Mark Twain Sez...

“New Year's Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”

Happy New Year, my friends. The nicest thing about 2006 was the three of you.

{gc}

A Very Vegas Christmas

In case you're wondering what you've missed out on, you can view the fabulous time had by yours truly on the Flickr page of my personal photographer. Wish you were here, friends.

Crepapelle (there is a little fork in us all)

Italians are pigs
c'e una forchetta
in everyone

women like carving
naked yellow onions
with butter knives

tear drops on table
lo spirito santo
tied up and scored

saffron threads muffle
all salt cured and waiting
wild boar mouth

al crepuscolo
scamorza on the hearth
thinner than skin

una vecchia
piccolo coltello
slippery tongue

without the madonna
la zuppa di pane
cannot be made

tu ha bisogna
di tutto il cuore
to break good bread

come se dice
where would one find baked goods
in this city?

lacrime christi
in bocca al lupo
your hand in mine

beer, bier, ber before liquer...(a vegas sendoff)

delerium tremins yes
me leffe please the
belgian blonde one
golden chouffe triple
fermented abbey bless
you tiny teeny martini
ginny dirty tootsie
roll milky vanillin
vodka jewels jews olive
juice top martini talks
girty ditty shelf
best bottom sex
ever clear image
of motel 6 sink or chair or
goat cheese crunchy
water salad with straw?
body size bigger is
gay? or was it super 8?
is better walking
jealousy subjects
of night talks water?
platform moves home
is so far away here it is
so hot sleeping in all
my emperors clothing
his hand me down tie

Hey lady, did you pay for the skull mug?

Otto's Shrunken Head, NYC, December 8, 2006

Writers Love to Talk About Themselves!

Upcoming Reading

Erica Hunt and Akilah Oliver at the belladonna* Reading Series

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Dixon Place
258 Bowery
Second Floor

belladonna* is a reading series and small press that promotes the work of women writers who are adventurous, experimental, politically involved, multi-form, multicultural, multi-gendered, impossible to define, delicious to talk about, unpredictable, dangerous with language.

When, in Brooklyn, a tree is stunted

When, in Brooklyn, a tree is stunted,

get down on your knees and massage its roots.

Sing Gregorian Chants. Recite Keats to it.

Don’t pull on its limbs or they may break you.

Don’t reach for its hand for it may be dead.

Pardon Me While I Open This Vent...

So yesterday morning, I was on stand-by (because I'm a flake and missed the registration date by two days) to take the GRE Subject Test in English Literature. I decided to apply to the doctoral program at the CUNY Graduate Center for the Fall of '07 because a) several professors here at City and the Grad Center told me I should and offered to write letters of rec, b) I figured out a topic I could write a dissertation about that wouldn't drive me to despair and c) why the hell not?

Anyway, it turns out there are three of us there on stand-by and only two tests. One of these people was Columbia Boy, who had been standing since 6:30 AM out in the cold in front of George Washington High School (the test site). The other was Cool, Funky Girl, who had a high-wattage smile and offered all the other GRE test takers extra pencils and clutched a dogeared copy of the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry to her chest like a talisman.

At first, it appeared that there were three stand-by tests, but this was due to the general imcompetence and confusion of the test-givers. It wasn't discovered that one of the people with an actual appointment was indeed there until I had taken off my jacket, bubbled in all my info on the scantron, and was waiting patiently to crack open the test booklet.

So when it was clear that one of we three stand-bys would have to bow out, I took the bullet. As I got up in front of a classroom full of people, each thankful that they were not the nice guy with the freshly opened chest wound, I wanted to shout out something ridiculous and carefree like "So long, suckers!" Instead, I glanced at Columbia Boy and said "Ahhhhh, I didn't want to be a real professor anyway. I'm still banking on being a famous poet."

To which Columbia Boy said (instead of "Thanks" or "Good luck!" or simply laughing) "Me too!" Which made me want to drive my sharpened number two pencil into his eye. Fuck you, Columbia Boy: You'll still be paying off your $90,000 degree while I'm bedding all the worshipful, geeky girls who come up to me after my brilliant poetry readings across this great land of ours.

Well, not really.

So I guess that was a mitzvah, a good deed--at least, that's what I keep telling myself (instead of Columbia Boy, I should think about what a generous, inspiring professor Cool, Funky Girl will one day become). I know, I know--I can always take it in April and simply apply to the Grad Center for the Fall of 2008. But that's not going to happen. Part of the appeal of this path was a seamless transition from finishing my MFA at City into the Grad Center (and the all the lovely continuance of financial aid that implies). To wait a whole year, and be that much further into my forties (My forties!), before launching on another five years of higher edumacation? Feh.

Why am I posting this, O coterie? Well, I'm feeling slightly low about the whole thing and wanted to share and my proper blog isn't the place for this sort of venting. That I'm low at all is funny, seeing as how I never really wanted to do it in the first place (that is, naturally, until I was prevented from doing it by Cruella DeFate).

But it's okay, right? There's still that whole famous poet thing. Ha. Ha ha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Let us close this week with the work of photojournalist James Nachtwey, whose images testify not only to the terrors of greed and war, but to a man's dedication to the truth. Like any artist worthy of the title, Nachtwey teaches us--through a medium that competes with the white noise of (mis)information, deceit, and the repetitive strain of everyday living--to look a bit closer at the world, to investigate and question all that we presume to know.

Have a good weekend, everyone. [DR]