obligatory snow picture

Snow and snow and snow. That’s been going on. The storm hit the Friday before last,
andevery day since then, something’s been falling from the sky. I tweaked my knee while
navigatingthrough the stomped down white, so I’m stuck wearing a giant brace on my right leg
this week(it’s a wonky sprain). The side effect: an interesting social experiment. Plus
I have to walk a lot more slowly. That’s different.

The doctor appointment? Went well. The mole looks benign and the doctor told me I
don’t have to remove it at this point, unless I want to. I think I’ll keep it for a while. I have to get
blood work done to check my thyroid. Also, anemia may be an issue. I can start the
paperwork for FMLA. I said it once and I’ll say it again: I’m thankful for such a wonderful,
attentive medical team. I’ve been feeling(and doing) a lot better because of their support.

Writing = full of surprises. My poem in [out of nothing] is about to be published(authors
were allowed to see the preview issue to check format and such). Open Thread Review
accepted a poem for publication–it will appear in their second print anthology.
Today I sent in my manuscript of poetry for the RADAR productions contest. A winner
receives 25 print copies of the poetry and the opportunity to read at an event in San Francisco.
I plan to record by the first week of March. Sister Spit is coming to town in April(!!!), and
I’m still working on out-of-town dates for the summertime. It’s been a slow and
steady fall/early winter for me–most of my focus stayed on my classes, so writing progress
dimmed a bit. I did some groundwork, and submitting lots of work for publishing consideration.
Doing so, and being accepted, has really helped me let go of the critical eye. I’m used
to approaching my work with an almost dismissive nature when really? I need to give myself
more credit(I cannot be afraid of that). I love to write more than anything, and I’m thankful
for the ability. So I’m feeling pretty good about it right now. Now to push out the sex
anthology, and piece together my next book.

Last but certainly most important, my sister found out what she’s having. A boy! I will have
a niece AND a nephew, and I’m over the moon. Everything looks good and she’s healthy,
and that’s all I care about. My family is so important to me, and I’m so glad that I have a
sister to look up to. She’s tremendous, and I can’t wait to meet the newest addition(coming in July).

When I get ready to read a book, I better have back up. That means at least one book of poetry
to accompany any longer nonfiction or fiction work I’m trucking through. My intake requires a balance.
Also, as a poet, I want to stay in a constant state of study. Going to readings, dragging my finger
over unique structures I admire, and losing my mind over new discoveries. Like the first
book pictured above, “Crush” by Richard Siken. I’ve mentioned his name to few poet-loving friends
and they all nod in agreement and understanding. Perhaps I’m behind the time. I have Marty
McConnell to thank for the discovery(she asked the readers of her journal to name their
favorite queer poets, and Siken’s name appeared in multiple comments). So thank you, Marty.
I read 4 of his poems and sent him a message immediately to let him know how much I
appreciated his work. That’s another thing I’m working on with words: giving credit loud and
instant when it’s due.

Other books in the picture above, stacked beneath Siken: “Wellspring” by Sharon Olds. Renee
gave me a gentle nudge in checking her out, and I studied her work for a project in poetry class
last semester. I’ve read two of her other books and I’m already swept away by this one.
Knowing how little she reveals outside of the page(in regards to her childhood and past) makes
her words even more stunning and intense. Good poetry is like being knocked over and not wanting to get up.

Next is “It’s So You,” edited by Michelle Tea. Various individuals contributed to this collection to
discuss personal style. Including Eileen Myles, my favorite. I will read anything that Tea is involved
with, honestly. But first, the book beneath that: a collection of letters between Vita Sackville-West
and Virginia Woolf. Oh. My. Goodness. Joseph described it best by calling it a “torrid love affair.”
Expect more entries on here in regards to the book as I delve deeper into it. Vita is such an interesting
spirit–the introduction refers to her as almost being “professional” when it comes to breaking
up marriages and having intense affairs with other women. She adores Woolf’s writing, and
Woolf takes to her because she is very mothering. I love knowing that “Orlando” was written with
Vita in mind as Orlando–that it is a book referred to as “the longest love letter ever written.”
Every time I start reading, I think of my dear friend Jess and how much she loved Virginia Woolf’s
work. I owe the exposure to Jess and Jess alone.

In between various housekeeping things, I started rolling my plethora of change tonight. I’m
tipping $120 and I still have a ways to go. Who knew? Change seems so random and everywhere
and not mattering too much. But oh when you archive it…the currency really shows itself.
I guess the word “change” is appropriate here.

In other news: another doctor appointment tomorrow. This one is a check up, some various
tests, and I’m going to see about getting this mole on my chest removed. For as long as I can
remember, I’ve had a beauty mark smack dab in the middle between my breasts. Two other
women in my family have one in the same place, which is kind of funny. However, mine is the
biggest, and I think I spy the first two or three warning signs of the ol’ “time to get the thing removed”
handbook. I’m used to seeing it, but parting won’t be such sweet sorrow–piece of mind
acquired is much better. Be done with it.

I have a busy, busy weekend in front of me(including a documentary on the Paris ballet), running
parallel to the warning of a snow storm coming our way. As usual, people are getting very excited
and anxious about the promise of severe weather, understandably so. I prefer to just wait and
see though. I’ll put on my boots and deal with it. It’s February, so I’m not surprised, and I’m
not disappointed. Spring is next. It’s coming, no matter how much people complain and detest the
current temperatures. It’ll pass.

That’ll do. And now, to bed.

Tattered reams of movies
used as sheets, kicked off by the lazy birthday waltz
of your feet in dreaming–
a slow pedal kick through water or
twitch of shock when the old friend comes back
explaining “well I was never really gone.”

Three people are asleep in the theater,
each one missing a different plot
slow light disappear then lifting
across a cleft chin, cracked lips, furrow sloping into bridge.
Mistake and misery bypassed while
the rest of the audience cries or pretends not to cry
(the kind of thing we do because
we always assume that someone’s watching us)

There is a drift and leaving.
A departure that swells in us,
blocks out the other bodies, the traffic,
the kind of slumber that requires walking and function,
days of it you can stack into nickel pisas
the kind of mess you can make with you whole heart
the undecided blue of the room
(it could be early morning,
it could be just beginning night.

“Everything that isn’t urgent falls away in revision…”

“Poets aren’t rock stars. I’m not sure they should be. Poetry rattles you, and it’s hard to pay for that,” he offers.
“I’d hate to see poetry commodified. It keeps it safe and sacred.”
- Richard Siken

Saying Your Names
Chemical names, bird names, names of fire
and flight and snow, baby names, paint names,
delicate names like bones in the body,
Rumplestiltskin names that are always changing,
names that no one’s ever able to figure out.
Names of spells and names of hexes, names
cursed quietly under the breath, or called out
loudly to fill the yard, calling you inside again,
calling you home. Nicknames and pet names
and baroque French monikers, written in
shorthand, written in longhand, scrawled
illegibly in brown ink on the backs of yellowing
photographs, or embossed on envelopes lined
with gold. Names called out across the water,
names I called you behind your back,
sour and delicious, secret and unrepeatable,
the names of flowers that open only once,
shouted from balconies, shouted from rooftops,
or muffled by pillows, or whispered in sleep,
or caught in the throat like a lump of meat.
I try, I do. I try and try. A happy ending?
Sure enough — Hello darling, welcome home.
I’ll call you darling, hold you tight. We are
not traitors but the lights go out. It’s dark.
Sweetheart, is that you? There are no tears,
no pictures of him squarely. A seaside framed
in glass, and boats, those little boats with
sails aflutter, shining lights upon the water,
lights that splinter when they hit the pier.
His voice on tape, his name on the envelope,
the soft sound of a body falling off a bridge
behind you, the body hardly even makes
a sound. The waters of the dead, a clear road,
every lover in the form of stars, the road
blocked. All night I stretched my arms across
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing
with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe.
Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed
to pieces. Makes a cathedral, him pressing against
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me
like stars. Names of heat and names of light,
names of collision in the dark, on the side of the
bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen
on jeans and hands and the backs of matchbooks
that then get lost. Names like pain cries, names
like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented,
names forbidden or overused. Your name like
a song I sing to myself, your name like a box
where I keep my love, your name like a nest
in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the
sea of love — O now we’re in the sea of love!
Your name like detergent in the washing machine.
Your name like two X’s like punched-in eyes,
like a drunk cartoon passed out in the gutter,
your name with two X’s to mark the spots,
to hold the place, to keep the treasure from
becoming ever lost. I’m saying your name
in the grocery store, I’m saying your name on
the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal
covered with frost, your name like a music that’s
been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud,
a kick in the pants, a lungful of glass, the sails
in wind and the slap of waves on the hull
of a boat that’s sinking to the sound of mermaids
singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple
profound sadness when it sounds so far away.
Here is a map with a your name for a capital,
here is an arrow to prove a point: we laugh
and it pits the world against us, we laugh,
and we’ve got nothing left to lose, and our hearts
turn red, and the river rises like a barn on fire.
I came to tell you, we’ll swim in the water, we’ll
swim like something sparkling underneath
the waves. Our bodies shivering, and the sound
of our breathing, and the shore so far away.
I’ll use my body like a ladder, climbing
to the thing behind it, saying farewell to flesh,
farewell to everything caught underfoot
and flattened. Names of poisons, names of
handguns, names of places we’ve been
together, names of people we’d be together,
Names of endurance, names of devotion,
street names and place names and all the names
of our dark heaven crackling in their pan.
It’s a bed of straw, darling. It sure as shit is.
If there was one thing I could save from the fire,
he said, the broken arms of the sycamore,
the eucalyptus still trying to climb out of the yard —
your breath on my neck like a music that holds
my hands down, kisses as they burn their way
along my spine — or rain, our bodies wet,
clothes clinging arm to elbow, clothes clinging
nipple to groin — I’ll be right here. I’m waiting.
Say hallelujah, say goodnight, say it over
the canned music and your feet won’t stumble,
his face getting larger, the rest blurring
on every side. And angels, about twelve angels,
angels knocking on your head right now, hello
hello, a flash in the sky, would you like to
meet him there, in Heaven? Imagine a room,
a sudden glow. Here is my hand, my heart,
my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from, but I can’t go through with it.
I just don’t want to die anymore.
- Richard Siken

Here we go, 2010. Year for the pen. I have a bit of poetry coming out in various publications this year, and here is the
first one. I’m sitting among some personal favorites so I’m feeling good. Click below to read. My poem is on page 73.

link!

Proximity is always on the lip of my mind. If I’m walking somewhere, I think in invisible string–tethered to this, to
that and to nothing. Corners snapping connections and the bus coming drags another taut, reels me in and I get home
somehow, like a magic trick. I am here and then I’m there, and so my used-to-be present place is now another
then. It’s a game of vision and space. The only thing I think about when I am sitting still is the pilates teacher
talking softly and matter-of-fact about people who draw their shoulders in as if protecting their heart. She says you
have to sit up straight and push back, let the bloody beast be pulled to the ceiling on a string. You can practice this
and feel strong and proud of everything your body is carrying around–the guts, the thoughts, ghosts of cells once
regenerating now gone. I imagine them like the atom bomb fall out–shadows burned into the sides of houses.

Once I said to someone, “I think it’s all about my proximity to others that I focus on to keep me sane.” Whatever I
am between the things I can immediately define. It’s silly and true, really. Silly that I think this and vocalize it and
true that the line remains blank until I can flail out my threads and figure it out. The proximity. My here to your there.

Lately I’ve been spending a thick amount of time by myself, and I’m starting to see another side to
the nickel. Realizing the distance, the mattering distance, is the self from self. The solitude is taking string and
tying knots and staying close. Is it what we do alone that truly defines us? Those coffees at tables with books and
pens and headphone-less walks from the bus stop to the front door. After I take out the key but before I turn the lock,
the second the shower shuts off. That precisely solo and definite half of a breath that escapes us right then. I’m
talking about that. When I focus on those type of things I can’t help but feel some relief, as if the best chorus is in
an endless song–how you can have nothing to do with any of it yet own a universe.

I think about getting older at weddings, when I note the wonderful amount of gray in my hair and around kids, like
my niece. I like talking to her because I have to simplify things a certain way–I have to explain or ask with a certain
absolute, and I hear the wonder come back in my voice when we have an interaction. Last year I carried the
getting-older bit like a pinched nerve; I turned 28 and the state of the current dawned on me in a new way. At first
it was the coat that didn’t fit but choked me, or that amusement park ride where the floor drops away and you’re
clenched to the wall with force and speed as it continues to turn. A bigger hopeless than the usual insecurities. Is
this something that everyone feels at one point or another? I had to give it time, but I settled into it. After all I will never
fear a clock, only the blank pages and the moments wasted when I didn’t write. I say that with an affection.

Bends of my lip ripped and broken, I think of you. The smooshed together word parts of you, the poetry and pacing–box fan
hollers of a room living. Ships in the middle of sinking, as if waves are parenthesis. I pause here. I read the ones I remember,
follow their entrails along the ocean floor. Most of it rotting away, pecked at by curious gill-keepers and less affectionate
outcasts with drag-drop arms. Sharks find your kind poison(or maybe one of their own) and stay a distance worth noting.
Bathing beauties smoke cigarettes around midnight when the moon is up and lantern-like–all wet headed young-20’s stare drunk
and start confessing(one gazes long and empty at the other, “Are you even inhaling?”).

You are this. Or a crate lost in the woods. A film left on in the abandoned blue, a dead body before you–anything dead or
dying. Veins that smell and act like trashcans, their pinpricked mouths work out the needlepoint. A jar, some bottles, a squat,
a dream–traveling failure. A neighborhood in darkness. Bruised father(barely), hugging funk to your middle and losing limbs
every time you turn around.

I’m reading some poetry on Thursday night with a line up of other awesome writers. Here’s the flyer, stop by if you can!

I checked my email before leaving for work this morning, and what did I see?

An acceptance letter for a poem publication, waiting just for me.

And this is how my Wednesday begins. With an audible whooping of joy, a fist in the air,
and the cat jumping off the couch in fear of the unexpected outburst.

I received a rejection today, and I’m over the moon about it.

Maybe I need to explain. I started submitting my work to various publications last week, after that dream of epic poetic proportions.
Risks, remember? Plus it’s just good practice as a writer. I mean why not? I’d like my words to expand beyond the bubble of
this city. The words aren’t born for stage only or a few choice ears or my bottom desk drawer. Maybe it’s my class and the discovery of
process(I am, you see, still forming mine). If I love writing so much, why have we developed a commit-fearing-yet-the-sex-is-amazing type of relationship?

Oh pen I’m sick of the love ‘em and leave ‘em disposition. Let’s change our story.

That’s what I’m doing. I used my lunch breaks at work to send off poem after poem. Today marks my first rejection, from a press that
prides themselves on being notoriously tough. I’m waiting to hear back from nine other publications. I’m well aware of the odds, and that’s
part of why I’m so damn happy about this first rejection. There are going to be more “thank you but no thank you’s.” The sooner
I can get rejected, the sooner I get the green light. I have a thick skin. It’s plenty okay.

I just finished preliminary work on my second writing class assignment—a poem based on our reading of “The Lesson” by Forrest
Hamer. We have to tell the story of a road trip, tap into an experience that holds meaning and tie it to a national or cultural event.
I spent a few days thinking about the various car trips, bike trips, walks. I kept coming back to the Greyhound trip from Pittsburgh to
Ohio on September 13th 2001. It wasn’t the most profound, not really at all, but that’s what intrigues me in regards to writing about it.
The magnitude and proximity of an event like September 11th, and the disconnect I felt going home. Honestly, I tried to think of
another impacting road trip because I don’t know how I feel about writing about that time. Don’t ask me why, but my instinct was to fight
against that. I rotated a few options in my mind but came back to that one, and now I think I have a great structure for it. I’m very close to being finished and I’m surprised by what came out. In a very good way.

Which brings me to my lesson learned this week, a lesson I’m going to continue to acknowledge going forward. It isn’t just bullshit when people tell you to do what you love and to do more of it. Think about how doing what you love makes you feel. What feels better than feeling that?

Helping others makes me happy. Being there, listening. The things I am passionate about, becoming a little more hellbent on chasing them. We forget how lucky we are. We forget how many things move us. We push them aside for trivial, for what bothers us or what makes us tired. Simply put: time’s too quick for that. Do what you love to do, do what moves you. Do more of it. This is a bonafide way to beat the blues back.
This could mean standing outside somebody’s house with a fistful of flowers because you know they’re busy fighting the good fight. This could be discussions based around things in this world that enrage you—building that comraderie, talking. This could mean more theater, less drinking—more symphony, less bitching.

And as noted in the photo above, I am still waiting for my contacts to arrive(oh elusive UPS man, our paths not even star-crossed). I’m fighting the urge to feel like a shy middle-schooler again, and remembering to lean back when I take the lid off the boiling pot of water. Instana-fog.