It's Out There!

So it's Cyber Monday and you've just gotta shop. Or not. But look, you can do this: Big Wonderful Press has The Afterlife is a Dry County available for pre-order, shipping Dec. 6th! Go there. Do that. Please, please, please!! It won't feel slimy or shoppy or commercial. It will feel good and wholesome. Very good.

Of Poets and Musicians

Or musicians and poets. I love them both. If it's a question of which came first, who knows. I'm open to hear your views. Maybe we could smash them together and call them posicians. Or muets. It could get messy.

However...

Joe Robinson has a better idea that you might want to check out. Over at Ham Kicker he's inviting musicians and poets to do some collaborative work. Check it out. Get in touch with him. Submit a few things.

Whaling Poetic

I bought a pile of dusty books for three bucks at my grandparents' auction. This week, Chris O. was thumbing through one of them, an 1879 edition of The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore. She found four-leaf clovers and various slips of paper, including this ad to see The Monster Whale. We're doing some research, but we think it might be from the Chicago World's Fair, 1893. Nice bookmark, but the reader only got through about one-third of Mr. Moore. I wonder if he/she went to see the whale.

Hearthside

Naoko Fujimoto reading @ Fiddler's Hearth
A duet with poet David Dodd Lee
David reading his poem Self Portrait
Naoko reading her Japanese translation of same

David Dodd Lee, Naoko Fujimoto, yours truly,

and featured poet Alessandra Simmons

Lilith

(Drafting again - ekphrasis)

----------------After John Collier, 1892


The Garden is dark

---------The Nude luminous

Breasts pubescent, slightly upturned

Head atilt
Hair aflame

Her hips suggest a motion
-----------The memory of sway

The Snake is coiling

Comprehension around
A perfectly formed leg

Her sex is encircled
(Dark shadowed)

Her arms play a variation

------------Upon The Grande Pose

She’s holds aloft a Creature
That hasn’t been named

Her chin rests upon the Serpent

She is smiling

Her eyes might be adoring

Her eyes might be closed

The Hobbyist

Q. Do you have any limitations on things you can do right now because of this accident?
A. No. I do all things more carefully.
Q. What kind of hobbies do you have? What do you do when you're not driving?
A. Do you really want to know that?
Q. Yes.
A. I better don't mention.
Q. I'm sorry?
A. I better don't mention. It's a really personal thing. It doesn't have anything to do with drugs or -- but it's very personal. I do sports. I like dancing. I don't drink. The other thing is a little bit ugly but --
Q. Okay. I need to know what sort of hobbies you have.
A. It might not be a hobby, but I'm a swinger. I didn't want to tell you guys. It's kind of not normal.

Auctioning The Memories

I'm bidder No. 1
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Come On Sugar

It's been a good couple of months. Poems, poems everywhere. You Can Use The Colored Pencils Any Way You Choose is a sample bite of sugar at Sugar House Review. Check it out, along with all the other delicious goods.

Gently Read Dough

Hey, mista, have you got a dolla? Just one? So there's this cool site that does book reviews, Gently Read Literature, and they're trying to raise some dough to, gasp, pay their reviewers! I know, I know. You can go here to get the fundraising details, or here to read reviews, or here to see a review I wrote for doggone free! Okay. You've probably already seen that last one, but you get the point, no?

American Lager

(Been fussing with this for a while. Maybe it's done. Maybe not.)


It’s a casualty of the mind
To think death before sunshine

The Amish horses, for instance,
Aren’t dead in the fields

They’re dreaming

I could have been a Budweiser