Plural?

Err. . . what's the plural of haiku? I thought to look in my Princeton Encyclopedia, but it's at home.
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Went to a reading last night by Erinn Batykefer and Katie Hays. Very much enjoyed the second half.
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It's nearly spring break. I can hardly wait.
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Look at the amazing cover we're doing for Steven Riel's new chapbook. We were so lucky to get permission from Sean-Michael Rau to use his image. More on artist and author will be posted soon at Seven Kitchens . . .

Get yours

Congrats to Matthew Hittinger, whose second chapbook, Narcissus Resists, is out now. Go get yours!

Convection

In the stillest house it startles
to see the curtains move above
the radiator, stirred by unseen
fountains, unseen drifts from warmed sweet
metal, showing the air alive
and rising in an oracle,
the lift within each calorie
and molecule, each element,
the fabric troubled by ghosts of
excitement so even emptiness
when touched by heat or pain becomes
breath, becomes aspiration to
convey across the difference change,
the clear trembling flower of haunt.

:: Robert Morgan, Wild Peavines (Gnomon Press, 1996)

We're okay--

So the fire dude assured us. He wouldn't lie; he's a professional. Right?

A fine mess

Working upstairs tonight, I heard the wail of a fire truck coming up Market Street. Coming up our street. Umm, stopping out front?

The neighbors' house is on fire. The next door neighbors, the ones who drink and fight in their back yard all summer. Is on fire. Right now.

Someone made darkness perfect

A Wordle made using the text of The Icarus Sketches, forthcoming this summer: http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/500396/The_Icarus_Sketches_manuscript

(Thanks, Jeff!)

The other anniversary

Just looked at my desk calendar (thanks, Sis: today's word is unkard) and realized that today would have been my 23rd anniversary with David--had he lived, had we stayed together. Cupids and bows make me retch, but it's perhaps significant that all my anniversaries (count them, only three) fall in February:

• 2/04 was with Tom, my first boyfriend back in college
• 2/03 was with David, and it marks the night he phoned me from Houston (I was still living in Cincinnati) to ask me to marry him. I was at a pay phone. It was after midnight and I was on break from my night shift job. With horror, I realized that it was actually February 4th, the date of my first anniversary, which relationship (I) had ended (badly). Suddenly, the answer: "What time is it there? Right now?" "Err. . . 11:43." And I accepted on Central Time.
• 2/23 is my anniversary with Randy: coming up on fourteen years.

Being the messenger

Just finished sending an e-mail to the folks whose work was not selected for the ReBound Chapbook Series. It was a short list. We didn't have many entries, and some of the e-mails went out to those who nominated the chapbooks for republication . . .

[Eww. That word looks too much like "republican." But ANYWAY--]

. . . I still feel very strongly about this series: I think it has enormous potential, and I'm doing what I can to better get the word out this year. Even though there were less than ten entries, the decision was not easy, and in the end I had to just set the top contenders aside, not look at them for a few weeks, and then see which one had sustained the strongest impact in my memory. Then I re-read them all again, just to verify that yes, this was the right choice for this year's title.

Which I will announce over at Seven Kitchens as soon as I've heard back from the author.

For now, a message of appreciation to everyone out there who's running a micropress or journal or reading series on an insanely tight budget; who's taking the time to encourage a younger writer; who shares his or her knowledge and resources freely, generously, constantly, all for the collective advancement of poetry. We're doing good work. I'm proud to be one of us.

Now I've gone and done it

After receiving several Facebook invitations over the past few weeks, I finally caved: within minutes of clicking through the application boxes, I had 33 friends and my gmail box was clicking like a Geiger counter. I figured out how to add a mail filter, which restored my inbox to some level of manageability. Found some more friends I'd lost touch with. Found out about a poetry reading that I can't attend, but added it to my PA Poetry blog listings--I'm there in spirit, Alex--and tracked down a brilliant artist whose work I'm ready to beg for because it would make a stunning cover for Steven Riel's chapbook. All this instead of grading a stack of quizzes. I've got one foot tentatively in the internet ether and the other on a banana peel. Go ahead: Facebook me.

Touch

TOUCH

When an illegal radioactive waste dump caused the death of a Colombian child who'd been playing there, villagers refused to bury her in their cemetery, and her body was classified as hazardous waste.

King Midas sits admiring his wealth
of burnished apples. It will be a long time
before hunger interrupts him,

a long time before he misses
the squeals of his childish daughter
who finds the dust

so lovely, so luminous, she streaks
both her arms with it. She paints her eyelids
and makes two bright antennae of her braids.

She can't wait for the dark.
How she will flit for him, lanky, radiant moth.
She doesn't wash for dinner.

And he hasn't noticed, not yet.
It will be a long time
before he comes around.

He will have to bury her in lead,
his fondest hope, this isotopic waste
over which the kingdom must rise

against him. Though he will swear
he only wanted the best
for them, for her, his golden girl,

who can barely contain herself just now--
look how she glows
anticipating his delight.

:: Jody Gladding, Stone Crop