New Poem Draft

It'll disappear in a few days; get it while you can.

*poof*

Sawnie Morris Interviews Joan Houlihan at Boston Review

This book, and 'The Ay' look extremely interesting.

Joan Houlihan’s third book, The Us, is a fifty-one page sequence of poems recounting the story of an imagined pre-historical culture. The narrative focuses on one of the culture’s members in particular—in a sense, its first true individual—“ay.” Although the book is mythological in its scope, it is lyric rather than epic in its approach, proceeding not with heroic pomp and encyclopedic comprehensiveness but instead with lyric delicacy and attention to carefully chosen particulars. The Us is not monumental, nor is it meant to be.
The Us begins with a table of contents, an “Argument” (which is in fact a synopsis), and a list of the cast of characters. These three elements serve as guide to a vaguely familiar yet unnamed country and time where the living is primitive and the people’s speech is rendered in an English unlike any known before—a broken, thorny idiom that scrambles the linearity we associate with traditional heroic narratives. It is the hobbled tongue of an anti-hero, and with The Us, Houlihan has given us an anti-epic with a scrappy, rebellious underdog placed front and center.

Curse of the Cat Woman--Edward Field

Edward Field is a new discovery of mine, and here's a representative poem, both funny and odd, like most of his work that I've read.

Curse of the Cat Woman
by Edward Field
It sometimes happens that the woman you meet and fall in love with is of that strange Transylvanian people with an affinity for cats. You take her to a restaurant, say, or a show, on an ordinary date, being attracted by the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk, and afterward of course you take her in your arms, and she turns into a black panther and bites you to death. Or perhaps you are saved in the nick of time, and she is tormented by the knowledge of her tendency: that she daren't hug a man unless she wants to risk clawing him up. This puts you both in a difficult position, panting lovers who are prevented from touching not by bars but by circumstance: you have terrible fights and say cruel things, for having the hots does not give you a sweet temper. One night you are walking down a dark street and hear the padpad of a panther following you, but when you turn around there are only shadows, or perhaps one shadow too many You approach, calling, "Who's there?" and it leaps on you. Luckily you have brought along your sword, and you stab it to death. And before your eyes it turns into the woman you love, her breast impaled on your sword, her mouth dribbling blood saying she loved you but couldn't help her tendency. So death released her from the curse at last, and you knew from the angelic smile on her dead face that in spite of a life the devil owned, love had won, and heaven pardoned her.

Nice, eh?? I love especially the first half of this poem because it could really go anywhere subject-wise. I wish I could write something funny. As it is, my new poetry manuscript (as opposed to the four old ones) is called 'Two Crows Short of a Murder.' Funny, eh?

We Who Have Sold Out, by Bruce Embree

          We who have sold out
are working on dreams of sheetrock
and vasoline
Don't tell us we are shallow
We were denied your lonesome road
and guitar music
cursed with our own choices
which were to go to work
          Your smoky nights and poverty
they all at least pretended to care
when you took a notion to go out and lose your mind
We put on our nigger jokes and coveralls
laughed as we hated everything, ourselves especially
and had no tears
          The pretty words, carved rocks
and canvas you decorated?
We buy tigers or big eyed kids on black velvet
          Our curses are not for your freedom
or songs of protest
They are for the dues we paid
They are for turning around one morning
and finding we were nobody
          Yes we are working on dreams
We who have sold out.

New Draft

It'll disappear soon.

*poof*

John Berryman Still Loves Us When We Wish We Were Dead

High, West, and Crooked

cross-posted from Fried Chicken and Coffee

That's how I feel right now after trying to manage my time in the last few days since I found out my chapbook Broke was going to be published (and quickly) by Didi Menendez and MiPoesias, the same folks that brought you Redneck Poems. That great news, combined with the home situation in which my wife is working ever more hours as the B&N gears up for Christmas, and the kids needing what kids need, like, uh, food, homework, interesting things to play with, and not so much TV, has given me a pain I'm just now wending my way out of. Having two books to promote at the same time is not ideal, but I'm not bitching, either. I am capital G grateful to Didi Menendez for seeing fit to pub this chapbook. And in keeping with this, here are all the links for purchase and/or download.

Here's how you can order or download Broke:

To get a print edition of Broke, please see magcloud.com:
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/286157

To get the Kindle edition see amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/005YDVX3G (link not yet live)

To get the Epub version see bn.com
(link not yet live)

To get the free (!) editions, visit:

Issuu:
http://issuu.com/didimenendez/docs/broke

Scribd
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/69723727