35 degrees


I step into the cold of a Florida night and instantly my Ice Age instincts kick in and I am looking for a caribou to kill

CHRICHARDMAS

I hoped to be reading Christmas Words and only Christmas Words by now, but I started The Fox in the Attic last week and it messed up my timing and now I'm stuck reading a Bavarian cousinfucking Hitler fantasia. Everyone is locked up together in a crumbling castle, and they want to do it but they are cousins, and all of them wish they were animals all the time.

LET'S MAKE THE BEST OF IT

Billiardrooms are never small. In childhood this one used to seem to Augustine as interminable as the vaults of heaven: it had always been a room of wonder, moreover, for what might not happen in a room where a rhinoceros--lurking in an Africa that must have been just behind the plaster--had thrust head and horn clean through the wall? (Often as a small thing he had peeped in fearfully before breakfast to find if during the night that rhinoceros in his collar had inched any further through.)

But most of all Polly was sad because she was lonely--and that happened only when she came to London! She never felt lonely at home in Dorset; for at Mellton Chase there were animals to play with, but in London there were only children.

That was what was wrong with London: "If only there were fewer people in the world how much nicer it would be for we animals, " Polly told herself...

"We animals!" --Polly could think a rabbit's kind of thoughts much easier than a grown-up's kind, for her thinking like an animal's was still more than nine parts emotion.

All the most interesting hours of the day still tended to be spent on all fours, and even in bodily size she was nearer to her father's spaniel than she was to her father.

Girls' clear minds...In tranquility like this how lovely they are to watch! First, a whitish motion, deep in the bottom-darkness: an irised shadow on the shining gravel...then suddenly, poised beautiful and unwitting in the lens-clear medium, that whole dappled finny back of some big thought--as blue as lead...

True, their word was their bond, but they acted spoilt, like babbies...

A moment later the woman's whole nether person began to heave with unseen poultry.

AND THAT UNSEEN POULTRY WAS ME
--JESUS

--A FOUND POEM BY RICHARD HUGHES AND JESUS

 

A crumbling Bavarian castle 

overrun

with animal multiplication

A List of the Plastic Animals I Have So Far Found in My Advent Calendar

• A raccoon
• A raccoon's child

• A badger
• A badger's child

• A wild boar
• A wild boar's child

• A stunning buck
• A stunning buck's child

• Two tiny rats, neither old nor young,
  neither parents nor children,
  simply of a healthy rat age

• One blood-red carrot, so blood-red
  I think it must count as an animal

It is the best Advent Calendar that has ever been made. I hope to find a gray-furred God on the final day of it, and his little wild son.

Soon I Will Post a Real Post Again Soon

I'm not trying to be such a glory-hole all day every day, but my poem "The Human Tassel Is Hanged at Dawn" is up at Anti-, along with my Anti- thesis which is for some reason about fisting. (Remember the days when everything in poetry was "fisting" itself? Why was that happening?) There's also a picture of me which will truly disappoint you--I'm committing a Smile! It's not even black and white! There's not a single jug in it anywhere! I deprive you so hard, can you ever love me again?

The issue also includes work from Keith Wilson, Zach Savich, Joshua Rivkin, Patty Paine, Christina Olson, Dan Nowak, Eric Morris, Jeff Mock, Joel Lee, Stephanie Kartalopoulos, Megan Hudgins, Elizabeth Hoover, Jennifer H. Fortin, Cynthia Cruz, Jamison Crabtree, and Michael Cantor. Check it out.

I Will Tell You So Much about Islands, Today

My poem "The Too-Long Grass, the Silverback, the Legendary Pockets of Naked Crusoe" is out in the current edition of Hayden's Ferry Review, and you can read it on the website here, if you aren't too afraid to be marooned on the island of my insight! Also, I wrote a Contributor Spotlight for them in which I totally meditate on the subject of islands, and tell all about how I am addicted to islands, and how if I could figure a way to inject the dirt of them directly into my bloodstream I would. You will also be pleased to encounter there an enormous representation of my Thinking Face; it is a total eclipse of reason; stare into it as long as you dare.

HFR #47 looks like this and it is an actual treasure, a piece of eight for you to bite! It's full of excellent photography--I particularly liked Debbie Fleming Caffery's "Gator Love" and Jocelyn Lee's "Girl with Kitten." I also recommend Darin Ciccotelli's poem "[And He Woke Knowing the Wren Was Inside Him]" and an interview of Adam Johnson by Noah Tucker called "Set It on a Spaceship." [ETA: PLUS I forgot to mention that Local Internet Boy Luke Johnson is also inside it!] My thanks to Beth Staples, Allyson Boggess, and the rest of the editorial staff. I'm typically shy with editors, don't want to bother them, etc.--that is, when I'm not drawing obscene pictures on my contracts--but these were the friendliest and funniest people ever, and I so enjoyed working with them.

BOOK REPORT: This Book Is Real

Florida is of course a hell, but now that I've been returned to the loving arms of its Magical Flea-Market Booksale I am once again happy. Last week I picked up Let's Pretend: Games of Fantasy for Babies and Young Children, a book that seems to have been written to help robots raise human offspring. The author treats the concept of Pretend as being only slightly less complicated than particle physics. The game of Dress Up requires hundreds of words of explanation, Puppet Show requires nearly a thousand. The victims of her murderous analysis are classic games such as Tea Party, Hairdos, Mama's Baby (Daddy's Baby), and Restaurant Fun. Who, as a child, did not occasionally enjoy a rousing game of And What's the Daddy's Name? Other games she teaches us are new to me, such as Bears in a Cave, No Way Out, Pillow Panic, and Don't Look Now, But. I think these were not typically played by well-adjusted children, of which I was certainly one. (LIE.)

Would you like to play a game called Me, Baby? Of course you would and here is how:

Me, Baby!

Equipment: None

Procedure:

1. Whether you encourage it or not, somewhere along the line your child will want to pretend to be a baby again. Having a new baby in the house will influence the extent and frequency of Me, Baby! You'll recognize step one when your child enters the room at a crawl or stagger and announces, "Me, baby!"

2. Your best bet is to go along with it. "Oh! My goodness! Look at this cute baby!"

3. Your "baby" will most likely gurgle, coo, or cry in response.

4. Pick her up and hold her over your shoulder as if she were an infant. Pat or rub her back while you sing a quick version of Rock-A-Bye Baby.

5. Pretending the couch is a crib or bassinet, lie her down with an imaginary bottle. "Here's your bottle, baby. You just lie there and watch Mommy wash the dishes!"

6. When your "baby" tires of lying still she may fuss or cry.

7. Take the imaginary bottle away and hand her a toy or keys to play with. "Play with this, baby. Mommy can't hold you right now."

8. Next time she "cries" pick her up again or rock her in a rocking chair.

9. A good way to end is simply to put the "baby" to bed. While you pretend to put on her pajamas, talk to yourself. "Boy, I sure will be glad when you are a big girl. I wish I had a big girl who could talk and play and help me. I'm awfully tired of babies!"

10. If your child wants to continue the game, tell her that babies sleep most of the time!

That is a quote. That is all a quote. I love how every single step is written out. If you didn't have this guide and your child staggered into the room pretending to be a baby, you'd probably end up freaking out and screaming BENJAMIN BUTTON WAS TRUE while forcibly diapering her and/or pressing her mouth against your bare breast. I mean wouldn't you?

Of course there are illustrations. Of course there are the worst illustrations.

what

This picture creeps me out so bad 

and I don't know why--

maybe because the child's reflection

appears to be an independent entity

capable of turning away from its source

and looking the reader in the eye

Pillow Panic is a fucked-up game, 

no two ways about it

Step 2 of Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty goes as follows: 

Once your child is in position, find out just how much 

she knows about cats. Ask, "What do kitties say? 

Can you meow like a kitty?"

Games of Fantasy for Babies indeed