Sorry I haven't had time (yet) to respond to all the comments and "tags"; I just took the GRE general test this weekend and the subject test the weekend before that and I interviewed with the head of the English Dept. at Fordham to see what a PhD there would be like. She wasn't very encouraging, kept repeating that admission is "very competitive" and staring down at me, but nonetheless I'm going to give it a try.

In other news, I'm thinking of changing the title of The Transparent Dinner to Begin at the Mouth, with this being the title poem:

Begin at the Mouth

not at the feet
those pretty pale turtles

or the belly
opalescent and soft 
           as a banana slug

not the hands
quick worker ants

or the hair
baring its throat
        to the scissors each spring
shining like a doe

but the mouth,
mobile, scarred, full of sharp
                        clicking
a crab with long red tongs
who pulls from my esophagus
dark bees  stinging marks in the air 
               these words

What do you think?