Found this photo on the old hard drive today:

Which made me think of this poem:

You Know This Too

The bird on the gate and the goat nosing the grass below make a funny little fraction, thinks the centaur. He wonders if this thought is more human than horse, more poetry than prose. Sometimes it’s hard not to abandon the whole rigmarole of standing at the counter-using a knife and fork to politely eat his steak and peas-to go outside and put his head in the grass. But what his stomach wants, his tongue won’t touch; what his mouth wants, his stomach recoils from. Through the restaurant window he sees flashes of silver and pink in the river. It’s so clogged with mermaids and mermen, there’s no room for fish. And under the bridge, a group of extremist griffins, intent on their graffiti-Long Live the Berlin. The spray paint runs out and while they’re shaking the next can in their clenched claws, the centaur spells out Wall on his napkin, and sketches next to it a girl in sequins getting sawed in half.

– Matthea Harvey
originally appeared in Octopus, forthcoming in Modern Life

I just finished paying off my undergraduate education. I wrote the final check today. It feels terrific.

Ironically, the engine for this early final payment was teaching undergraduate creative writing– I just got my payment for that today.

So, after ten years of laboring for the state, all of it at the institution I took out a loan to attend, I’ve finally given back the appropriate portion of the money the state gave me.

Still, and I know I’m repeating myself, it feels terrific.

Now, I just have to pay the state back for the money it gives me to attend graduate school.