In The Unfinished Folder

image thanks to Anu Tuominen

Poems in which the end goes wrong.
Poems in which only the end works.
Poems that can’t take a joke.
Poems like a mob of disconnected sentences.
Poems that lean too sweet.
Poems in an induced coma.
Poems that made all the wrong choices in life.
Poems with one wow line surrounded by meh. 

Poems that remain just a 3-4 word germ.
Poems that trip predictable.
Poems like a hoarder’s wicked kitchen.

Jewels and Binoculars (week 21)

Listened to: I’ll Keep It With Mine, one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, in honor of his birthday

Watched: This spoof on women fending off compliments

Inside: Dog hair city
Outside: That time of year when the wisteria rhymes with hysteria

Read: Wislawa Szymborska’s “The Kindness of the Blind”
Wrote: Lots of “(noun) of (noun)” phrases

Ate: Rucola with feta, pine nuts and potatoes
Drank: Italian red 

Yeah: Galleys for upcoming poem in Bird’s Thumb 

Nay: sports fandom and “patriotism” that depends on war glory

Discussed: Handwriting. Writing a letter by hand nowadays is like walking instead of driving a car. Everyone looks at you like you’re weird, or at least that’s how you feel.
Decided: I should get a full-length manuscript together, just lazy and insecure.

Missed: My parents
Acquired: Birthday presents for the kids

Cursed: Housework
Learned: There’s a swath of grey hair under the top layer of my hair. I found it at the hairdresser's. I thought it was (undissolved) mousse. 

Word of the week: Ampule, which sound electric but is filled with liquid

Pithiness: If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough. ― Meister Eckhart

The weary museum translator

Based on a true story:

Original German version: In antiquity, the image of a face with a wavy beard and a full head of long hair usually depicts a river god, the hair evoking the flowing water. This sandstone sculpture likely represents the god of the Rhine. 

English translation: The bearded face most likely represents a river god, probably of the Rhine. 

French translation: River god?

Every appointment has been moved to last week

Listened to: Audio book of The Dogs of Riga, a Henning Mankell book
Read: More Proust

Saw: Gladiators battle, or at least some serious guys dressed as gladiators
Watched: Thebans, an opera by Julian Anderson

Laughed: Fakely
Cursed: Genuinely

Nay: Homesick
Yeah: Poem accepted at One Sentence Poems

Acquired: Labello. I blow through a lot of money but don’t seem to acquire much.
Discarded: A German guide to bike tours in Ireland

Visited: Roman-Germanic museum, Cologne
Learned: Oedipus had four children, two of whom killed each other. Kind of a bad family situation there all around. 

Ate: Cinnamon buns
Drank: Starbucks products 

Inside: Yoga, a little too close to the guy in front of me’s feet
Outside: Pushed a shopping cart full of beer across a lawn along the Main River, accompanied by a colleague holding an umbrella over my head

Word of the week: Wafer (if the wafer of light offends me - charles wright)

Pithiness: "It’s easier to help the hungry than the overfed." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach


Thanks to Valerie Roybal for permission to use the image

Burns like black handkerchiefs

Two of my poems are up in the new issue of DMQ. One's a found poem, the other a book poem. Actually, both book poems, since the found poem was found in a book.

Cool and sunny. Off to friends on the Rhine for the weekend. We'll see the opera Thebans in Bonn, which I understand is a Sophocles drama in English. Delight of delights - I don't have to rely entirely on subtitles.

April into May

Listened to: Spiritual High Part II
Read: The End of Retirement by Jessica Bruder (Harper’s, Aug. 2014) 

Saw: A documentary on the Lodz ghetto
Watched: Interstellar 

Laughed: Amy Schumer
Cursed: Bad news from kid’s school

Nay: 4 rejections
Yeah: 1 acceptance, and an essay published at Lunch Review 

Acquired: Toiletries
Discarded: Moth-eaten clothes

Visited: Traiteur Jeanette café
Finished: PoMoSco, the April project of found poetry 

Ate: Tarte au Citron Meringuée
Drank: Spanish wine

Inside: Wiped down bathroom walls
Outside: Rode a bike, jogged, got rained on 

Word of the week: Wingless, disguised as wineglass

Pithiness: “I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wakeup letter.”  Steven Wright 

Overlapping Landscapes

“Eternal tourists of ourselves, there is no landscape but what we are. We possess nothing, for we don’t even possess ourselves. We have nothing because we are nothing. What hand will I reach out, and to what universe? The universe isn’t mine: it’s me,” said Fernando Pessoa.

“The floor is something we must fight against,” Russell Edson wrote.

The clutter of my mind gets tidied up in “Overlapping Landscapes,” an essay in the inaugural issue of Lunch Review.