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?

confluence

It won’t go away, she said, shirt tails dragging across her thighs. thatched dimension takes her breath away. she runs her pinkie finger over the abrasion, stimulating moisture. a ripple. paralyze. gargantuan rectangles, buttons. the star her hand makes when it spreads. off the table. leak. pickling salt. alum. caving her mouth in and scraping it dry. what about the debris, the excrescence, the carbuncle alive in the constellation? vacuum tight. she will always be reminded of him. radiance. bellicose snow, rapture.

aware of the seamlessness

As I continue my dissertation project and attempt, over and over again, to articulate my "poetic goal" in my dissertation prospectus, I become more and more aware that my poems lack a central subject, making it very difficult to put them "together" in any form of a collection. Surely in PhD dissertation defense, someone is bound to ask, "What are these poems ABOUT?" Truth is, I have no idea. And I don't mean this in a cosmic, metaphysical way that proposes me as some sort of conduit of the gods, channeling all things poetic through me ala Plato. No, I mean that I seem to be purposely avolding a tangible subject so as to let amore general-ness of the poems open up. I'm trying to articulate a specific sadness that is inherent in femininity, perhaps, or at least a sadness that I often find in my own femininity, whatever that looks like. They seek to explore something that in fact has no center, or perhaps multiple centers, that fracture, that refract. I don't want my poems to point to one specific thing. I want them to open instead of close. This is problematic when faced with building a "collection," though. How does something with no center relate to other things with no centers? What can be the binding fdactors? Their essential non-centrality? No, that's too vague. The imagery and how it often centers around nature and bizarre relations to it? Maybe, but imagery is not necessarily the central trope in my poetry.

I'm kind of stuck, but in a good way, I think. I mean, this is what it's all about. I'm dpoing this whole PhD thing in order to speak more eloquently about these things. To situate my own work among other poets with similar trajectories and ideas. More soon. . .I welcome feedback. . .

drizzle

drizzle

the fat rain has gone;
seasons ricochet and rest.
you. grab me and
boomerang every notion
of gray. we once held
scampering aphids,
let them dart
into our skinfolds
and out again. then into fire.
popping. small explosions.
go now. I am caustically awake.
unfold the velvet of my lungs.
you snore rhapsodically.
I am in another room,
another hemisphere,
like my mother who swatted
so frantically
at the termites.
they scatter. clouds.
generic formation.
outline your hip,
hinge, so far away.
once I pressed my cheek
against that palimpsest of flesh.
smooth flexor and pulse.
decade to imagine
a more germinated moment.
fly, now, into the dust.
I sent you there.
It began with a
slippery tongue kiss
against a fence. crackle.
I said,
“put your hand here. push.
feel it drop.”
you gave in.
imagine my surprise.

farm

sideways moon. arms always on angle. he carried me through the patch, the blue evening brown. he knows about the vines, how they run in circles, how they strangulate the cornstalks and potatoes. maze and stuffed bodies. only shadows. not real. this time, I’m not on the floor. hold me until it stops. the pacific. but I am needing. bulbous pulp split. hatchet. I come open, untwined. sunken and gushing but right on time.

forecast

the new chill blends with the dark fibers on the wall. manifestation and arrow. cornucopia. cowlick my phobias and the way you move the captions. a silo, a basket. a green and yellow. strapped like an objectionable perfume. why is she slumped so sideways, her limbs parted from the deluge. for your ear, I reach in. some say it was the recognition and all of the vaginal bleeding. I go the other way, searching for unexpected colors. Black pumpkins. purple corn. hanging pendulum, the autumn lights. this one comes over again, a river. a generous song to harvest.

Pumpkin picking fun

This weekend was great. Check out the photos from our first ever pumpkin-picking excursion here in the sticks. This is DEFINITELY something you can't do in Chicago.

pumpkin picking

Oct 7, 2006 - 31 Photos

Redundancy: on turning thirty

Image: noon’s electric red leaves, verging
on purple. Splinters of light, ending. Each
decade, stratified on my body like

crust. My lilting lithosphere. Open with
walls. I sing for you too long, the trees have
decried. We speak this instance. Window, space.

What is the dilemma of your catch-phrase?
Today is a beautiful day in the
echoing chasm. Balmy fluorescence

casts its shadow long. Gust. Brazen and shift.
Gather wood chips, floral notes. Taste the wine,
blushed so hard it’s nearly black. Go as far

as your triumph allows. Vision: trembling
pink hyacinths terrified of wind. You
come covered in it. Festooned like a room

for a funeral. Imagine the stems.
Legs. Swirling wine drags on your lips. Sometimes
catching up is all about color. Hue.

You know how to leave. We ended up here,
one color in the brocade, tangled,
too heavy. My years hang on me today,

more like a suffix than a bauble. More
like a hyphen than a charm. The line breaks
hard. Fwack. A sound without your signature.

pictures

Happy Birthday to Eliot! He's two!

While he loved all his gifts, the red fire engine really made him smile.

Eliot and his friend, Sophia at the park in for their last playdate also pictured. (boohoo).

The big birthday excursion was to go see Thomas the Train (yes, life-sized-- it was way cool!) at the Railroad museum in Golden. From left to right, Barbara (my mom), Me, Eliot, Brian, Bill (Brian's Dad), and Barbara (Brian's Mom). It was really a lot of fun, but as you can see, also very windy.

As promised, I'll post some pictures of the house as soon as I take some. Stay tuned.

Third Monday

It's our third Monday in our new house. I'm beginning to settle in, but only beginning. I'm still far from comfortable here, which is unexpected. People are less friendly than I expected. Friends are more difficult to make, though I'm certainly blessed by a clique of friends that I've somehow managed to hold onto since last time we lived here, and for them I am very grateful.

It was a weekend of parties: Saturday, the big t-w-o for Eliot. We made it a brunch pot-luck type of thing, and it turned out to be fabulous. I highly suggest this route for toddler birthdays, especially if you're pressed for time. All we had to do was clean and make the kitchen available for others to cook, prep, etc. Fun times.

On Sunday, I was told there was to be a small family dinner to celebrate my big 3-0, which is on Friday. It was at my in-law's house. To my awe, it was in fact a surprise party forME, which I certainly wasn't expecting. A lot of the same wonderful people (who I'll never tire of!) but a few who we've yet to see since our arrival. Another great time. And so begins the week of festivities leading to the demise of my 20's. Alas.

Sunday began with a long trail run in familiar territory (North Boulder) with a familiar running partner (Jen Hansen, who has pretty much been my running partner off and on since we met 8 years ago). It was an amazing feeling to be back on those trails, which are so beautiful and simultaneously difficult. I miss N. Boulder very much. Out of curiousity, we stopped by a house for sale in the Wonderland Lake area and picked up a pamphlet about the house. 2,500 sf, $850,000. Astonishing. No wonder we live 30 miles away in Broomfield. And our house is much bigger and newer. But we're not in Wonderland.

Eliot is battling daycare again today, and we'll see how it goes. I'm hoping for good things.

A conversation with some friends at Eliot's birthday party may have landed me a job at a local company doing some marketing work. I don't know-- we'll see. I've submitted my resume for their perusal. The teaching market out here is dry as a bone, so I figured I might as well keep my options open. It actually sounds like a lot of fun, as far as 9-5's go, anyway.

could it be?

Could this really be my third post today? I don't believe it. after the long lapse, I'm back in the saddle. A differend saddle, a saddle of suburban quiet and mountain vievs, but a saddle nonetheless.

The new house is nice, to say the least. It's BIG. I have my own office! Our bathroom is bigger than our bedroom in Chicago.

I'm not nearly as content as I imagined myself to be out here. The distance from school is very disconcerting and the fact that I'm not teaching and don't know when I'll be teaching again is really, well, sad. I am pretty sad, though I'm not really sure why. The weather is already turning autumnal. I miss Chicago more than I expected. I am more afraid of my existence here than I imagined. I'm really just not sure what to make of it all.

But, as you can see below, I have actually written some poems. Attempted to, anyway. I'm eager to get reading again and I gor some really good suggestions from Christina Pugh, my dissertation liason at UIC. Anyone heard of Elizabeth Willis' The Human Abstract? It's on the list. Christina is a rock star, really. Check out her book, Rotary. The title poem is a knockout.

Anyway, I hope to be blogging again more regularly, if anyone is still visiting. And more poems, too. Possibly more angst about living in the middle of nowhere even though this is exactly what I thought I wanted. So it goes.

picara

it begins more like a splatter than a sample, all over the room. unleashing. appreciate the suggestions; they might get you loosened. it doesn’t have to take to root, she said because of the brown spots. you gather me up like a picaresque and carry me through. I am brown here. I misread my own desire to drown. enough about the soil. it is mostly clay and compost. fall, first snow in the mountains. forget the asphalt, the tingling lips in the sun. you caught my sly angular noise like a pilot and flew. away. where am I. contained, ineffectual. damp with lacquer. when will we get on with it. damp.

alumni

slope black fog. her straddle opens pinafores and reservoirs to contemplation. what she means is escape. I recognize her scraps, the parchment fibers clinging to her lips like cilia, filtering. galvanizing. I didn’t expect her uneasiness about the alabaster icon. breasts heavy like wet snow. heaving lilac like cement. I don’t know her, but she is. me(n). she doesn’t know anybody, which makes her mysteriously translucent. run to meet her. meet her. swimming in pulp, swimming disaster so difficult to read.

home sweet home

We're moved in, loosely speaking. Things are in shambles, I'm completely exhausted, but we're in the new house. I'll post pictures and possibly a poem soon.

mission accomplished

We made it here alive. . .to Denver, that is. Technically, Wheat Ridge, CO for now with my in-laws, then to the new house in Broomfield.

Reasons I'm glad to get out of Chicago

1o. It stinks. While we lived there, I gave it the nick-name "Shit-cago," and it stuck.

9. It's dirty. You can never wear white becausae by the end of the day, it's a faint shade of grey. Or brown, depending on the neighborhood you're hanging in.

8. It's crowded. You're never alone with your thoughts. No wonder there are so many crazy people there.

7. It's noisy. Tranis, planes, honking cabbies, busses, screaming people. It wears on a calm, quiet person after a while. I'm afraid I'm neither calm nor quiet anymore.

6. Everything you do is complicated. Grocery shopping is an event, not a chore. You can't just "go out to dinner" without reservations to any place worth eating (there are a few exceptions, as always). Take out food, delivered, takes at least an hour, even if they're just up the street. Finding parking in most neighborhoods is as stressful as going to the dentist, sometimes worse.

5. People are cranky. It's as if no one really wants to live there. People are just mean to each other, and that's the way it works. I've been very uneasy by the warmth and friendliness I've recieved from the residents of this here town in Colorado. It creeps me out when people are nice, thanks to my rudeness training in Chicago.

4. There's a lot of crime, and chances are good you'll be the victim at some point. We lived there for four years and were the victims of three criminal acts- all theft: one identity, once my wallet was stolen, and one just plain stealing our stuff. This is not to mention the crimes we witnessed, which I won't even get into.

3. It's not family-friendly. As much as people tout the city for being family-friendly, I'll tell you plain and simple, it sucks. There are things that are good about it, like there are a lot of parks, b ut they're always crowded, especially the ones thet aren't in the ghetto. Brian got assaulted at the grocery store for letting our 2-year old son scan a candy bar because "it's not a playground." People who don't have children don't have patience for children, or parents for that matter. Here, well, pretty much everyone has a family, so it's not really an issue. I far prefer it so far.

2. People don't recycle. I know, it's kind of a small thing to be so high up the list, but I'm kind of a freak about recycling. In Chicago, you have to put your recycled stuff in the infamous "blue bags," which you have to buy and keep a stock of. Then you have to wait and wonder if it really gets sorted; of course, you have no way of really knowing. Out here, the extreme falls on the other end of the spectrum. If you don't recycle, you're a social outcast. I far prefer this paradigm.

1. People poop and pee in the parks. It was rare, in fact, that we could find a park without the smell of urine or an evident pile of human feces spotlighted on the jungle gym, etc. When people ask me why I don't like Chicago, this is what I say: "People pee and poop in the parks. . .where our CHILDREN play. Fine, not everyone has homes and bathrooms to relieve themselves. But there are bushes right over there, where there are no children playing. Can you pee there? Can we at least keep the parks clean?

So that's that. I;m not a big blog list-er, but I've been working on this one for a while.

I'm planning to write some more poems soon, as soon as the haze lifts and I can settle in, if only a little.

make up and moving

In one week, I'll be on an airplane to Colorado (yikes, double yikes as of yesterday!). I'm getting a little anxious.

I just put on make-up before 6pm for the first time in like three months, so I thought I'd take a picture. Yes, I'm a dork. I have a meeting with my psuedo-dissertation advisor (long story) to talk about what I've written so far for the first time. I'm a little nervous. Pretty much the only people who have seen any of these poems are the peeps who read my blog. And yalls crazy, yo. We'll see. I hope she notices that I put on make-up for her :)

Moving sucks

I know, it's no earthshattering revalation. And all things considered, I'm happier about this move to Broomfield, CO than I've ever been about a move in my life. It's amazing, then, how much moving still sucks the life out of me. With a toddler who is constantly at your heels, packing is a trick. I average a box or two a day, if I'm lucky. It's definitely more of a marathon than a sprint, for sure. I feel like we've been moving for two months already. I just can't wait till it's all over.

Then there is the anxiety about leaving UIC, where my PhD and dissertation are still in progress. I have yet to fully assemble my dissertation committee, although my dissertation is nearly half-way done. And I'm theroetically entering the job market this fall, though my opportunities will be severely diminished because of my new location. Yes, there's CU, Naropa, U of Denver, Regis, Metro, and several reputable community colleges in the area, but there are also a lot of highly educated people in the Boulder-Denver area looking for the same jobs I am. I'm contemplating putting my resume in for some High School teaching jobs, just to see what happens. They have a certification program there that's a sort of certify-as-you-go deal, and it wouldn't be all bad, I suppose. I know I'll miss teaching. I miss it already and the summer's not even over!

I haven't written a lick of poetry in weeks. Packing all of my earthly belongings (the ones that weren't stolen!) into boxes not to be seen again for at least a month, puts a damper on my poetic spirit. Usually being disconcerted brings out the best of my poetic personas. Not now. I'm over the edge on this one.