Rebecca Wolff

Freak Flag

I was a little big hungover this morning after a wonderfully friendly reading in Williamsburg last night, after which I reconvened with some batshit crazy friend of mind from high school who I nomered “The Unlikeliest Attorney.” I mean, fifteen years ago this guy was growing hydroponic in a warehouse in Brooklyn and next thing you know he’s a public defender. This morning I woke up on the floor (intentionally) of my parents’ apartment, where they had kindly laid out the spare mattress in what they call “the library”–which really is a room lined with books. Among these books I noticed three copies in a row of my dad’s only one, published in 1973 by the Sierra Club. It’s called Unreal Estate, (har har, and that’s the point of this post) and it’s an expose of a certain bunch of real estate scams going down at the time. Knowing my dad, it’s probably a pretty dry read, but unfailingly accurate and even-handed. He’s a Libra. Right there and then, with my right temple alternately on fire and impaled by an ice pick I had a revelation: EVERYTHING is genetic. Or let me rephrase that as a question: IS Everything Genetic? Did even my helpless and unremitting fondness for punny or just jokey titles (”Laconic Parkway”; “The World Is My Cloister”; “Autobiographia Copularia”–these are just a few of my gems) come to me the same way my large hands and skinny ankles did? God knows my dad didn’t walk around the house punning or even just being humorous with any regularity. He’s a Libra.

07.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Eileen Myles

Chickens Without Media

Chickens without media come running. I am kneeling at the edge of their electronic fence with three crumpled index cards because unlike say DH Lawrence who wrote good animal poems, I have no memory. Not much. What would I have of your fat fullness without recording. One goes back into the chicken house then two. One tries another angle, getting close to me. A truck rides by laughing. Look at

07.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Camille Dungy

A Few Prompts Drawn From Wandering/Home

Two poets at Faulkner's pad (C. Dungy and Major Jackson in Oxford, MS)

As I feared when I packed my life into boxes this spring, plenty is still lost to the inside of paper-walled containers.  My copy of Flight to Canada must still be boxed up in cardboard, also my third-favorite terrycloth robe.  Did I leave my good black bra in the old building’s washer, and where in laurels’ name is my signed copy of Native Guard?  I can’t even locate the sheet of return address labels my insurance agent sent.  Why would I bother to lose something as useless as that?  The husband asks where our checkbooks are, and I panic.  He asks where I’ve hidden his favorite sugar dispenser, and I tell him his guess is as good as mine.  I’m pretty sure the box of his baby pictures my mother-in-law keeps asking after is buried in that incredibly dusty storage closet.  Which means I’ll soon be back in the closet, stirring up dirt from the past.  Consider the possibility of having permanently misplaced your husband’s baby pictures.  Now write a poem.

07.31.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (3)

Eileen Myles

The Chickens Speak

Here at last, live, the chickens get to do their own bidding, despite the human voice trying to introduce them, to rile them up, to get the chickens to give a good show.

07.30.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8)

Eileen Myles

chicken research

Peterborough NH, July 28 2009

Would you be available for a possible conversation?

Researcher needs to shift to an animal platform where other sound systems have value and can be received. Transition successful:

07.29.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (6)

Rebecca Wolff

On my way to work today

I saw a dead cat on the side of the road and it reminded me of my intention to write about Jennifer Moxley’s new book, Clampdown. Actually first it reminded me of the book itself, and then it reminded me of my intention. So I’ll do that later.

07.29.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (4)

Rebecca Wolff

Poet Writes Novel

This morning I’ve set about finishing my novel for the dozenth time. It keeps being finished and then adjustments need to be made, and I make them, and then it goes out into the world again for feedback, and then it comes back to me, and so on and so forth. My hope is that it will go out this time and not come back, and instead will be made directly into a fantastic teen sex/longing movie by the genius who made the movie Twilight. Or by Eric Rohmer. I think Europeans (even dead ones)(actually he’s not dead! even better) will get my novel better than Americans. An undead European would be ideal.

07.28.09 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS