nice

i think it is important to acknowledge other people's feelings. like, hey -- i get why that poem makes you feel like shit. no one likes being told that their feelings are not valid. anyway, i should have said that i get the way you are feeling.

migraine

sunburst, nother week -end
wreckered

window drift, mirror-navel
skin-pinned and flanked
you open generous muscles

you should know, you deserve better
you should know, i'm thinking of you

mermaid

I want to make things. bones and buttons sewed together with glue. The murdered flue murmured through the sink water. I pin my bones back with skin. No, raw let. Already drawn on.

you are reading again. reading. reading. you hair in the light like gold thread. the head of a baby goat skinned and powdered. sugared highlight of the bruised fin slid through your teeth like claps.

hollow bottle button brush, hemmed against your lost hand

procrastination is a part of life

yes. that is what I am doing. procrastinating.

apparently halloween in isla vista is totally crazy.

i fed a pelican yesterday.

Magi/Magpie

every day i wait
for the slow rains
they say unfold
the silence made
by so many slit
lips, so many flicked
wrists shreading sheets
stitched with missed time --

a noisy chatter
made possible by
invisibled gifts
no one admits

audience / clairaudience

I've been interested in public space/ public art poetry -- sidewalk chalk, scraps of paper tied to trees, sand and snow glyphs, graffiti. The type of stuff where the audience is simply those who see/hear/find it.

I also really like stuff made out of trash/refuse.

I am annoyed by the phrase "bringing poetry to the people." There are always more people doing interesting stuff than those who receive or pursue recognition for it. I guess that is obvious, but I hate that the mode of presentation with so many poetry things (especially touring/corporate/institutional things) is like "come hear/read us -- we're poets" as if other/local people are not poets. Or as if poetry could be contained/embodied by an institution or brand.

Moreover, there is the whole question of attention and how attention itself is a sort of currency.

I'm interested in how ambient poetry works. How do you make an ambient poem?

Clairaudience

sidewalk chalk

I didn't go to impunities. Alas. Soon, I hope to go someplace where I will meet people.

Yesterday, a dear friend came to visit. She was here for a mere 9 hours. We drank champagne and ate grilled cheese and stayed up all night.

Places I want to go: Milwaukee, San Francisco, Seattle. Soon we are going to Annapolis for Dad's 60th birthday.

I have many pieces of poetry mssssss floating around in different folders. I generate and scatter. The harder part is gathering. So much focus and concentration on the sorting, sifting. Somehow this must also be physical. Piles shuffled. bundling sticks.

Things I want do: surf, sew, bake.

Heathers is on Lifetime. Random.

I was afraid. Eclipse like paper
torn by clipped
sun. no pinion
but my glass jaw bobbing

water crags, enveloped rips
and scurried clinking
all along. A bathing suit
designed by lanterns

scaled by wax winglets
unslit by fish

surfing

I'm going to learn how.

I am going to go Impunities conference. I've been laying pretty low since we got here, but I'm starting to feel ready to venture out. I never know whether I should declare that I am shy or pretend that I am not. Anyway, I love LA. I find the city incredibly stimulating and energizing. And I love October. I think it is going to be a gorgeous weekend.

I love Jessica's FOURSQUARE and Maureen's TINYSIDES. I have this fantasy that they will both create book length anthologies that contain the full run of both. Can you imagine -- all that color and splash and zig-zang language in one volume? What amazing gifts they would make. And what a great way to document exciting publications that, alas, have a very limited run. Of course a book wouldn't be the same as the issues/individual sides themselves...but they are so special. I know loads of people who would really enjoy being able to see/have them even if it wasn't in their original form.

found in california

frolic fair arc 0r
carol crania or
air frail cilia

i lion local foci
i foil a rail

a far iron can ail
an oil -- an ion naif --
a coil or flair

MEMO

Re: Come done, un king --

the willful awe
the younger girls pretend
all the way to the ascending
eyelace -- their corsetted steps
along a ruddy line
that stitches into heaven --
is only a sick soaked in ink.
already, we invisible you.

O, Lord -- mister police --
please unloosen the pole
position from which your
shimmy hips mimic teeth --
there's nothing there beyond
a sucking pink. We all think
it's about time you come down.

scrim, lie down

oven runt – mewing
alley puss – you are counting
my ladder glass, sway
of mineral tubes untied
and skinned
as your sisters – twin
pencils – pretend
they're old enough, and pretend

the pinion felt
in the cradle sacrum
where the screw slipped
is what they meant to happen

Dog Run

A place where walking

is akin to shifting names.

Not an escape, only

an erasing of the besotted lines

that criss and cross like arrow-spines

prickling the wood pulp air –

a cinder-hunt mined for flashbacks (naked

swimming, the lost transistor, a burning car).

Scent of when the wheat grew waist high

and you parted the way.

Saved Cures for a Tied Reach

The architects and mediums
traded tools as if their purpose
were to string one skyscraper
to the next, an unholy tight-rope
designed to guide visitors
from hall to airy hall. Without
the tapered trap, the mirror-born
would be left to paper
their footsteps with debris
gathered from the ruins
of ribboned sheets, the shredded
glass of hallowed atria.

Jams

catharsis

Song
by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Listen: there was a goat's head hanging by ropes in a tree. All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat's head Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away Beside which the goat's headless body lay. Some boys Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined. The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything. The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks. The head called to the body. The body to the head. They missed each other. The missing grew large between them, Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills. Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder, Sang long and low until the morning light came up over The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped.... The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after The night's bush of stars, because the goat's silky hair Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit. The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train's horn Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats. She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming Made it so. But one night the girl didn't hear the train's horn, And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat's body By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles At the goat's torn neck. Then somebody found the head Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take These things away so that the girl would not see them. They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat. They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke.... But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job, Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark. What they didn't know was that the goat's head was already Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn't know Was that the goat's head would go on singing, just for them, Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen, Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song, The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother's call. Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

towards

still feeling new, but finding things to do:

backspace bookarts class, if I have the $

Mika Miko w/ THE SLITS @ Troubador in LA!!!!

pony up

I haven't really told you about it here, how the hummingbird visits the vine every morning around eleven, or how the light slides in the front room bright and wide in the afternoon. One weekend there was ash in the air for hours.

all the vines are secret here

feather father fox

rearview mirrors

In a capitalist patriarchal culture, so many reviews seemed to be geared toward public relations and buying and selling. IF women are systemically unequal, the reviews are likely to take on that hue. Moreover, many reviewers feel compelled to invoke hegemonic "histories of poetry" in their reviews.

Poetry is the most radical form of language, and (often) reviews feel like the most conservative -- motivated by economics and parasitic.This isn't to say that reviews can't be radical (I def think there is potential in the "authorless" review), but ultimately art is the most radical way to evaluate.

But I read lots of reviews/criticisms of pop culture that take gender/feminism(s) into account and -- I have to say -- the availability of feminist critiques of tv shows like Laguna Beach do make me hopeful. Magazines like Bitch don't bill themselves as a "review" of pop culture but rather a "response." Now I'm just thinking out loud here, but a "review" seems to suggest primarily a critique of the content, while "response" suggests an engagement/questioning/assessment of both premise and content. So it's not just about "what happens" on Laguna Beach, but also about why and how the show "laguna beach" exists and what the implications of that premise are. And then that can be compared to a show like "Veronica Mars." Sorry to be going on about TV here, but it's the best example I can come up with right now. At any rate, the "review" as it tends to exist in the NYTBR and other places may be too narrow a form to address what needs to be addressed.

So what I'm wondering is how "a feminist response to poetry culture" might look.

And what is the review culture that would be good for any female poets book?

A few thoughts

- highlighting how individuals do something special is good
- reporting "what happens" when we read/listen/look/touch as opposed to placing whatever
we read/listen/look/touch is into some linear, historical context is good.
-reviews that are not tied to buying and selling are good

also, to what extent might "poetry culture" be different from academic culture, AND to what extent has academic/AWP poetry culture been effectively sealed off from the culture of spoken word poetry where race/gender/class are so much more likely to be treated topically.