& dust & ashes

Following the fossils. Trace their bony limb. This one, a plant, perfectly straight and fern-like. Have you tempted this fate? Asked yourself why you are so afraid of being trapped without air? Why should we hope for the miners, buried for 10 days, so many miles under? I would rather be crushed. Mortar and pestle. My body become a rock, petrified, hardening more with every touch. Like the miners: the closer they are to being rescued, the further they fall from the opening.

Winds of Change

I thought it was about time for a post, seeing as I haven't posted in two months! Work, family, and making a house into a home have all been extremely taxing and time consuming lately, and I'm glad to announce that I'll soon be giving up my current corporate-type job for a more suiting job, teaching composition at a local college called Metro State College of Denver. There will be one week of overlap- last week fo work, first week of teaching, but I'm sure I can handle a week. This new situation will open my time up for more writing, reading, preparing for my dissertation defense this semester, and, well, hopefully much more blogging. How I've missed the blogging.

I'm working on my syllabus right now and am realizing how difficult it is going from one school of through/ pedagogical approach to another. . .I'm trying to figure out how to NOT create an entirely new syllabus and writing assignments, but at UIC it was all context-based writing, and at Metro it's more about the research and process. Really, they are two completely different approaches. The books are different, the assignments are different, and, of course, the campuses and schools are 1000 miles away from each other, both literally and figuratively. I'd be amazed if anyone still reads my blog, but if you do, I welcome any suggestions on this topic. I'm a little stuck as of now!

I'm also wrapping up production of my second (well, actually. . .third, since I did two last year!) dusie kollektiv e/chap for this year's project. I'm WAY late, but not dead last yet. I'll be using a lot of the poems in conjunction with my friend, Felicia's, photographs, for the projects. It's pretty awesome. I'll let you know when they're completed-- we'll certainly have plenty extra for distributing.

& repair

For Brian

In your absence, there are tendrils. Leafy curls that reach for you. They have always been there, looking more like spiders than trees; feeling more like bristles than flowers. So inconspicuous. Delicate chains, hidden buds. A chaotic wisp brought us here, where there is no mythology. The bird’s new nest above the porch, an uncontrollable pile of junk mail. Your ability to forgive, erase. Shriveled, my hair and scalp in the tree. Chasing us out and away. Epiphyte. I cover you. I will chase. Longer then. And repair. And spread. I am here to grow with you.

& persona

Murmur. Strands of hair woven in tulle. Her pear tree, nascent and removed. It is a cage, we argue, this swallowing center most illuminated by nests. What song? The woman you heard me saying me saying. What tine? Initial clap of the bell. You descend on me, still falling, still hovering. Perched. Who sings? Don’t answer so quickly. Standing among my others. Which one of me is being lost? On occasion, I call myself “her” because she is a multiple of three. Capture me moving, you can see the trinity. Beginning to shudder.

& lens

Your coming here, pure accident. Dodging. The barometer was wrong; it promised grey and wet. Heavy skies. Instead, it is black and on me. Some sun in my ear. I feel it in the back of my eyes: the confusion to focus. How close? How much to get closer? How many slowly rolled before you said “Come here. You’re getting too wet.”

Maybe you’ll always see a window. I can't stop myself from looking, and looking again. And maybe again.

& fingers

There’s something about the lacing. Touch and twine. The mixture of slice and rub. Muddled spark, all downhill. As if we are rolling, we follow the lines. Closeness, more of a blur than miles away. He is here, in this moment, overlapping each segment of digression. How many do you have? How many more can you touch me with? Hundreds? Thousands? Snakes in the rocks? Your thumbs again, holding every thing in place.

& subtle

Split me into three. Braid. You’ve wound me too hard. Up the hill, the sidewalk crumbles. I can’t follow you there. Collapse. Like a glaring light on my cornea. My always-red eyes look for you. It’s time to shred this colorful blossom. You say, “We must use our thumbs.” The veins in your hands that only I want. I will take this and go. A trail of scalp & petals. Snow in Spring. You have already gone, speed and sweat, up the hill behind me.

& sun

How to say the simplest thing. Clearly. What might happen in the shade of forest. Nude. Or night. What if you did touch me, exaggerating my sadness. Dark side of foliage. You cannot look at my face, the place it will take you. The rain coming down on our mountainous drive. Or distant. I want you to be there, waiting, but not knowing why. Or what you are wearing. With you, the most dangerous ride. A backdrop dies to be created. (maybe stairs, their angular slope, their ability to hold us and bring us up. . .down.) I can’t give you any hope. We are both steeping in that water, and despite its sting, we swim and swim.

& rope

& rope

Hands elevate. Angle from below, the silent fall. What was hanging. You whisper around me. In a circle the voices drop. Swear to me, this is your battle, this is your tire swing. I crave the swing of the pendulum, the way it used to bring me to you. A climate that frays and tugs on the end. Sweet daffodil, I have tied you and tied you again.

Hopes

Well, Colorado seems to have sucked the blog-desire right out of me. It could also have something to do with the full-time job and the monstrous house to take care of. I do have high hopes of getting back into writing here, though as well as checking up on other bolg-buddies better. I've been a bad cyberfriend.

The new job has it's ups and downs, and I suppose it's not so new anymore, as I've been there almost 4 months. It's safe to say that I like the people more than I like the actual work, but it's challenging and I'm learning a lot of useful things. So it goes. I miss teaching a ridiculous amount, and have floated my resume around a little, just to see if there's any hope of ever teaching again. It's definitely a missing piece of the puzzle right now.

I'm officially one step closer to the PhD completion- I defended my Prospectus (critical paper proposing the theoretical framework for your dissertation) and since the dissertation is mostly done, this is fab. If all goes well, I should defend the dissertation next semester and be a doctor by Christmas. Yes, what a gift that will be. And what a party.

I'm definitely still writing, even with the chaos of family, work, running, etc. Right now, I'm collaborating (surprised?) with a friend of mine who is a photographer, and some really amazing things are coming about. (Check out her photo blog here: http://stillh20.photobloggers.com) I'll post a few of the poems that have come about so far, but since I plan on using this for the dusie chapbook project, I don't want to give too much away. Got to save some for the paying customers, as they say.

New work coming out in ACM soon. And finally. It's going to be a whopper of a mag- well worth the wait and the $$. Haven't submitted much lately, but hope to change that at some point.

Hope to also get back to blogging about things that interest me and more involved in some sort of discourse about Contemporary poetry. I miss this outlet, whether or not anyone actually reads it.

Still kicking

I thought I'd let anyone who might still be tuning in that I'm still alive. I've taken a full time job working for a company who creates and suppoerts educational products, and I'm doing a lot of writing for them. It's surely paying the bills, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Not much time for writing, as you can probably tell. I'm still working on the PhD, if I can squeeze a minute here and there to work on it. The prospectus is still kicking my butt, and I'm not done with it yet. The actual dissertation is pretty much done.

Looks like I'm lucky enough to be part of teh dusie kolektiv again, which is super wonderful. I'm in need of a project like this to spark my creative fuse. I'm also looking forward to making new friends in the network- it proved to be a wonderful tool last year. I have no idea what I'm doing yet. Hopefully working with a photographer friend of mine (Felicia) to create something cool.

I've been really bad about submitting anything. I have an upcoming pub in ACM, but that's from almost a year and a half ago. Something in Sugar Mule as well, not sure about those details. I need to send some stuff out. Is anyone else really been affected by this bizarre season of disfunction? What a strange winter.

egress

for W.S.

the stations we march from are only guides. shallow markings. you are concerned about how and where we flow. from where the destination comes. how we can share and still move. away. out. osmosis of terrifying particles. I cannot breach your walls, your skin. I cannot calm your lenient slide, your best guess. I'll give you one if you take it. but where. do we go from there?

fallen

drifts, and deep. suffocating baggage as it falls, falling. where are your green attentions among this whitewash? we can see the slant of air in brutal form, almost horizontal. almost as if you are the wind, stretching your arms on the mountain's downslope. but you are piling up. otherwise. this one's not a blizzard. all in all, I'm expecting to be covered twice.

sadness

Poet and social activist, Kari Edwards, passed away on December 2. I was lucky enough to have worked with her, though remotely, with the dusie kolektiv this past summer. I'm pretty much shocked, even though I didn't really "know" Kari. It seems to me that this is a testament to her power as a writer and as a person- that even people only loosely associated with her are astonished by her absence in the world. I came across this poem by her in Tarpaulin Sky which gives me chills- so beautiful and grating at the same time. I hope it's OK that I post it here. I extend my condolences to her friends and family.

kari edwards

let us say goodbye

let’s get serious, say good-bye, I love you, so long, been nice, someone's got to die, waiting for another on time, A-bomb. Cut off, collectively lost, as long as you believe in, as long as you think, as you believe in thinking in believing in . . . click your heels, repeat after me, we are not talking proxy portraits, or ideological traditional sophist, or single issue essential, or utopian politicians into an out of time, falling in and out of the service of “truth,” to another, for another, in love with “truth.” Repeating, you have to believe, you must believe, listen to the mother and father, read books and repeat after me, I can not represent myself, we must represent the not representative whole impossible to represent, the higher broader bigger blogger. So, let's get personal, get serious and translate violence into a form, wondering are there more morals coming? We all can not wait to read more of the same long neck gods talking to the pigs, the pigs to the horses, and the mysterious shadow making mysterious hand motions, waiting to dine. The tableau is set, you arrive, there is ample bread, plenty of plenty, translation disappears, there is no need for need, an argument begins, we all go hungry, start a war of wars, the divine majority sings creation creation songs in the celestial cathedral till dawn . . . we say good-bye I love you someone has to die.

sadness

Poet and social activist, Kari Edwards, passed away on December 2. I was lucky enough to have worked with her, though remotely, with the dusie kolektiv this past summer. I'm pretty much shocked, even though I didn't really "know" Kari. It seems to me that this is a testament to her power as a writer and as a person- that even people only loosely associated with her are astonished by her absence in the world. I came across this poem by her in Tarpaulin Sky which gives me chills- so beautiful and grating at the same time. I hope it's OK that I post it here. I extend my condolences to her friends and family.

kari edwards

let us say goodbye

let’s get serious, say good-bye, I love you, so long, been nice, someone's got to die, waiting for another on time, A-bomb. Cut off, collectively lost, as long as you believe in, as long as you think, as you believe in thinking in believing in . . . click your heels, repeat after me, we are not talking proxy portraits, or ideological traditional sophist, or single issue essential, or utopian politicians into an out of time, falling in and out of the service of “truth,” to another, for another, in love with “truth.” Repeating, you have to believe, you must believe, listen to the mother and father, read books and repeat after me, I can not represent myself, we must represent the not representative whole impossible to represent, the higher broader bigger blogger. So, let's get personal, get serious and translate violence into a form, wondering are there more morals coming? We all can not wait to read more of the same long neck gods talking to the pigs, the pigs to the horses, and the mysterious shadow making mysterious hand motions, waiting to dine. The tableau is set, you arrive, there is ample bread, plenty of plenty, translation disappears, there is no need for need, an argument begins, we all go hungry, start a war of wars, the divine majority sings creation creation songs in the celestial cathedral till dawn . . . we say good-bye I love you someone has to die.

fool

crystalline structures. she notices their girth and bites them. it sweeps her away and becomes her. this poem begins here, under the froth. calamine around your eyes and lips. you are stepping away, but carefully. not the gallop it was before. you left. we recall: I could hear it through the floor, her pitch a fallow soil. wheel wells attacked by spray. smattering of star, music, train. your lips on her but away. you ask me to cover, forgive. but no. I cannot cover the spread.

interval

bead and brighten, swaggering lifestamp. if you hate the piccolo so much, its shrill stampede of vibrato, then why have you swallowed the octave? like you had me, all inside and intonated. now barely breathing and tingled, so heavy your smallest participles. your gangly hyperboles have lost their shimmer. I’m surprised by the altitude, it’s pressure, it’s ability to change the sound of your voice. from soliloquy to monotone, heading further away.

astonishing discovery. . .

apparently if you google the phrase "I miss Chicago," my blog is the 71st result. I'm not sure how I feel about that. . .

from the dead (walking)

I finally updated my blogroll and added some peeps who should have been there all along. I still have a long way to go.

News from Scott the other day says some work form our collaborative project, "helixes" is to appear in Sugar Mule, guest edited by Sheila Murphey. I'm not sure of the details, but I think the issue focus on collaboration as a poetic genre, or something of the sort, so it's pretty exciting to be included, not to mention, it will surely be a seriously kick-butt production.

I'm lucky enough to be a featured poet on MiPoesias this month (bottom of the page. . .but don't scroll too quickly-- there's good stuff in here!). They chose some prose poems, which is very promising. Also, you can catch me reading a new poem, "fascicles," on bob macacci's poetry podcast, THE COUNTDOWN, also associated with MiPOesias. Thanks, Bob and Didi. It's great!

I'm headed to Chicago on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to meet with teachers and see what they make of the first draft of my dissertation. I'm not sure what to expect, but hoping for the best. I'm most interested to see if they think there's a possibility that I could graduate in May. I'm pretty eager to wrap this thing up, especially now that I'm so far away (in so many ways. . .).

I've been submitting to several places that I've been putting off for a long time, I'm not sure why. Seems like time. It's exciting and frightening to bu putting my new work out there, mostly because I like it so much, which is rare for me and my poetry. I usually see some merit in it, but don't feel a specific affinity towards it. These new pieces, mostly prose poems, are something I'm proud of. . .something I can defend and stand up for. They make up the preponderence of my dissertation, and I'm also quite pleased with the way they string together in a larger collection. I'm excited to begin assembling this collection as a book manuscript and sending it out for the November/ December deadlines. Why not, right?

fascicles

she couldn’t find it there, in the woven and swollen birch bark. damn the choosing rhymes, their flavorful, ghastly whine. buckle. three, four. she is fastened tightly with portrait stamps, wound around her knuckles. faces lost to damp adhesion. war into day. and more days. you are a different child. than the one we lost. liquefy and shed. we take drastic measures to hide those words. will I cast my lot. will it end up solid, growing and vehicular, in this, the most desperate of sunsets?