I dream that I've written essays

One of the dreams was about a paper I'd written called "The Fog of Scholarship." The thesis was that scholarship creates a fog around the subject, and sometimes it fills a book or a room. Or else it is there like a ghost in conversations. In the paper I called appearances of the fog in conversations "ghostings," and talked about how the language of scholarship is both guest and host which made the term especially appropriate. This all made perfect sense in the dream, even though now it seems...foggy.

Another essay was called "Multi-colored Pencils" and it was about how constructions and representations of race are articulated in different poetry communities. I remember that it seemed urgently important that I clarify that I wasn't talking about pencils of different colors, but rather pencils that were marbled rainbow (like these or these).

Another essay was called "Compassionate Sentences for Socialists" and it was written in a sort of Mad Libs form with many blanks above fine print descriptions of what should go in the blanks. There were things like "an animal with gentle skin" and "verb to describe the sound of machines" and "a house made out of paper and grass."

I have less time to write on paper or screens. I write when I am driving, or when I am walking home from class, or when I'm falling asleep. I see the words in my mind -- shuffling and reshuffling like scrabble tiles -- but my contact with the materials of writing -- paper, pencils, keys, and screens -- seems to be for typing and to-do lists.

These swans live at the lagoon at UCSB. For the longest time there was only one. Local birders believed that it was the offspring of a pair that had migrated out of the area. When a second swan appeared, the birding listserve was atwitter with the news. So many people were glad that the first swan was no longer alone.

dead dove when I opened the door...on its back...white feathers...red feet, curled red, nails...in my hand...but is it dead? eyelid, gold eye, eyeslide. the chest is moving. I'm looking looking looking for breath. It is alive, just barely, on the brink. I feel its pulse. I show it to J. "It's still breathing." Looking closely, J says "no, no, that is just your hand moving." It was my own pulse I felt.

AfterPlath

wound the old hole fashion

a thing sparkling, yellow jacket

sting-wings, plastic sheep bobbing

horizon-green, propeller-stung

kitty hanging synthroid

_________shudder cupboard

clean cat, claws pink: meat-making

mud-hooves, cork-screw

squeal, squid's ink in a jar

the dead dove's eye

gold in her slit

More Birds

Yesterday, I noticed a gray dove outside the enclosed seabird pond area. The dove looked like the doves in the aviaries, and so I suspected that it had escaped and then found its way back. Later, June said that she had given the dove to a neighbor, and that it must have escaped from its new home and come back. I went out of the enclosure and tried to net the bird so I could get it back inside, but it was difficult and the bird eluded the small, soft net. After several more failed attempts, I decided to put some seed on the roof of one of the aviaries. As it turned out, there was a hole in the net there, and I hoped that the bird might find its way back inside. Later, I noticed that this was the case; the bird had made its way in and was flying against the screens of the aviaries.

There was also a cormorant who we needed to net so that we could remove its wing wrap. It too was elusive, but at last,when it was in the water, J was able to scoop it up. Unfortunately, it became stuck in the net. At first we though it was stuck because one of its toenails had become stuck in the mesh, but what we thought was a toenail was actually a fishhook that had embedded itself in the cormorants foot. It took us quite awhile to untangle the net and remove the hook. There was blood.

There were ten cormorants at the pond -- the most I've ever seen -- and 8 pelicans. They had planned to do a release at dos pueblos ranch, but they had to reschedule because they were doing a photoshoot at the ranch that day. It was a shoot for Playboy magazine, and it was a closed set. The birds will be released there next week.

dazed in ruins, the interlocking grid
you've given us all the longing we can mend
to bark-babies, canine sheaths, torn wakes
in knotted bibs, wings in trenches, oil blood
blade babes, sand in iced glass, rattle rattle
the chill climbs twin spiders spread
greased windows, healthy prints

@ SBWCN

went to the beach today at 2 pm when the sun was high but there was still a lambswool mist of the marine layer along the sand and rocks. there was a good deal of tar on the beach and afterwards my friend and I dragged our sneakers across the grass and asphalt and just now I went to the car and noticed the smell of oil still in the air.

the summer is my favorite because the days are long and I tend to have fewer obligations. I have been estivating. It is sort of a dreamless estivation -- either very deep or very shallow -- no long strides in between. I have fewer words. the line makes shapes of non-words.

I am grateful for your work.

Hex Presse Updates

A *new* chapbook from Hex Presse, published as part of the Dusie Kollektiv. Many thanks to Author Elizabeth Bryant and Dusie luminary Susana Gardner.

*1/4 letter size

*double-bound with chiyogami paper and vellum, cloth, or iridescent tissue paper, or lace. Every single copy is unique.

*printed in an edition of 100 copies. Only a very limited number are available for purchase, as the majority of the print run has been distributed to the collective.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elizabeth Bryant's newest book, (nevertheless enjoyment, is forthcoming fall 2009 from Quale Press. Her writing appears in many print and online journals including Coconut, Dusie #8, Bombay Gin, Key Satch(el), Gerry Mulligan, and Intercapillary Space. She is the editor of CR79 Books, and the ongoing writing experiment Defeffable.

She first studied experimental writing and poetics as an undergrad at Smith College, then again in the M.F.A. program at Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, with Anne Waldman, Lyn Hejinian, Bernadette Mayer, and Lee Ann Brown.

She is co-curator of the Bard Roving Reading Series. [close] Elizabeth Bryant's newest book, (nevertheless enjoyment, is forthcoming fall 2009 from Quale Press. Her writing appears in many print and online journals including Coconut, Dusie #8, Bombay Gin, Key Satch(el), Gerry Mulligan, Intercapillary Space, and in the upcoming issue of Jacket Magazine. She is the editor of CR79 Books, and the ongoing writing experiment Defeffable.

She first studied experimental writing and poetics as an undergrad at Smith College, then again in the M.F.A. program at Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, with Anne Waldman, Lyn Hejinian, Bernadette Mayer, and Lee Ann Brown.

She is co-curator of the Bard Roving Reading Series.

xoxo still here