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.

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.

excited ! : Myself & my dear friend Betsy Wheeler will be reading together on Sunday June 15 at the sunday poetry & reading series, from 2-3 p.m. Betsy's not from the 'burgh, so it's going to be an extra treat. for you and me both. AND it's father's day that sunday, so it's going to be an extra treat for you, and me, and my dad. who introduced me to poetry in the first place but that's another story..

Sunday Poetry & Reading Series: A free monthly series
featuring readings from academic, experimental and
spoken-word Pittsburgh poets and writers.
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Main First Floor - Quiet Reading Room
2 - 3 p.m.
For more information, call 412.622.3151 or visit www.carnegielibrary.org.

from the press release: other up-coming sunday offerings at the CLP:

Sunday ❘ 5 • 18 ❘ 2 pm ❘ Terrance Hayes
Terrance Hayes is the author of Hip Logic, Wind in a Box and Muscular Music and has been the recipient of many honors and awards including a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He teaches creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sunday ❘ 7 • 20 ❘ 2 pm ❘ The Typewriter Girls
The Typewriter Girls are decadent intellectuals with an uncanny penchant for monkey breeding. Descendants of the Cabaret Voltaire, their Dada-bred performances feature comedy, music, and poetry, and in the words of Comte de Lautreamont, embody the concept that “poetry must be made by all.”

Sunday ❘ 8 • 17 ❘ 2 pm ❘ Heather McNaugher
Heather McNaugher is an Assistant Professor of English at Chatham University’s MFA program. Her chapbook, Panic & Joy, was published this spring by Finishing Line Press.‘

here's Terrance Hayes( an invaluable critic, excellent poet & an all around interesting person) on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, reading his work in the neighborhood I grew up in. The coffee shop he's filmed in, and outside of, is the The Union Project, which used to offer a weirdly delicious sandwich called something self-explanatory like 'The Cheesy Pickle,' but now also offers things like yoga classes, ceramics classes & a reading series...