Aparently, television watchers, I was on an episode of This American Life yesterday. This shocked me for several reasons:

• I did not know This American Life was a television show.
• I have no idea why I would be on This American Life. Update: I found out. I must be in the background of some old footage. My pal, the brilliant Charlie Todd, had been featured on the radio version of the show some time ago in a segment about Improv Everywhere. It makes perfect sense that his story would be on the inaugural episode of a TAL tv show. I must be in the background of some old footage. If you do not yet know about Improv Everywhere, it’s brilliant. I really want a copy of this show now! Congratulations to Charlie.
• This will not bode well for my federal witness protection program identity.

If you happened to tape or TiVo this program, I would love to see it.

The center. The edge. Magnetic north. How we move in circles around it. These poles, this equator. Right. Longitude. Left. The Y axis. Vertical alignment. Movement across a plane. Concentric. Parallel. How we understand space, our placement in it, our relation to others. What responsibility we have when static, what inertia we have when moving. How we never stop. How we always stop. How we are stopped. The bend of the back when we stop.

Several artist friends with good news today. It makes me happy to see good people (and people with a generous amount of talent– not that I don’t love you too, my not-so-artistically inclined friends) enjoying some of the small rewards that this life has to offer. If you can’t be rich, you can at least be well-reviewed.

I cut off all my hair today. I am now optimized for spring.

I laid awake in bed for a while. Something was bugging me. Then it hit me– I had a March 22 deadline that I was about to miss. So I came downstairs, ready to work and get some stuff in the mail for tomorrow. Dug through a stack of papers to quell a mild paranoia that perhaps the deadline was not March 22 but March 20. My deadline is April 25. Only blogging can make me feel better about this mistake.

Meagan told me in a Friday e-mail to take the weekend off from Bull City. I’d been going at it harder than normal when Michael McFee’s book came out. When I got her e-mail, I chuckled and thought, “A weekend off? Weekends off are for FOOLS, Bonnell.” But when Saturday morning rolled around, I felt like a total lump. So I did absolutely nothing– no work of any kind. Then Sunday rolled around and I felt the same way. I had some things for other jobs that needed to be done for Monday. But I didn’t lift a finger. Wasted all day Sunday and didn’t even think about working until I woke up this morning. It felt wonderful. Weekend off. I’ll probably take another sometime… in June.

June, suckas!

I love one-line poems. So why do one-line stanzas make me bristle so?

Three of the best new (-ish… I mean from the last year or so) books I have read this spring have been from Four Way Books. Two from Ecco; I can’t think that any other company has more than one… Of course what this really means is that I should be reading more. But still…

I’m in Caraway with a group of science teachers. The other group here with us is a leadership symposium for student government types. We have bonded over the Secret Order of the Polar Bear, a dice game/puzzle which uses the following poem:

Polar bears around the ice hole
in the days of Genghis Khan,
like petals around a rose
looking up toward the sun.

Are you a member of the Secret Order of the Polar Bear? If so, leave me a RARRR in the comment section. If not, find me sometime when I have five dice on me.

Amazon now lists The Smallest Talk and Licorice. Of course, you can always nab a copy from Bull City Press, but if you’re looking for an item that will get you to the $25 Super Saver Shipping a little bit faster, these books are perfect for you!

I did some book shopping today, as I took Bull City Press titles to McIntyre’s Fine Books in Fearrington Village. Picked up copies of Tender Hooks by Beth Ann Fennelly and Embryoyo by Dean Young.

Right on! amazon just ordered Licorice and The Smallest Talk. Licorice already shows up on their site as being available for order and shipping in 4-6 weeks. The Smallest Talk has yet to appear. But, soon, Amazon buyers can show Bull City Press some love.

I went outside to mow my lawn this morning and promptly got my lawnmower stuck in a thick patch of brush. Do not ask me why I was mowing the thick patch of brush. That is not important to my story. What is important is that I felt stuck, in fiftyleven other ways, too. I felt physically bound to things. Of course I could have walked away from that lawnmower, but I did not. I stayed there, stuck, for hours. The skies clouded over, and I thought, oh, well, now my luck has taken a turn for the worse. And I felt a drop or two of rain, and that was all. Slowly, my thinking became, hey, I dodged a bullet there, because as bad as it is to be stuck, it’d be worse to be stuck and wet. Then church let out– I live in the house next door to the church’s long driveway– and people from the church craned their necks to see me stuck in the brush. But none stopped, and none spoke to me. And soon I began thinking, perhaps I am not stuck. Perhaps it’s just the lawnmower. And I left the thick patch of brush. But the lawnmower is still there.

I’m in love with the term “haterade.” A friend used it in conversation today and I’d forgotten how delightful a term it is. I think I will name my first book HATERADE. That’ll be the non-fiction book, in which I write essays on how much I’m hatin’ on all the playas.

Emma Bolden has good news today. I don’t know if I should reveal it, so I’ll just say that Emma Bolden has good news today, and I’m super-psyched for her.

I’m also super-psyched for the aforementioned friend, who also got some good news recently and needs to get used to the idea that he’s doing things that are going to set some people’s hair on fire. In a good way.

And finally, I got some good news this week: I got the author to sign a copy of this:

You can buy a copy from Paypal for only $6.00 plus shipping.

Just a moment. There’s someone at the door.

It’s a corpse.

Third time this week.

God damn it.

Dead people. Always interrupting dinner.

Dead people, you are so rude.

Worst thing about AWP:

Being in the hotel lobby at the same time as Chris Tonelli, both of us hoping to meet up, and missing each other because of my lame-ass cell phone.

Best thing about AWP:

Daddy Phase,

we say,
as the child slaps the bottle from my hand
but opens wide for Daddy,

Daddy Phase,
perfectly natural, just a stage,
as she calls for him upon waking,
Daddy Phase as he rises to her, tired but flattered,
pretending I’m the lucky one, inviting me to keep sleeping

as if I care to keep sleeping
on the stale white bread
of this marriage bed, Daddy Phase–

me, I’m a huge bland lawn jockey
and she, she is a perfect
size zero, gigging the tireless horse of her father
back and forth across the kitchen tile

I think she just pretends to be a baby

I would like to pitch a fit
when she ducks my kiss

my lips two fat hot dogs
cooling at the drive-thru,

but would she bother to notice?
Would she feel compelled to empathize?
No,
because she’s a BABY,
it’s a brilliant plan

A determined competitor, I
diversify my offerings

Have you seen this one? I ask her,

apparently she has

If only she still drank my milk
still drank my bloodwarm milk
then I could squeeze her, squeeze her, squeeze her

Oh, there were entire years before she existed,
years of the single fare, years of the road trip,
years of the fishnets and the fake ID,

the Doc Martens, the come-as-you-are,
the backpack, hipflask, do-not-disturb,

I used to be a restaurant hostess Oh I had the power then,
tapping a pencil on my bottom lip
or slipping it whisperingly down the waiting list,
the tips that I palmed,
the gents that I stacked like quarters on a pool table–
one crook of my long red nail,
how they would leap to my side

but now,
now we’re in the Daddy Phase

so now I remember
that each spring I’d discover
in the restaurant coat check room
some sad brown parka,
forgotten, forsaken–

so now I feel the elbows
of the empty wire hangers,
so now I hear them titter and hiss

–Beth Ann Fennelly