Angel

In the Lupton Library at UTC where Meacham started last night. I read at noon along with a few others (Rebecca Cook, Pam Aakhus -- I've screwed up her last name; I'll fix it later) but most notably for me personally was Laurel Snyder. I was very proud to be in the same line-up with her, we who started out in the same workshops together some thirteen or fourteen years ago. Her poems, from her chapbook Daphne & Jim, were just awesome. So I'm rather abuzz about all that.

I read four poems, all new work. I've gotten to feel like as long as I'm reading here, locally, with others, I'll take the hit, read short, make space for others. I'm sure most people are sick to death of me as is. So that's cool.

Currently, everybody took off to one of the professor's houses for wine, dinner before tonight's reading. I never go to these off-campus things: logistically, it's just a pain -- how to get me there? What about this two-hundred pound wheelchair? Is the house even accessible? Usually not. So I just skip. I should go, but it's too much trouble.

Very good to meet Mr. Adam Thomas, who drove down from Nashville for the noon reading. My friends Betsy and Sherry are here from Memphis; I'm introducing them as my weekend girlfriends. I'm probably more amused by this idea than they are.

Very overcast today after yesterday's stunning gorgeousness.

2

EULOGY

So that this will seem like words between

old friends, I’ll say it was painless.

And quick. I’ll say it was mercy

and behind my face where I put

things like The Truth and dreams about

supernovae, I’ll try to mean it.

But it was his time, we should all admit.

Shouldn’t we, who loved him

the way we love traffic

and cell phones during spectacular sex

and the degradations of puberty,

shouldn’t we all feel

as though light were swelling within us,

inflaming us? Tell me where

you were when you heard

but tell me later, much later,

the kind of later mathematicians get excited about.

By then memory will have torn

away from my body like a scab

I’ll no longer have to pick at

and I’ll listen to you like a stethoscope.

It will be good for my heart.

It will be good for your heart.

In the air of that deferred spring

we’ll be healthy, speaking

of an ancient wound neither of us

really remember, except

that by starlight we promised

to honor this question mark

in the periodic sentence of our lives.

Whatever you say, remember

that we cried. The dead love that we weep,

that we stain ourselves with

salt, that we become for a moment

indistinguishable from the sea,

that our shining faces rock with grief.

8 is enough to fill our lives with love

Ever a fan of the mighty Octopus, here's a call for submissions:

Octopus Magazine (http://www.octopusmagazine.com) will be accepting chapbook manuscripts of poetry from now until April 30, 2006, for its 8th issue, which will be a print issue available in winter of 06-07.

Octopus #8 will be a collection of eight separately bound chapbooks presented together. All eight will also be available individually and each chapbook will have a print run of 250 copies.

The chapbooks will be the first product of Octopus Books (http://www.octopusbooks.net), the new small press created by the editors of Octopus Magazine.

For Submission Guidelines and other information, go to http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue07/html/contest.htm

Flame

Surfing around blogs tonight, I found this passage:

I once was impetus for an encyclical from the Bemsha See pontificating that criticism amongst bloggers was in his opinion taboo because god knows there’s bigger fish to fry elsewhere but as I think on it now I believe that’s ill-advised and in fact blogs won’t be more than sales and marketing devices until some real critical back and forth begins on one another's poems and not just their diarrhea of poetics [and to fess up even more, the impetus was a tirade on a poem by Paul Guest in Slate which I believed was quite, well, not good, but later deleted said criticism because of aforementioned blogger guilt]).

I'm really kind of disappointed said tirade was deleted. I'm a big boy. I can take it. It might have been instructive. It might have been redonkulous (to quote my beloved Cornshake).

But now we'll never know.

Stars fell

The hits keep on coming. One of my Tuscaloosa cohorts is featured today at Verse Daily, and yes, it's from Passages North. Go read "Hammerhead on the Atlantic" by John Pursley.

About

Passages North continues to rock out over at Verse Daily. Go read Matthew Thorburn's "Horse Poetica."

Passages North is an up-and-comer, no doubt. They're making a great journal up there. Nice people, too.

The stray cat my brother recently adopted just had her kittens but in hiding. He's spent a few days searching for where she would go when she would come to be fed. He found her, with 4 kittens, inside the hollow trunk of this tree.

Saltville

What to do when a typo might conceivably make your poem more interesting? There's a typo in "The Numbers are Not In" as it appears on Verse Daily:

The world is filled with those who want
someone else, just as the world
is split in halves, or hemispheres
if we want the world that says it
with a measure of beauty.


Now, as I wrote it, and as it appears in Passages North, world is "word." But I kind of like the tweak here, though three worlds in four lines is pushing it. I can't decide if it adds anything, or if it's inconsequential overall. Opine for me.

***

Email today from a publisher in Belgium doing a daily desk calendar of poems, asking to reprint my poem "These Arms of Mine." Which is out in American Literary Review, though I haven't received my copies yet. Amazing how these little scribblings circulate throught, well, the world, I guess.

I said yes. Names like Pinsky, Collins, Dove, etc., appeared in last year's edition. Why not me? Wait, don't answer that.

***

Secret project created yesterday.

In repose. 

I'm a Hokie

Holy crap, I'm home. A vortex of travel and talking and I am plum tuckered out. Yes, that is, I think, a very southern turn of speech. I'm running with it.

The reading went quite well, I think. We also met with grad students, workshopped their poems, and talked about whatever came up in our chat. They're a great bunch of people there. We enjoyed hanging out with them.

Wednesday night I got in to Blacksburg around 6, had dinner, then met Bob for a drink in the hotel bar where we chatted a good long while, longer than either of us realized, I think. I watched some South Park and collapsed.

Eliot was driving in from Norfolk, getting in late, so I didn't see him until Thursday morning. Up early, then, where we met up, pretended we were attending some conference taking place at the Inn and scavenged some muffins and juice and ghastly pizza roll-up type things, about which I was at first excited. But I let Eliot taste them and, well, I enjoyed the muffin.

We discussed everyone's poems, then met up with Bob, had some sandwiches, and then met with the poetry people. The Eliot & Paul Show began. A lot of laughs, only a few tears, and generally unacceptable levels of offensive comments ensued. We had a good time and I think everyone else did as well.

Some downtime, then dinner, then our reading. Bob gives awesome intro. Eliot was up first and knocked it out of the ballpark, the commonwealth, and possibly into Nova Scotia. I do despise him for his awesomeness. I followed and stank up the joint as is my usual, though I was rather proud of my miniature treatise on Def Leppard and how one of my poems had begun as a poem about them. I must have gotten a touch carried away as Bob switched off the microphone, so great was his agony. I'd forgotten to print out a poem Eliot wanted me to read (this one) so Bob held open my book for me. Thanks, Bob, for being the second-best book holder ever.

Afterwards, Eliot and I signed books. They sold out; we had to turn people away. Not that they were crushed, weeping, but still I hated to do it. I had considered bringing some of my own. Next time.

Afterwards, drinks at the bar with the gang and lots of talk. A very good time.

This morning, breakfast buffet, not worth the 9 bucks, and goodbyes. Far too short a time to hang out, but still wonderful to spend time, laugh, talk poems, and everything else that cannot be repeated here.

The phrase of the trip: "a queasy mix of disgust and admiration."

I think that captures our friendship perfectly.

***

Poems stuff--here's my poem "The Numbers are Not In" over at Verse Daily. Thanks to them for featuring my work.

Here are two new poems at Keep Going.

***

Most of all, I want to thank everybody at Virginia Tech for the great time, their kindness, and their support.

Madness

Ha! That picture of Bush finally appeared. I set it up two months ago. Weirdm

***

I'm in the lobby of the ultra-swank hotel we're staying in here in Blacksburg, waiting to meet Eliot for Breakfast. It's been a great time. I'll write more tonight or tomorrow.

***

Check out Verse Daily today. There's this guy featured.

***

I talked about Def Leppard at my reading.

Poets on parade

This makes me grin. So fancy!

Blacksburg City Nights

Getting ready to head up to Blacksburg tomorrow. I could have flown but considering that the most direct route from Chattanooga went through Cincinatti, then Charlotte, then Roanoke, then driving to Blacksburg, well, it's quicker to drive. And a lot less headache.

So Mapquest is my friend. I've been through there before though. My parents are tagging along, making a little trip of it. So I have to search for quilt shops in the area for my mom. This is a tradition: I know where a great many quilt shops are through the southeast, midwest, and British Columbia. My dad will search out antique malls. So we go.

I'm not sure if they're planning on going to the reading. They don't really pay much attention to what I write, aren't readers themselves, really, so it's not their thing. Writing is for me, in their eyes, like a hobby. We'll see.

***

I've got to think about what I'll read. I have two poems chosen already. The rest is wide open. I had planned for this to be the debut of my second book, but we all know how that went down.

***

Eliot and I will be meeting with some grad students, talking about their poems. That'll be fun.

***

I think Eliot and I are going to arm wrestle to determine reading order.

Monday rain

I'm in a bad mood today. Cheer me up?

Let's get it on

Crazy poetry man continues: I wrote yet another new poem this morning, this one called "Parts of the Body by Name." It's a straightforward, non-strange love poem of sorts, though love of a past tense. Maybe I'll post it later. I'm conscious of the possibility that people might get sick of reading another poem in such short order. Of course, it's easy to skip them and I suspect most people do. We'll see. The first two lines are: "Once she said I think you should not write / any more poems about breasts."

***

In some ways I am wary of writing so many poems so quickly, but I know better than to resist. It's like that Marvin Gaye line: "If the spirit moves you, let me groove you." Well, the spirit is moving.

***

I have this (now not) secret goal of having some manner of a new manuscript by August. It would be a stretch, though not if this pace keeps up.

***

Saw V for Vendetta Friday. The comic books are classic works by Allan Moore, famous for hating every movie made of his work. This is pretty goofy for the most part. Part of the problem is that the movie is less visual than the books. It all feels rather ordinary and even at times like some strange sitcom, V loves Evey! I did very much like Stephen Rhea and Hugo Weaving does well in the role, though the lack of a moving mouth creates some goofy pantomimicry. Natalie Portman is lovely but not dark and not deep.

orange

NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION

You should see what I found in my navel

showering the other night. Or

maybe excavating is the better word.

No matter. It had been, I think,

a squirrel before it stopped being one.

Right there in the shoddy slipknot

tying off my stomach. Often

before this discovery, I had imagined

one could carefully untie

that closed off tunnel, locus for the tether

of my umbilical, which somewhere

my mother keeps in a little gold box.

It looks like a scab, the dried hank

of that which connected us in the rosy dark.

Looking at it, I felt vaguely faint.

Not as if there was nausea

in my future, though the present

was decidedly up for debate.

I felt like my body was falling through

the floor of itself, bones

leaving behind the sketchy shadows

of bones, my teeth impostors,

my hands reaching for motes

of my life salting the air.

I have already forgotten

the squirrel that died within me.

Maybe it was some never before seen

form of parthenogenesis,

parts of me desperate to escape

my life in order to birth

their own, identical lives.

I’m filled with the sad pride of a parent.

Maybe this will hurt me

more than it will hurt you,

darling clumps of cells

now loose in the calamitous weather of gravity.

What was I saying before

sadness scooped me up

in its funnel cloud mouth?

I was telling you how clean

I have become, how white,

how smooth, how utterly indivisible,

how much more myself.

If you do not recognize me, good.

If you cannot see me,

even in the light, better still.

If you cannot touch me, you can begin to forget.

feathers, iron

IMPROVISATION WITH DESCENT

Maybe because I’ve never had blood oranges

for breakfast or for any meal

or at all or even looked at them

without shuddering visibly

while housewives coursed past

in the velocity of their convictions

and I thought of all the other things

I was not willing to take in

the pills the medicine the one last drinks

at midnight the strange lips

and cloud of new perfume

and the perforated lobes of her shell-like ears

maybe it was a sickness

that brought me here

vibrating in the clotted aisle

trying to remember the shape of a bruise

or the estimated weight of the moon

or the pathology of hunger

whatever it was I knew

it needed my name in order to be mine

and maybe this would be

my first marriage

the thing I’d pray to in the darkness of the day

in the solicitous absence

of the sun while the clouds

slowly arrayed overhead

like an abacus of air

maybe I could measure

how far one must fall

to stop falling to find the end.

Howdy

Stop by and say hi at my old friend Matt Guenette's new blog....

Pepper

Last night PBS was playing a Johnny Cash concert from Montreux, Switzerland. I was writing, but I kept it on anyway. It was filmed around the time American Recordings came out, when Johnny was still pretty hale and hardy, a big man. You could sense a kind of joy in his newfound resurgence and his band was having a ball. Later, he did several solo numbers from the album: "Delia," "Tennessee Stud," "The Beast in Me." Then he brought out June for "Jackson."

***

My birthday was pretty nice. Nothing worthy of reporting. Thanks for all the well wishes.

***

Excited about heading up to Blacksburg. I haven't seen Eliot since AWP in Chicago, which is far too long. He thinks we should wear matching jumpsuits or headbands. I think I'm going to have to pass on that. Maybe if we go on tour.

How do these reading invites happen? I guess the same way this one did. Someone thinks to ask you.

***

I went for a walk with Richard Siken yesterday. His book, I mean.

road

AT LAST

All day I wanted, I ached, to tell

you of the rabbit dead in the road

and how the whole day I marked

time with its evisceration—

if at first I had touched its flank

or its sleek ears tucked back,

I would have taken the last measure

of its warmth. The ghost

of its abortive bound would be near.

And later when its torso

began to show, when its pelt was peeled,

and its innards unspooled

I didn’t grieve. The flies had come

and in their noise, in their work,

they glittered. The flesh

seemed to sink with the sun

and I thought to tell you

at the door, taking whatever you held

into my arms, at last I’ve kept

vigil over something,

over ruin, come see, come see, come see.

But it was not vigil

and it wasn’t ruin

and in the cuff of the wind

white petals sloughed

from the branches of the gnarled dogwood,

the tree I was taught

Christ’s cross was cut from

and if once I believed

in so much holy ruin,

there was none of it to be found there.

And this was right.

In the matted entrails

of the slaughtered,

whoever thought to know the future

in the slick, wet coils

never saw me keeping watch

in the failing light

for the dead to vanish and you to appear.

The master

Rodney Jones, at Poetry Daily

32

I think it's funny that the first song that comes up in my iTunes shuffle is Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams to Remember." Sample lyrics: I've got dreams to remember / Rough dreams / Bad dreams / Don't make me suffer. What a way to start one's birthday!

So I fired up "19" by the Old 97's as an antidote.

After that, I'm going for "17" by Winger. I'm so not even kidding.

Hmm. What else? "Thirteen" by Big Star would work. Any other songs of this ilk?

***

My 4 year old cousin Sally just emailed me a happy birthday note:

gjktot950tp-=55=-=t====krhjjru frjjgjjuuhdhuiuuttuuugwjjjruuruhhgghhheyyeryyuy mcnxgttttettrdfhgdgffffsdagdgdgdffgfsagfrwtqtwqytt,mkfj jfhjjjftyujhhfh734 ktgjiu8u88jjhjjdjsdksfjfdsbdbfdhdsfjfdnsdagrlkllliiihnnbvffft4 ui8iw9eriureur jjjuuhhhghhghhhhhgjrduyuujj899899oiiuewqwjkjkgkklkkkoiut455w qakjkooyuotookooooiijyooyotyooouoyooy[[[wegfgdgffffdfggghhy62uiiiuui iuiuiurtuuiuuiuutuuitututuutuutuururtuztyjkjiiityiityijjhyjhi yttiuyiuyityiiyiyiyiyticvnbrtuirtirtirtroitoiritriiotriotiotyiotyyiooityi otyhoioiyoiyityit68jfjjkgbnmvnvnvmmcmkkirtukfdfjfddjkdkkdjjkkjdkdkd dkdjjkjkgh5lkf;dkkcvxclkvklvvlkcvklcklcklcvkl cvu6itiurio0o=[]ohriutixkkoooo87oghohgoohhooohohopew tr4565866dioidfifkdfk kvfklcllcvcvkllkvc;l;kcv;lckvclkvklcvlkklvklcclklkclkcklkl.

sally

***

I think that says it all.

This seems about right

So in checking out some of the info for the reading at Virginia Tech next week, which will be Thursday the 23rd at 7 p.m., I found a website for Volume II, where me and Eliot will be reading. Check out the Upcoming Events.

It kind of warms my heart because it calls to mind that scene from This is Spinal Tap, after Nigel has quit the band, when they arrive at a Six Flags-style show and see the marquee, which reads:

Puppet Show

and

Spinal Tap

I think Eliot and I may incorporate coloring and storytime into our readings. It's the next big thing.

Skies

Check out Aimee's super scary flight home.

***

I was flying into St. Louis Valentine's Day weekend a couple of years ago. The jet had stopped over in Memphis, picking up passengers, letting others off.

We were just beginning to accelerate down the runway when everyone heard a loud boom. No, a loud BOOM.

The jet immediately stopped. The pilot came over the intercom, saying that they may have just had a flight tire. We were all skeptical. Even the pilot seemed like he didn't buy it.

The woman sitting beside me called her husband, a pilot, and described the noise. He knew right away what the problem was. After a few minutes, the pilot announced we were going to be switching planes, that although no tire was flat and none of their gauges indicated any problems they were going to play it safe.

I was thinking he probably shouldn't announce that none of their safety equipment was troubled by a large explosion just before takeoff.

It turned out some kind of compressor in the engine detonated as the engine revved up, sparing us the horrific experience Aimee and her husband had.

***

This picture makes me sick(er) about missing AWP. It's weird how many different parts of my life are intersecting here: presumably, Laurel is taking it, Laurel who I went to undergrad with and was in all our poetry workshops; and in it is Megan, the wife of my pal Ander Monson from the bad old Alabama days, who also served with me some hard time in the English dept.'s writing center; Ali Stine, whose work Ander first noticed in his days as Black Warrior Review editor, and would later work with Ander up in Michigan, and was introduced to me by Ander; and then Emma Ramey, another Tuscaloosa survivor.

***

Next week: reading at Virginia Tech.

Tomorrow: my birthday.

spring

NOW THE LIGHT

Slow children at play the sign reads.

And me a slow child
beneath the sequined sky.

This light won't ever stop
coming. I've asked if love is
a religion, if its theology
is the thunderbolt,
the light on the road to Damascus.

The erasure of your name.

On his porch a man answers policemen,
clutching the red fragments
of a hummingbird feeder,
his face a fragment
red with blood.
It's his blood I'm thinking of now.

Later I'll think
of the nail I lost to a thorn.

Or the eleven miles I drove
to reach that hotel
that summer
that other life.

Through the window was proof
we would never leave
the south:

a wire fence rimed in rust
and through it wound
a burden of honeysuckle
beside the silent road.

To the glass I pressed my face to see
if the odor of that vine
could breach the glass,
if there was perfume in the world besides your own.

All my nose knew was you
that whole night
sleeping like bread.

Once I dreamed you were clouds
and once I dreamed you swam away.

It was morning.
Now the light
is different,
is late, is.

Weirdness

BEGINNING WITH A LINE FROM A CARTOON

O Karen, my computer wife,

you were saying

something about binary stars

clacking like false

teeth in the night.

Or was it lasagna

you offered me.

I was thinking of salt, again,

and broken promises

and dried leaves left

to winter

in the drain of our shallow pool.

I think your eyes

were my idea,

where to put them,

what color.

I wanted to see you always in this darkness.

No one ever said

how soon bones begin

to seep through the skin

or that sadness

is a substitute for the sacrament of the x-ray.

We should get

a dog, name him

something

truly unspeakable.

And start attending church

as though we

belonged, our mouths stuffed

with song.

City

Well, I had planned to be in Austin, but it didn't work out.

I'm hating it.

Supes

When he was alive, Christopher Reeve and I didn't quite see eye to eye regarding his attitudes and ideas about disability. As much good as he did, for all the money he raised for research, I felt like he still misled the public in some material way: he was never going to walk again. His particular spinal cord injury was too severe, his spinal cord was, in fact, severed. Despite all the progress that's been made, medicine and science have a long way to yet go before that level of damage might be repaired, if ever. Reeve relentlessly painted the worst picture imaginable of living with a disability. For him, I know it was hard. God knows I'm not exactly fond of my own spinal cord injury and the ways in which it completely changed my life. But, if life is to be lived then you go on, you make whatever peace you can.

I'm reminded of the creepy commercial in which a computer graphic version of his body walked with Reeve's head unconvincingly grafted on. It was appallingly dehumanizing.

And I think of the countless hours he spent each day in physical therapy, in a desperate attempt to cajole a body back into his command.

Hours that would have been more wisely spent with his family, who would not have him much longer. And now his wife has died.

It's strange because I've been thinking about writing here about him for a couple of weeks now. I rented Superman II, considering the first is one of my favorite movies, and early in the second film, the first time Clark Kent turns into a Superman, he runs into an alley, pulling his shirt open, revealing the S emblazoned across his chest. It's a small moment, but Reeve is breathtakingly graceful as he runs. It's beautiful. In that moment, I felt my gripes with him give way, melt away.

And now Dana Reeve has died of lung cancer. There's a legend about a curse following whoever plays Superman: the Reeve's; George Reeves, who played the 1950's tv Superman, committed suicide; Richard Pryor, starring in the third movie, had MS; and Dean Cain, well, I guess his curse is to be Dean Cain.

At any rate, I guess my point is that I've been feeling grateful of late: that winter is over; that in a year in which I've had to resign from a new job and kill my second book, a pretty striking run of crappy luck if you're asking me, I still feel pretty good about things, which is a kind of victory, however small.

Partly

Today was the best day in I don't know how long. Spring, she has sprung. 72 yesterday, but gusty, so it felt cooler; 66 today, with light breeze and blue sky, and real warmth. I feel bad for Aimee, who woke up to lake effect snow. Eek. I once dated a girl from Cleveland and the few times we made it up there it was always frigid, snowing. We left Tuscaloosa once, in March, warm already, and drove to Cleveland in one miserable shot because of a death in the family. I could watch the temperature drop with the miles. While there, I got locked inside the church by the priest. It took a while for someone to miss me.

But I was talking about today. I've read, wrote a new poem, restarted Veronica Mars from the beginning: I got about halfway through before getting derailed. So I'm on disc 2. If Buffy were ever to be recast, Kristin Bell is the only actress for the job. The show is, I think, probably the best structured long-form serial ever made. And I've only seen half of it. It's that good.

This afternoon I went for a walk and ended up at the local convenience store. An older man held the door open for me and said, "You wouldn't happen to be any relation to Rip Bohannon, would you?"

"Yes, sir, he's my grandfather."

"I thought that's who you were."

We talked for a few minutes in the very Southern idiom that is not my usual way but that I know, of course, in my bones.

I walked back, sat in the sun, nodding off.

Saturnidae

ON LEARNING THE LUNA MOTH HAS NO MOUTH

I have been thinking of the moon again

and the moth named for it

which has no mouth,

how it lives only for a week

after unfurling

from the translucent lime shell

inside which it began

to learn flight

and forget the imperative of hunger,

and I have been thinking

of the ocean

once more,

but not the ocean

and not all the things inside of it

swimming in darkness

with their hungers,

the tiger shark caught and killed and emptied

of two overcoats,

one raincoat,

a driver’s license

and a chicken coop—

no, I was thinking of kelp-swaddled mermaids,

their drowned choir,

their bottle-green skin,

the line at which glittering scales

becomes skin,

becomes human

almost,

and I have been trying to think,

to remember

before sleep

my name and address,

height and weight,

the blue of my eyes

before you swallow me or I you.