LOS ANGELES -

 1. “Supernatural Superserious” – R.E.M.

It starts like this: the immediate slash and burn of guitar. And a voice reminding us that there was once a time in our lives when we were ghosts, so supernatural/superserious in the face of this occasionally cruel world. Pasts we can hide from, pasts we can ignore, rediscover, reinvent, or simply embrace and accept as they are. As we are.

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GULF BREEZE, FL -

05/08/09 UPDATE FROM Rebecca Lindenberg @ Find Craig Arnold:

THANK YOU.

Our dear friends and family,
Though Craig himself has not been recovered, the amazing expert trackers of 1SRG have been able to make themselves and us certain of what has become of Craig. His trail indicates that after sustaining a leg injury, Craig fell from a very high and very dangerous cliff and there is virtually no possibility that Craig could have survived that fall. Chris will pursue what he can about getting specialists to go down into the place we know Craig is so we can bring him home, but it is very, very dangerous and we are not yet completely certain what that will require. The only relief in this news is that we do know exactly what befell Craig, and we can be fairly certain that it was very quick, and that he did not wait or wonder or suffer. 

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BOULDER, CO-

I’ve often heard it said that “there is no such thing as a communist Igbo”, a reference to our intense mercantile culture. Somewhat like stereotype of Lebanese, we’ve tended to structure our very existence around what we can sell, and in this 419 age, what we can con out of others. Ok, before I get an earful, that’s just a handful of petty thug “areaboy” “yahoozees”, but I digress.

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VANCOUVER–

“I’ve already told you: the only way to a woman’s heart is along the path of torment. I know none other as sure.” —Marquis de Sade

Stop shaking your head. Gimme a chance to explain…

Long distance relationships open like pop-up books. Her pop-up book is in Manhattan.

I like stealing stuff—if I like you. I case every woman who catches my eye trying to see what they’re hiding. You can’t give your phone number without giving something of yourself. Every little hair on a woman, even the peach fuzz, is a fuse.

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SAN ANTONIO, TX-

My parents’ big beige White Westinghouse stocked with foodstuffs
New and old, foreign and domestic, healthy and hedonic
From the adjustable top rack to the stay-crisp drawers and even the interior door shelving

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BOULDER, CO-

Mitochondrial DNA is a profound, primeval truth.  As far back as all the creatures we can see with our naked eye, ourselves included, it’s meant that the blueprints for the energy of our lives are passed only through the lines of mothers.  Poetry is all about such profound truths.  Sometimes those truths possess lives in cruel ways.  Sylvia Plath is known as a writer and a woman who killed herself.  Her daughter became a writer.  Her son has just killed himself.  A tragic purification of the mitochondrial line.  It so happens that Sylvia’s imagined rival, mistress of her husband Ted Hughes, and Sylvia’s rival to the dramatic (but not poetically) minded, also killed herself, and her daughter with Hughes.  But that is soap opera, not poetry.

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PARIS, FRANCE -

The first I gave you was Farewell, My Only One by Antoine Audouard, a novel written in French, translated into English and shipped across the ocean where I found it on a shelf in the mountains.  I lay it in my suitcase and took it back to France where I put it in your hands.

The first you gave me was a leftover jar of olives (a remnant of your ruined vacation) and when you were gone I ate them alone wishing you’d stayed.  You offered me the idea that I might not disintegrate, might make it through.  It’s the same gift you continue to give, the one I found years ago in a jar you’d bought with someone else, for some other life.

You know the place, the smell, the feel of cheap tile beneath your bare feet.  You know the kitchen and what you can see from there.  You know all of it so I’ll excuse myself from the burden of trying to describe a thing so far beyond language. (more…)

GRAND RAPIDS, MI- 

This past February, at this year’s AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference in Chicago, many of the overheard conversations did not involve the usual topics—Where’s the best place in the city to score a discount bottle of Booker’s bourbon?  Do you know anyone who brought a bag of weed?  

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LAS VEGAS, NV -

I was on my way to the bookstore. I called earlier and had them hold a book for me. Cool thing about where I live is that everything I need is five minutes away. Giant mall. Restaurants. Novelty stores. Markets. Toys R Us and Roberto’s Taco Shop. 

I stepped into the bookstore and poked around. I made the usual rounds. I hit the fiction section. Then I slipped into the poetry section. I checked out the art section. I went into the music section looking for a Frank Black CD that needed replacing because the first one was scratched and sweetly worn out from years of serious rocking. I love the man. One of my favorites. 

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GULF BREEZE, FL -

Magic Couch

This fabulous sectional couch
just came out of my house
and has been well loved by all.

No stains or odors
that I can see or smell.

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LOS ANGELES-

Every writer I know has trouble writing. Joseph Heller said that once. I would echo it here. Personally I don’t know a single writer who has an easy time writing. Especially fiction. Fiction seems to be a special kind of pain in the ass. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

Another thing I would add is that a lot of writers don’t write very much. And some of them don’t write, period.

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PARIS, FRANCE -

After school we’d play two-hand touch on our front lawns.  These were years when the LAPD was cruising around handing out limited edition baseball cards to the neighborhood kids and we were as safe in the streets as we were inside our own houses.  We spent every minute we could out there dreading the inevitable fall of darkness, being called to dinner, to our homework, to our beds.

When my parents went out they’d hire one of my father’s students to look after me. She’d cook me dinner and make me go to sleep on time.

One evening I was standing with my babysitter in front of our house in the soft dusk when a car came tearing around the corner and screeched to a stop.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

Two weeks ago I went to see Leonard Cohen. Not as an invited visitor or anything, but as a paying guest. This diminutive 74 year old man with his ragtag gypsy band packed out the arena where Kylie Minogue and Justin Timberlake recently played.

He skipped, he knelt, he offered his heart and his hat to us the audience, and to his fellow musicians and the crowd lapped it up encore after encore.

I grew up on Leonard Cohen. My mother was a flower child and Leonard obviously spoke to her. I hated him then. Hated his plucky guitar, his monotonous voice, his droning melodies. I much preferred my Muppet’s cassette.

I kept on hating Leonard through my teen years. Even when I became a Gothic, I resisted him.

Jesus and Mary Chain: Yep. Sisters of Mercy: Alright. The Cure: Absolutely.

Leonard Cohen: No fucking way. Jose.

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PHILADELPHIA, PA

As we enter the teeth of winter here on the East Coast, things can get a little bleak. Gray skies. Frozen ground. In the hopes of melting a little ice, I’ll post some haiku poems that I wrote last spring and summer. Enjoy.

after a long winter-

the grill ignites

on the first try

my daughter’s two favorite M&M colors

are yellow and brown-

and green (more…)

LAS VEGAS, NV - 

Well, folks, we’re almost a month into 2009 and things are already crazy. Things have happened. A failed president ends his reign of incompetence. A new guy lives in the White House. The Cardinals are going to the Super Bowl. A man in the Philippines took some video of a ghost on his phone. 

And that’s just in the past three weeks. Anyhow, here’s some other natural and unnatural observations:

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BOULDER, CO-

The inaugural poem by Elizabeth Alexander had one of the greatest audiences for poetry in the past 16 years or so, ever since Maya Angelou in 1993.  It seeped over its huge audience just yesterday.  Do you remember any of it?  How about the opening?

“Praise song for the day.”

How about the opening two words?  These were repeated several times in the poem as an unstructured refrain.  I wonder if you remembered any of it, even those two leading words, by the time John Roberts misremembered the thirty-five words of the constitution’s presidential oath.  If you didn’t, does it make you question the entire point of the inaugural poem?
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THE LERKIM -

   with apologies to Mr. Geisel, his Lorax, and Dr. Bookstaber

It all started way back…
such a long, long time back…

Way back in the days when money was green
and interest was simple
and energy clean.
It began on a farm that belonged to my dad.
What a wonderful farm my family had!
A wonderful farm
with chickens and mares
where the Truffula trees bore Truffula pears.
In winter the bulls would battle the bears.

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BLOWING ROCK, NC-

As a staff member at Memorious, an online journal of new verse and fiction, I’m super excited to be announcing the release of the Fall 2008 issue. This fifth anniversary issue of Memorious features poetry and prose from Kevin Prufer, G. C. Waldrep, Kelle Groom, Todd Hearon, and B.J. Hollars, as well as a conversation between Alexander Chee and Sigrid Nunez, an interview with Larissa Szporluck, and some pretty awesome emerging writers.

WEIRTON, WV-

In late November, the first of my final English 101 papers rolled in. I asked for a persuasive paper, explaining that writing is always an act of persuasion. The students’ audience: a Congressman. Their format: a letter. We’d had a regular essay-format persuasion assignment a month before. This time, I required students to turn in a series of drafts before submitting their final copy.

The first one, from a student who had pretty badly flubbed her literary analysis paper just before, arrived in my email box extra early. Running three pages, it was longer than the ‘effective paragraph’ I’d assigned. The chosen topic? She was asking for the mandatory sterilization of unfit parents.

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LAFAYETTE, LA -

Neurosyphilis. Recently, in an attempt to keep my brain occupied (read: prevent utter mental paralysis) while my agent shops my novel, I decided to begin researching my next project. So now, instead of lying awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, pondering the terrible economy and my dumb luck to finish writing my book this of all Novembers, I am lying awake in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, pondering my awesome luck at being born in twenty-first-century America where no one ever gets neurosyphilis. [1] (more…)