This is great. You go girls. Secretaries should steal all they can. Then run. Run like the wind, you hear me!

The whole idea of loyal secretaries is just such upper class stupidity. Have any of these Lawyers at Skadden, Arps ever been a secretary? Do they know what humiliation really is?

I actually was a secretary for a lawyer at Skadden Arps for about 4 months. She was one of the nice ones. And she was absolutely crazy and demanding.

New poem:

Kiss or Kill

It's like a cut I lick

red like the velvet dress
Maria wore that night outside the bar in november
she refused to wear her jacket
she said it clashed
her goose pimples
were like braille
I wanted
to touch them with my fingertips

Maria kept talking under the streetlamp
she wouldn’t go back into the bar with me
to get warm
I wondered if she wanted me
to kiss her
and I wondered so hard I felt sick

her breath kept spurting out
in white clouds of syllables
from her red red mouth
shaped like a big o or maybe a zero

I just wanted to shut that red mouth
somehow
I wasn’t sure how

First


we’ve been sitting on the couch
watching TV for

My shiny skirt is pulled
I push my soft leg

Soon he will
He says he wants to


I take
my palm.

Closer, Closer, Closer, Closer
He touches

as if by accident. I trace
my white cotton panties

Kiss me

StopStopStop Stop
I know I should say

but his finger is
sweet

gentle
hot, I
I

and it feels too good to

And I rewrote one really old and yucky poem. I think it's kinda cool now, in that minimalist kind'a way.

And since I have all this free time, not working, I decided to get a book of my poems together and submit it. To several places. Yes. I have a title for the book, Sag, Soil, Fade or Burn, after one manufacturer's claim that his perfect fabric would do none of these. Right.

I've been working, working, working, without being employed. Listed about 30 books at Amazon.com, and was happy to learn that I had some collectibles I didn't know about. Like a hardcover copy of Satan Says. Also, I sold my first book within 30 minutes, which is good.

So tonight!! I met one of my favorite artists in the world, Catya Plate, and also, well, okay, she's not Kiki Smith, she second favorite to Kiki Smith. But anyway, I met her at an opening and she knew me! From her mailing list! Evidentally she knows everyone who ever bought a piece of her work. And I have a piece. A great painting called Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend. And she said I could interview her! For Wide Angle. If it comes out. Catya Rules! And I totally embarrassed myself in front of her. I kept hopping up and down and saying, I'm your biggest fan! every 30 seconds. O well.

Rewrite:

the other side of the room

All Sunday I heard it.
A sussurant whisper;
hundreds of grasshopper
wings whirring.
In my wifebeater and chains, I leaned
out my window on Flatbush Avenue
and saw nothing.
No feathered Sunday hats, no
locked bicycles dissolving into rust, no
candles and wreathes.
And the sound stopped.
I slouched to my kitchen
where roaches twitched
on their backs
like hot black commas.
I tucked a rag green with smears
into the handle
on the oven door while
over the stove the mirror,
ragged with fingerprints,
reflected nothing.

I sat down on my velvet
couch and it shredded to dust.
Then the stove exploded,
silently like snow
and the sun traced
figures in the sand,
everywhere.

Everywhere, sand.
The insects flew faster.
Behind me a wave of green and blue
wings nearly crashed.
I stood near the ocean,
some wide pink and blue ocean
and it was almost quiet,
with that hush between tides.
I opened my palm to read
and a flower bloomed there,
slowly, but quick,
with large white petals
which were the white petals
of my heart.

I've actually corresponded with Daphne Gottlieb and Lauren Wheeler on livejournal. Teenage squealing. More poetry stars I worship. Along with Tricia Warden, Todd Colby and, uh, well, others.

It's so cold, now. I'm not used to all this cold. I just can't go outside. Even inside, it gets inside my bones. My feet are never warm. Winter is always the time I imagine I'm dying.

The Backward Cannibal

Five seconds after you leave,
I want to obliterate every part of you.

I had asked you not to go.
Not even screaming
concentrating on my fingernails.

Now I down your beer and
half-eaten pizza so fast
I can't breathe.

I flush your hat.

The toilet burps and soaks
my pink carpet red.

I raise your favorite mug to smash
but it slips through my fingers
and breaks my foot.

Finally, I have a reason to howl.

New Poem.

But the place I interviewed at yesterday also seems nice, and it's working in schools, so I get two months off in the summer. Kewl.

Tomorrow is my fifth interview of this week. So far, everyone seems to like me a lot, but I won't hear back from anyone for at least another week. The job I interviewed for today seems grand and it's working with children. Plus, it pays a lot!

Now, if I can just get a job so I won't be homeless.

So today was good news. I am! too! enthusiastic! First off, I found out that I was short-listed for the Alsop's Review poetry prize. This is very big deal. To the few amount of people who know what I'm talking about. Then the editor of Alsop's asked me, asked me, asked me (I feel like a Benny Hill sketch: What's that in the road ahead? What that in the road, a head?) if he could publish the poem that had almost won. Uh,

Yeah.

Alsop's Octavo Quarterly, where my poem is going to be published, has also published Kim Addonzio and Dorriane Laux, both of whom I just started liking a few months ago when I was looking for interesting poems for my class.

So this is in the plus category.

And, furthermore, meanwhile, back at the ranch, later that same day: Sex and Guts accepted one of my pieces, and the editor said my work, "broke [his] heart." Heh.

I swore I'd never use sussurant in a poem. And now I've done it.

The Other Side of the Room

All Sunday I heard it.
A sussurant whisper;
hundreds of grasshopper
wings whirring.

In my wifebeater and chains, I leaned
out my window on Flatbush Avenue
and saw nothing.
No feathered Sunday hats, no
locked bicycles dissolving into rust, no
candles and wreathes.

And the sound stopped.

I slouched to my kitchen
where the roaches twitched
on their backs.

I tucked a rag green with smears
into the handle
on the oven door while
over the stove the mirror,
ragged with fingerprints,
reflected nothing.

I sat down on my velvet
couch and it shredded to dust.
Then the stove exploded,
silently like snow
and the sun traced
figures in the sand,
everywhere.

Everywhere, sand.
The insects flew faster.
Behind me a wave of green and blue
wings nearly crashed.
I stood near the ocean,
some wide pink and blue ocean
and it was almost quiet,
with that hush between tides.

I opened my palm to read
and a flower bloomed there,
slowly, but quick,
with large white petals
which were the white petals
of my heart.

Okay, and since you're begging, here's another one.

Girlfriends

There's a shameful secret
my friend told me once (I think
she was a little drunk).

We were having lunch
at the Mexican-slash-Chinese place
one of those times when our boss
wouldn't miss us.

She turned her delicate head away
and looked at something vague
across the room.

She said that's what she thinks
about all the time,
getting it from two men at once
from behind and from in front,
and she must be crazy,
is she crazy?

I was silent --
I left her alone
for that moment;
figuring out how
I could be one of those men.

Plus this is just a draft.

Got a new poem. It's not about you! Really.

Yeah, I'm sorry I've been so remiss at updating. I've been writing and painting alot, and just generally losing my mind over my lack of employment situation. Seriously. I'm showing all the tell-tale signs of Alzheimer's. I'm just about to start accusing people of stealing the things i misplace. like my glasses.

Anyway, seeing as I didn't sell many paintings last weekend, I have created a new portfolio page listing the rock bottom prices born of desperation and a Con Ed shut off notice. Please buy! I accept checks.Portfolio of pain.

I think I'm gonna try to turn the fiction below into a poem. Mebbe.

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I have been getting quite a bit of writing done. however. Teaching this class has been a great motivator and inspiration. Not that I'm stealing my student's ideas. Much.

I had an art sale Saturday. Spent all Friday cleaning my apartment, hanging the pictures, putting out candy and selecting the nice art-gallerish music and scents.

Guess how many people came?

One. At the very end of the day, the darling and talented writer, Ms. Hillary Russ, who bought 3 pieces after I practically shoved them down her throat.

Okay and two neighbors came. Near the end of the day, I was standing out in the hallway and grabbing anyone who walked by.

After my upstairs neighbors ran by my door, I realized that I had become the annoying single lady with too many cats who asks every one to stop by "just for five minutes" to look at her button collection.

I did see a little of that duck and weave. I've done it myself. I can recognize it.

I hate not being employed. Makes me depressed. And so lonely and needy. I've been calling the boyfriend so many times a day he just turns off his cell. So I'm pissed off and lonely.

So... Halloween came and went. I dressed up in a costume I bought 8 years ago but never wore, put on a new purple wig, made my self-up like a ghoul and then decided to stay home all night. Well, at least I made half the effort.