shook up on these trees they have come

June 30, 2007 Friends, Microfiction No Comments

Why are people allowed to have GMail accounts, but not Google chat? You should have them both if you have either. Looking at you, Matthew Olzmann.

He was drunk again and rifling through the dictionary looking at the d words. Drunk was still the one that suited him best, but there were others :difficult, distempered, dumbfounded. This was how he found out about decohesion. He fumbled at the desk for a pencil and paper to draw an electromagnetic device for restoring things to their normal states. He knew nothing of physics, nothing of electromagnetism. But the idea of restoration appealed to him strongly. He felt somehow burdened, as though he had been given a coefficient, as though some malignant electron had bonded with him, and it would take an alteration in state to remove it. But the machine that he had envisioned, could never work for this purpose. He returned to the dictionary as his hot head ceased to boil. There he found new words: defervescence, deficiency, defeat.

That’s all for the month of microfiction. It’s been an interesting experiment, that’s for certain. I suppose I’ll keep this exercise in my back pocket, and I may return to it in, say a million years (or, if my previous declarations are any indication, I’ll do it again in a few months). But I have gotten a few decent ideas out of the, some of which will become poems, some of which will become, or stay, stories. There were moments that I wasn’t real happy about it, but overall I’m glad I did it.

some joker has painted the famous set of ears

June 30, 2007 Bull City Press No Comments

Issue 4 of Inch features poetry from Jeffery Beam, Sebastian Matthews, and Mischa Willett, and fiction by Michael McFee and Cynthia Reeves.

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the snow will go away, but nobody will be there

June 30, 2007 Friends, Poetry No Comments

As with all good memes: I see, I obey. Ivy tagged me to this one, wherein participants reveal 8 things about themselves. My strong tendency towards private confession makes this the best meme ever. How can I make you think I am telling you something while revealing nothing? Why is it so tempting to lie here?

1. When I was in seventh grade, I got into a fight with a guy named Chuck. Chuck was about a foot and a half taller than I was and he absolutely beat me down. It was the only fight I ever got into. I later found that whatever slight it caused the fight had been caused by somebody else and Chuck just thought it was me. So, undeserved beating.

2. This revelation is for Ivy Alvarez only: I was Ale from Steak and Ale. I enjoyed the libertine adventures of the character more than I enjoyed the poems. But I’ve come back to the poems. Haven’t come back to the character.

3. I’m a little obsessive about books. For many years, that obsession was paired with a strange fear of libraries, which I have only conquered in my thirties. In fact, I have swung entirely in the other direction, to the point where I am now a little obsessed with libraries.

4. Though I like small things, I am somewhat convinced that mankind’s end will in some way involve nanotechnology. I can trace some of my fears about man’s annihilation to The Beast– the interactive fiction/game/community that occurred in advance of the horrible Spielberg movie A.I. They have been intensified by the Bush administration. So yes, in my case, the terrorists have won.

5. I am a serial entrepreneur, but not a very good businessman.

6. Lots of people know I’m sort of a jerk. But I think few know that I really don’t know I’m being a jerk most of the time. I do truly believe that if you treat people right, good things will happen in your life. And I really do try to live by that credo, and be pleasant and fair. I recognize my failings in this, though usually only in retrospect.

7. After she delivered a sub to my place of employment and spent some time photographing our lighthouse, I asked a girl named Jenny out on a date. I found out that night that she had kissed Kim Deal, so I told her that I had to kiss her. We went to a show and met up with B-Mo. Jenny was seriously disappointed that I don’t smoke weed, and I never heard from her again. But I did kiss her that one time. Which means I basically kissed Kim Deal. And I love Kim Deal.

8. When I tell people that I have never used an illegal substance, they usually think I am joking. Failing that, they think I am lying to try to make some moral point. But that’s a true fact.

This meme requires that I help it self-replicate by tagging people. Emma Bolden, you must get a blog for the express purpose of answering the call of this meme. Jessie Carty, prepare to be tagged every time I get one of these. Then there are the people who aren’t likely to read this blog, but if you know them, tip them off that they’re named: Ken Rumble, Maureen Thorson, and Chris Tonelli. Daryl, you would be blogged if you had written about poetry in the last two months. But you haven’t– PENALTY BOX.

I am spending some time with Frank O’Hara today, and will continue to do so tomorrow. I just re-read a previous O’Hara annotation, looking at “Poem” and “A Step Away from Them,” and I am embarrassed. It’s truly wretched. But as I re-read Lunch Poems, I find that I don’t really know if I’ll do better this time around. So, I’m kind of looking forward to several days’ worth of discussion on O’Hara. “oh Lana Turner we love you get up” is still one of my favorite lines of poetry ever.