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rag tag

Jessica tagged me to list 8 random things. Here is a list of 8 "random" things about my reading habits.

1. I read my horoscope. I don't necessarily "believe" in astrology, but I find horoscopes interesting. I especially like reading Susan Miller's astrology zone at the beginning of each month. I'm on the cusp of scorpio/sagitarius.

2. I visit Wikipedia at least once a day. Today I read about Michael Faraday
and the squirrel.

3. I very rarely read a book cover to cover, except for novels and poetry books, and even in those I tend to read around. If I'm reading criticism or theory, I have to read with a pen/pencil and underline a lot -- otherwise, I remember nothing.

4. I read blogs, and have recently been using google reader. In addition to poetry and feminist blogs, I also read celebrity gossip blogs. Don't judge me.

5. 8 Novels I've read multiple times since I turned 18: Sons and Lovers, To the Lighthouse, The Metamorphosis, Cane, Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, Written on the Body, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

6. 8 Novels I read multiple times as a child: Little House on the Prairie, Flowers for Algernon, The Black Stallion, The Red Pony, Misty of Chincoteague, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon.

7. I read, but do not follow, recipes. I hate being precise in the kitchen. It annoys me.

8. I hate reading directions that come with board games. I expect games to be intuitive. I hate that feeling of opening a board game and encountering some thick booklet of instructions.

poems from Guantanamo

Kaya Oakes is rad

Kate Greenstreet interviews Kaya Oakes

weekend reading

cool interview with Perter Ganick

Reading Hannah Weiner

I see words

ghosts

awesome poem by Amy King up at Verse Daily today.

citement

My friends Chris and Julia make beautiful things. Check out the chaps in progress for their new project, dos press. Also take a look at the minumentals (one is pictured above): tiny poem books/boxes. Lastly, their new poetry journal, Little Red Leaves (for which I'm a contributing editor), is now live.

makes me want to make (spring)

Linh Dinh is my new favorite poet. Lots of intriguing and inspiring stuff over at the flux I share.

post-bellumletters reading

I'm reading this. lots of great images.

sunday

A whole section devoted to feminist art in The Washington Post:

To get into the show, you have to brush past a 12-foot-tall, blood-red vulva suspended from the ceiling, woven from sisal in the gnarly style of a classic hippie hanging. It's so supremely brash it makes you laugh and squirm at the same time. Many of the female and feminist themes in this show, as well as the simple concentration of them in one place, can leave even fans feeling vaguely squirmy. We're clearly not used to an exhibition that's all woman, all the time, even though we seem to have no trouble with other shows drenched in testosterone -- which would be almost every exhibition that we've ever seen, judging by the warriors and courtesans and macho brushstrokes in their works, and by the males who crafted them.

I've also been reading Lee Ann Brown and Sylvia Plath. Also watching Twin Peaks Season 2.

BellumLetters #8

birdbox

1.

no arrival, only the construct

a tethered thing, a lid
to lift

2.

wood from the sea
where birds are made
wood box

the saw
through


white tail
tip
blade feather

box of knives
box of beds

3.

thermometer for blood making

syringe, feeder

drained and piled
faceless wings

shaped to slip, flesh grip
soft and bone

glass on stone
tip red tip

knock on bone
without breath

________

outside, too
a life stretch
brown and moving
eye, wing stitch
the missing sound
boxless

_________________

4.

sad neck, deflated
unfrozen and soft

homeless, three
sisters
missing home
tapered tail to tip

unlidded
without flight

BellumLetters #6

_all the kings horses_

Body puzzle, where to begin
to put you back together again?
Sun-yolk spilt, my split heart
plump with thieving (even
that isn't mine)
_________________Like
a pencil the missile moves
over the city; outline of streets
and houses traced and tensile.
Soldier, isotope, when you
report the green sunset
and how the halos bloomed
and the ash clouds bundled
one thousand shovels,
the budding pacers
made from prosthetic
transplants, silk lantern
engines fit for larceny, become
sails knit together with
shrapnel, a place for roofs
to grow if it finally rains.

BellumLetters

Ambulance

As if that lets you off the hook. My skirt
could not become your palm, spread
wreckage of tires, triggers.
Giddyup, lover. (But really
you are full of it.) I practiced
making fists under the table
as garden walkers rowed the aisles
with sown syringes. You think
I don't know how you stay
awake so long? The taste
of gunpowder on your wrists
and the dogs barking
all through the night. I hang
my garments on the line
inviting fire, syllables.

fire in the hole by oliver munday

here

BellumLetters: A Project for National Poetry Month

P R E V E N T I O N

Today I drew marks
in the sand; they
reminded me of letters
or bones or teeth. Perhaps
you would call them vulgar.
The light pulls back
as an arm draws the arrow.
Bow, the bough breaking.
Rope and pulley singing
as wind throws birds
from the cliffs. It isn't even
ours -- this sand. We are
so stupid sometimes.

perhaps mirrors

One day I hope we'll remember
how it ends. It should be with more
than fountains or libraries.
Perhaps mirrors
will show our houses
amid the lost pretending --
echoes of buildings looped and fired
among refashioned
morrows and scales.
It will not be like holding
a quivering rainbow
or a lamb, or discovering
a wintry arbor
within a skirted hollow.
What materials
remain could turn
to meat or teeth or iron.
Film dome where bars suggest
habitats and animals again.

march

no war remembered how our hands held
or if the green sun was for growing
old or growing rain. There are numbers
I cannot understand and a glass hum
like saucers tilting away from
from oceans. A disc set
to spin as tires clear and darken.
Machine wreaths ringing halos
that clasp and sharpen
palms to palm-arrows
mining chime-shattered lines.

Me and DT

My score on The Which Famous Poet Are You Test:


Dylan Thomas!
(You scored 79 Demeanour, 59 Debauchery, 54 Traditionalism, and 75 Expression!)

Man! Do you love to party or what! If it's not fun, you probably haven't done it in a while. But that doesn't mean you're not serious about some things. You are a person with deep passions and a respect for beauty and craft. The world is a better place for having you in it. Too bad you won't be around that long. Drink up! You're masterpiece is "Under Milkwood".

Link: The Which Famous Poet Are You Test
(OkCupid Free Online Dating)