In which I take a month’s inventory November is National Novel Writing Month, as the US-based organization attempting to bully us into drafting 50,000 words would have us believe. I’ll mention it in passing to non-Americans who look at me as if I’ve just thrown in a dialect word, and, in a way, I have.Continue reading “NaNoWriMo???”
Tag Archives: #poetry
A presto, Dante Alighieri!
In which I peer into the passato remoto (like, molto molto remoto) Dante, the poet of Italy, so famous the last name is basically superfluous, died seven hundred years ago today. Seven HUNDRED years. WHAT. He had contracted malaria while staying in Ravenna at the request of its prince, Guido II da Polenta. Scholars estimateContinue reading “A presto, Dante Alighieri!”
More poetry!
In which new lit is lit 🔥 Ciao tutti— The lovely new lit mag Journal of Erato dropped its second issue today, entitled Hometown, in which my poem “Me and Mike #3” is featured. It began life as a fragment, a half-thought-out meditation on being away from familiar places and people. Then I realized itContinue reading “More poetry!”
From Köln Cathedral
• I nearly set fire to something yesterday out of laziness lying on the floor in the little room I’d rented on the outskirts of a city even stranger than the one I was trying to call home. Even the word home carries a note of strangeness now, as if I am only just discoveringContinue reading “From Köln Cathedral”
April Snow
• This is the walk she knows they will never take: down the jealous sidewalk where every step’s a stumble, across volcano train tracks sleepy in sunlight and screeching at the moon, toward the glassy freshwater air and the green that spills down into skirted diamond current where she kicks off her shoes without thought,Continue reading “April Snow”
How ‘Bout Them Apples?
• How do you like them apples now? I hear The anthem being taken up. And yet The tune is faint and easy to forget If panic has not stuck it in your ear, Or drummed it down into your bones, or lodged It in the antechambers of your heart, Reminding you, should revolution start,Continue reading “How ‘Bout Them Apples?”
Who Wants a Lover?
• Who wants a lover this Valentine’s Day? Who wants a meaningless fling? Who wants a romance with no consequences, No major commitments, just minor offenses, No number, no text, and no ring? Who wants a lover this fourteenth of Feb? Who wants a roll in the hay? Who wants next morning to sayContinue reading “Who Wants a Lover?”
Clouds Over Troy
Central Courtyard, University of Southern California. • this is hallowed knowledge: the shadow of the movement of heavenly bodies in the cool dry air— June gloom come early— illumination where no sun shines, the torch of kings to guide the steps of coming plebeians— sustenance for the humblest soul, no moreContinue reading “Clouds Over Troy”
A Summer So Long
• As a seed in the bright-colored street I am saying so long To the I know of nothing, the nothing that knows not of me. On a high cushioned wingtip my bondage was loosed with a song Of seduction to come, a provoking, profane melody; The lean languid lusting of aimlessness, sloth, and despair,Continue reading “A Summer So Long”
The Greeters
A poem You’d think everybody’s eyes would be fixed up here, so far above the cataracts. But these two kids look just like they used to, and nobody calls them four eyes— they’re the cool ones who left the party early, before you could corner one of them and say hey, how does it feelContinue reading “The Greeters”