Although this is very late, I want to crow about how wonderful it was to hear Shanna Compton and Elise Miller read at the Bowery Poetry Club. They were both fantastic, and touching, and surprising, just as I suspected. Elise was looking so good I thought she had some "work done" but it turns out...not, and Shanna looks like a fairy princess in some lights, which I definitely hadn't noticed. Everything was just extremely pretty with a little strange thrown in, and my ruby slippers brought good luck as usual.

I finally got a copy of Down Spooky and it is... well, beautiful and odd beyond description. You must buy it.

Elise will be publishing her book soon! I hope so I can buy it.

I'm lucky to be hosting a pair of fabulous writers tomorrow night (11/16: Open mic at 7:30, readers at 8) at the Bowery Poetry Club: Elise Miller and Shanna Compton!

Elise Miller hosts and curates the monthly reading series, East Side Oral, “the reading series your mother warned you about,” at The Living Room on the lower east side. The next show is sometime in December. Elise’s first novel, Star Craving Mad, was published by Warner Books and was optioned by Madonna’s production company. Personal essays from her collection, COCK-CRAZY, can be read on nerve.com, smallspiralnotebook.com, and freshyarn.com. Reach her at elisemiller.com.

Shanna Compton's book Down Spooky won the 2004 Winnow Press Open Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Best American Poetry 2005, Verse, McSweeney's, Gastronomica, No Tell Motel, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Eye-Rhyme, and elsewhere. She is the former curator of both the Frequency Series and the Soft Skull Sneak Peek Series. She is an editor at large for LIT at New School University (and served as editor for issues 7-10) and the Associate Publisher of Soft Skull Press. She recently edited an anthology of essays on the subject of video games called GAMERS: Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels. She teaches poetry & publishing at Bowery Arts & Science and the New School (first class January 2006). Her micropress Half Empty/Half Full specializes in poetry chapbooks and broadsides. Originally from Texas, she has lived in Brooklyn, NY since 1995.

The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, New York, NY 10012
212.614.0505

foot of First Street, between Houston & Bleecker
across the street from CBGBs
F train to Second Ave, or 6 train to Bleecker

Although this is a bit late, I wanted to let you know about the reading I gave as part of the Atomic series, hosted by Cheryl B, who is the nicest chica ever, and someday, I may aspire to her level of coolness. Here's herblog.

I was lucky enough to read with some real pros: Lisa Selin Davis, Tsaurah and Andy Horwitz. For the full scoop, go here. This is the second time, I've read with Andy -- the first was in 2001 when I was just starting out as a poet, and he was already rich and famous. Okay, famous. Well-known. His piece this time had a slightly different tone than the one in 2001, but it was just as brilliant, if not more so. I want him to put out a book so I can read it.

Fertility Rites for a Daughter

I have followed the instructions carved into
the bathroom wall at the desert service station,
hints about how to trap a child's spirit into flesh
no matter how shiny and quick, no matter
how much like a ribbon escaping out a car window,

I have taken lessons from how the crows and robins
make their nests, sticking bottlecaps and barrettes
under my mattress, weaving twigs into the cracks in
my headboard

I have sewn spirals into the curtains, strung red prisms
from the lamp shades to hypnotize the fleeing light

I have opened the cupboard door and taken out the salt
strewn it into stars on the floor
so she will sit and stay, fascinated by the constellations
stuck to her soles

I have dug up the carrots and beets in the garden
beside the porch, left deep brown clefts for her
to rise out of

I row a boat, every Sunday, to the center
of the still lake, and feed
the pike rising to the surface
my fingerprints

I put a pillow under my ass and turn off the TV
Wednesday nights, humming into a different man's
neck each time, singing, come to me, come to me,
in a language only possibility knows
______