FEBRUARY 2011 POETRY PARTY

My contributor's copies of Poetry came in the mail; I'm in the February issue! There are poems from Carolyn Forché and Thomas Lynch and Todd Swift and Jessica Jopp and John Ridland and Lisa Russ Spaar and Andrea Cohen and Ange Mlinko and Alberto Ríos and Alicia Ostriker and then there is a poem from me. Now ask me if I'm going to be cool about this. I AM NOT GOING TO BE COOL AT ALL.

Uncool things I have done so far:

Smelled it
Called my mom
Read the poem out loud in my mirror for like an hour pretending to be Famous

Uncool thing I am about to do:

HAVE A PARTY

Okay, this is what the issue looks like. When your first issue of Poetry comes and there's an evil little wolf on the cover you throw a party, period, no arguments. I'm about two seconds, no lie, from getting this wolf tattooed on my face:

My poem is called "The Church of the Open Crayon Box" and it's about crayons and The Frontier and hunter-trappers and horses and and pinewoods and log cabins. There is a man named "Whitey BaLavender" in it. I put a man named Whitey BaLavender inside Poetry. Why did they let me? Pity is the most likely answer, and that milkiest of human milk called Kindness.

As you know, all parties start with a question, like what do you want to drink, or would you mind taking off your shoes, or did you put your key in the bowl. So here is my question: Did you know that crayons look so freaky now?

MORPH PHOTOS INTO A CARTOON CHARACTER. Well there goes the rest of my day.

You know I love to decorate for a party! Um let's see what fun decorations do I have lying around:

 NOT a line from the poem, sadly

Why would a person even do this

Do you like how the letters get progressively darker 

and bolder because I am insane

Obviously I made a crown to wear for the party, did you think I wouldn't? I tried to put some crayon antlers on this crown because there is a deer in the poem but Physics wouldn't let me, so I consoled myself with a frontal sunburst of radiant gold:

This is the closest thing to a Frontier Outfit I had. I swore there were horses all over this shirt but on closer inspection it seems they're actually unicorns. I guess dreams do come true!

This one has Basement Photoshoot written all over it

Nice pose, genius

There is nothing I could say that would make this Okay

It wasn't supposed to be like this. These pictures were supposed to look classy and celebratory and graciously modest, and then...my natural instincts took over? I don't know. The only pictures where you could see my crown, my Frontier Outfit, both contributor's copies, and the plastic wolf also happened to be the ones where I was showing you alllll of my total business.

JUST DEAL WITH IT

Then I got the idea to pretend to be throwing up the wolf, and that was rather more elegant, I know you'll agree:

Next I was going to post pictures of me taking shots of corn whiskey out of the skull of a jackrabbit because that's what you do at a Frontier Party, but I don't even know what corn whiskey is and I couldn't find the skull of a jackrabbit and it's only eleven in the morning anyway so why don't you just imagine that one!

IN CONCLUSION

THANK YOU POETRY

I UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN

I LOVE YOU ANYWAY, FOREVER