friday confession: got a mule, her name is sal

Until this week I thought that the Suez in Suez Canal was Zeus spelled backwards. On Tuesday I learned it's a real place. Come to think of it, it would be cheeky for the canal builders to choose a name as a kind of trick. I think I may have gotten this notion from a crossword puzzle clue years ago.

chorus of mutes

Caught a cold but the really important thing is laryngitis.
It's a pleasure not having to talk. And the whole family
whispers in sympathy - a relief when you live with Italians.

friday confession: creeps

When a comma is placed outside quotation marks, as in British punctuation, it gives me a cold feeling in the bones of my right hand. As in -

I must withdraw my poem "Creeping Mobocracy", which has been accepted elsewhere.

Aaaaaaaah!

As a schoolgirl, I had a similar problem if the teacher, in erasing the board, left little chalk marks up like random sticks and dashes. Neglected. Abandoned. Worse if it happened in math class.

Everything Becomes Aroma

The second issue of Dirty Napkin is up today.
My poem Outdoor Café, October is included.
Based on a true story.

gelid chambers

Woke up brooding about something that happened at work.
Then there was the whole scene with the raised voices!
My husband snored a bunch so I slept on the couch and it
was cold, but I couldn't be bothered to get another blanket.
If there can be no coconut custard pie in the morning, I said,
at least let me find an acceptance notice in my inbox. And
I did! Eclectica took two poems - "Elegy," which I wrote for
my nana, and "Ghazal of Lost Sleep," which is a recent one.
Thank you 'clectica.

To buoy the mood, I got word my "Jellyfish"
is up at Blood Orange Review today.

also clouds assume oddball shapes

Halfway through 30:30 at Inside the Writer's Studio. It's markedly less stressful than previous rounds. Writing along are Liz G, Nicole CD, Brenda N, Arlene A, Annie B and Sharon H.

Here's my playlist so far:
1. Wild Card (The sky looks convincing this morning)
2. Reading While Walking (The book opens and the street shuts up.)
3. Passing Through the Train Station (In the morning all I want is …)
4. Why Pregnant Women Don’t Tip Over (Because a single thought …)
5. The Previous Owner (I warp the cloth of the dormer blinds)
6. Midget Pony (I lift my chin like the ladies / traipsing the covers of Bazaar)
7. Beacon (At midnight, all that lolls / falls asleep)
8. Hard Candy (Who put this horseshit in my tire tread)
9. I Have the Feeling You Enjoy Stress (Just fill my pillow with tinder)
10. Amber Alert (The mother swears something is missing /from Sundays)
11. Man Found Guilty of Gruesome Doodling (His suit was saddle-stitched)
12. Men in Suits (Hatch still sealed, the airplane / vestibule crowds)
13. Potato (The potato holds a hospice./ Nurses serve in dense attendance)
14. Flesh Made Word (Bounding over land demands flounce)
15. Cowboy at the Sushi Circle (I want a square meal)

getting even

It can happen that I mix the evenings up. What I mean is sometimes one comes disguised as the other, as in having an evening out. Is it a noun describing a time of day, or night, or pre-night, dinnertime, twilight or late late afternoon, or any one of the cocktail hours? Or is it a progressive verb perhaps encompassing all that timely baggage as well as a general leveling - the bottle of Syrah aerating on the counter, the oven in a phase of pre-heating, the childhood hypnosis of Nickelodeon, the up-elevator clanging past the down, the moon bulging out of the chimney across the street? Maybe it’s just an evening out of everything, a bulldozery, a reckoning best represented by darkening.

tell me something good

There was some downtime at work so I was reading the paper and saw a vaguely familiar face. Turned out to be Matthew Sweeney, who's reading tonight in Frankfurt. So that's where I'm off to. I just have to change from my blue cords and blue turtleneck into black cords and black turtleneck, brush my teeth, and that's it.

Flight

The airport wants my shoes.
At last I see the trapdoor in the soles
toggling down the x-ray ramp.
My shapes have never shone like this.
My whole life lights up in vials and doses.

When I fly, I fly entire and abandoning.
The animal lies down with the mineral -
a leather belt curls around my mints and keys.
At the threshhold, a man draws his detector
down my spine, that hinge, the leash
that grounds me.

His convex glass magnifies my need, though
he gets too close to see the blue fuse inside.
He'll never leave the earth; the machine
will never see the seams of an overloaded suitcase
rip with wishes, rent as a lost continent.

whistle the threshing song

I'm so lucky. I get to go to work today. I don't have to look at the dust on the shelves. I don't have to decide where to sit - I have my rolling office chair. The dog must stay home without me. If she's whining I don't hear her. If the kids come home and want sandwiches, I figure they'll have worked it out by the time I get there. I don't have the foggiest if the refrigerator door is properly shut or not. If the apple man is at the door, I'm not answering. Is a cat pissing in my garden? Are the trains running on time? Is a flybuzz torturing my pillowcase? I don't have the faintest idea!

moonlighting as me

Three of my poems are up at nth position.

the fairest one of all

I wanted the morning to last so I went to a place where they serve breakfast all day. I usually wouldn’t spend the money. Usually I’d just wolf down a hot pretzel for 60 cents and have it done with, being thrifty and all. But there I was drooling for a fried egg, sunny side up. The Germans call it the “Spiegelei,” or “mirror egg.” Why that I don’t know. I’ve tried it. I got down real close to the yoke but didn’t see myself there, even when I closed one eye and squinted. Anyway, the cook arranged two fried eggs on a rectangular plate alongside three crescents of ham. Perhaps not unintentionally did this arrangement resemble leaves around two flowers. Come to think of it, these eggs might more aptly be called “daisy eggs” rather than “mirror eggs,” whatever language we’re in. Three sprigs of parsley were splayed on top, green and flat as the lawn outside a pharmaceutial company headquarters. They were really beautiful. I considered taking them home and reusing them, thrifty as I am.

drumming

My poem Rainmaker is up at juked today.