i was in nyc

The flag was hanging vertically from the building, just hanging there as if gravity were a mistake.

Noise didn’t matter. Tears didn’t matter, and you’d need more than moonlight. You could be the drunkest man on the planet and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

And why should it? It wasn’t as if the flag were outside Army HQ. It wasn’t even at a public school building, much less a bank. Still.

Later when the wind picked up and the people inside saw it flapping and writhing, they put their hands to their heads as if their hats might fly off.

And as I always do when my wish comes true I began wishing the exact opposite, all the while knowing even if the wind did settle down it had nothing to do with me.

Sometimes it’s better not to read too much into things.
Sometimes even the smallest desire seems an enormous impertinence.

Aunt Bobbie’s Almanac

If your palm itches, choose sixes.
If your wrist itches, it’s not because
you’re missed.

Empty your head for clarity,
then abandon all desire for clarity.

To ward off fever, twist your mustache.
A mustache is bad luck enough.

Whistle in the kitchen
and marry a man who beats you.

Don’t whistle
and you won’t know love at all.

To achieve your dearest wish
cross your fingers,
all your fingers;

keep them crossed
until they fall off.

stray notes from my desk / unable to throw them away I put them here

the key is fooling yourself. My doctor gave me a placebo / never underestimate the power of a placebo, he said, his one eye drooping

Sacrifice is a sign

Explaining my gay marriage with a Chinese character

comeuppance/high dudgeon, and what is this about boots to hide the gazelle-like ankles

Mexican girls smoking small cigars and wearing masculine hats, that’s what makes the world go round

He who has recovered from a distant sickness
An audience of chairs

German food is alive and well

And when the doors bulge & split, we erect a fence and hoard our modest hopes behind the border

The Dead/Araby/Where are you going, where have you been/George Saunders

pockets we care deeply

I would like to get fat and wear military fatigues while sitting in a quiet, carpeted room with the xenophobia shades down smoking cigarettes and drinking red wine like in the old days

A guy walks into a bar and there is no one there to get the joke

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood

I finished Wuthering Heights at the very moment Elizabeth Taylor died and now Catherine Earnshaw/Linton will be forever tied up in my mind with the slightly plump young Liz. Richard Burton can play Heathrow, Hindleg and Harelip all rolled up in one overly emotional mass - occasionally drunk, of course. Works for me.

I don’t know, call me uptight but Wuthering Heights was over the top. I’m more the Jane Eyre type. It’s like Rose Red vs. Snow White. I always come down on the Snow White side, even when I wish I could loosen up. It’s why I like pale Legolas more than sultry Aragorn, why as a kid I preferred Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood over Sesame Street, and probably why I work out better in Germany than Italy.

My own failings aside, it is amazing that Heathcliff is considered a romantic hero when really he is a plain sadist. My husband also recently read Wuthering Heights, then watched a movie version, and he said the film brought over more clearly how Heathcliff had been abused and humiliated as a child. You get that less in the book because the volume is cranked up to FREAKOUT pretty much throughout. But the abuse, along with his attachment to Catherine #1, was one of the reasons he decided to be spiteful, tyrannical and cruel for the rest of his life, before finally going insane. Thank you!

I am glad I read it. I’d started and given up on it some years ago. I did understand Heathcliff in the end, and the story and writing certainly are stirring. And we got an excellent Kate Bush song out of it. For the next hour or so I will be enjoying that limbo between books, when every shelf brims with possibilities.

Thanks to Adrienne Kammerer for lending me her image "Bringer of the Black Dawn."

Comments Cut and Pasted from an Article on Sidewalk Rage

I used to have irrational outbursts of rage,
those stopping at bottom or top of stairs or escalators in subway stops.
Later in my life I analyzed the source or rage and focused it appropriately.

I recently got in an argument
about a parking space. I was putting boxes in the trunk and I noticed a pickup waiting.
I closed the trunk and headed for the supermarket.

The driver yelled, “You could have told me you weren’t leaving.”

It is quite natural to feel annoyance. No laws need to be passed.
Idiots can figure it out. The absolute worst is those who do it mid-stair.
The elevator, bus door or subway rushers.
(Please correct me where I may err.)

After I returned I found a dent in the hood of my car.

When I am in the city, walking alone, I have a destination.
Walking from A to B, I will mutter things, walking on a sidewalk.
I don’t care about the appearance of my car.

But don’t you hate when parents use side by side strollers on a sidewalk?
Don’t you hate it when people stand side by side on an escalator?
Don’t you hate it when two slow people are walking side by side?

When I am travelling on foot
and have interacted in subtle ways with men,
I feel I am in a tribal hunting party. I find it hard
to fault people who feel the urge to strike someone:
reptilian idiots, corner blockers, hand talkers, person
with an out of state tag, the stop-and-turners,
slow movers, the home for the blind.

Civility isn’t everywhere. But it must be in a guidebook
because tourists regularly stop and take pictures.

My point is the pickup driver is an angry person;
his anger will lead to health problems, or he’ll encounter
an equally angry person who will hurt him.

I believe he is already mentally ill. A disease is much worse than a dent in my car.
I’m not sure about religion or politics but I am positive
ultra-narrow cars would make the world a better place.

Not that any of this matters.

Most men travelling in the same direction will not change course, coming out of a building at full speed. I spent most of my working days in the belief the only way was by the skin of my teeth.

If I could have changed my behaviour I would have yelled, “I’m not leaving.”
I would have pulled out and let him park there.
**

Song of the day: The Magic - Joan as Police Woman

quite the

So ok let me check that I’m getting the gist of this article -

"Dwayne and Wanda Smallwood worry the gravel pit threatens the town’s RURAL CHARACTER."

"So Brite Tattoos believes the proposal is at odds with the town's RURAL CHARACTER."

"Wee Ones Play–n-Day Care have joined the protest, saying the town's RURAL CHARACTER is at stake."

Ok, think I got it.

weather zelig

I was in an earthquake once. I had recently moved to Germany and rented an apartment near the train station in Mainz. My bedroom window looked out on a labyrinthical courtyard of buildings, including a brothel, a laundry shack, and lots of garbage cans. In the middle of the night I woke up shaking. I half woke up, anyway, and my sleepmind tried to grasp what was happening. I realized it wasn't me but the bed shaking, or actually the room. I said to myself, 'finally it has happened: the devil has come to claim me.' And I went back to bed. I was always scared shitless of the devil, even when I stopped believing. In the morning, I'd forgotten all about it. When I got to work, our secretary asked if I had felt the earthquake, and I was at once surprised and completely relieved.

I also experienced a tornado when I lived in Kansas. I lived in a house across from the fire department. One day I was deeply engrossed in an exercise video when the sirens went off. I noticed them, but they were quickly absorbed by my subconscious. Minutes later the German professor from the college where I worked was banging at my door. He had a crush on me and often showed up at my door asking to massage my feet, but this time he hustled me into his car and down into his tornado cellar. Weather-wise it was an interesting experience - everything went dark and very quiet. Our town was spared but some terrible trailer bashing went on not too far away.

From the human disaster almanac, I was also in China when the Tiananmen massacre went down. I lived in a city on the coast east of Beijing. We'd seen some protests, and some of our students had traveled to Beijing to be part of larger demonstrations. In China at that time, the one way to get real news was from other people. There was no internet, censored or not censored. The tv was state run and so were the newspapers. The only true news -and even that was questionable- came from people who were there. My mother in NJ knew more than I did about what was happening in Beijing, and she wasn't taking it calmly. All we had was Li Peng, the premier at the time, on tv repeating the same speech over and over.

After recounting all this I suddenly feel, at least on an amateur level, like an unimportant, curiously nondescript short Jewish man with glasses who manages to show up in surprising circumstances without any particular motive. I blend in, and am defined only by what has happened to me. I do hope it is a career I've now abandoned, and I will be spared eyewitnessing Middle East uprisings and nuclear disaster.

(The poster is from Witold Sadowski, a Polish graphic artist.)

ides

The ides of March have come, and things are much worse for the world today than they were for Ceasar. Who really cares about Ceasar at this point. Still, given the nuclear crisis in Japan, this old literary reference is certainly getting a new chance at relevance and householdnamedom. Germany shut seven nuclear reactors for review.

I was thinking, what if all of Japan was rendered unliveable? Would there be a place in the world to re-settle the 127 million beleaguered Japanese? They certainly have emerged in all this as very humane and organized. Not one looting as far as I heard.

Anyway, I looked up 'ides' and it means the 'middle of a Roman month,' but the 15th of March is not the middle. There are 14 days before it and 16 after it. Let us hope tomorrow the situation does not deteriorate further.

And now for my daily grumble, from Yahoo! News, again:
"Japan Faces Radiation Catastrophe Threat"
I guess it's not technically wrong, but it sounds awkward. Does Japan face the actual catastrophe or the threat? I think what they want to say is the "threat of catastrophe." Being in news myself, I'd like to believe there just wasn't room for that "of..."

The Ungrateful Son, or Justice Galore

A man and his wife were sitting by the door of their house. They had a roasted chicken and were about to eat it together. Then the man saw that his old father coming, and he quick took the chicken and hid it, for he did not want to give his father any. The old man came, took a drink, and went away. Now the son wanted to put the roasted chicken on the table again, but when he picked it up, he found it had become a great toad, which jumped upon his face and sat there, and would not budge. If anyone tried to take it off, the toad looked ferociously at him as if it would jump in his face, too. So no one dared to touch it. And the ungrateful son was forced to feed the toad every day, or else it would have eaten part of his face; and thus the son wandered the world without rest.

from The Brothers Grimm

magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror and no one can stop them

Some children have a fierce sense of right and wrong. Take the magpies. When you tell some kids what magpies do to the eggs of less flamboyant birds it’s an outrage to them! After that they will not give the magpies any rest. My son was like this. I was also like this. I remember the day my father told me life wasn’t fair and it was like I’d been tasered. (Anyway, as I said to my doctor, I wonder if those children with a deep sense of justice grow up to become criminals. Probably not.) Still, I don’t think it’s good to put too much energy into right vs. wrong. It will exhaust you. You’ll get on a train and someone’s bag will be occupying a seat that should be for a person. You’ll scowl at the bag man and wish bad things on him, even if you have a seat. Or you’ll be a cyclist who gets terribly pissed off about an ambulance parked in the bike lane. This stuff will eat you up.

In my train this morning, a woman was reading a book called Goals ("Ziele"). She was marking passages with a highlighter. Goals can be good, but it is also good not to have too many of them. And why mark up a nice book with an ugly, yellow fluorescent pen? That is wrong and should be severely punished.

Thanks to seasprayblue for letting me use her image.

I suspect my son and I will continue, justly, to give the magpies a very hard time.

at the office entrance

We talked about the wind because it was windy. Across the courtyard a man’s scarf was flapping around fit to strangle him.
- H said, it is like a wind tunnel here in the courtyard.
- L said, at least it is a warm wind. Two days ago it was bracing.
- K said, this wind is like the wind in Kansas! When it pushes my coat open I have the feeling I am in Kansas anymore!

They were all right, really. I have also lived and Kansas and was astounded by the strong wind they could muster there.

Mostly I wanted to say that in all of nature the wind is most like water, but I didn’t think that was something to mention right then.

I also have noticed – and it seems banal, however true – that when I wash my hands in cool water in the restroom after hours of working, it is like my hands are having a drink.

nettles in march/mugwort in may

I admit I have neglected to think about stinging nettles for months. Then, yesterday, they came up in two different things I was reading. One was a Salon article about cooking them, and the other was in the book Lolly Willowes, again about cooking and eating them. I never knew of nettles until I moved to Germany, where they're called Brennessel (burning nettles). Left alone they grow very tall and fuzzy. People panic when they see them because contact irritates the skin, for upward of a couple hours. It's unpleasant, but also interesting. Like childbirth!

I don't get bent out of shape about nettles because I come from America, host to the crippling and fearsome poison ivy, which dwarfs nettles like losing your leg dwarfs stubbing your toe.

On days when I can't think of anything positive about living in Germany, I look in the mirror and write "poison ivy" backwards on my forehead with eyeliner to remind me the country is p.i.-free. At most it is shown in botanical gardens like a bearded lady in a freak show. There innocent Germans can ogle it, and expats taunt it with sticks.

Reading While Walking

When the book opens, the street shuts up.
The story pours from all sides; it drops

its ponderings along shorn lawns. It splits
ways with the true day. Fiction freights

the air; the walker strays. When the book
opens, the street shuts up. The mind dowses,

drinking at the page. Eyes trip and linger
on the doubling curve. The walk meanders

and the walk moves straight. Leafing
fills the air with a whirr of birds. Pages

layer, and pages turn. The mind lolls
down the rungs of words. When

the book opens, the street shuts up.
There is no fiction. There was no world.

been there

Somewhere here in the middle of various crises I have been named a 'Stylish Blogger.' Thanks Sherry and Kathleen. The first thing I have to do to go down in the book of stylish boogers is reveal seven things about myself. So here goes:

1. I love staying in hotels alone. First thing I want to know is is there a sewing kit? And do I have something tiny along that needs sewing?

2. I was one of those lucky women who lost weight after having children instead of getting fat. I think it was nursing. Or it was subsisting on what the kids left on their plates. Or chasing them around. Or maybe it had nothing to do with kids and somewhere along the line I simply fell out of love with food. Really, I can’t be bothered most of the time. Been there, done that. I also wish sleep were optional.

3. Dog is man’s best friend, diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and my best friend is 100% whole milk. Really, every day. Ok, so there is one food...

4. Places I’ve lived: Mainz, Germany; Plainfield, NJ; South Plainfield, NJ; Dalian, China; New Brunswick, NJ; Frankfurt, Germany; Highland Park, NJ; McPherson, KS; Davis, CA; Milan, Italy; Madison, NJ;

5. I am a loungewear pioneer. You can count me in on any outfit that does bed, grocery store and dog-walking. I have strong ambitions in this area.

6. I find snobbery occasionally refreshing, but arrogance I find mostly outrageous.

7. All those no-name rejections on Duotrope are mine. Surprise!

The next thing is to name some other stylish bloggers. I've decided not to do that since many of the blogs I frequent have showed up on Kathleen or Sherry's lists, or the lists generated by those lists. Instead, here are some art sites/blogs that I really like and you should look at:

Brian Dettmer
Anthony Zinonos
Su Blackwell
Hollis Brown Thornton
Juliana Swaney
Emma Kidd

and they all lived together in a little crooked house

Pretty beautiful photograph, no? Taken by my talented brother Thatcher. The singer/band pictured – Joan as Police Woman - plays at Frankfurt’s Mousonturm tonight, and I’ve got tickets for me and my daughter, who thinks Indie is everything, and my friend Ingeborg. I usually wouldn’t do this on a school/work night, but my brother has been urgently concerned about how uncool I am. Just home all the time in my uncool clothes, thinking my uncool thoughts, feeling my uncool feelings, keeping them all at low temperatures slightly above freezing.

the france less traveled

Dingdon
Hermit
Whimper
Pays à Lot
Eyesore
Cher
Trés Cher
Bois Sauvage
La Flopp
Forgerie
Lac de Funds
Chateau Morose
Pointe Strangl
Funerale
Giesz Louise
Alibi
Moustache Blanche
Le Spazz

my warehouse eyes

After watching I’m Not There last week, I remembered my mother gave me Bob Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles for Christmas, and I pulled it out from the book bank under the bed. I’m a big fan of Bob Dylan’s music, but I’ve never been so interested in him personally. It always seemed to me a clear cut case of ‘better not to know.’ I did read a biography of Dylan about 10 years ago – No Direction Home – which I liked, but in general, even with poets and writers and artists I love, my interest in their personal lives goes only so far. Do they call their mom on Sunday, what’s their favourite color, do they practice good hygiene…? I hate when questions like that start creeping in to the experience of their work. This can sometimes be enriching, I know, but just as often not. When my husband brought I’m Not There from the video store thinking I’d be thrilled, my first inclination was to make myself scarce.

While I think Dylan is a song-writing genius, he also always seemed like a chauvinist and an egoist. On the latter, after watching I’m Not There, I have to ask who can blame him. You get the feeling he’s being hounded relentlessly by people with wrongly-placed expectations, so Dylan says a lot of stuff off the cuff just to get them out of his face. All I can say is Go, Bob. This is something that doesn’t come over as clearly in print.

I’m enjoying Chronicles. I like it also because Dylan doesn’t intend to reveal his ‘innermost self.’ He talks about himself but also about the times and music and where he was. He does throw all kinds of anecdotes to you – he couldn’t finish The Sound and the Fury, he thinks Balzac is hilarious. He is also funny. I really enjoyed his take on the early sixties, which couldn’t help but seem contemporary.

“The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted – in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them. If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen. If you were a housewife, you could become a glamour girl with rhinestone sunglasses. Are you slow witted? No worries – you can be an intellectual genius. If you’re old, you can be young. Anything was possible. It was almost like a war against the self.” (p. 90)

better relatives

The only thing worse than movies about soccer is actual soccer.
The only thing worse than affixing the adjective 'shadowy' to the noun 'recesses' is affixing the adjective 'dark.'
The only thing worse than a cheap wine is an expensive wine that tastes like shit.
The only thing worse than a sledding accident is a deliberate sledding suicide attempt that leaves you mangled and unable to go to the potty alone but nevertheless alive.


(I actually loved Ethan Frome.)

in honor of all things unspeakable

I have a poem up at Frostwriting.

... actually another one is up now: Sworn to Observance.

This little house is a bank I found on our street last night. I walked by it, but then went back, thinking I could use it in a shadow box, if I ever get around to making another one. It says "Sparkasse" on the facade, or "savings bank," and it has one of those old-timey German water troths out front at the right and a strange swaddled mummified thing there in the middle that I am thinking to pluck away. Once I figure out what it once was. I know the lighting is bad. Use your imagination.

i have not forgotten

Amid the horrid rigamarole I am every day asked to keep track of, America, I have not forgotten you. I don’t get out of bed without the prairies and parking lots, without the wide loads and amber tucked into my collar, the totemic towers stiff in my shirt sleeves making my elbows unbreakable. America, when the cloth that was torn from my chest sets in with its enormous phantom ache like a skin graft taking place somewhere along Highway 58, I think of you, your broken blinker ...

the celebration is the collapse

You know what it's like to shoulder a difficult project, or hold out through a period of killer stress. The strobe lights! Worry! The nails across the chalkboard! All the times you thought you'd keel over and couldn't do it anymore but you kept doing it. Then when it was over you should have sprung up and celebrated. But instead you collapsed, almost as if you'd been defeated.

vistage

I haven’t had a front porch since I was a kid, though I’ve had balconies, stoops, fire escapes and back terraces. Speaking from memory, then, better than on the front porch was under it – vines, potato bugs and damp, the shade, refuge, eavesdropping. And while the porch may have been a good perch for watching whatever was happening around the neighborhood, under the porch spared you all that.

Stoops, on the other hand, are a place to be seen. It's no accident that they are like chairs. They prove important, imperious, immovable.

As for balconies, they’re best for beating rugs. Or throwing the contents of the chamber pot overboard. Or reciting Edward Lear poems. If your kids get lice, put the bedlinens out there for a couple weeks. If the balcony is off a room rarely used, you can hide there effectively. If it’s not lightninging. Germans are crazy for balconies. As for me, glad owner of a back terrace, I’d rather have a bigger bedroom.

Oddly enough, fire escapes make a great place to smoke.

land's end

Edibles
Velvet plum - Coriander - Bright lemon - Spice brown– Teaberry - Loganberry - Pale mint - Honey gold – Chive - Cappuccino heather - Beet root - Aubergine - Wine grape

Sky Stuff
Pale sky - Light blue sky - Blue twilight - Sunset gold - Bold sun - Vista blue - Purple sky

Waters & Seas
Dew green - Emerald cove - Lake blue - Coral blush - Coral melon - Coral orange - Cancun coral – Ice pink - Blue marine heather - Pearl pink - Sea washed green - Sea washed red - Sail white - Blue aqua heather

Sticks-n-Stones
Willow green - Forest moss – Ivy – Vintage brick - Flint - - Bright leaf - Foliage green - Dark spruce –Light stone– Amethyst - Blue turquoise - Light emerald - Terracotta - Dark charcoal - Pewter heather

Old Softies
Grey heather - Chambray blue - Mink heather

Yer Blues
Deepest cobalt - Blue illusion - Brilliant blue - True navy - Majestic navy - English blue

yea though i walk through the vale of tears

Nothing makes my inner English teacher writhe like Yahoo! sports news. There's always some horrible affront going down. I don't read sports news much anyway, and a lot of "sports news" is actually celebrity news, i.e. "Mr. ABC helps fan fix flat tire," or "Burger flipper fired for giving Jock Hero a free coke." Today there was a sports story on the Yahoo! home page, a heart-rending article about an injured footballer giving a speech to his teammates and "breaking down into tears." (It wasn't much of a speech as far as I understood. He'd said about two words when the faucet started flowing. Awwww!)

Anyway I would like to publicly register my chagrin about the prepositional overkill of "breaking down into tears." You can either "break into tears" or "break down in tears." You don't have to go overboard and "break down into tears," which reads like some kind of transformative, molecular miracle.

"We were in the chemistry lab when the nitrous dioxide broke down into nitrous oxide."
"I was eating lunch when salivary amylase broke the starches down into sugars."
"He was watching Lassie when the Incredible Hulk broke down into tears and scattered about the living room."

It's just not necessary.

I would also like to express my preference for being "on the verge of tears" over "being on the point of tears." You may also be "brought/moved to tears" or "to the verge of tears." I suppose "point" is not wrong, but it is not very sharp either.

Gotterdämmerung

Feb 1: Up: 7.56 Down: 17.18 Light: 9.21
Feb 5: Up: 7.50 Down: 17.25 Light: 9.38
Feb 9: Up: 7.44 Down: 17.32 Light: 9.48
Feb 13: Up: 7.37 Down: 17.39 Light: 10.02
Feb 17: Up: 7.30 Down: 17.46 Light: 10.16
Feb 21: Up: 7.22 Down: 17.53 Light: 10.30
Feb 25: Up: 7.14 Down: 18.00 Light: 10.45
Feb 28: Up: 7.08 Down: 18.05 Light: 10.56

a purse lacking vinyl lining

I have two poems in the new Soundzine, an ezine that includes recordings. My poems are “Notes on Succulence” and “On Waking I Think of Winter.” (The latter was previously published in Avatar Review.) Soundzine has in-house readers, which is a good thing because I don’t have recording capabilities (yet).

“Notes on Succulence” is about how everything is on its way to rot and horror and how hopeless everything is and we’re all going to die and “On Waking” is about the same thing. (INSERT SMILEY FACE)

Also in the issue are Kathleen Kirk, Toni Clark and Judy Swann, whose poems I recommend. Sherry O’Keefe just began serving as poetry editor at Soundzine, and submissions are open for the next issue on the theme of LUCK.

will it go round in circles

The February issue of Snakeskin is up - an issue on the theme of food edited by Jessy Randall. I have a counting poem in it called "Sushi Circle."

If you like sushi, you've probably been to a sushi restaurant with plates that go around on a band waiting to be plucked. I always enjoy watching the strange, colorful creatures go by, and occasionally eating them.

uncomfortable truths

1. Uncertainty make us uncertain.
2. Crippling cripples us.
3. Hardship is hard.
4. If you get past p. 182 of The Fellowship of the Ring, you are a dork.

I know most of this from experience, and this silly parody makes me laugh, but doesn't dissuade me in my dorky love.

People I met this week

Conference Room
KD is in charge the new company project. KD is Zen-like. When I was called in for a private audience, he took a quiet interest in my thoughts. Although I think the project is very cool, I really hope my thoughts on it are not that important.

Baseler Platz
Asked me if I smoke. Nope. Why doesn’t anyone smoke, he wanted to know. I said it was the times. Still, even if I didn’t smoke, did I know where there was a cigarette automat? Nope.

Baseler Platz ii
This one had facial hair that seemed almost painful. She asked me something I didn’t understand, but I figured she was asking for money. I went into the bank. When I came out I had money. I knew that. She knew that. I don’t know if she was asking for money but I gave her some.

Office Corridor
As tall as he is, he must often feel left out.

Subway
Psycho on the train, blocking the door between cars with outstreched arms. I squeezed under him and watched the other victims come in. What an asshole. “Entschuldigung angenommen,” he kept saying, meaning “apology accepted.” For everyone’s sake, I am glad firearms are not readily available in this country, for there are lots of pissed-off people here.

irish emblem

I learned a great word today, shambolic, meaning disorganized or confused. I like it because it sounds so much like shamanic, and according to the dictionary sprang from the rib of shambles about 40 years ago. But what made it really fun was I read it in the context of the breakdown of the Irish government after the Green party abandoned the coalition, which couldn't help but bring to mind - in two ways - the shamrock.

Sometimes it is easy to make me happy. Not because of the Irish government, of course, but because of confluence.

salon

If you go to get a haircut with your daughter, it’s nice if they seat you beside one other so you can watch each other’s progress.

But it’s also nice if your daughter is led off to a completely different room where you forget about her.

If you’re in the same room, you’re available to help her when she asks you to look in your purse for stuff she wants/needs, like gum or her cell phone, while the hairdresser is busy with scissors near your eyes, ears and neck.

If you’re in different rooms, you can think about whatever you want. Something interesting like the book you're reading, or what you’d do if you had $2 million dollars.

Of course if you’re in the same room you can get into a four-way conversation with the offspring and the hairdressers about rap music, or the clubs downtown, or, you know, what you studied in school (30 years ago).

If you're in different rooms you might be able to tell the hairdresser what you want done without being distracted.

But if you’re in the same room, it’s nice to look in the next mirror and see your daughter, whose hair is very pretty even though she is not sitting up straight.

electric slumber

It was my day off and I finished Mrs. Dalloway, which was excellent. I got two false starts in other bad books before beginning it, and it was like a balm on all that awfulness.

I also went downtown and bought some stuff.

When I got back, I had an email from an ezine that uses audio and they wanted to know if Sloat rhymes with goat. Yes, it does! It does, gladly and without resistance.

I have a poem up at Eclectica, along with my friend Toni Clark. It’s a graveyard poem, as always on my rambles through Frankfurt’s gorgeous cemetery.

Otherwise the day went too fast and where did it go? To the minnows and swallows and people who cheat on their taxes. And I did have to make two work-related phone calls. And take two dog walks.

Next up: Schnitzel.

Ohpiuchus

Well I finally gave in a read an article about the new astrological sign and found out I was not only affected but indeed I AM the new astrological sign, the ‘snake annoyer’ or Upanishad or whatever it’s called. Pretty cool except as a (former) Sagitarrius I felt a real kinship with the archer Legolas and always had a good excuse for making a horse’s ass of myself. Alas. Of all that was left I’ve kept nothing, as Pierre Reverdy likes to say.

While we’re at it, we should add a few more signs: the Clonus, who blends in with the crowd, and the Yokoönus, who can be a burden, for example.

I never read horoscopes anyway. Who did? And the only reason Pisces were considered quiet, unworldly introverts was because we have very little experience of the lives of fish, their being underwater most of the time. It isn't a matter of fish-like traits.

In any case, let’s celebrate the demolition of an industry of fraud and mass deception!

mobocracy

An acquaintance (read ‘facebook friend’) recently complained that some of the passersby in some flash mob video just failed to catch the enthusiasm and walked by as if nothing were happening. This particular flash mob was a wedding that “spontaneously” occurred in what seemed to be a shopping mall, complete with jubilant musicians and flower girl. Whatever. I’ve also seen a bunch of Hallelujah choruses and sycnopated dancing and generally loopy skip-to-my-loo.

I have sometimes enjoyed watching these, despite the nagging feeling that they are the utmost in schmaltz, and the fear that pernicious hormones would eventually seize my vulnerable brain.

Not to side with the naysayers, but some of those people passing by without clapping or collapsing in collective orgasm may just be tired of the “Everybody is a Star” mentality and apparently insatiable need for attention that has gripped the population like an syndrome. A rash! An infection!

If someone followed you around watching your every move, you’d freak out a little bit, no? Sure, because it's the legal version of voyeurism. So why on the other hand when a clutch of obviously attention-starved exhibitionists thrusts its amateur theatrics in everyone’s face is it considered “cute?” Even if the naughty bits are left out, it’s a form of exhibitionism that some don’t want to support or participate in, innocuous as it might be.

Some people are just getting on with their lives and errands and worries and personal joys, which they manage through good taste or good breeding or greed to keep to themselves. Oh well, I guess I am a humbug. On top of which, these days, when I encounter a public commotion I run for my life.

On that note, let me point out the terrific collage above by Dayna Thacker, “Breathing Room.” Check out her site, which is full of cool collages using printed matter.

long swim

I've had some good news which is dancing girl press accepted my chapbook manuscript "Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair" for publication. July. I'm very glad.

The funny thing was I got the acceptance notice on Friday, the same day I won a bottle of Rioja in the office tombola. And there is a poem called "Rioja" in the chapbook! There is also a poem about the dictionary, money and riding backwards on the train. And Weimar and bees and reindeer. Poems galore.

autophilately

When I don’t know what to do I consult my album of German stamps.

Should I read a book about Chernobyl?
Here is a stamp of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, who was raised in an environment “open to the world, with humanitarian values and educational ideals.” Yes, I should read a book about Chernobyl.

Should I take it easy tonight or set my house in order?
Here is a stamp celebrating “Astronomy – 400 years of Kepler’s Laws,” the first of which says the orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the sun at one focus of the ellipse. Whoa! I better get my house in order.

Why does Fernando Pessoa appeal to me so much?
Here is a page of stamps devoted to lighthouses. Lighthouses are those towering shoreline structures that keep the little boats from losing their way in the dark. That explains it!

Will I die in a German nursing home?
Here is a stamp commemorating 20 years of open border between Hungary and Austria. “The wall fell overnight, suddenly and unexpectedly.” I don’t know exactly what this indicates, but it strongly suggests I won’t die in a German nursing home. Hooray.

with apologies to christopher smart

For I will consider the muse Donald Sutherland.
For he is whiskered as a complete cat might be whiskered.
For though he cannot fly he is accustomed to great heights.
For first he is a mixture of gravity and gangly.
For secondly he walks like a dinghy sinking.
For thirdly he reinvented sprawl with long appendages.
For fourthly he counteracts the powers of darkness with his sandy hair.
For fifthly God has blessed him with a variety of roles.
For he can dangle at all angles at the word of command.
For he is good to think on, if I may say so plainly.

*
With apologies also to Mary Ellen Mark, whose photo I have stolen and hung by my bathtub.

popgun and cloudburst

I got a black turtleneck for Christmas, a small that can be tucked in in the spirit of all things amphibial. It looks striking against the snow. The black turtleneck goes well with green, brown, tweed, pinstripes and grey. The black turtleneck also goes very well with black.

I made so many Christmas cookies I had to carry more than half of them into the new year: polar bears, sleighs, angels, crocodiles, squirrels, donkeys, Santas, churches and cats. What some of these have to do with Christmas I don’t know.

Like last year, my resolution is to eat more broccoli.
Like last year, this should not be difficult. If I eat four heads of broccoli I will surpass 2010 consumption.

I also intend to read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, War by Sebastian Junger, and Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein. My expectations are not high, a strategy that works for me.

On New Year’s Eve we participated in traditional German molybdomancy, a kind of divination. You melt lead over a flame then pour it into water. The shape the lead takes decides your fortune. M. got a dragon, which means “don’t get all worked up.” C. got a fish, which means “a bath would do you good.” Mine resembled a moon, which means “dreams will be fulfilled.”

It didn’t say whose dreams.

January 3 seems to me completely superfluous. I am wearing the black turtleneck. I would have preferred to stay home to watch 'The Lord of the Rings' triology a few million more times.

When I woke up, I asked, “where am I?,” a trick question posed only for the purpose of raising my bag-like body from bed.

portis finds his title

Genuine Moxie
Irrefutable Fortitude
Indubitable Pluck
Honest-to-God Guts
Real Nerve
Authentic Backbone
Certified Chutzpah
Veracious Crust
Clear Spunk
Bona-fide Balls
Unquestionable Mettle
True Grit

last dash

The only book I got for Christmas was True Grit. I’d asked for it because I am fervently in favor of preventing the movie industry from stealing the goods from the publishing industry. After reading the book I feel free to see the film. I usually try to pull this off, and the only high-profile failure I recall now is Atonement by Ian McEwan. It was a very good movie, and I look at the unread book on the shelf and know it must be at least as good. But unfortunately I know the plot and characters, which damps my enthusiasm.

A day or two before Christmas I also got my contributor’s copies of Bateau (4.1). This is my third time in this journal, which I'm really glad about because I love Bateau. There are a number of prose poems in this issue (mine is a poem poem), and I’m looking forward to reading everything. One of the things I admire about Bateau is the editors decide which order the pieces will appear in, i.e. it’s not alphabetical. That reflects how much thought they put into presenting the journal as a whole.

That said, as with poetry books, I don’t think I ever read journals from first piece to last. At least on first encounter, I open randomly and start reading, or go through the table of contents to find something intriguing. Also in this issue are Carrie Chappell, Ben Merriman, Paige Taggart and John Peck, among many others.

In the morning for what it's worth I open my eyes

By shoveling snow, I invent sunlight.
It arrives just as I finish scraping away.
I could like this job, I say to the first possible bird.
I could let this grow on me.

super sad true story

On Tuesday night, the night she was supposed to fly, my sister had to cancel her Christmas visit because of European airport chaos. Poor us! My mother, who was to fly the same day, didn’t have to cancel, but won’t be here until Dec. 26. I’m considering taking a bunch of sleeping pills tonight and waking up Dec. 26. Sorry, I just pretty much had all the holiday joy sucked out of me. I'd put up the video of Elvis singing 'Blue Christmas,' but I hate Elvis. On the upside, I have earned great sympathy from my husband and kids.

Also nice is the deal with my son. I told him that for Christmas I’d like him to read two books for me, and after browsing though my Young Adult expert’s bookshelves (thanks NE), managed to find a couple titles available in German, both by Rick Yancey: The Monstrumologist and The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp. I am happy because I think my son may actually like these books.

I got books for my daughter, too, but she never needs her arm twisted. She went with me to pick up a Yancey book I ordered yesterday and came up to me at the cashier with an armload of “interesting books,” “just to show me,” you know, for my interest...

under the bridge

Just a short stretch until 2011 arrives, so here is my reading list for 2010 so far. As always, some of these are shortish ebooks, thus boosting the number. On the other hand, I left off a couple books because I stopped reading them, or they were art books that I have trouble saying I “read.” I don’t know. I’m still figuring that out.

Among the most memorable was David Copperfield. It was my New Year’s resolution to read it and dread was the watchword, but it was great. Jane Eyre was at least its equal, less tra-la-la, more sturm und drang. I was also bowled over by Today I Wrote Nothing. In non-fiction I thought Columbine was fabulous, although the topic was never in the forefield of my radar screen.

In poetry, I liked many things, but A Civic Pageant (a chapbook) may have been my favorite by a single author. The Poetry of Surrealism edited by Michael Benedikt was super. American Spikenard and Salvinia Molesta definitely had my full attention.

I'm in the middle of Drood and The Book of Disquiet. If I manage to finish one, I'll just add it to the list. I'm hopeful.

Among the clunkers, hmmm, there surely were some... Lark and Termite, for example. If I Die in a Combat Zone was also a let-down, although I've enjoyed O'Brien's other books a lot.

For next year the big book will either be Crime and Punishment or The Magic Mountain. It is good to resolve.

1. Dear Friends the Bird were Wonderful! – Alexis Orgera (Jan/Poetry)
2. The Land of Green Plums – Herta Müller (Jan/Fiction)
3. The Sea – John Banville (Jan 23/Fiction)
4. The Reluctant Fundamentalist – Moshin Hamid (Jan/Fiction)
5. A Walk Through the Memory Palace – Pamela Johnson Parker (Jan/Poetry)
6. Attention Deficit Letters – Nicelle Davis (Feb/Poetry)
7. The Air Around the Butterfly – Katerina Stoykova Klemer (Feb/Poetry)
8. Super Undone Blue – Sarah Anne Cox (Jan/Poetry)
9. Last Words – Howard Good (Jan/Poetry)
10. Magnum Magnum (Jan/Photography)
11. Lark Apprentice – Louise Mathias (Jan/Poetry)
12. Bear v. Shark – Chris Bachelder (Jan/Fiction)
13. Pig/Iron – Howie Good (Feb/Poetry)
14. Der Tiger Tötet Nicht – Ted Hughes (March/Poetry)
15. Today I Read Nothing – Danil Harms (March/Shorts&Poetry)
16. Lark & Termite – Jayne Anne Phillips (March 21/Fiction)
17. A Companion For Owls - Maurice Manning (March 27/Poetry)
18. Erwin Wurm: The Artist Who Swallowed the World (March/Art)
19. Erwin Wurm: One Minute Sculpture (March/Art)
20. Underlife – January O’Neil (April 11/Poetry)
21. Speak Easy Symmetry – Audri Sousa (Apr/Poetry)
22. The Shadow of Sirius – W.S. Merwin (April/Poetry)
23. Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure – Harold Bloom ed. (Apr/Lit Crit)
24. American Spikenard – Sarah Vap (April/Poetry)
25. They Kissed Their Homes – Christopher Cheney (May/Poetry)
26. Why I Hate Straws – Barry Parham (May/Humor)
27. Every Man Dies Alone – Hans Falluda (May/Fiction)
28. A Civic Pageant – Frank Montesonti (May/Poetry)
29. Book of Longing – Leonard Cohen (May/Poetry)
30. The Birds – Tarjei Vesaas (June/Fiction)
31. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy (June/Fiction)
32. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams – Peter Handke (June/Memoir)
33. The Poetry of Surrealism – Michael Benedikt ed (June/Poetry)
34. How German Is It – Walter Abish (June/Fiction)
35. The Diary of a Country Priest – Georges Bernanos (Fiction)
36. If I Die in a Combat Zone – Tim O’Brien (Memoir)
37. Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu – Arlene Ang (June/Poetry)
38. The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven – Mairead Byrne (June/Poetry)
39. Give Over to the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt – Jason Tandon (Jul/Poetry)
40. Nadirs – Herta Müller (July/Fiction)
41. The Door – Magda Szabo (July/Fiction)
42. Columbine – Dave Cullen (July/Non-Fiction)
43. Stick Pink – Carrie Murphy (July/Poetry)
44. The Cat Inside – William S. Burroughs (July/Memoir)
45. The Reserve – Russell Banks (July/Fiction)
46. With Deer – Aase Berg (July/Poetry)
47. Factory of Tears – Valzhana More (July/Poetry)
48. Written in Bone – Simon Beckett (Aug/Fiction)
49. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens (Aug/Fiction)
50. Tiny Deaths –Robert Shearman (Aug/Fiction)
51. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell (Aug/Fiction)
52. Camus, a Romance – Elizabeth Hawes (Sept/Bio&Memoir)
53. The Stranger – Albert Camus (Sept/Fiction)
54. The Shining – Stephen King (Sept/Fiction)
55. Watermark – Clayton Michaels (Sept/Poetry)
56. Best of the Web 2010 – Matt Bell ed. (Oct/Poetry&Pieces)
57. Pornografia – Witold Gombrowicz (Oct/Fiction)
58. Methland – Nick Reding (Oct/Non-Fiction)
59. Salvinia Molesta – Victoria Chang (Oct/Poetry)
60. The Waste Books – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Oct/Aphorisms)
61. Stupid Hope – Jason Shinder (Oct/Poetry)
62. Dark Things – Novica Tadic (Nov/Poetry)
63. Awe – Dorothea Lasky (Nov/Poetry)
64. The Furies – Janet Hobhouse (Nov/Fiction&Memoir)
65. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle – David Wroblewski (Dec/Fiction)
66. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte (Dec/Fiction)
67. Austerlitz - WB Sebald (Sept/Fiction)
68. Drood - Dan Simmons (Dec/Historical Fiction)
69. True Grit - Charles Portis (Dec/Fiction)

Begging the question

Does Mary have white or black hair?
Does Mary have hair?

Does the left want to destroy or defend the Constitution?
Does the left want?

The housewife is vacuuming the rugs.
Doesn’t she live in an apartment?

A poem is god’s lightbulb.
Is Thomas Edison god?

(doesn’t god sell candles in church?)

snooze button

I find the best time for a nice nap is as soon as you wake up. You’re dressed for it, and often it’s still dark out. When I wake up, first thing I notice is how big my head is in relation to my body, like a crazy toddler, and in danger of toppling. My pillow makes a good table for it. Legless at this hour, like everything. Also my heavy are eyes. My sore throats. Sleep is heartbreakingly desirous of me. It finds me very attractive. But I am being brown-dogged by a kiss.

Crossings

The copious snow went the way of the tunamelt yesterday and revealed that the grass beneath it was still green as green can be. Today the freeze is back on. Two decades in Germany and still I’m adjusting to celcius, with its significant degrees. How easy it is to get negative. Maybe that’s part of the weight on the national personality. In Kansas one winter I had a Jeep and went ice skidding across the highway smack up against the rail that looked many meters down onto a milomaize field. I sat there stunned. “Almost bought the farm,” I said to myself stupidly, unable even at that moment to resist the pun. That accident isn’t where I got my limp, though. My limp is the result of childhood crush. And the crick in my neck comes from caring.