dawn, them up. / nobody is ever missing.

Over at Gigantic Sequins, where I am the poetry editor, we are getting ready to close the doors on this submission period & snuggle up to the work we think has got that je ne sais quoi. But - you have 4 MORE DAYS to submit your writing and art. For more information, hop on over to the Gigantic Sequins site. You can purchase issues online over there, or at the following fine bookstores:

Trident Booksellers & Cafe | 338 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

St. Mark’s Bookshop | 31 3rd Ave. New York, NY

bluestockings | 172 Allen St. New York, NY

Flying Object | 42 West St. Hadley, MA

We're revving our tiny journal engine & kicking this thing into the next gear. If there is an independent bookstore near you that you think would be a good match for Gigantic Sequins, please let me know.


Speaking of matches, check it out:



that's me holding Matchbook 3, from Small Fires Press, in which I have a tiny poem about Batman. I love love love tiny things, so it's very lovely to be published in this particular handmade form, an obvious labor of love. This issue debuted at AWP and will soon be available for purchase online at Small Fires Press.

Slapdash

Here's Speaking Out, my brief essay/rant on questions about creative responses to the rash of LGBT youth suicides & the search for voice, published on the staff blog for the literary magazine, Gulf Coast.

I can't quite stop thinking about Untitled, a film of pornstars reading poems by Laurel Nakadate, based on text by Dora Malech. It's not actually that I think the film itself is perfect, or even entirely well done - maybe I would've chosen different girls? some better spoken? set up filming so the sound would be more clear? given different direction? BUT.. but.. but... as I'm watching this whole thing sort of lazily, scanning through it, I come to Stacy Adams (at around 5 minutes) reading 'Hush Money' and think - What? I feel bad for her somehow, but intrigued. I watch it again. I go find the text of the poem, read it, watch the video again. I can't tell whether I feel tricked or disappointed or something else. The film's not what I'd call capital A art, but neither is it merely pedestrian. In any case, it made me think -it made me think about the poems, about poetry, and disrupted my daily. Maybe that's capital A art after all. It caught my attention doubly too, since after reading the text of 'Hush Money' and some others of Malech's, I realized, this is a poem I might not have stopped to take a second look at. I've been so caught up in narrative for so long, here I'd nearly forgotten this type of tight, splendid music. Below is the poem by Dora Malech that Stacy Adams reads, and there are more over at No Tell Motel, it's an easy sift through the archives.

Hush Money

Pretend this is legal. Pretend this is tender.
Composed of one carpel a pistil is simple.
Inside the engine, the piston's a-thrusting.
Spleen's an impostor, gland-like but ductless.
Chrysanthemums bloom and God's in Havana.
Shift the sandals and stand agape.
The corpse is in the copse, of course.




(and yes, yes, this is the inside of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh - stacks reflected in the window that looks into the dinosaur exhibit in the Museum of Natural History. Pittsburgh, I love you.)

Acceptances, fall & shining

There's been a lot of lovely acceptances in my world lately - I'm just quiet about them. Here's some poems of mine forthcoming in Winter/Spring 2011:

~ long poem (5 pages!!) called River-heart, Radio in OH NO Magazine

~ in Lo-Ball Magazine, my poem For Derek, Missing for 8 Months

~ in The Normal School, look for two poems - The Closest I Come To Prayer These Days and The Night Life.


Also, not sure when this will air but, while visiting Pittsburgh, I'll be taping an episode of Prosody down at 91.3 WYEP, with guest host Renee Alberts, a woman who I think is fast becoming one of Pittsburgh's poetry saints, who, among so much else, curates a free poetry reading at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, each Sunday afternoon.

Speaking of Pittsburgh and kind stars, a holler of congratulations to dear mentor Terrance Hayes, who tonight won the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry . Not just a mentor but a gracious, funny, generous guy and a good dad to boot. Hell yes, Terrance! Well-deserved, to put it mildly.

i take my waking slow

on shuffle, Placebo's cover of Kate Bush's Runnin'Up that Hill came right before Iron & Wine's "Lion's Mane."

I have been (gasp) social this weekend, as I was already coaxed out of my hermit hole for a Gulf Coast staff meeting. We start reading slush next weekend - entirely excited to be involved with a publication of this scale. A little bird tells me that a Gulf Coast blog will be live on October 2, so keep an eye out.

Meanwhile, in the shining world of Gigantic Sequins, our editor is reading over the proof for 2.1 while we do a bit of fund-raising. We're having (don't laugh) a raffle, which I am calling Raffle Me Baffle Me!, which is to say we are happily baffled and entirely pleased by the array of donations — from the likes of ModCloth,Tao Lin, and Wave Books - arriving for our up-coming raffle. Thanks for those who have donated so far! If you, your press, your band, or your craft, would like to be a part of our fund-raising raffle, or want to know more, please contact GIGANTICMAGAZINE@gmail.com, or comment here with your email address and I will send you our editor-in-chief's mailing address.

And so, nous finissons, chickadees. Tune in next time.

Reading this Saturday :

Join us to celebrate the release of Natural Language: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry and Reading Series Anthology with a reading and reception!

featuring readings from some contributing writers:
Nikki Allen • Madalon Amenta • Tess Barry • Margaret Bashaar • Jan Beatty • Deborah Bogen • CM Burroughs • Jay Carson • Kristofer Collins • Jerome Crooks • Jim Daniels • Toi Derricotte • Barbara Edelman • Che Elias • Angele Ellis • Jessica Fenlon • Rebecca Foust • Crystal Hoffman • Jason Irwin • Robert Isenberg • Marc Jampole • Dana Killmeyer • Sophie Klahr • Karen Lillis • Joseph Lyons • Sharon Fagan McDermott • Heather McNaugher • Judith R. Robinson • Richard St. John • Ed Steck • Michelle Stoner • Justin Vicari • Judith Vollmer • Stacey Waite • Michael Wurster

Renée Alberts, editor
Connie Amoroso, designing editor

Natural Language: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry and Reading Series Anthology collects work from featured writers of the library’s monthly reading series. The Sunday Poetry and Reading Series, which began in 2007, is free to the public and features academic, experimental and spoken-word Pittsburgh poets and writers. The anthology was made possible by a donation from Poets for Humanity.

Books will be available for purchase for $10 each.
All proceeds will directly support the continuation of poetry programming at the library.

Saturday, May 8, 2010
2 pm

International Poetry Room
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh – Main (Oakland)
4400 Forbes Ave
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

412-622-3151
newandfeatured@carnegielibrary.org
www.carnegielibrary.org

Do your work, then step back...

I've recently become the poetry editor for Gigantic Sequins. Our reading period just reopened, and will close on June 30th; please submit! I've been having a great time reading submissions - haven't done any editorial thinking since being editor-in-chief of Gangsters in Concrete at Emerson College from 2005-2006. It's a very interesting position to be in, especially for someone who's been out of school for awhile (i.e. the impulse to give constructive criticism is stronger than my desire to give a blunt yay or nay).


The graduate school decisions have begun to roll in. Three acceptances, one interview, one rejection. Waiting on three more schools. Have heard from some programs how, having certain possibilities (and funding!) makes me more anxious to hear from those last few schools so that I can just make a decision already and begin to build a picture of what the fall might look like. ACK! So exciting.

March is flying by.

the first cut is the deepest

Hello Chickadees. I am thinking of you as we move through the night into February. I have some new poems in the latest issue of Strange Machine Poetry, many of which were written last June at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute.

This week's been both difficult & beautiful, an education. Sometimes pain and confusion and the stories we tell ourselves that construct our identities go cyclic and we wake up with headaches going "How the hell did I do that again." Then someone asks, "Don't you think you deserve more?" And the answer you think is yes, but you can hardly begin to imagine what that might look like, how the parts might fit & move together. A friend dies suddenly, then another, you're left in the aftermath to decide whether living in their absence is a stone on a chain or a gift. Or a friend's disease flares up and you know intuitively how to help, but when they begin to recover, all your feelings topple into themselves and you can't figure out exactly where to stand, where to look, where to put your hands. Sometimes you find yourself past midnight kissing someone just like you, later waking briefly beside them in the dark and being comforted by an unexpectedly deep certainty. It's all a gift, chickadees. The view of the city & the river on Sunday morning from a warm Cadillac, and when you're still, the sound of nothing but birdsong.

Pittsburgh IsReads (the official site) Hurrah!

I just received a very nice letter from Renee Alberts at the The Sunday Poetry and Reading Series at the Carnegie Library in Oakleand, asking me to submit poetry for an anthology of past readers. Celebrate the Arts Sundays is always a varied collection of marvels - every Sunday is a different sort of performance or experience but always 2-3 pm and free. Did I say free? Oh, indeed.

nifty

a poem of mine is part of the Pittsburgh edition of an outdoors journal called IsReads!

Here's Quakes,Revolutions on the door of James Simon's studio, where the Gist Street Reading Series is held. I'm frittered with excitement/honor to have my poem appear there.

here's a general article about IsReads in Poets & Writers. Pittsburgh isn't up on the IsReads site yet, but there's a Pittsburgh-specific Facebook page. I'm very curious to see where the other poems are... I think there are about 30 poems in total now posted all over the city. What a delight.

in other news: I am quite freckly from being in North Carolina for all of last week. No longer do I Victorian ghostie be. At the start of our journey we stayed on an inspiring farm. Later, I found a large white tooth on the beach.. everyone thinks it's from a dog, but I am choosing to let it be a mystery tooth.

I am very happy to be published in DIAGRAM 9.2