For those of you who want a fun Sunday:

I'm doing a reading! As part of Cheryl B.'s reading series, the Atomic Cafe, at Lucky 13 in Park Slope. It's easy to get to, and quite worth the trip -- i.e.; free!

I'll be reading from my new chapbook, The Animal Husband, which explores some of the least practical aspects of bestiality. (Wow, Microsoft Word doesn't even recognize that as a word.) The poems have been called, variously, funny, dark, and most of all, confusing.

I'm reading with fiction writers --Tony O'Neill (author, Digging the Vein)
and Michelle Wildgen (Tin House, You're Not You)

The reading is on June 4th and starts at 7PM. Sharp! Like a knife!

Here's the address:

At the Lucky 13 Saloon
273 13th (5th Avenue)
Park Slope, Brooklyn
(F train to 7th Ave,
walk down 7th Ave to 13th street,
then walk down towards 5th Ave)
718-499-7553
NO COVER

And the link to the reading series is here: http://www.cherylb.com/atomic

New POEM. IT'S EX'PER'MENTAL. okay

Carnival in Your Mouth

the toilets on Crescent Street
like blonde rain
give up the pillow

vomit and bleach bargain with God

the refrigerator light ties around your neck
a sparrow, a fish beeps like a chick
glistening with oil

James Dean slices his steak
distracted by peanut sauce and
a starling beating against his face
telling us his loves us with a tennis ball
on the sofa

dripping, the world enters him
a carburetor and giraffe

begin to suck my husband
in the kitchen cheese

ignore the tub
ignore the phone’s ring

open the dryer to check
your window, wrapped in a pink blanket,
hold it over rocks, it disappears

spaghetti every where
children are crawling
architecture kills the squash of rubber bands,
the tomatoes of a swan

Christmas licks us clean
our toes dumb in a silk purse

Sorry I've been MIA lately; illness has got me down. But I'm a little better.

Here's a poem I came up with after melding three sources together for my visual poetry class (see pic below). Text from the library after I did a search on feminism and naming -- I got a crazy article about female apostles, plus my skewed and surreal impressions of the library, and text and a page from a handbook on how to be a good secretary, circa 1941.

So this is what I came up with. I think it has some good spots, but it probably needs to be cut alot. Let me know what you think!

Highlight Your Individuality

Finally, the criterion of cohesiveness supports
PERSONALITY TALK NO. 3

1. Apostles must exhibit charisma

Stemming from 1969, we were dazzled.
"Visit a garment", the revolving doors whisper
by the thousands and then only when
accompanied by three masked men,
provided we each wear one hundred
thicknesses of material.

Our tiny heels on the marble floors full of diamonds,
a pattern placed on top of all we wish --
our fingerprints and sputum inside their books,
dresses cut out in one operation.

These books arrive ten days after we fill out
the forms, strapped to the back of red dresses.
Identical wooden cupboards descend and ascend
because they have neglected someone.

Heaven is painted on the ceiling here
but those books are placed on the table before us.
It is possible for a person to have a wooden spatula
to turn the pages and beat us. The descriptive phrases
hit us until our fingertips are raw,
until names are beaten out of our dreams.

Everyone wanting to help is allowed to
retire and have tea with the other ladies.
"Evasive", "gullible", "timid", are noticeable
characteristics of "Sugar."

What can you do to make individuality?
Observe the characteristics of persons whom you indicate.
Women fulfilled all criteria of apostleship.
List all these and add others.
Seem desirable, if you have anyone.

Click on image to see the big one.

Another visual poem. The typed text is taken from a passage from the Golden Bough about the power of names. I then blacked it out to give it another meaning.



Click on the image to go to the bigger version.

Help Wanted

We’d all kill for a little light.
We crowd around the one office window,
quarrelling over who will lick it clean this time.
Someone on the second floor stashed
their vitamin D in OUR refrigerator.
Who else sees the skull in the sky
above the hotdog cart on east 14th Street?

What I need is the Complete Idiot’s guide
to the Eyes in the Back of My Head.
Do you think you can remember this for tomorrow?
The tension in the women‘s potty is as thick
as the cat-choking mist of hairspray.
You could cut it with a plastic fork
like all the old farewell cakes.

I lost the post-it telling me where I am.
As for the previous assistants, sometimes I visit
their graves, sometimes their graves visit me.
It’s hard to see the screen with all these ghosts;
when’s the exterminator coming?
It said bad file/corrupted, but I hadn’t even
touched it yet. I wouldn’t eat that,
if I were you.

Hey, I started a new shop at Cafe Press. It's got a lot of funky ethnic t-shirts and mousepads and stuff. Basically, I made things that I'm going to buy for myself.

Check it out, dudes.

A new poem, finally. Well I've been sick... and stuff.

I Borrowed a Dream to Tell You This

I gave birth in a library
smell of dried worms in the stacks
in between Harding and Pierce
old webs to wipe up the afterbirth
ribbons of pink and black

my baby scuttled away before I could Christen him
before I could put him to my breast
and make him human

now I will crawl after him forever
a poor thing of words and bones
smelling of burnt hair
bleating like a little goat
like a tiny angry baby goat
skating on the ice and falling
and falling again against
your hot white shins

-------------

Thanks to my friend Kerry for the goat.

Couldn't be more silly:

Using my lovely vintage grammar book, I came up with a couple new poems. Here's the first --

Popular Baby Names

distinguish it from hoping, a very different word

goddess       deference    occurrence    usually 
literally     baggage      redden        permitting 
deferred      slipped      planned       nutting  
preference    beginning    beginner      gripping 
preferring    stopped      swimming      compelling

Holy+day make holiday, and plenty+ful makes plentiful;
but joy+ful makes joyful

___________________

Also, go see BRICK -- it is the best film ever! Esp. if you like the Maltese Falcon, etc.

I have finished my visual poem and I am quite excited. Here is the small version.



Yes, there was a great deal of sewing and gluing. I'm feeling crafty!

If you would like to be able to read the text (large version) go here and click: all sizes.

I'm still enjoying that minty fresh feeling of working in a new medium.
BRILLIANT!

If you go here, you can hear me mumble my way through my reading for MiPoesias. Also, you can hear Jen Tynes and Jennifer Firestone being terrific and surprising.

This is something I started in my new visual poetry class at Poet's House, with Jill Magi -- who is the greatest. I'm still working on it. I'm gonna paste into an ancient book of kids stories and chop it and sew it, mebbe. The class seems like it's really fun.

(Remember whoever makes the most comments this week wins a chapbook.)

Naming the Animals

when I turned 21 my father told me
his real name

he taught me names are heavy keys
sour to the tongue

3 locks in a row down our door
bluebeard says to call him something new

the key is hidden under the doormat
the doormat says WELCOME bites
you fingers when you reach for it

my brother buried my name under a stone
when he was five

he was hoping to protect me, the Tonka Trucks
and plastic swords made feeble guards

now when autumn comes I sleep all day
fur sprouts down my spine

sometimes I wake up sniffing the animal
tracks to the window

our phone has never worked
the words catch in our throats
and all we can do is point

-----

We were asked to write about an important experience we had with language growing up. Mine was my dad telling my his real name. I never knew the name he went by normally was made up. Both my parents changed their first names (independently, before they met each other). This freaks me out more the more I think about it.

A new poem. Pls. tell me if it's crappish! TX. xxx

But That’s My Limit

country bed full of weevils
we pick them out with a fork
stored in a silver teacup
the singing of the invisible horizon
she cracks open with her teeth

the moon hurries into the trees
like a quiet liquid tea

my Idaho cousins drive those tiny cattle
into a room full of spiders and old ladies
holding teabags in their mouths

the hippies of Idaho are on to us
they have strapped kicking calves
under the tea-stained floorboards of their jeeps

they are going to ask if we want a ride
and if we’ve drunk our tea
they are going to smile and toss
their shaggy red manes until we say yes

you can take us to the edge of town,
this clicking noise, this scalding tea

I’ll touch your dental plate
with the tea leaves
but that’s my limit

I sent a note to Elaine at chapbookfinder.com to see if she would list my chapbooks. She said she's really only interested in publishers right now. So publishers, send some info and get listed! Here's what she asked me to forward.


Dear Readers, Authors, Publishers:

Thank you for your interest in chapbookfinder.com. Currently, we are listing links to publishers only, though we will begin to offer an index by individual authors as the site develops.

o If you are an author: have your publisher send us a copy of your chapbook. All titles listed must still be in print with copies available for sale. We are working on adding a forum to encourage a dialogue re: out of print titles and other matters of interest to chapbook readers, authors and publishers.

o If you are a publisher: we need 1-2 sentences about your press (see site), your URL, and samples of your chapbooks (see address below).

o If you are self-published: check chapbookfinder.com periodically. We hope to add an author index soon.

To get the word out about our site, chapbookfinder.com asks publishers and authors to provide a link from your website to ours.

The editors will maintain an archive of submitted chapbooks while we pursue a partner institution, one who will serve as an ongoing archive and repository. All samples and pertinent information should be mailed to:

Elaine Sexton
chapbookfinder.com
2 Horatio Street, No. 6F
New York, NY 10014

Thank you again for your interest and support.

Sincerely,


Elaine Sexton

I saw Sharon Olds and Robert Pinsky read on Thursday night. (With the ever entertaining Kerry! Hey!) They were fantastic. But I worship Sharon as a god, and the ground did not split open with light, she did not levitate, and all times, she remained herself, a pretty older woman with a somewhat nasal speaking voice.

Here's a really bad pic (my camera does not zoom well -- it needs to be adjusted or spanked or something):




In other news, I'm working on a series of experimental poems where I mine old poems of mine (awkward sentence, rewrite?) for lines and collage them together. Take a look-see.

You Might Be Tarzan

in the beginning you can call her Sarah
it helps to draw a dotted line down her middle
your underwear confuses you
you can type on her with your tongue
you pluck the moons from her bowls
enema bulb
chocolate laxative
you hold her liver, small, moist
a starling on the telephone
icy children’s hands on your neck
stand outside, like a payphone
if you have an astronomer,
ask him to hold her hip

on the other side of the world,
people believe everything they read

I finished two book reviews -- finally! Now I feel like I can breath. I'm posting what's left of the April poems. They were done, I swear! but I didn't have time to type them.


And hey, you want a nice, if slightly wistful book of poems about mothers for Mother's Day? Go here.

Comments are very welcomed, and in fact, required for this new one.

When Beauty Met Beast

a girl falls in love with her horse
sneaks into his stall to sleep when the lights are off
he’s big, awkward, cramped
he steps on her hand by accident and weeps
he’s a gelding
dried corn nicely mixed with molasses
is the only thing that excites him
he wishes he could find a way to apologize
to the girls (she’s not the first)

ostriches should never be kept in the petting zoo
she thought, as a pair ripped her blouse
tore open her cheek
they carried her between them to a sawdust and
manure filled corner
far from the shouting animal handlers

she had heard orgasms were easier under water
she wanted to go the beach but she was fourteen
and incapable of waiting
Lake Palermo down the street would have to do
just after sunset, she swam bottomless to the raft
in the center
she hadn’t expected the fish, or that they would glow
their pecking ended up helping, actually

the girl kept a female chinchilla in a cage by her bed
she liked to reach through the wire and brush
her fingertips through the chinchilla’s fur
over and over for hours, a strange smile on her face
the chinchilla had to watch when the girl had sex
with her boyfriends
she tried to look away and study the newspaper
lining her cage
the chinchilla was in love with the girl
couldn’t stand to see how the men treated her
the lies and the yelling
a chinchilla always keeps her word
she rehearsed to herself over and over
but she worried that she would never
get a chance to say it

I've got two new friends: Dan Coffey and Sean Kilpatrick. Dan is going to soon, I think, publish a poem as a teaser for The Animal Husband.

Welcome to the blogosphere boys! Try to avoid drunken bunnies, the comment section in Silliman's blog and Jim Behrle.

Hey art lovers in New Yawk:

Want some cheap art?

Local artists will be selling their work this Saturday

in the center of Astoria, 5 blocks away from the 30th Avenue stop on the
N/W line. The United Methodist Church, South West corner at 30th Road and
Crescent St: Astoria, Queens New York City.

paintings, sculpture, handicrafts

I, Christine, will personally be selling over 30 of my paintings at 20 dollars a pop.

See some examples below:







For more, go to my flickr
page.

Questions? write to the organizer -- helensoto11106@yahoo.com

a rewrite, a rewrite! very exciting thunder and lightening

Pale Horse

my hospital bed in the living room I am a shut-off     room with its own 
weather my son trembles    in the distance baby’s breath in his fist 
like I’m his first date and he’s terrified      I’ll kiss him 
under the apple tree

I don’t sleep anymore    I dream with my eyes open    in my dream 
I predict    my daughter’s future     express myself through the mouth 
of a brown goat    

                 the goat shits daisies    and lilies 
they pile up on the couch   the window sill my daughter begs 
the doctor to increase the morphine      in my drip  

here’s a fence of poesies around my bed     violets   white tulips 
queen anne's lace    they hope to bury me in flowers my lavender 
nightgown stinks     of roses      my hands swim free       
float around the room
touching petals          when no one’s watching the children 

whisper about me upstairs      I use my new eyes to see 
                                     through  the ceiling

when my goat is done chewing          the potted plants 
he lets me lean on him leads me into the kitchen  
                     I do things

there at night excellent      meals   I put 
                                   together and hide

they’ve picked out a flowered 
urn for my ashes   I have other 
                                               plans