for you who wonders if its for you

your name is an elixir, a panacea, a placebo for my lesions. wait for it, the call. beckoning bayonet from the other side of the forge. it will come if sequestered. I desire to history you, plump you up with my multiple lips and tongues, ejaculate your scented fog so lost in humidity. isolate your kiss. one more time. what I like to hear is the dripping, warm concoction flowing south. the squeaking weathervane turning, collapsing. why I can't say it. giving way to the wind. as soft as drive.

circulary

brilliant know, the sleeping slow limbs. catching high eyes. shed your gold stamps into shallow fish pond. why do you walk so quickly away from this reason? must be vascular. we begin to ask about the child, his falling exempted and quelled. christened plank, veins under the skin of a clementine. like corn silk. yes, we dread the seasoning, the wax and even festivity. your exuberance is teal and billowing. shifting breadth. how far do the layers reach, their circulation varied, their feeder vein to the sky pumping and fresh.

amendment

once you sang back. ununderlined. said you were on your way. to where. I was. if you were broken, I was fused. unequally lined. if I waited, I was in the lawn and you were on the telephone. you always. muffled your screams. pressed me into the formica countertop. able to steady. myself. until later when the texture resembled stone. you wouldn’t. give it up. this isn’t for you. like you think it is. answers your question. from years ago. again but better.

scapilary

recovering you is a traumatic fragrance. there in the thistles. stagnant diatribe. is it strange that I feel the structure twirl around me like a pinwheel? going somewhere. in relation to a fixed point, you are upside down. your scrawl should reveal your yearning, prescriptive. we settle on the topiary, its drastic bellows of foliage, it's scrawny limbs atwine. standing water. going somewhere? dangerous insects, skating on your flesh. this move, through stapled territory, is your design, is your lesion.

your heart is always talking

(Title taken from an email from my gym)

give protection to the room, the permeable walls. is it a muscle or an organ, we continue to debate. it has a mouth and lips that isolate the striated sphincter. crowded hallway. blow sweetness in a push of spicy juice. why. do you feed it words? this is why. during the equinox, you were expelled. platelets and all that jazz. mosaic underwall. gently, the ventricular message lands upon you. galvanized like a pinwheel controlled by breath. you don’t like it when it arrives, slippery and the color of water.

New Beginnings of the best kind

My friend and fellow poetess, Mary Biddinger, welcomed her first son into the world yesterday morning to join the family. He arrived on the birthday of his older sister, Gabi. A happy day for all. What a sweet little bundle.

bread and butter

Perhaps I mentioned that my husband got a new job some months ago working for a start-up web company. Well, after all of their hard work they launched their product yesterday. It's called "naymz." It's free, yippee. It's also could prove to be very, very helpful for poets who want to "professionalize" themselves, get their name out there, and make sure that people searching for them on the internet see what they want them to see. What it does is create a central web page that links all of your tertiary and associated pages together, so that a link to your blogger account, your resume link, links to your poems, links to your photograph accounts, etc all show up on the same page. Also, you can subscribe (like $5 a month) and when people google your name, your name appears as a sponsored link in the right margin. That link connects to your naymz page, which has all the information you want people the see. Pretty cool if you ask me. It only takes a minute.

In other news, I officially began compiling and adding to my dissertation on Tuesday. It's pretty exciting and I'm loving what it's looking like so far. My first official task of the dissertation process is to write a prospectus. . .but this is a new requirement for creative writers, so I'm shooting in the dark here. As far as I know, noone has written a prospectus yet at UIC for a poetry dissertation. Lucky me. I get to be the first. If anyone has any insightful advice about this process, I sure would appreciate it. I don't really know where to begin. It's one thing to be able to talk abotu a collection after it's finished. . .it's another to be able to talk about it before you've started! I'm sure I'll figure it out, but an example sure would be helpful.

My husband, son and I were in Colorado for a week attending the funeral of Brian's grandfather. He was a much loved member of the Denver community and will be greatly missed. I've never seen so many old men crying. It was very moving, and the images have already crept into the manuscript. So much death in such a short amount of time (my own grandfather passed only two months ago). So much mourning.

things on the floor

Gone long, I wonder about piles. How they form. How long it takes without you. Where is the news, the wringing kudzu vines that spell out a curse from blocks away? I feel a small slice of you from here. Incomplete but sharp and penetrating. But listless. But a jingling tassel from your ankle. Begin here, you ask, more like a limb than a branch. What where. You finally say you want me. But I wasn't. Listening. Piles of scraps of thoughts of you. Of water of lakes. Of pieces but small and collaged. Where do we get together? Where do we stack our bodies in the fields and hide among the wreckage?