They Steal My New Yorkers Too, I Hope One of Them Wins the Caption Contest Eventually

I have a poem called "That Bullfight in the Forehead, Those Black Eyes" in Gulf Coast. I have a poem called "As Many as Fill the Mouth of Flies, As Much of Lure as Parts the Lips" in Black Warrior Review. I have a poem called "Who Has the Whip-Hand over Aimless Animals" in Zone 3. Here is the Halloween part: all of these magazines dropped yesterday on the dot. Is October 28th a special litmag holy day that I don't know about? I haven't received any of my copies yet because I'm moving in like five days and I had to get my address changed, plus juvenile delinquents in my neighborhood always steal them for some reason. I hope they're so disappointed! I hope they read my nature metaphors and are suddenly seized with the fact of their mortality! A juvenile delinquent reading my poem and going, "Oh no I'm going to die someday" is even sweeter than me getting to kill him myself, for revenge.

Ha!

My illustration of a sentence from Sean Kilpatrick's "The All Encompassed Drowned" is up at HTMLGIANT. Go stare until your eyes burn, and then go read his piece here. Then go buy the current issue of New York Tyrant so you can participate in the Literary Magazine Club!

Whoops

So I think I am not allowed to go to literary readings anymore! I went to this one last Friday and it was at a bar and Elegant Choice was late picking me up and by the time he got there I was smoking a total stranger's cigar and making friends with a ripped male terror who kept telling me, "I saw your wide eyes and I knew you was a German!" I have no idea. Also I tried to force Keith Lee Morris to draw a picture of a dog wearing an army hat in my book but he demurred and signed it, Imagine these words are a drawing of a dog, which nearly killed me with deepness, and then later he took down the hugest most intricate pile of nachos I've ever seen in my life. Respect. Then I collaborated on a drunken napkin with a fine fellow who shared my love for David Foster Wallace and cardigans. I drew my specialty: Explicit Pig with a Snout Where a Snout Should Not Be, and he drew a sheep dressed as Michael Jackson, which might have sparked a debate on the nature of clothes and whether sheep could be said to wear sweaters. "Must a sweater be separate from the self in order to be a sweater?" I screamed, and then scrawled this incoherent legend on the napkin: THE IMPORTANT THING IZ THA WOOL. I woke up the next morning smelling like a creepy uncle, probably because of my bad cigar decision. Do not ever smoke one! I inhaled just the tiniest bit and instantly burst into tears, partly with sadness for my lost innocence, partly because it had poisoned me.

FOUND FOREST WONDER POEM

Did you know that 1960 was a simpler 

time? Even the squirrels of 1960

were less complicated than the squirrels 

of today

The First Settlers: Were Probably
Not Thinking about How Trees Began

All began in the seas and the oceans.
Tiny green algae got food from the sun,
the seas rushed to fill the hollow places,
and sea weeds somehow learned to grow
on land. The waves of the sea could not
wash them back. Settle our big,
.................................wide country.

Does It All Sound Easy and Fun?

It wasn't. These men were the tallest
straightest pines. All day the rushing
river took them pell-mell to the saw-
mill. They balanced on the logs, the logs
rolled out from under them. They jumped
from one to another as the rushing water
carried them. Impossible people doing
impossible things. These men weren't
the trees we know today, the cherries,
.....................apples, pears and oranges.

Certain Trees Are Special

A limber pine from Idaho
was working like mad just
growing. Made a small,
cleared place in the forest
of years. You can speak.
If anyone asks, tell your age.
A special tool has now been
.........invented, it is called
an "increment borer." The loud
knock-knock of a woodpecker,
making a hole in the year
1950 and eating the grubs
that live there, the days.

Never Lose All Your Leaves

At one time. Your feet are
probably resting on a carpet
of dead and dead, a soft
carpet of broken and broken.
In winter a forest insect
has weather all its own,
too. We would never have
our Christmas if this were
not so. The sun is needed
for its manufacture, all kinds
of shades of red and green.

The Sun

Is a hard-sounding name
for the same yellow found
.....in egg yolks. Hot rays
of daylight--enough to build
........a four-foot wide path
to the sun!

American Paper and Pulp Association

Reading a stump can be as exciting
........as clues in a detective story.
...............A tree is always there,
unless an accident happens to it.
Now this log will make one trip--
to the handles of the knives in your
kitchen. To the musical instruments
in your favorite orchestra. To
the book you are building, in your
own town or city. It is important
for these to be light enough to carry.

The Same Trees Give Us Their Sweetness

A kind of bouncy quality, soft white
legs and arms. Have you ever touched
a tree and then had a sticky "sap"
in your hand? If the wood in your pencil
ever got crooked you can imagine what
a useless pencil you would have.

The First Real Writing

Many of our English words
began as the cells of trees.
The wonder-working cells
of trees. A ladder was put
against the tree so the spirit
could leave it comfortably.

We Make So Many Things From Paper

Real paper, like the kind we know,
was reported in China two thousand
years ago. A French scientist,
a German, an American invented it.
They chewed the wood into pulp,
mixed it with their saliva, and lo!
it came out paper. How surprised
all of these fine gentlemen would be
if they could visit our paper today,
creamy white when it is new.

Live in a World without Paper

All the paper in the world
suddenly whisked away.
No mail in your mailbox,
no funnies or history, no
pictures of great hairy
elephants. You could make
a list a yard long, the list
would be written on paper
too. You wouldn't be reading
............this very sentence,

"And now if my imaginary visitors
could be with me on this imaginary trip."


--from The Adventure Book of Forest Wonders,
by Eva Knox Evans

He used a rock for his pencil

Here Is One Noo, One Unit of Noos

I don't feel so good! "I feel udderly inhuman," Tom said moonily. (Does that stretch the definition of a Tom Swifty?) It's because I just found out that we have to move again. Back to Florida, that wang. Moving is the second most stressful event, right after "getting married to your new puppy," and I've had to do it like forty times in my life. Where is home? "Home is where your dog is," Tom barked doggedly, sliding sensually into "home"--home base, that is!--which is okay because he and his dog are married. (I tell you starting today I am taking Tom Swifties to the next level.)

What Is Wrong with Me

After the last manuscript, which I wrote in a total frenzy over the course of a year, I decided I needed to relax a little bit and write some unserious poems for a while. Write whatever you want, I told myself. No rules and no restrictions! What a dangerous game to play--I took this new freedom and ran with it and consequently the new poems are so, so unpublishable. The one I wrote yesterday is about dolphins who grow breasts and are totally surprised. I spent like four hours on it, scrunching up my little face with concentration. I thought so hard about what a dolphin breast might look like that I should maybe be arrested. I'll probably change the title but right now I'm calling it "Perfect Little Mouthfuls," which wins an award for Title Most Likely to Never Appear in Any Magazine, Ever.

Hmm. Would now be a good time to link that Hey Champ video where the women's boobs are dolphin faces, which I had never encountered until I typed the previously unthinkable query "dolphin breasts" into Google Images? I warn you, though--once you see you can never unsee.

"..."

 
In writing this, I notice the care it costs me not to use certain words more than I ought to. I am thinking about the word "just." I almost wish I could have written that the sun just shone and the tree just glistened, and the water just poured out of it and the girl just laughed--when it's used that way it does indicate a stress on the word that follows it, and also a particular pitch of the voice. People talk that way when they want to call attention to a thing existing in excess of itself, so to speak, a sort of purity or lavishness, at any rate something ordinary in kind but exceptional in degree. So it seems to me at the moment. There is something real signified by the word "just" that proper language won't acknowledge.

--Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

FOUND POODLE POEM

What a beautiful JonBenét

It took me like three hours

to finish the shading on your upper lip

You're not even trying 

this is basically Chewbacca 

The Creative Poodle Owner
Should Never Feel Restricted

The extremely tiny Poodle is designated a toy.

Ten inches describes a miniature. Neon light 

is the best for Poodle grooming. Visualize 

your Poodle as a living canvas. Snip and comb, 

snip and comb. Never be lax, and never be brutal.

Give the face a quizzical expression. Full ears are 

also very attractive. Scissor evenly for a hedge-like 

look. If you wish to have rosettes. The head should 

have a sheep-like look. For a lion-like appearance. 

There is no distinct "Poodle" shape. The pompon 

on the tail. The pompon on the head. The pompon 

..................................................is round and high.
Rinse the dog. It should squeak when you stroke it.
Dress the Poodle in finery. You can spend anywhere
from fifty cents for a dog toy to two hundred dollars
for a mink coat, and all for your Poodle. Shock
your friends and please your enemies. He may be
a spoiled mother's darling, but not vicious. Chew sticks
made of rawhide, tug-of-war toys. Poodle reigns,
..................................and will reign, king of them all.

--from Know How to Clip a Poodle, by Dana Miller

TMNT: XX Is the Greatest Mutation of All

Did you know there was briefly a FEMALE Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle? Back in the 80s, during the run of the original cartoon series, the explicit rule was "no female turtles"--the creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, agreed that a female turtle was "a lame, stupid, creatively bankrupt idea." However, in 1997, a live-action series called Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation introduced a character named Venus de Milo so that...eventually the Turtles would have someone to have sex with, I guess!

Oh my God they gave her breasts a little bit

Oh my God her shell has a crotch, it is a BODYSUIT,

now everyone is wondering

what her vagina is like

It is amphibious, even more than a regular vagina

OH WHY JESUS NO

Now I'm going to give you the gift of a lifetime. It turns out some people on the internet have thought a lot about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles getting it on. There is...fan art. Turtles are frenching humans, Turtles are frenching humans with cat faces, Turtles are frenching lizard-women, Turtles are frenching each other. Turtles will be frenching YOU, if you are brave enough to click this link. Surprisingly safe-ish for work!