CODED MESSAGES TO THE OWLS

32

2012-02-12T13:28:00.002-06:00

My birthday celebrations included George's Lebanese for lunch, a trip to Whole Foods, and three types of apple pie.

I'm treating the day after my birthday as submissions day - essays to magazines and my poetry manuscript to book contests (which seems like an ok way to spend birthday money)

2012-02-05T22:41:00.001-06:00

If you'll be in Tuscaloosa this weekend, you should come to this.

2012-02-02T21:24:00.004-06:00

The new issue of Typo features a poem Joshua Helms & I wrote together, along with other fine words by other fine writers.

2012-02-02T21:22:00.001-06:00

I have two prose poems between the covers of the new issue of PANK.

Mutilation Questionnaire (True/False)

2012-01-24T15:28:00.004-06:00

1. I could not remove the hook from a fish that was caught.
2. I would feel some revulsion looking at a preserved brain in a jar.
3. If a badly injured person appears on TV, I turn my head away.
4. I dislike looking at pictures of accidents or injuries in magazines.
5. I do not mind visiting a hospital and seeing ill or injured persons.
6. Medical odors make me tense and uncomfortable.
7. I would not want to go hunting because I could not stand the sight of a dead animal.
8. Watching a butcher at work would make me anxious.
9. A career as a doctor or nurse is very attractive to me.
10. I would feel faint if I saw someone with a wound in the eye.
11. Watching people use sharp power tools makes me nervous.
12. The prospect of getting an injection or seeing someone else get one bothers me quite a bit.
13. I feel sick or faint at the sight of blood.
14. I enjoy reading articles about modern medical techniques.
15. Injuries, accidents, blood, etc. bother me more than anything else.
16. Under no circumstances would I accept an invitation to watch a surgical operation.
17. When I see an accident I feel tense.
18. It would not bother me to see a bad cut as long as it had been cleaned and stitched.
19. Using very sharp knives makes me nervous.
20. Not only do cuts and wounds upset me, but also the sight of people with amputated limbs, large scars, or plastic surgery.
21. If instruments were available, it would be interesting to see the action of the internal organs in a living body.
22. I am frightened at the idea of someone drawing a blood sample from me.
23. I don’t believe anyone could help a person with a bloody wound without feeling at least a little upset.
24. I am terrified by the idea of having surgery.
25. I am frightened by the thought that I might some day have to help a person badly hurt in a car wreck.
26. I shudder when I think of accidently cutting myself.
27. The sight of dried blood is repulsive.
28. Blood and gore upset me no more than the average person.
29. The sight of an open wound nauseates me.
30. I could never swab out a wound.

2012-01-11T19:32:00.001-06:00

I have a poem in the new Indiana Review, which showed up in my mailbox today.

2012-01-04T22:55:00.002-06:00

Here is one of those lists people make in late Dec/early Jan.

I remember listening to these the most:

Wye Oak - Civilian
Destroyer - Kaputt
Jonsi - Go
Washed Out - Within & Without
Moonface - Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like You'd Hoped
Explosions In the Sky - Take Care Take Care Take Care
St Vincent - Strange Mercy
TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light

I remember watching these the most:

Downton Abbey
HP7
Cedar Rapids
The American

I remember reading these the most:

Hunger Games
The Bodyfeel Lexicon
The Grief Performance
Creation Myth
Five Quarts
Bad Bad

I have a pretty bad memory. The tornado feels like it was years ago, so this list is pretty skewed towards fall & winter.

Winter Glitter

2011-12-07T19:10:00.001-06:00

I have two poems in the new issue of GlitterPony.

Late night thoughts

2011-12-06T23:40:00.002-06:00

Food Network needs to stop showing commercials that tell me to put powdered ranch dressing on pork chops as if that's a reasonable thing to do.

Christmas shopping/wrapping presents should be a career. Probably my favorite thing to do.

Now I'm wondering what other sentences I can write that end with "to do."

Grading 48 essays next week is all I have left to do.

November

2011-11-20T20:39:00.002-06:00

Each day brings new clothes. The sun knows it needn't show itself to soak our bones. November is a foreign tongue. Its syllables go monotone in local mouths, mouths yawning wide with gratitude and expectation.

2011-10-15T11:56:00.006-05:00

I have some sections of a long poem in the new Alice Blue Review, which is very pretty. All hay and gourds and fall.

2011-09-24T11:47:00.003-05:00

Fåhræus (1921), a Swedish physician who devised the erythrocyte sedimentation rate, suggested that the four humours were based upon the observation of blood clotting in a transparent container. When blood is drawn in a glass container and left undisturbed for about an hour, four different layers can be seen. A dark clot forms at the bottom (the "black bile"). Above the clot is a layer of red blood cells (the "blood"). Above this is a whitish layer of white blood cells (the "phlegm", now called the buffy coat). The top layer is clear yellow serum (the "yellow bile").

Vacation Highlights

2011-08-15T10:59:00.001-05:00

lake root beer, using a boat to buy ice cream, boat ride ice cream,
coconut gelato, capital oktoberfest, culver's, great dane soft pretzels,
milwaukee art museum, woodland patterns bookstore, juggling
store, 75 degrees, sheep's milk cheese, pretzilla pretzel buns.

What I've been reading lately

2011-07-14T19:37:00.000-05:00

Fainting in women was a commonplace trope or stereotype in Victorian England and in contemporary and modern depictions of the period. This may have been partly due to genuine ill-health (the respiratory effects of corsets are frequently cited), but it was fashionable for women to affect an aristocratic frailty and create a scene by fainting at a dramatic moment.

Summer = Popsicles

2011-07-13T18:53:00.003-05:00

Flavors made so far:

Strawberry-Limeade
Pimm's & 7 w/ sliced Strawberries
Kiwi-Coconut
Fruit Salad (Sliced mango, kiwi, strawberries & blueberries in limeade)

Flavors consumed at other people's houses:

Bourbon Peaches & Cream
Watermelon Blueberry Mojito

What I've been writing lately

2011-07-13T18:50:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I experience a tinnitus-like ringing in my ears in addition to the sunspots. Other times my hearing becomes cloudy, or even inverted, in which I seem to hear a muffled version of the chaos occurring inside my body. Imagine the steady din of a crowded restaurant played backwards, with someone constantly raising and lowering the volume. Now imagine that restaurant is underwater.

2011-07-10T21:45:00.003-05:00

Ashtray glass hurries into trashcans on mornings like this.

Summer Thoughts

2011-07-06T16:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think if I could get paid to just sit
at a desk & waste time online I’d be all set.
Whenever I’ve been unemployed in the past
I’ve tried to convince myself that
I’d eventually get bored/depressed
if I never had to work again
but I never really believe it.
I try to convince myself that this realization
is troubling & indicates a serious
lack of motivation/purpose but I just end up
being impressed/reassured by how self-aware I am.

2011-06-21T12:24:00.002-05:00

You’re whipping butter in some sweltering kitchen / but right now I can almost see you perched in the cherry tree / can still feel the way it makes my legs go hollow / & if you don’t mind I think I’ll just stare until the rain / washes you away.

2011-05-18T00:47:00.001-05:00

Tuscaloosa writers (including myself) wrote small pieces about a robot statue that's on UA's campus. All proceeds will go to Holt Elementary School, which was damaged in the tornadoes. Check it out. Order. Promote.

http://sadrobotbooks.bigcartel.com/

2011-04-15T14:07:00.003-05:00

I have three micro-fictions up at Monkeybicycle, from a new project currently titled This Was Before.

2011-04-11T21:16:00.001-05:00

I have three poems in the newest issue of Jellyfish, which came out today.

Reading Chelsey Minnis for School and Then Writing Like Her

2011-03-27T18:20:00.002-05:00

It is a hard thing to talk about poems…

To put on the ill-fitting hat of knowledge…

Talking about poems can feel like putting on a suit and handing out those little green bibles on street corners…

A blood-and-feathers swan is nice to think about but I would rather see a shadow-puppet swan…

Let’s agree to come to more mutual decisions…to agree to disagree…

If you get the vaccine you can immerse yourself in the thick of it all…no problem!

But vaccines are big money…big ticket items…the healer only has so many…

Everything…all at once…makes you sick…but you’ll get over it…

Get well soon!...(you have a job to do)…

Poems are not a job but they can feel like one sometimes…

Yes Please New Eric Baus Poems

2011-03-21T23:13:00.001-05:00

Owl Wool

The sky fermented a cotton tarp. The baffled voiceover spread. Iris’s dove scored itself with scales while owl wool coated the clouds.

more here

Irishness

2011-03-16T21:07:00.001-05:00

I have a poem up at Everyday Genius today.

2011-03-11T17:20:00.004-06:00

I spend too much time wondering if other people wonder if they’re crazy. If other people sometimes scare themselves when they are alone in their homes. Am I the only one who sometimes finds it impossible to sleep because I’m too busy picturing yards of dark red and light blue threads unspooling from the tiny holes in my eyelids, the ones eyelashes grow out of? I wonder whether others let loose sounds they didn’t plan to, never imagined or expected them taking shape within the wet walls of their lungs. Do other people’s bodies occasionally capsize or careen into furniture and foundations? Do their limbs briefly turn into violent propellers or severed electrical cords without warning?

Bird & Meat Subject

2011-02-20T22:50:00.002-06:00

the words / in my throats // once sure as cream //
spinning the human voice / around the atom

Maybe you want to read more of Eleni Sikelianos?

mfa talk

2011-02-17T10:28:00.002-06:00

B. Wells: poetry's not a real thing matthew. it doesnt count.
Me: no but fiction's boring. rather be fake than boring
B. Wells: yeah? haha. i had no idea.
Me:seems like a good motto for life?

How Have I Gone This Long Without Ever Annagramming My Name?

2011-02-04T23:24:00.003-06:00

These are just five of the 25,779 possibilities:

Ahem Tan My Wheat

A Wheat Tame Hymn

Eaten Hath My Maw

Methane What May

Mama Hath Ten Yew

Off you go to do your own.

The story is like a wooden skull because it creaks

2011-02-03T17:17:00.005-06:00

More crazy book art by Brian Dettmer here.

New Year, New Malady

2011-01-25T23:10:00.003-06:00

Lately I keep feeling phantom vibrations in my left sweatshirt pocket,
but then realize my phone is not in my pocket, nor set to vibrate.

This is probably a precursor to some terrible medical condition I should
investigate further. It's probably cancer. Pocket cancer.

OCD OCD OCD

2011-01-24T17:43:00.006-06:00

Did you know that Howard Hughes test landed his prototype sea plane 5,116 times?

Or that he refused to send flowers to funerals due to his backflow theory of germs,
in which he imagined germs, illnesses, and disease finding their way to him,
the sender of the flowers?

Outstanding.

Three Plagues Short of an Exodus

2011-01-18T21:18:00.004-06:00

Oh blog, it has been so long. I promise I have had nothing to say.

I really want to start painting again. Maybe this summer that will happen.
I spent a good hour looking through the art magazines in Barnes & Noble's
magazine section, especially New American Paintings.

If I was in the position where $20 wasn't kind of too much money to be
spending on art magazines I would probably buy it, though this introduces
the question of spending well over $20 on art supplies. We'll see what
happens.

Caketrain

2010-12-03T13:17:00.006-06:00

Look what the mailman brought me this morning:

Well, I only got one copy, but you get the idea.
Go buy your own here.

Alabama Student Life

2010-11-12T20:00:00.002-06:00

I have ten new chapbooks from Greying Ghost thanks to my winning bid at last night's Black Warrior Review auction. Good fuel for my poem-a-day sweatshoppe, which is usurping NaNoWriMo. I also have two gift certificates for whole pies from Pie Lab.

I will also be in FL next week, for the first time in a year. There is talk of visiting Hogsmeade.

Double Shiny 3

2010-11-07T18:36:00.005-06:00

The spooky Halloween Issue is belatedly out. Brandi Wells, A. Minetta Gould, Carrie Lorig, plus literally thousands of others.

It Is Officially Fall

2010-11-05T14:38:00.001-05:00

a whipsaw hum
calls us back to our hive

Walking & Dancing

2010-10-27T21:12:00.002-05:00

"Walking, like prose, has a definite aim. [...]movements in walking...
are abolished and, as it were, absorbed by the accomplishment of the
act, by the attainment of the goal.

The dance is quite another matter. If it pursues an object, it is only
an ideal object, a state, an enchantment, the phantom of a flower,
a smile--which forms at last on the face of the one who summoned it
from empty space.

[...]however different the dance may be from walking and utilitarian
movement, it uses the same organs, the same bones, the same muscles,
only differently co-ordinated and aroused.

This is why one should guard against reasoning about poetry as one
does about prose.

-Paul Valery

2010-10-15T13:11:00.002-05:00

Caketrain 08 (AKA the Alabama Issue) is available for pre-order here. Eight measly dollars magically exchanged over interconnected computers will result in a lovely surprise in your mailbox in November.

Write my poem for me

2010-09-26T22:48:00.008-05:00

I hate not being able to think of things. I prefer finishing things. Things being poems.
And stacks of essays still needing capital letters placed atop their jelly-stained pages.

It is still not fall in Alabama. I know you were wondering. Hoping, even. We all were.
And yet. And yet. I am distraught and unsurprised to report: Zero corn mazes.
Zero pumpkin patches. Zero hay rides. Zero leaves crunching satisfyingly beneath
my size 13 sandals.

O Scotch Mist... if anything deserves an apostrophe, it's you

2010-08-31T21:31:00.001-05:00

August

2010-08-23T15:13:00.004-05:00

Back to School here in the South

Started a new poem. I'm using made up words, combo words, and various
other syntactical tricks. So there's that.

I also have some new poems forthcoming in Caketrain #8, which will be
out later this year. Elizabeth is finally ready to make her public debut,
after much workshopping and sweatshoppe-ing.

Mary Todd on Her Deathbed

2010-08-05T13:12:00.002-05:00

"I can hear them, choking on spoons, screaming / in shower stalls;
the fat are given only / a raw egg and whiskey / and those
who refuse / to eat are force-fed. The least crazy sing, /
picking scalp scabs in window seats. / One woman finds
scissors /and stabs herself / again and again. (...)"

-Julianna Baggot (BAP 2000)

So happy I finally found this poem (which is much longer than what I've quoted here)again, after much searching through various libraries. I've been wanting to write a poem (or even series of poems) on Howard Hughes near the end of his life, and this poem has stuck with me as a potential model for that project ever since I first read it several years ago.

2010-07-21T13:19:00.003-05:00

If you have two minutes, sixteen seconds to spare, this seems as good a way as any to spend it to me. Sometimes I start hitting replay and end up spending a little longer.

Currently Reading

2010-07-16T22:59:00.002-05:00

"Marcelo, are you ready?"

I lift up my thumb. It means that I am ready.

"Okay, I'm going to wheel you in."

Then he slides me inside the tunnel of the machine. I like the feeling of being closed in. The lights are not bright enough to hurt my eyes but I close them anyway.

"Don't forget to lift your finger when you first hear the mental music." The tunnel has a speaker. Dr. Malone's voice comes out from there.

I wait for the music. It always comes. The hard part is remembering to lift my finger. There's a tiny camera that allows Dr. Malone and Toby to see me from up in the control booth.

"Marcelo, Marcelo." I hear Toby in the distance. I like Toby. He's a medical doctor just like Dr. Malone but he doesn't let me call him doctor. Once I called him doctor and he corrected me and said, 'Toby, please.' His face is covered with freckles.

"Ready for the so-called real stuff?" he asks when slides me out.

"Yes," I say to him. The "real stuff" is what he calls the music that is piped in through the speaker in the machine. The music that comes from inside my head is not considered real.

-Marcelo In the Real World (Francisco Stork)

Somehow It's July Already

2010-07-08T10:27:00.003-05:00

I finally got on board the Bon Iver express this week. I'm not sure why everyone tried to turn me on to them (him?) with Skinny Love. Easily my least favorite song on the cd.

Who else is disappointed by the new Wolf Parade album, despite every online review saying it's their best so far?

Currently reading: Caketrain Issue 07

Next up: Pretty Monsters (Kelly Link)

I want to eat this pulled pork & mashed potato parfait right now

2010-07-05T10:29:00.002-05:00

Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast

2010-06-27T16:30:00.002-05:00

I had no idea these four foods had such curative powers.

Elizabeth + Baus = JenMarie Davis?

2010-06-21T17:09:00.005-05:00

"Eve best likes filling her glass in the dark, listening, within kitchen atmosphere acoustics,
for the sound water makes at capacity. Cold water colliding into glass sounds different
from hot"

"she keeps keen ears for reason. To shut out uninvited spirits and sentient beings, says
a voice. But, Eve wonders, how does a blue threshold barricade the unseen?"

Glitterpony

Oh America, you make me smile in a sad sort of way

2010-06-19T19:07:00.002-05:00

I feel confident in assuming that Debra Jackson may be a resident of Alabama.

Summer Reading is the Best Kind of Reading

2010-06-13T12:08:00.003-05:00

"We make elaborate diagrams for one another using pink phone-message sheets. You write these words: Kissing you would be like this, and draw a picture of two butterflies being struck by lightning. I stare at it and wonder if you may be right. I do my own drawing and write, Kissing you would be like this, and draw a picture of a man made of ice kissing a woman who is actually a stove. We have made hundreds of these drawings."

"People are becoming clouds nowadays. Each time John goes to kiss his wife, Eleanor simply laughs politely into the palm of her hand and immediately turns into a puff of soft white vapor. The vapor is quite odorless and can assume various shapes. It can still understand when it is being spoken to, the vapor. It can understand whenever John begins wordlessly crying. One time, while holding hands at the airport, john, without thinking, kissed Eleanor's soft cheek and she immediately turned into a puff of charming whiteness that resembled a young pony leaping over a fence post."

"After he is acquitted, Clark Olofsson will begin a lifelong friendship with Kristin Ehnemark. On holidays and birthdays, when he is not in prison, they will exchange presents with one another. One year, for Christmas, Olofsson will give Ehnemark a white rabbit in a perforated box. It will have a blue bow around its neck. It will smell of violet perfume and will be stolen from a local pet store. It will be the best present Kristin ever receives. In her dreams, Kristin sees Clark as a hand made of ice."

(from Demons In the Spring)

five minute poems

2010-06-09T12:41:00.003-05:00

I have poems up at New Wave Vomit today.

If you were in the sweatshoppe they are nothing new.

2010-06-05T17:48:00.003-05:00

Apparently being 30 equals being healthy. Whether it's the influence of some strange biological impulse or spending the last month in Madison with my culinarily gifted & semi-vegetarian girlfriend, lately I'm seeking out, cooking, and eating all kinds of things I either used to hate, thought I hated, or just never bothered to try. some of my new favorites include couscous, fruit (especially in salad form), broccoli, & bell peppers. Some old favorites getting more playing time include black beans, lentils, bread (the real kind, from a bakery), and salads.

I know you're proud.

Recent Reading List

2010-05-23T13:28:00.002-05:00

Simone Muench - Orange Crush, knife. notebook. mentholatum.

Nick Lantz - We Don't Know We Don't Know

Julia Story - Post Moxie

Rusty Morrison - the true keeps calm biding its story

Jake Halpern & Peter Kujawinski - Dormia

Madeleine L'engle - A Wrinkle In Time

Lois Lowry - The Giver

overheard

2010-04-28T12:03:00.001-05:00

"I Wish Donuts Had Bones"

I want a bunch of glazed donuts with bones in them set out in the middle of the conference room table so I can watch people try to navigate "serious business conversation" while stacking their pastry bones on a communal paper plate. Donut bones.

2010-04-22T09:56:00.003-05:00

The Rule

"Hold the reader's attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don't know who the reader is, so it's like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B."

from Margaret Atwood (who of course I have never read, since I have never read anything, especially if it's fiction, which I suspect is what she writes)

also from c.t's blog , which includes 9 other, less important, but still entertaining rules.

2010-04-21T21:12:00.002-05:00

Bears are 100%
illiterate but love
to curl up with
a good book and
just roar
at the pages for hours.

from Parallel Universe (Mark Leidner)

2010-04-18T14:13:00.001-05:00

This Is Me Pretending To Know You

And what will you do when you come home to find your dog’s head on a pole in the front yard and a bonfire made of your bed? When you have to decide what shape your life will take next. You will not be able to decide. You will sit in your Jeep with your IPod on shuffle, wishing it would land on a good song so you could be distracted from making a decision as you dig through your purse for your phone, even though you wouldn’t beable to decide who to call. Your fingernail will click into something metallic — a quarter — and you’ll decide to let the quarter decide for you, then laugh hard and loud at the fact that you are about to flip a coin to decide what to do with your life, despite the shock and fear and sadness you are feeling, despite the fact that you hate the song that is playing right now.

2010-04-16T23:55:00.000-05:00

I miss the days of three word band names

Remember the early to mid-nineties, when bands would have a clever name that was a pop culture reference or just a memorable phrase, and their music didn’t even matter? Remember Letters to Cleo? Remember Better Than Ezra? I would rather listen to a roomful of toddlers beat pots and pans with wooden spoons than Fall Out Boy, but at least they know how good band names work. Monosyllabic rhythm in triplicate AND a Simpsons reference. Well done, androgynous Ashley Simpson marry-er/impregnator.

Bonus: I once made the F.O.B. drummer a medium soy mocha. He was tiny and sweatshirted. He tipped me $5.

End of post.

2010-04-13T13:23:00.010-05:00

Last Night I Got Shot In the Back By a Thin Man Who Resembled a TV Actor In A Vague Way

I was with an elderly couple who had adopted me. We were on a neighbor's farm, watching three men in black ski masks chase my brother into a cornfield. I was kneeling on the grass. The thin man who had stayed behind asked me my name. The elderly couple said "Mathias" in unison, and the thin man spat on the ground. When I turned towards the cornfield again I felt a warm pressure on the middle of my back. I heard gasps. I remember falling to the ground from my knees and looking up at the thin man, wondering why I hadn't heard anything. I remember being scared, and frustrated that I was about to die this way. I remember thinking of so many random names and faces, hating that I wasn't going to be able see those people or talk to them again. I remember that the thin man was wearing black, and that he had very short hair. I don't remember anything else.

2010-04-10T22:44:00.002-05:00

Some things I have read recently

- If you think of a torso as a box, you can see
how someone might want to open it with his fingers.

-We listen to the accordion players kiss the backs of each other's necks on the radio... Brunibar unscrews his wooden foot, and I gently climb inside.

-When it gets lonely, I sit by the river & read. Correction. There is no river. Mostly, I read.

-Tonight the moths are beating the shit out of themselves against the screen door.

-In danger of being understood
Too well, they gathered up

Their orthodoxies and made
For the sugar hills. A nite

Of piecemeal anathema,
Backlit by bubbling overs.

2010-04-02T15:30:00.001-05:00

Corrections for Thursday, March 25, 2010

•An obituary on Wednesday incorrectly referred to a 1964 Ford Mustang as a two-seater; it had a back seat.

The Tribune regrets the error.

2010-03-30T10:45:00.002-05:00

Double Shiny 2.0 is ready for your perusal

03/20/10

2010-03-20T21:29:00.002-05:00

Re: Your Poetry Submission

We thank you for the opportunity to read your manuscript. Unfortunately, your work does not meed our needs at this time. Because we know how much effort went into this submission, we regret the use of this form. But the volume of manuscripts we receive makes a personal reply impossible.

The Editors

2010-03-09T18:35:00.002-06:00

6:02 PM
me: what should be for dinner?
Jennifer: chips and guacamole from chipotle
me: $$$
try sunchips
and diet cherry coke
Jennifer: okay
sunchips and dccoke
me: poem
I like that chipotle has FoodInc posters
I like being "earth friendly"
but I can't afford their food
I guess i'll just eat sun chips
and drink diet coke
at home
again
then throw my sunchips bag out my window
and watch it biodegrade
over the next 2 weeks
like in that commercial
(end of poem)
6:05PM

2010-03-08T18:36:00.001-06:00

The second issue of Double Shiny is right around the corner.

(I know you're on pins & needles)

2010-03-03T21:30:00.002-06:00

Do you know that it's Small Press Month?

Maybe you want to go here and maybe buy a few things.

(Or feel free to peruse the offerings of your small press website of choice)

2010-02-27T23:29:00.004-06:00

For Homework I had to write a blurb for a book that I like. My blurb is probably a little longer than the average blurb, but who's to say what the word limit for a blurb is? I'm starting to feel like when Hobbes kept saying "Smock" all through that comic strip, so I'm going to move on.

I Am In the Air Right Now
by Kathryn Regina

If this collection of poems were a person it would be the kind of attractive and intriguing person you might notice browsing in your local bookstore, or while standing in line to order a skim latte at your favorite coffee shop. Seeing them would make you wonder why you’ve never seen this person before, and you’d debate talking to them in case you never see them again. In the end, you would post a Missed Connection for them on Craigslist, and if you were very lucky, you would receive a reply that was, like Regina’s poems, filled with the strange meditations of a dedicated hot air balloonist, including musings on bears, Native Americans, boys named Pedro, puppets, and pollution.

2010-02-19T12:36:00.001-06:00

we quietly played
a game called

if you had to kill
everyone

in this snack car
who would go first?

ZS & EKF one-upping Rohrer & Beckman

2010-02-10T17:24:00.002-06:00

Did any of you happen to see the early cardinal
bloodying the fenceline yesterday?

If you didn't, you probably think I'm talking about a bird.

2010-02-06T21:32:00.002-06:00

I need a new game for Wii. Having beaten the new Super Mario Bros twice since getting it for Christmas I have nothing to do but my homework. Maybe I'll get one for my birthday.

Oh, and Team Sad still hasn't arrived in the mail.

2010-01-27T19:02:00.002-06:00

How can I get a job as a fortune cookie writer?

I'm working on my portfolio. I'm going for much more specific predictions
than the medium typically offers. Here's a few samples:

You will marry for love, but your spouse will marry for money.
You’ll be too in love to notice.
Lucky Numbers - 2, 7, 18

This time, everyone at work is going to notice your new haircut.
Lucky Numbers - 5, 11, 21

You will have 134 more headaches before you die.
Lucky numbers - 6, 14, 31

2010-01-19T23:58:00.002-06:00

Peanut Butter Eggs don't get nearly enough love.

www.marriedtothesea.com

2010-01-18T00:33:00.001-06:00

Of course the girl in 500 Days of Summer made paper cranes. Stupid Indie movies

2010-01-14T20:31:00.001-06:00

Since I joined Netfliz all I do is watch British comedies on my computer. Especially The IT Crowd.

IT Crowd - Anti Piracy - Click here for more amazing videos

2010-01-11T11:53:00.000-06:00

Why is the word yes so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.

- Anna Pavlova (trans. Steven Seymour)

All You Need to Know About Where I Live

2010-01-08T21:50:00.001-06:00

Walmarts to host Bama's BCS trophy

The University of Alabama is going to display its new national championship football trophy at a place where most anyone can see it: Walmart.

The school says the Coaches' Trophy will be on display at a Walmart Supercenter in Tuscaloosa on Saturday and another Walmart store in Gardendale on Sunday.

Fans will be able to get their picture taken with the actual Coaches' Trophy that was presented after the BCS win over Texas. The $30,000 trophy is topped with a football made of Waterford Crystal.

The school will permanently display the trophy on campus. The Walmart stops are part of a sponsorship deal.

(from ESPN.com)

Agree

2010-01-03T23:43:00.001-06:00

Good God

Instead of casting them out of paradise,
Instead of making them labor in pain and sweat,
Instead of instilling tristesse after coitus,
Instead of giving them fire to burn their house down

And light their way into the outer world,

He could have split them, each with a memory of the other,
And put them each into a separate world.

(Mark Jarman)

The Fitting

2009-12-31T15:11:00.002-06:00

When you're not sure, remember those strange,
muffled sounds she made during sex, as if the coordinates
for buried treasure were caught
in her throat and she'd rather choke than share the gold.

from Taste of Cherry, by Kara Candito

2009 stats

2009-12-30T10:11:00.004-06:00

states lived in: 2
flights: 4
bus rides: 0
train rides: 0
places lived: 2
low temp: -9
high temp: 92
cars driven: 5
car accidents: 0
pulled over: 2
speeding tickets: 0
times super mario 3 was beaten: 4
times super mario world was beaten: 2
weddings attended: 2
degrees: 1
poetry submissions: 57
poems published: 6
pills taken: approx. 400
corn mazes: 1
pumpkin ice cream/malts: 6
jobs held: 4
online lit mags started: 1
lady gaga songs downloaded: 3
breakfasts involving grits: 3
cockroaches killed: 11
cell phones broken/lost: 1
handmade scarves received: 1
pairs of shoes purchased: 2
ping pong trophies won: 1
chik-fil-a: delicious
chipotle chicken burritos: also delicious
thanksgiving dinners featuring both ham & turkey: 1
occasions involving glow-in-the-dark bracelets: 2
drink in hand badminton games: 2
cross channel frisbee: 1

Baptism

2009-12-28T16:09:00.004-06:00

the men heaved the body on a picnic table wrapped in Glad bags
and tape and rolled the carcass on its back and split the skin down
the long belly, its guts oozing out--all beigy, peachy, and blue like
clouds of chewed bubble-gum or the bulbs of a wilted, worn-in coin purse.
Collapsed hoses, too soft and slick to pile up, spread across the lawn
in pearly pools. Then, carefully, the men excised the gall bladder
before it broke and spoiled the meat, gallbladder curled like a finger
on a folding chair beside them while they emptied the carcass to the snout.
On the grass, the heart and lungs lay, and the throat ridged and perfect
like a staircase.

from Bird Eating Bird, by Kristin Naca

I love Married to the Sea and You Should Too

2009-12-28T16:04:00.001-06:00

marriedtothesea.com

Boxing Day

2009-12-26T09:21:00.003-06:00

I have a poem up at Six Sentences.
It is not about boxing.

Happy Christmas, Piranhamoose

2009-12-21T23:48:00.002-06:00

What skulks through the lonely forest? What has eaten all these squirrels?
What blood-spattered tracks lead from the site of this carnage back to some dank, brackish aquatic den?

Piranhamoose

What I am Doing While Snowed In This Week

2009-12-08T17:17:00.005-06:00

1. Playing a lot of games on my sister's Ipod touch, especially Unblock Me,
which is an addictive puzzle game involving freeing one red block from a sea
of boring brown blocks. 1.5 days in, I am currently on puzzle 96 out of 400.

2. Playing a lot of Wii.

3. Eating a lot of pumpkin pie ice cream.

4. Reading Kathryn Regina (again)
and Karyna McGlynn
and maybe even the new issue of Gulf Coast

5. Writing elevator game flash fiction.

BBC Radio

2009-11-25T12:39:00.000-06:00

Cough Syrup and Poetry

2009-11-16T20:04:00.007-06:00

I got carded trying to buy Nyquil at Target the other day.
OK, trying to buy the Target brand equivalent of Nyquil.
Apparently all the kids are drinking a bottle of cough syrup to get high.

Apparently it's called Robotripping. (It's all over urban dictionary)

I'm assuming this is more related to Robitussin than Robocop (the movie or the Kanye West song), though it should really be Robitripping then...

unless the effects produced by drinking a bottle of cough syrup
include hallucinations in which the drinker thinks they are a robot,
are being attacked by robots, or develop robotic movements or speech patterns.

The makers of Robitussin must be thrilled.

My next assignment: write a poem about a cough medicine-abusing robotic police officer from the future.

Get Your Shine On

2009-11-02T08:21:00.004-06:00

The first issue of Double Shiny is out.

Go here to read poems & flash by Emily Kendal Frey,
Corey Mesler, Jillian Clark, and others.

I am almost in Wisconsin

2009-10-25T21:32:00.004-05:00

I will go to this bookstore

then I will eat here

and then I will walk around inside of this for a while.

I got some new books in the mail this week

2009-10-09T11:20:00.005-05:00

I'm not sure how to feel when I like 1/3 of a poet's poems
more than anything else I've read in a long, long time,
but the other 2/3 of their poems make me feel an emotion
that is best described as "I want to turn the page as fast
and as violently as I can in the hopes that the poet will
feel the gust of wind this reaction creates and that
gust of wind."

Most of me is just happy to have the small amount of poems
that I really like.

I never actually turn the page as fast or as hard as I can.

Another Tuscaloosa Vignette

2009-10-01T21:07:00.004-05:00

In my local Midas repair shop waiting room, I couldn't help but notice the outstanding array of entertainment options. It was almost impossible to choose between watching Fox News on a small TV up in the corner, reading the bible on the coffee table in the middle of the room, or flipping through the plethora of gun catalogs and hunting magazines on the other table.

In the end I chose to play tetris on my cell phone. Although I was also covertly watching/listening to two southern guys talk trucks and Alabama football while drinking from a shared jug of sweet tea.

This is just the funniest thing I've seen in a long time.

2009-09-29T14:47:00.001-05:00

International News

2009-09-24T16:33:00.003-05:00

O kinky Brits.
O witty PR reps.

Some Highlights from a Collaborative Poem I was 1/3 responsible for Composing Today

2009-09-18T20:10:00.002-05:00

Every year snails retreat to Alaska. This phenomenon
occurs so that women may dance naked atop igloos.

Songs are such irritating inventions.

Somehow Alaskans regret everything.

Illuminated solar panels digest light. So does
my beard full of bees.

Whales also wail when they slaughter seals, or small romances.

My favorite past-time is killing whales, or their babies
with bludgeons, axes, darts, whips, or hugs.

Driving on Lurleen Wallace Blvd.

2009-09-11T17:19:00.004-05:00

It took over a month, but I finally saw my first confederate flag-themed truck the other day. It was pretty great. Picture an antique ford pick-up truck painted dukes of hazard orange, with the entire back windshield painted thusly-

I don't think I am ever going to stop liking this...

2009-09-04T14:31:00.001-05:00

The State

2009-09-02T20:30:00.002-05:00

is FINALLY out on DVD. The whole series. It really happened. Apparently it happened like 6 weeks ago but I just saw it at Target tonight for the first time. Lollipops, indeed.

The State DVD

Mark Leidner Makes Me Laugh Out Loud

2009-08-29T18:06:00.007-05:00

I just ordered Mark Leidner's chapbook Night of 1,000 Murders

Here are some of my favorite lines from Mark Leidner's poem "Romantic Comedies,"
which can be seen here

Everyone in his life has drowned and he hates dogs and she’s a
collegiate swimming coach with a thousand dogs.

She’s sort of interested in him, but he’s not sure how interested he is
in her, though he is, a little bit.

She’s a sassy black oncologist and he’s a racist with prostate cancer.

He’s a Muslim terrorist and she’s a normal Muslim.

He’s a foot fetishist and she’s an amputee.

She likes things one way and he likes them the other.

He’s hungry and doesn’t care where they eat, and she keeps saying she doesn’t care either, but every restaurant he offers up, she shoots down.

She likes monogamy but he likes sleeping around.

She’s like get a load of this and he’s like whoa.

2009-08-20T15:54:00.002-05:00

Guess who just ordered a bunch of new books with his Alabama $$$?

I did.

Lara Glenum
Rebecca Loudon
Anna Journey
Robyn Schiff

And this is just the beginning.

2009-08-16T13:25:00.001-05:00

I have three poems in the current issue of FOLLY online.

This link might work.