Heiress to a Small Ruin

My new chapbook, “Heiress to a Small Ruin,” is out! It was slightly delayed, but I like the February publishing date. I need more Pisces in my life. The poems are old and new. There are cigarettes and wine and household gadgets. The wonderful cover collage was done by Catherine Mellinger. 

The Quotidian Bee, a website that runs poems from new books and chapbooks, put up Airstrip Heart yesterday, one of my favorites. Thanks for reading. If you’d like a copy, you can order one here. They're $7, or about 29 cents a poem. Which is what? Two tall lattes? 

The poems: 

Salem - Airstrip Heart - Thrall - Seven Postcards from Solitude - Chablis, Amen - Headache, Amen - Heiress to a Small Ruin - Bloodshot Cartography - Clinic Lilies - Snapshot with Mica & Narcolepsy - The If Horse - Lines written in a Japanese noodle shop watching a building be demolished - I Will Now Eat a Loaf of Bread - Inebriate of Air - Self-Portrait with Lava Lamp -Hackers - Smoking Jacket - Nightlight Ghazal -Inksleep - Electric Singer

Things I Love (v-day, a day late)

Fontina cheese. Talking Heads. Kurt Schwitters. Kalamata olives. David Markson. Peonies. Santa Fe. The Greatest. The oceans. Bidú Sayao. Villette. Rioja. Gingham. Good Reads. Paul Klee. Almonds. Dusk Litany. Black-eyed Susans. Titled. Lichtenberg. Brown paper. Brattleboro. Mairead Byrne. 72 Fahrenheit. Candles. Babies. Dachshunds. My Dead Friends. Fernando Pessoa. Fondue. Rucola. BWV 82. Norman Dubie. Teal. Marimekko. Fireplaces. Affentor. Tapioca pudding. Brittany. Chanel 5. Garamond. Meryl Streep. German. Acorns. Daunt Books. Lavender. Bath bombs. Barrister bookcases. MoMA. Collage. Garlic. Satie. Street cars. Tidiness. The glottal stop. Book art. Complex plots. Warm washcloths on airplanes. Adjectives. Szymborska. Steak. Alexievich. The Jackson 5. Birdsong. Kimonos. Wooden matches. Emily Dickinson. Naples. Calligraphy. Upscale hotels. Aspirin. Lake Constance. Breast feeding. Spoons. Pocket knives. WS Merwin. Snow. Persimmons. Apollinaire. Burt Bacharach. Camper shoes. The Owl and the Pussycat. Pipe tobacco. Bright Pittsburgh Morning. Licorice. Wattwandern. Popcorn. Aprons. Hans Arp. Swann’s Way. Dark blue velvet. Chai latte. Chuang Tzu. Lord of the Rings. Pocket watches. Clouds.

Petals fell like snow into the year of the monkey

Good Wife of Hunan

You knew I’d been up all night startling the wok 

and I’d been up for ages grooming the dog star
of ticks, throwing a tarp over all that barking
for the sake of the neighbors and cosmic harmony.
Clearly I’d been up with my measuring stick
by the river, which chilled my toe bones and triggered
that crying-jag phone call to my mother two monasteries
west of here, my mother who was glad to have girls.
Spring petals fell like snow into the year of the monkey.
Snow fell like snow into the year of the cat.
And it seemed I’d be up startling the wok
for generations and it seemed I was going to live
to see 10,000 or at least the day you dropped dead
drunk from the jug of plum wine and I’d shown 

the barking star who’s master.

Song of the day: Year of the Cat

Evening falls / so bespoke blue

My poem “Electric Singer,” which appeared in RHINO last year, is now up online. I’m lucky to have been in a number of RHINO issues, and last year they accepted a poem for this year, too, called “The Quiet That Follows a Protracted Racket We’d Ceased to Register.” You may know I like short-ish poems with long, intricate titles.

Another intricate I liked this week was #colorourcollections. Over the past 2-3 years there’ve been scads of adult coloring books, some rather hokey. But this week various museums put up files of their collections in black & white that you can print out and color. There were some lovelies, including Oregon Health & Science University and the Folger Library. If you like that kind of thing. You can find more via Twitter with #colorourcollections.