Said a whiting to a snail.

Battersea.

2011-02-27T12:34:00.000-08:00

Not I

2011-02-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

Moon over Stockholm

2011-02-20T00:00:00.001-08:00

RIP Trish Keenan.

2011-01-15T23:02:00.001-08:00

Found Photograph: Two Women

2011-01-04T20:54:00.000-08:00

found on the street in Amsterdam

Happy 1-1-11 from Amsterdam.

2011-01-01T13:38:00.000-08:00

Bullet Tree.

2010-12-27T21:27:00.000-08:00

Found along a hiking trail in Cyprus.

2010-11-29T04:55:00.001-08:00

Carolina Chocolate Drops

2010-11-13T15:00:00.001-08:00

Some good yarn graffiti in Amsterdam.

2010-10-16T01:18:00.000-07:00

Taken at night, close to Westergasfabriek.

Emir.

2010-09-23T07:23:00.001-07:00

Books I think you should read: The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene

2010-09-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

From The Paris Review interview with Graham Greene, Autumn 1953:

INTERVIEWER

You made Scobie say in The Heart of the Matter: “Point me out the happy man and I will show you either egotism, selfishness, evil or else an absolute ignorance.” What worries us is that you yourself seem to be so much happier than we had expected. Perhaps we are being rather naive but the seventy-four miniature whiskey bottles, the expression on your face, so different from the fixed, set look of your photograph, the whole atmosphere, seem to be the products of something much more positive than that very limited optimum of happiness that you described in The Power and the Glory in this passage: “the world is all much of a piece: it is engaged everywhere in the same subterranean struggle . . . there is no peace anywhere where there is life; but there are quiet and active sectors of the line.”

GREENE

(With a smile) Oh yes, I see what troubles you. I think that you have misjudged me and my consistency. This flat, my way of life—these are simply my hole in the ground.

INTERVIEWER

A moderately comfortable hole.

GREENE

Shall we leave it at that?

Urban ruin across the IJ.

2010-09-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

2010-09-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

The continual production of ‘more excellent fiction … than anyone has time to read’ is the essence of the problem. That’s the torture of walking into a bookshop these days: it’s not that you think the books will all be terrible; it’s that you know they’ll all have a certain degree of competent workmanship, that most will have about three genuinely beautiful or interesting sentences and no really bad ones, that many will have at least one convincing, well-observed character, and that nearly all will be bound up in a story that you can’t bring yourself to care about. All that great writing, trapped in mediocre books! Who, indeed, has time to read them?

from Get a Real Degree, Elif Batuman

(via Rumpus, long-- but worth it.)

Zane Grey Holding a Koala.

2010-09-10T08:23:00.000-07:00

Stencils from Venice.

2010-09-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

Found in Venice, 2010

2010-09-07T09:30:00.001-07:00

Books I think you should read: Voices from the Plains, Gianni Celati

2010-08-29T07:02:00.000-07:00

I had a fierce admiration for these little stories. And probably my highest recommendation these days-- they made me want to sit down and write. Good translation by Robert Lumley:

He went on writing stories at night, but after he had written about fifty he realized he didn't like them. He thought that only in the desert or close to death was it worth writing something.
from "A parable for the disenchanted"

Happiness.

2010-08-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

On urban fantasy, from another place on the Internets.

2010-08-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

I HATED this book. HATED it. I am so FREAKING TIRED of urban fantasy books featuring waif-like women with masses of tangled hair of whatever goshdarn color. I wanted to drop-kick Isabelle and her precious waif-like paintings out of a plate glass window. And WHY in the name of all that's good in the world are the main characters in urban fantasy novels always painters or lute players or madrigal singers or earth mothers or writers? Does nobody in Newford have an actual job?

I would give nearly anything for an urban fantasy novel that features a stocky banker. With short hair. Who studied accounting. At least then I would have the feeling that I wasn't reading a singles advertisement from the writer over and over and over again. Bookish male, 40s, seeks waif-like artist with masses of tangled hair for a carefree and magical existence. Likes Celtic music and pre-Raphaelite painting. WE GET IT, OKAY? Sheesh.

Ireland-- In the woods.

2010-08-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

Ireland 2-- Green

2010-08-15T13:06:00.001-07:00

O Rose thou art sick

2010-08-14T08:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve been following the story of the election in Australia a little bit. You know--Julia Gillard. Childless. Modern. Boyfriend.

Lightly following. Noting with some interest. Nothing more.

(This isn’t about her policies. I don’t know much about her policies.)

A friend’s blog ran a little blurb—small article noting that Gillard was being attacked for her fitness for office due to childlessness. I expressed surprise someone would attack her on that basis. Someone else agreed. It’s how those conversations go.

But then someone else said:

“See, here's the thing. I'm prejudiced against any public official who is deliberately childless. The concern about "living in sin" part is completely alien to me, but I completely understand the reticence at handing over policy decisions to somebody who has chosen to avoid raising children, either biological or adoptive.

It speaks of selfishness and suggests a lack of connection with the greater society. Unfair? Yup. It's a prejudice; obviously it doesn't hold for everyone. But I'm also going to say that as a heuristic, it's reasonable ... and as a negative emotional reaction, I have it quite quite strongly.”

I was a little surprised by the intensity of my own reaction. On the Interwebs, I’ll argue about films. I’ll argue about books. I’ll even have the occasional discussion about politics. But I’ve been out here a long time online, and a troll rarely gets to me. Rarely hooks me in the gut.

I thought about many things. Shoes and ships and sealing wax. Cabbages and kings. I even cried.

It doesn’t seem very worthwhile for me to discuss the arguments against this point of view rationally.

I wonder if it’s even possible, actually, to discuss it rationally. I think many of my friends who intellectually would agree with me, actually agree with him. Hold that heuristic too.

A cross to bear, so perhaps I should just bear it?

During my disaster pregnancy, a (younger) friend who had her children at 23 said to me with a tone of smugness: “now you’re finally going to be an adult.”

She never mentioned it again later. Threshold fail.

Ireland-- Newgrange

2010-08-13T10:05:00.001-07:00

from The Autobiography of Henry Adams

2010-08-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

He never reached Concord, and to Concord Church he, like the rest of mankind who accepted a material universe, remained always an insect, or something much lower—a man. It was surely no fault of his that the universe seemed to him real; perhaps—as Mr. Emerson justly said—it was so; in spite of the long-continued effort of a lifetime, he perpetually fell back into the heresy that if anything universal was unreal, it was himself and not the appearances; it was the poet and not the banker; it was his own thought, not the thing that moved it. He did not lack the wish to be transcendental.

True Romance

2010-08-09T12:19:00.001-07:00

RIP, Mitch.

2010-08-02T11:21:00.001-07:00

Uplifting, for a change.

2010-07-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

Moon over Amsterdam

2010-07-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

Miss Manners on Submission Etiquette.

2010-07-25T03:18:00.000-07:00

Today ran across a journal whose submission guidelines read:

"Submissions will not be acknowledged, no rejection notices will be sent."

It looks like a nice market, actually. But I have to say I find this pretty rude. At least on first glance. The idea is that if you don't hear from them in 30 days, it's a no.

I kind of get why this makes their lives easier, but I have had both manuscripts and replies go into spam filters. As a writer there is something pretty nice about at least knowing that an electronic submission arrived where it was supposed to go.

I'm possibly also reacting like this since there seems to be an increasing trend of markets that fail to behave with even the already sketchy common base of courtesy to writers. One particular annoying journal solicited poems from me, failed to send any acknowledgement or reply, and did not respond to queries. Normally I would have assumed they were just too busy and doing this part-time, but I've just seen they're out on Duotrope and elsewhere asking for new themed submissions. I'm capable of figuring out that this is a 'no' on my own. But still.

Anyhow, I suppose that if you can't be polite, it's better to let people know before they send their work. And markets certainly have the right to set their own boundaries. If I'm left with a lingering sense of 'ick', I'm willing to chalk it up to being my own problem.

But what do you think? Is it reasonable for writers to expect at least the courtesy of a form letter 'no'? Or is this a historical affectation? Artifact of a gentler time?

Domestic Bliss.

2010-07-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

2010-07-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

On television shows, when someone is dying, they always make the portrayal very comforting for the ones left behind. The dying person is always graceful and accepting, and it's the family who mourns and cannot be consoled.

In real life, this is often not how it works. The sadness of someone you love who so desperately doesn't want to go is too unbearable to think about for long.

Found in the Central Station bathroom, Amsterdam.

2010-07-02T14:57:00.001-07:00

Fake fruit in a real tree.

2010-06-28T13:41:00.001-07:00

The dress.

2010-06-27T09:30:00.001-07:00

I bought this dress at a thrift store yesterday.

I wore it today.

My grandmother had a dress in the same pattern, something I didn't realize until this morning. It was made of polyester, and this is cotton. But it had the same gathered top, and nearly the same colors. All day I've been wearing the dress and remembering sitting on her lap as a child.

I am very like my grandmother: She was small and heavy. She was very blond. She read too much. She had trouble having babies. She was given to flights of wild and angry fancy. She was sharp. She was sarcastic. She didn't dance. She didn't like people very much. She adored me. She longed to travel. She was the smartest girl in her class. She hated her mother and loved her daughter. My mother hated her in turn. She brought me bags full of romance novels that she picked up for free somewhere. She liked bright patterns and skirts. She said "oh baby" when she wanted to create emphasis. She liked driving with the car window down. Her favorite writer was Mary J. Holmes. She died unpleasantly-- cancer linked to a botched hysterectomy. She had blue eyes like my sister.

Word of the Day: Poilus

2010-06-26T00:06:00.001-07:00

poi·lu [pwah-loo; Fr. pwa-ly] Show IPA
–noun, plural -lus [-looz; Fr. -ly] Show IPA.
a french common soldier.

Origin:
1910–15; < F, in earlier slang: tough individual, tough, brave, lit., hairy, haired; MF, OF pelu ( cf. plew) < VL *pilūtus, equiv. to L pil ( us ) hair + VL *-ūtus, for L -ātus -ate1 ( e > oi by influence of poil hair < L pilus )

From Paris in the Fifties, Stanley Karnow

2010-06-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

Later, over drinks with him, I asked Beckett, “If you were marooned on a desert island and could only have one book, which one would it be?” He replied without hesitation, “Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson.”

Found Photograph: Man & Boy

2010-06-23T22:18:00.001-07:00

Found in the bushes in Amsterdam, June 2010.

2010-06-20T01:46:00.000-07:00

My first published SF story has appeared:

http://www.short-story.me/science-fiction-stories/210-when-life-hands-you-lemons.html

I can't help but read it and wince, but still.

Golconda Temple.

2010-06-16T07:57:00.001-07:00

Dubai

2010-06-12T08:48:00.001-07:00

Word of the Day: Fissile

2010-06-12T02:29:00.001-07:00

fissile

/fissil/

• adjective 1 (of an atom or element) able to undergo nuclear fission. 2 (chiefly of rock) easily split.

— ORIGIN Latin fissilis, from findere ‘split, crack’.

Found Photograph: The Ice Skating Club?

2010-05-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

This was found in Amsterdam North, close to a burned-out office building. Click for larger.

Lion in 13 Lines

2010-05-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

The Lady of the long grass

with her hair in a snarl

cries and says:

I am as disconnected

as a summer’s day

when the heat rises up

and keeps the land from wholeness.

It is all quite easy

caught within the days and ways,

caught in the pathos of our times.

It is all quite adequate.

Witness the Lady:

I am most lion before the roar begins.

diepwand

2010-05-05T03:38:00.000-07:00

Tattletale.

2010-05-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

It appears Ms. Rios has annoyed someone in Amsterdam, since a little Google search turned up this and this.

(found in Amsterdam 2010)

My Moment In Time image-- McDonald's in Enkhuizen, rainy day, 2 May 2010-- 17:00

2010-05-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

(here)

It wasn't so long ago the world looked like this for months on end.

2010-04-18T09:58:00.001-07:00

So count yer blessings, girlie. Count them each day.

White balloons on the bike path at night.

2010-04-17T02:17:00.000-07:00

found in Amsterdam, 2010.

from Une Saison en Enfer, Rimbaud

2010-04-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

I loved maudlin picture, the painted panels over doors, stage sets, the back-drops of mountebanks, old inn signs, popular prints; antiquated literature, church Latin, erotic books innocent of all spelling, children’s story books, old operas inane refrains and artless rhythms.

I dreamed crusades, unrecorded voyages of discovery, untroubled republics, religious wars stifled, revolutions of customs, the displacements of races and continents: I believed in all marvels.

I invented the color of vowels! – A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green—I regulated the form and the movement of every consonant, and with instinctive rhythms I prided myself on inventing a poetic language accessible some day to all the senses. I reserved all rights of translation.

At first it was an experiment. I wrote silences. I wrote the night. I recorded the inexpressible. I fixed frenzies in their flight.

I entered this world with the job of sleeping with the media.

2010-04-10T10:40:00.001-07:00

Report

2010-04-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

You must be back. I am well.
I have been thinking about God. The book says:
He has taken empty away.
Tenses still don’t matter.
I think much less. I have spent
so much time with an IV stand
rotting behind me I check
when I move for invisible trains.
Consequently, I go slow.
On my good days, I walk.
On my bad days, I don’t.
I don’t think of people much,
or see them. My health is unreliable--
my brain still soaked with medicine.
Hello—I’m watching movies.
I hope you enjoyed your trip.

The Walton Boys

2010-03-31T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hannah Arendt on Adolf Eichmann

2010-03-28T08:11:00.001-07:00

He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness—something by no means identical with stupidity—that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of that period. And if this is “banal”and even funny, if with the best will in the world one cannot extract any diabolical or demonic profundity from Eichmann, that is still far from calling it commonplace. It surely cannot be so common that a man facing death, and, moreover, standing beneath the gallows, should be able to think of nothing but what he has heard at funerals all his life, and that these “lofty words” should completely becloud the reality of his own death. That such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together which, perhaps, are inherent in man—that was, in fact, the lesson one could learn in Jerusalem.

A small story about Ai and Poetry.

2010-03-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

I grew up in a very small town. This town had little to recommend it, but it had one thing: There was another, slightly bigger town, next door. This slightly bigger town had a SUNY. This particularly SUNY had a really good set of poets, and an excellent writing program.

The high school I attended had a program where the understimulated could spend half of their senior year taking classes at the SUNY. I signed up to take an introductory creative writing class, taught by a Well Known Poet. As the program required, I set up a meeting with the poet to ask him if this was okay.

It was, he said. But not quite. As luck would have had it, he had heard me read the year before that at a student reading-- a little poem about a shy girl who would rather dance with a broom than a boy. He thought I belonged in the advanced poetry seminar instead of the introductory course.

I was flattered. Of course I was flattered. I was seventeen, and allowed to participate in a largely graduate poetry seminar. The next youngest person in the class was 21, and a senior. He's the main character in my story about Ai.

The next part of the story was predictable-- the next-younger-poet and I became lovers. I was flattered. Of course I was flattered.

For the sake of background, it's important to know more or less all the writers in this environment were Deep Imagists and Transcendentalists. It was all Whitman around a bonfire and Robert Bly and Wendell Berry and William Carlos Williams and Galway Kinnell. We only read the confessional poets in order to talk about what a shame it was they didn't go beyond their limitations.

I lent my lover my treasured copy of Ariel and he handed it back to me defaced with a note questioning her value. He'd copied that damned Williams poem about the wheelbarrow and the chickens onto the book's title page.

Anyhow. I got older. I won a scholarship that let me attend a prestigious women's college. The relationship with the poet ended, as relationships do-- although we swore to keep our poetic connection alive. It was all very writerly.

At college, I discovered feminism. And not just political feminism. Suddenly I was reading Marianne Moore, Dickinson, Margaret Fuller's letters to Emerson. The writers I studied with there were not as quick to dismiss my Sexton and Plath. Culture and Agriculture was no longer holy writ. I also bought my first book by Ai, Sin.

When I went back to my home town for the summer, I decided to live in a student house in the slightly bigger town with my ex-lover. We would write poems together, bake bread, drink wine on the Erie Canal.

As you can imagine, it was a disaster. I was no longer looking up to my ex, and it permanently changed the dynamics. He would probably say I had gotten abrasive. I would argue I had stopped being easily influenced.

Anyhow.it all finally exploded in one horrible argument. Kind of a funny argument, looking back now. He argued there was no need for female writers as such because if a man was sufficiently open to the universal in his nature then gender was irrelevant. I was furious, and argued that I preferred Ai's poems to Robert Lowell.(*) Which was heresy, of course.

This fight led to several days of sulking. He pointedly baked bread without me. There was something about gladiolas. When I finally tried to get him to talk, he exploded and slapped me hard across the face. I moved out.(**)

The Well Known Poet who had chosen me for his class asked me what had caused the fight. I told him I thought "Ai was a better writer than Robert Lowell".

The Well Known Poet looked at me with gentle bemusement. "But that's a good thing," he said. "You should be confident about your own work."

"I am," I said. "But I mean 'Ai' and not 'I'."

The truth is, I didn't know much about Ai. I had only really started to explore a few of her pieces when I had the fight in the first place. None of what I just wrote was really about her, or her work. It was more about the fight for my own voice.

I went on to really explore her work. I spent a lot of time poring over her poetry. She became a kind of guiding spirit-- leading me to trust my own voice, my own identity. Sin became a totem-- one I still have, by the way-- carried with me to Amsterdam.

Even if I hadn't known it when I made it, Ai was a really good choice as a poet of identity-- particularly the struggle for self. Even though I don't read her now as much as I did, I'm still so impressed with the way she wrote to characters and to points of view-- always questioning the bias inside our ideas of identification and identity.

So even though I never met her and never heard her read she was one of my personal heroes. And this story is the story of why.

(*)The man in question tells me that the fight couldn't have been about Lowell, since he doesn't like Lowell either. I'm deferring to my own memory, but it could have been Bly-- I really enjoyed needling him about Bly.

(**)I turned the incident into a poem, and it was the first poem I ever had accepted into a national venue. It also was the only piece I ever had published which generated fan mail. And so it goes.

Farewelcome 2007

2010-03-27T04:59:00.000-07:00

The AMC held a memorial ceremony for children who had died at the hospital within the year. They called it a Farewelcome. I thought the name was goofy.

I'm cursed with the role of the continual critic. It limits my participation.

We were supposed to bring our child's "favorite flower". Does a dead baby have a favorite flower? I bought a peony because the daisies were all stupid colors. I would have rather been damned than bring a rose bud. I don't know why.

We were a little late, because we're that kind of people. I didn't know what a person is supposed to wear to a Farewelcome, so I settled on blue jeans, black boots, jet necklace & black shirt and sweater. Halfway to mourning. It turned out to be appropriate. Anything was appropriate.

We started seeing people with a single flower inside the hospital lobby. It seemed there was a good turnout. We checked our peony in a vase by the door.

First surprise. Which was not really a surprise. 90% of the women were pregnant. A baby belly was the must-have fashion accessory. I say it isn't a surprise because I understand it. There were also older children being Farewelcomed, but most of the losses were infants. If a dead baby is a conversation with God, then pregnancy is the only possible reply.

If you can still speak, of course.

Second surprise. We were seated and I was trying to channel Jackie Kennedy when someone loomed in my personal space. An old co-worker. "I don't know the story," he said, and took my hand. "But strength to you both." More about him later.

So then they played the harp. Why is it always a harp? And then they read all the names. Nobody in Holland can pronounce Eleanor. As your child's name was read, you were supposed to go light a candle. Some little kids went up a couple of times and lit candles whenever they felt like it.

Then they read a story about a squirrel. B. didn't think it was dumb.

Then more harp. Then we left.

So this old coworker: We went for coffee afterwards. They lost their baby in August. She's actually up to the same point in her pregnancy where she lost the baby before. The pregnancy was great until they went in for their 20 week echo. They baby had massive genetic problems and no heart to speak of. So they induced at 22 weeks, knowing the outcome.

"Pregnancy is so much fun," I cracked, weeping.

She wiped her own tears away. "A rose colored cloud."

(edited to say that this happened, as the title says, in 2007. I was working on something else, and came back to this fragment. And as it isn't part of anything else, I posted it here.)

Susan Rothenberg: Emotions

2010-03-27T04:01:00.000-07:00

(via here)

2010-03-27T03:49:00.001-07:00

RIP, AI. (January 2, 1947-March 19, 2010)/ "Conversation" by AI

2010-03-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Conversation

for Robert Lowell

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
And when you open your mouth,
a ball of yellow light falls to the floor
and burns a hole through it.
Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.
Did you ever, you start,
wear a certain kind of silk dress
and just by accident,
so inconsequential you barely notice it,
your fingers graze that dress
and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life
is a chain of words
that one day will snap.
Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,
and beginning to rise heavenward
in their confirmation dresses,
like white helium balloons,
the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning,
and above all that,
that’s where I’m floating,
and that’s what it’s like
only ten times clearer,
ten times more horrible.
Could anyone alive survive it?

In Advance of the Broken Leg. (Slow.)

2010-03-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day trying to go back to work with my unreliable knee. My bad knee. My crutches and brace and backpack clutched under my arm.

The journey was not a success.

At Schiphol I looked uneasily at my track. No train. No cancellation notice. Just no train. I stumped to another track. No train. I stumped back to the original track. No information. No train.

I joined a group of angry commuters in a circle around the NS official. He frowned at his little machine. Logistics problem, he said.

A hatchet-faced man insisted the 'logistics problem' was actually a fire in Utrecht.

The official disagreed. No, he said, there's someone wandering in the tunnel close to the airport.

I asked if any trains were coming. The official shrugged. You know as much as I do, he answered. But I didn't know anything.

I decided to buy a sandwich. And sit. My knee was hurting from all the running between tracks and standing around. I went to Delifrance, and waited in line.

An old man with a wheeled suitcase watched me. He was behind me. He looked at my crutch, his watch, then made up his mind. He dashed around the barrier and jumped in front of me.

His hand was firm on the handle, no indecision. I was Slow. He was going first. His ears did not turn red with shame.

Eventually, I sat and ate my sandwich. The benches in the airport are separated with metal rails. Anti-sleeping person protection. I couldn't stretch my leg out. I saw unhappy people continue to mill around the trains. I wrote email.

Eventually my leg hurt more from the sitting than the standing, so I made my way back to the tracks.

Still nothing running in the direction of Delft. But finally a train for Amsterdam. I got on, went back home. I gave up.

But this isn't what I wanted to say.

I wanted to write about rage. And being Slow. First: Slow.

As a commuter, you are defined by your speed. Other commuters are as quick as cats to smell weakness. And crutches = Slow.

You see it on faces, in the way people react. The tight unhappy fear of someone interrupting pace.

The old man I mentioned above. A girl who raced in front of me to jump on the escalator first. The eye-rolling students behind me, objecting to me standing in front of them. The cars and bikes that sped up when they saw me step into the crosswalk. The pedestrian who pushed me into the railing on the too-narrow sidewalk so he could get past.

Slow.

And now Rage. I have been surprised, distantly, how much anger is exposed by my bad leg. By the time I was on my way back home, I was chewing my lower lip to avoid shouting like a mad bag lady.

Finally, nearly at my door, a bike came up behind me on the sidewalk, aggressively ringing her bell. She wanted to turn on a side street, but didn't feel like waiting for the light. So she took the sidewalk. Only I was in her way.

I reeled with surprise and nearly fell. She took the moment to race past.

I lost control of my lip. Get pleurisy and rot, you tiresome cancer cuntbitch! I was snarling.

She turned her head, briefly. Shocked.

Good she sped along quickly. I believe if she had stopped I would have hit her with my metal crutch. Pounded and pounded until she was bleeding on the ground, her own leg broken. Bruised and battered. I wished her disability and disaster. I wanted her to hurt. I wished her Slow.

I'm going to take some time and try to learn from how much anger I've got right now. Certainly, I will practice more empathy and less pace. When my leg heals. Eventually.

Berryman.

2010-03-15T08:14:00.001-07:00

2010-03-10T23:38:00.001-08:00

I don’t know how to use these online spaces well. I’ve been struggling to keep up with my work and writing goals, and this space has suffered. I use it mostly to park things I look up while I’m writing—a place to store images/ideas/experiences.

I also struggle with the online writers community. I feel dull, precious and middle aged. My wit is undertuned and I ohave very little to say besides thank you or an expression of appreciation/agreement. Sometimes not even that since it feels syncophantic.

Think what I like about Miller, but he was at least willing to make choices. I’m mossy and shambling.

Fan Dancer Sally Rand at 1934 Chicago World's Fair

2010-02-24T21:40:00.000-08:00

Voicemail from the moon.

2010-02-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

My husband's company has new software which sends him emails with transcribed versions of voicemails people leave for him. The software doesn't work quite as it should.

These are voicemails which it thinks I left for him while he was in Atlanta for work:

Hey this is extending his.

Voice mail for me -- -- yeah I love you will try and call you later.

Bye bye.

*****

Hey it's me I'm actually going to.

I forgot to tell you that you do have a cracking win children efficiency sending a better feel sorry to get back -- certain I sheet one it's Wells pretty big will star trucks wrote the be brought -- actually to our servers -- three start 12 medium in one little -- but they don't I can still see Cheryl and there -- passenger side calling crack.

Clearly this message NEMI love you.

*****

Hey it's me.

I am back -- but it was again serpentine shortly.

Here this week.

*****

Hey it's me I love you very much actually really early tomorrow.

So I'm going to give you a call -- later if you don't call me back tonight it doesn't really early tonight so I could be there 7:32 -- hey I really don't like testing of you always meeting your phone off you will receive it on and might ring and then don't answer leave you know it's Charisse Meyer 90 -- well when you are having an affair with me -- if you could give to you -- soon turnings an awful time.

I love you if you get this call me.

Wingy Manone.

2010-02-21T13:52:00.001-08:00

The Owl Critic, James T. Fields

2010-02-21T05:07:00.000-08:00

"Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop,
The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;
The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The "Daily," the "Herald," the "Post," little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.

"Don't you see, Mr. Brown,"
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous each wing is
How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is--
In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis!
I make no apology;
I've learned owl-eology.
I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections,
And can not be blinded to any deflections
Arising from unskilful fingers that fail
To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!
Do take that bird down,
Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over town!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls,
And other night-fowls,
And I tell you
What I know to be true;
An owl can not roost
With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.
He can't do it, because
'Tis against all bird-laws.
Anatomy teaches,
Ornithology preaches,
An owl has a toe
That can't turn out so!
I've made the white owl my study for years,
And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mr. Brown, I'm amazed
You should be so gone crazed
As to put up a bird
In that posture absurd!
To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;
The man who stuffed him don't half know his business!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"Examine those eyes.
I'm filled with surprise
Taxidermists should pass
Off on you such poor glass;
So unnatural they seem
They'd make Audubon scream,
And John Burroughs laugh
To encounter such chaff.
Do take that bird down;
Have him stuffed again, Brown!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

"With some sawdust and bark
I could stuff in the dark
An owl better than that.
I could make an old hat
Look more like an owl
Than that horrid fowl,
Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,
Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic
(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic,
And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:
"Your learning's at fault this time, anyway;
Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.
I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good day!"
And the barber kept on shaving.

From The Diaries of Dawn Powell 1931-1965

2010-02-20T08:13:00.001-08:00

If anyone likes truth—and it seems to me the most beautiful form of art in the world—they not only like to get at real motives and the real character of other people but there is a release in finding out something about themselves, or even finding old cliché’s true. After a while a number of things unfold—the reason for the banalities of best sellers, the popularity of platitudinous books on living. Platitude is the stuff of life, the core of living, the cure for heartbreak, the ultimate answer to “Why?” Underneath the woes of the world run the firm roots of platitude, the song cues, the calendar slogans. “Darkness comes before daylight,” “Tomorrow is another day,” “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” “Jesus loves you.”

There is nothing permanent, nothing for the mind to fall on but this old bed of clichés after it has stormed through life trying to find its own answers, its own solutions, and finally its own heartbreak, its own stone wall. What comfort then in “Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary?” Little—but all there is.

Lejaren Hiller: Computer Cantata (1963), Prolog to Strophe I, Strophe I

2010-02-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

Rosie Plummer (as recorded in the book Shamanic Visions, Joan Halifax)

2010-02-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

Some shamans get their power from the water-babies. They are the only people who can talk to them. They tell the rest of the people not to make fun of water-babies. These shamans can take the water-babies out of the lake.

The water-babies came to life by their own power. They formed themselves. Some water-babies live in water-holes, and these holes never dry up. People call these water-babies the “breath of the water-holes.” There is a cool breeze all the time in the mountains where they live. They have the power to cause wind to blow, even a very strong wind. The wind is their breath.

There are also women in the lakes where the water-babies live. These women are like the water-babies. They have the same power. Big serpents live in the lake, too. Like the water-babies, those serpents have strong power. They give power to some shamans.

RIP, Lucille Clifton.

2010-02-14T01:27:00.001-08:00

“oh antic God”
(Lucille Clifton)

oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed.

I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.

I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.

For the Sylvia Plath bake-off (at Radish King's place)

2010-02-11T09:51:00.001-08:00

Photomontage for Majakovski's "Pro Eto", Alexander Rodchenko

2010-02-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

at foam until March, 2010

Barbara Kruger

2010-02-07T01:51:00.001-08:00

Kelp

2010-02-06T08:17:00.000-08:00

There are long whips in the sea, ladies.
They are my tears. I cried them.
Ladies, not much separates me.
Not much. From love, from other such.
Not much, ladies. The word 'cat'
separates me and the word 'necessary'
and a certain question about the definition of
'age'. Not much separates me. Not much.
The boy takes a whip up from out of the foam.
He strikes the rock because he likes the sound.
I am amused and distracted, "Tom,"
I call, "put it down, my dear." He only does it
because he likes the sound. And I am,
after all, only amused. Ladies,
take the long whips, these tears I've shed.
I don't care what you do with them
but they are necessary. Not much separates me.
A question of time. My tears have nothing
to do with that.

(originally published in New Stone Circle)

Question.

2010-02-02T09:08:00.000-08:00

If I'm making a submission, I generally try to find the name of the editor responsible for the specific area (prose/poetry) and address the submission letter to that person by name.

Increasingly, literary journals are providing a non-hierarchical list of editors without much illumination regarding who reads for what. In that case, is it better to use the generic "dear editor" or would it be better to select one of those names at random?

Going with "Dear Editor" for today. But curious if any of you have thoughts on the matter.

Zarah Leander sings Wunderbar, 1977

2010-01-30T12:48:00.000-08:00

2010-01-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

Can't there be something great in the sheer number of poets working today? Can it be like a fabulous bazaar, poems bunched and offered like flowers-- exotic sellers, startling colors?

It doesn't feel like that now. Diffusion. Too diffuse.

As though I walked into the drug store and saw 10,000 different brands of shampoo. So many options I don't feel delighted by the choice. Instead the suspicion all shampoo is the same. Too many choices, creating the feeling of sameness? How does that work?

Also something autistic about the circles of writers. Backs turned out to the readers, faces turned to each other.

Looking for a way to make a really joyful noise.

Beginning My Studies, Walt Whitman

2010-01-24T06:14:00.001-08:00

BEGINNING my studies, the first step pleas’d me so much,
The mere fact, consciousness—these forms—the power of motion,
The least insect or animal—the senses—eyesight—love;
The first step, I say, aw’d me and pleas’d me so much,
I have hardly gone, and hardly wish’d to go, any farther,
But stop and loiter all the time, to sing it in extatic songs.

Found in a town park in Wisconsin, Thanksgiving 2009.

2010-01-23T07:47:00.001-08:00

Whitman, Whittier, and the fire.

2010-01-22T04:03:00.000-08:00

There's been quite a bit of discussion lately within the Internet division of the poetry community about the nature of criticism as it relates to poetry.

I'm not sure I'm wise enough to add much beyond what I've already said in various comments. I don't feel up to quoting Deleuze in a good way. This isn't an attempt at a thoughtful philosophical argument.

I wanted to react to one point. Isn't there always one point? In one of the comment threads, a way of thinking went like this: I wouldn't have wanted to be one of the critics who trashed Whitman when he first appeared.

Well, me neither. If only for the reason I would have turned out to be wrong. I hate being wrong.

But on the other hand, I'm really glad those negative criticisms existed. Weren't they part of making Whitman who he was?

I don't mean Whitman the man, or even the poet as part of the man. I mean Whitman as the poet in the world. The great new voice which came from outside and changed the face of writing.

Can something important happen without a reaction? Poetry isn't completely atypical. Poets work in relation to each other. They stretch within and beyond the prevailing norms. Critics help set and codify the norms, note them as they move-- perhaps several steps later than the poets themselves. Sometimes they spot the true paradigm shifts. Sometimes they don't.

Emerson got it. Whittier didn't. But would Whitman have Whitman without other poets wanting to throw the books into the fire? For a game changer to exist, there has to be a game to change.

If there's no need for negative criticism today, doesn't that scare you? It terrifies me. It might mean we've evolved to a more wonderful place. It might mean there is no mainstream. That nothing poetry does *matters*. Did poetry die with the modernists?

I don't know.

I stand by my feeling that discussion of any kind is better than silence. Naturally I prefer treatment of writing come from a place of genuine empathy and love for the work. But shouldn't that go without saying?

Hard times come again no more

2010-01-19T10:29:00.001-08:00

2010-01-17T01:07:00.001-08:00

What about using real pop culture characters/figures for near-time dystopic science fiction? Legally, it should fall under fair use, if I read the available material. But would a publisher avoid a small piece of fiction that did something like feature a violent gang that named itself The Boy Scouts?

Found on the street today in Amsterdam.

2010-01-16T07:08:00.001-08:00

this photograph

and

this earring

and

I also found a 10 euro note, but I spent that on chocolate cake.

2010-01-16T02:39:00.000-08:00

a history of the mansion on the Tellico River

Johnny Guitar.

2010-01-15T13:57:00.001-08:00

2010-01-13T12:47:00.001-08:00

One of my worst habits in prose is exposing the already obvious. I tell the reader someone has spoken while they're already speaking. I mention a phone, when the fact that they're talking into a receiver is sufficient. I need the complete picture in my head. A story is a painting, not a photograph.

From "Creative Self-Criticism in Science and in Art", Karl Popper

2010-01-10T06:33:00.000-08:00

We can distinguish two kinds of criticism, one that has aesthetic and literary interests and one that has rational interests. The first leads from myth to poetry, the second leads from myth to science; or to be more precise, to natural science. The former evaluates the beauty of the language, the energy of the rhythm, the radiance and vividness of the images, the dramatic tension and its persuasive power. This kind of critical judgment leads to poetry, especially to epic and dramatic poetry; to petic song, and with it to classical music.

Rational criticism, by contrast, asks whether the mythical report is true; whether the world really evolved in the manner asserted: whether it could have been created as Hesiod tells us or, perhaps, in according with Genesis. Under the pressure of such questions myth becomes cosmology, the science of our world, of our environment; it turns into natural science.

My third thesis is that there are still many traces left over from the common origin of poetry and music on the one hand and cosmology and science on the other. I am not asserting that all poetry is mythical in character, or that all science is cosmology. But I wish to say is that in poetry—one only has to think of Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann—and in science, the creation of myths still plays an unexpectedly large role. Myths are our attempts, naïve and inspired by our imagination, to explain ourselves and our world to ourselves. A large part not only of poetry but also of science can still be described as a naïve attempt, inspired by imagination, at explaining our world to ourselves.

Poetry and science—and therefore also music—are blood relations. They stem from the attempt to understand our origin and our fate, and the origin and the fate of our world.

(trans. Laura J. Bennett)

þæt

2010-01-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

I'm comfortable with my adjective use. It's my conjunctions which can use some work.

Resolute.

2010-01-07T05:58:00.000-08:00

This is my cat Grace. Grace is suicidal.

She's five years old. Grace has, in those years, jumped out of a second story window, hung herself in the closet, stolen and eaten blood thinners, and eaten several feet of Christmas ribbon.

While we were in Prague, Grace was staying with friends of ours who have looked after her before. This time, Grace decided that life without us was not worth living. She stopped eating and drinking. Our friends didn't notice this because she has long fluffy hair, tends to hide under the bed, and because our other cat Amor

who is not suicidal, ate all the food for both of them. He got very fat.

Just before New Year's we returned. We discovered our dehydrated and starved cat. This required multiple vet visits, expensive blood tests, and liquid with an eye dropper every three hours.

700 euros and two sleepless nights later, Grace is feeling better. Yay! On New Year's Eve she started to eat on her own. She demanded cat candy.

We gave a small party on New Year's Eve. That was fun. I was very tired. Because I was very tired, friends pitched in and turned the dinner part into a pot luck. Thank you, friends.

I drank champagne. Quite a lot of champagne.

The next day, I got sick.

I've been sick ever since.

So even though I intended to start this year with all kinds of writing-related activities, film watching, and cleaning my house and getting my paperwork done, I haven't accomplished very much at all.

Our house is full of crumpled tissues. I still haven't taken the Christmas tree down. I have played a great deal of Bejeweled Blitz.

But Grace feels better. So that's good.

That's all.

On business models for literary journals.

2010-01-04T07:00:00.001-08:00

I just got an email from the local expat literary journal. They have rebranded themselves. Rather than shilling subscriptions to their journal, they want you to buy a membership in their writing community. For between 20-50 euros per year, you get one free copy of the journal, 35% off a subscription, a VIP invitation to their launch party, and reduced prices for their writing groups and workshops. The more you pay, the more reduced events you can attend.

It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (VIP invitation to their launch party? Seriously?)

They aren't the only ones taking this kind of initiative. Another journal that has been around for many years now regularly asks for payment for themed reading periods. They only have two periods per year where they accept unpaid submissions. Reading between the lines, the strong implication is your chances of acceptance are improved if you're willing to fork over the money.

The initiative of the first journal is certainly, on the surface, less pernicious than in the case of the second. But still, it begins to feel as though the journal only exists to hawk the workshops and their (paid) writing groups.

What's the purpose of a literary journal anyhow?

They certainly aren't enduring works of art in and of themselves. Even the most famous are swiftly forgotten. Some of the most influential had runs of no more than two or three years.

It seems to me that a literary journal is a way of facilitating a conversation about writing/art-- a conversation between writers, editors, and readers which finds form through the printed or online page. Writing groups certainly often grow up around a journal, but shouldn't that be an organic thing? Not a paid membership to some kind of writing club like fucking poetry girlscouts.

Pardon my language.

I get regular communication from these people. They never seem to talk about the work anymore. Increasingly it seems they're just hawking their wares.

2010's theme for me is the notion of a writer's community. So I'm more sensitive to this stuff, and thinking about it just a little bit more critically, I imagine.

I have nothing against editors making a living. So perhaps I'm overreacting.

They've never published me. So perhaps I'm a dog in a manger.

Or maybe I really just don't like workshops.

Last year, or a little before, I had contemplated joining one of their Master Classes. The next night I had a dream that I attended one, and a group of people held me down and pissed in my face. The bad taste in my mouth?

What do you think? The way of the future?

From The Journal of John Woolman

2010-01-01T10:35:00.001-08:00

Look, my dear friends, to Divine Providence, and follow in simplicity that exercise of body, that plainness and frugality, which true wisdom leads to; so may you be preserved from those dangers which attend such as are aiming at outward ease and greatness.

Treasures, though small, attained on a true principle of virtue, are sweet; and while we walk in the light of the Lord there is a true comfort and satisfaction in the possession; neither the murmurs of an oppressed people, nor a throbbing uneasy conscience, nor anxious thoughts about the events of things, hinder the enjoyment of them.

The third man.

2009-12-26T10:46:00.000-08:00

I've been working on a rewrite of a short story. I have just, grudgingly, gotten rid of my third man. I really wanted there to be three men. I wanted there to be three men because in an important bureaucratic moment, there would always be three representatives in attendance. Nobody in business would ever show up for something critical with just two people. My third man didn't need to *do* anything. He just needed to sit there in a mediocre suit and occasionally shake hands.

Can't be done in a short story, I fear. My third man took on all kinds of unreasonable importance. I tried giving him a line or two, but the lines took on inappropriate weight. When he was silent, there was tension in the lack of words. He was mystery. He was the cipher. All the gravity of the story flew away from my other characters and stuck to him.

So now he's gone. Third man, RIP.

It irritates me. Sometimes there is just a third man in the room. Sometimes he isn't important for anything except being that third person. And I'm not good enough to find a way to include him in the story without making that into the story.

Not yet, anyhow.

Christ Climbed Down, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

2009-12-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

Georges Simenon

2009-12-23T23:18:00.000-08:00

Interview in French. I can just puzzle my way through.

Simenon showed us that crime is banal. At the same time he showed the fascinating life of the everyday person in France. Mystery writers do that all the time.

I wish that speculative fiction-- fantasy/sci fi-- did it more. It seems many science fiction/fanatasy stories I read bejewel the fantastic. Gilding the lily?

Gray vs. Grey

2009-12-23T01:51:00.000-08:00

In a round of editing I've been doing lately, I noticed I use both "grey" and "gray". If I had to pick, I would say that "grey" looks a bit better to me. Sometimes. Grey eyes, gray suit. Why do I do that?

A little bit of research via Dr. Google tells me that "gray" is primarily used in the US and that "grey" is primarily used in the UK.

From some discussion boards, I read that The Associated Press Style Book wants "gray". So for US editors, "grey" is probably going to look funny. The New York Times is ""The Gray Lady", right?

In A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L'Engle wrote:

When A Wrinkle in Time went into galleys, the copy editor -- I'm glad I haven't the faintest idea who it was -- had him/herself a ball. First of all, I do spell the English way; I was in an English boarding school when I was twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and these are the years when spelling gets set. After I had been made to write h-o-n-o-u-r, for instance, a hundred times on a blackboard several hundred times, it was almost impossible for me to spell it h-o-n-o-r. The English use t-o-w-a-r-d-s and we use t-o-w-a-r-d. I like to use them both, depending on the rhythm of the sentence and the letter which begins the following word; sometimes the s is needed; sometimes not: this is, I realize, rather erratic, and I can't blame the copy editor who tries to talk me out of it. Then there's grey, which is English, and one very definite, bird-wing, ocean-wave color to me; and gray, which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color. Then there are the c and s words, such as practice or practise. Abour words like these I'm simply in a state of confusion, rather than aesthetic persuasion, as with grey or towards, and the copy editor can have his way. On the whole I tell the copy editor to go ahead and make the spelling American, but don't muck around with the punctuation.

I suppose I'll mostly strive for consistency in fiction, and go with sound in poetry. As I write that sentence, I realize that grey 'sounds' different in my head than 'gray'. Hm. Perhaps I need to think about this some more.

From the Confessions, Saint Augustine

2009-12-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

Is this the rhythm of our world? Is this what you prescribed when from the heights of heaven to the depths of earth, from the first beginnings to the end of time, from the angel to the worm, from the fist movement to the last, you allotted a proper place and proper time to good things of every kind and to all your just works? How can I hope to understand the height and the depth of you, from the greatest to the most lowly of your works? You never depart from us, yet it is hard for us to return to you.

(translation R.S. Pine-Coffin)

The Triolet

2009-12-21T09:28:00.000-08:00

One of the elements most important to me in poetry is the sound. I have a definite taste for doggerel.

As a kid, I did myself a real favor by filling notebooks (literally) full of sonnets, rondeaux, whatever I could find. I didn't generate anything for the ages, but I did learn a lot about meter and sound.

Lately, I had the feeling everything I had learned about structure had kind of melted into advertising jingle. Advertising jingle is a nice feel for certain kinds of irony and frantic energy, but it isn't everything that I would like to achieve.

So when I ran across The Rondeau Roundup blog and its Triolet contest, it gave me a good excuse to practice again with a new form.

So for the last few weeks, every time I get a few minutes on a train or at night, I've been writing a triolet. Some of them are very bad. Some of them have promise. The exercise is the point. Getting to the moment where I internalize the voice of the structure is the point.

It may be the natural human need to justify how I spend my time, but this feels like a good idea.

*****

I’ve lost the memory of pain.
I hate the doctor who harried you—
All alone on every train,
I’ve lost the memory of pain.
Release the blame into the rain,
our clenching grip on what was true.
I’ve lost the memory of pain.
I hate the doctor who harried you.

*****

The cat came down and stalked the room,
I rubbed the rug to feel the spark.
The clumps of hair stuck to the broom,
the cat came down and stalked the room.
She came out spitting from the womb;
she likes to hobble in the dark.
The cat came down and stalked the room,
I rubbed the rug to feel the spark.

*****

White-backed birds outside the glass
circle flapping over trees.
Crickets sing us to the mass,
white-backed birds outside the glass.
Bow your head and pray ‘alas’
for muted earth and humming seas—
white-backed birds outside the glass
circle flapping over trees.

*****

The smell of orange on fingernails,
olive boredom of office rooms.
Time passes by with all entails,
the smell of orange on fingernails.
I switch this here when that life fails
and sweep the week with rusty broom.
The smell of orange on fingernails,
olive boredom of office rooms.