Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I just got a chapbook accepted by Dancing Girl Press!

I'm so happy and shocked I'm practically having a stroke, you know, the kind where the chunks of happiness break up into your blood stream and enter your brain, blocking all other thoughts.
New painting! First time in a looong time.



Thursday, July 21, 2005

Random Bragging

If you go here and look at the upper right hand corner, you might see someone you recognize.

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

And again! The punishment just never stops.

We Go to Get

the grocery store is so freezing coming out of the sun
i love the ringing of the automatic door how the glass opens
when you step on the blank rubber i love to run in and out
in my pink flip-flops with the daisy on top in and out
too young to even have under arm hair or smell like anything
but grass my hair matted brushing my shoulders brittle
and chlorine green
tied back with two red plastic balls on a rubber band
my face shiny brown
my teeth broken white white
i am smiling in all these photos
Breakfast, Lunch


Nougat with flecks of grain, white
bread with swiss
.
in the morning the air on the porch
smells of blood but it is only
the roses stretching towards
the sun over the limbs of the dying
in the garden
.
"I like to go barefoot in my sheer white
nightgown, my hair swept
back with a scorpion"
.
she was always hungry but never liked to admit it
.
she preferred to chew
toilet paper in the safety of her
own closet
.
"I’m not a morning person"
.
"If you keep me
waiting one more minute
I’m going to take your sister
and leave you here"
.
sobbing so hard it sounds
like a meat bell
tolling
face like a lost red shoe
.
clinging to the door knob despite the tugs
at the back of his collar until the seams
ripped until the tag with his name sewn on
pulled free
.
"Look closer, I want to tell you everything I know
about dead dogs
revived with injections
of sea water"
.
they lived close enough
to the water to be a rest stop
for gulls
.
sometimes they would drop tiny crabs
on her head
it was so shiny and hard like a rock
.
Who doesn’t like cotton candy?
when applied directly it acts
just like an ace bandage

Monday, July 18, 2005

The director of the SMUT reading series just asked me back to read again. He sent me this email:

"Can you do 8/22 at 8pm? By the way, I reeeeeally liked the stuff you read last time. It was really dark and twisted, personal, obtuse, and surreal at the same time. Oh yeah, and funny as hell, too! Hit me in all the right places. I know Desiree loved your stuff, too. We both were sitting there with our jaws on the floor in shock and awe."

I love the "obtuse and surreal"! I am so flattered!

(BTW, my obnoxious plea for cash has not even raised 50 cents. I don't get it. Being an ass works for so many people!)

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Hey, if anyone's ever enjoyed my poetry, or perhaps, my witty and insightful comments on your own blog, you might want to give me some money. You know, just for being your friend, you might want to pay me. Or you may want to pay just to see the world's most obnoxious plea for money.
Just a thought.



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Friday, July 15, 2005

So, as many of you know, about a month ago I became the acting director of writing at the Women's Studio Center, and I now have a lot to do. Whew. One of my new projects is starting a reading series in the fall centering around women writers.

I just got Daphne Gottlieb to agree to be one the readers! I'm so blown away. I have admired her for ages.

I'm going to be doing my nerdish happy dance all day now.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction


this tinfoil hat is not the way
gluing your feet to the bed each night
is not going to save you from the sucking
woosh
.
some say a green paint on the belly distracts them
so their machines malfunction
.
and also some books suggest smearing rotten
boysenberries at the windowsill
.
but I know substituting myself
with an identical
robot under the covers, at the breakfast table
and in front of the class room
when asked to solve
for Y
.
has worked very well for me as long as
you don't turn round and I stay right here
in the corner behind you

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Who found me by googling the phrase "I am the bestest," will find that it's true. I am the bestest. At grammar.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Furniture
for mama

all day Saturday your hands
have been at this
...
a crooked roll-top desk in the driveway
expensive wood
poorly kept
...
hard nailing and the saw
has humped your shoulders
wrenched your collar off-key
...
your knuckles shine with blisters
like the marks of kisses
...
for this you leave your wedding ring
on the top porch step
...
stray hairs from your ponytail get caught
in the varnish pot
then waver in the wind, catch the light like
starbursts
...
even as the dust from sanding paints
a halo around you two on the asphalt
...
I have never so envied wood

Friday, July 08, 2005

I think I've found a new publisher!

And Shanna has a cool new blog about DIY publishing (not at all connected to above link.)

Thursday, July 07, 2005

This is a sort of riff on a previous poem:

A Natural History of Thumbs


my first kiss, a sea lion, sloppy,
slack lips against trembling
fish-colored tongues,
...

saliva sliding over our chins until my electric
blue tube top is wet, a slick between my white
ten year-old breasts, so new they still ache with being born,
riven with blue veins
...

me laying on top of the sea lion during recess
in the center lawn of the school,
not caring if anyone saw,
not caring if the principal came and tore me
off him, everything gone warm and gone black
...

only this wormy mess of teeth clicking
against teeth, his whiskers in my mouth,
fast as slugs
on speed and a burning
...

in my cunt, I grind against the sea lion trying to feel
through the 16 layers of my panties, jeans, apron
and lead skirt, grinding so hard the sea lion whimpers
in pain, grinding to grind out the burning
between my legs, it is the strangest fucking
...

I've ever felt and I can't stop, I can't,
I hold the sea lion down by his flippers,
push his head far into the earth with my mouth
...

he’s trying to squirm free, the lawn churning into
wet mud, I’m pushing, moving,
the sun so bright I can see it behind
my closed lids, a small planet
spinning in my pelvis
...

then he slips from beneath me,
wipes his mouth on the grass, waddles away fast and
...

that’s the first time I know it, that to love
is to be left wet and holding

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Today I finally got rejected from the New Hampshire Review. They held a poem for 5 months because they were toying with me (trying to decide if it fit with the other pieces, blah, blah, :PPPP)

And then I got an email from Mayapple Press with the headline, Poetry Book Submission. Holy crap. I stopped breathing while I clicked on it, and waited, waited for the email to load. They just wanted to let me know that they were backlogged with submissions, and wouldn't get back to me until Sept. Ah well.

Hey! But I updated my CV, and now you can go here and see the omniscent, omnipotent and omnicorpuscules that is CHRISTINE. Try to avoid stalking me through the contact info, K?