Depending on the evaluation of my final, I am through the first module of my course. Woot!

As a reward, I’m going to the library. Woot!

… thinking of ways to poison Keith Hernandez.

Lots of women are baseball fans, probably more than any other team sport. So when Keith Hernandez gets all sexist and insulting, he isn’t just insulting two or three people.

No, Keith. I don’t belong in the kitchen. I’d do better in a dugout, though my spitting skills need work. Tell ya what, you stand right in front of me and we’ll see how I do.

This morning, I walked a gas line. It’s been a while, and I still like doing it.

I didn’t find a leak, which is always a mixture of bad and good. Not finding it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Corsons Inlet by AR Ammons

I don’t have anything against prose. Write it myself. I give a hearty thumbs up to prose poetry, generally, and have no issue with blurring lines between various art forms. But I dislike prose with linebreaks being sold as a poem. And this work by AR Ammons is prose with linebreaks and fancy pants indentations. It can’t disguise the flat language and the lack of affect.

———

Nerve Sequence by James Grinwis

Ever have someone tell you that if you didn’t like a poem, you just didn’t get it? Well, I thought this poem was okay, but the getting it? Not so much. Which means that my “okay” is a highly provisional one and that it’s worth, well, nothing.

———

Undid in the Land of Undone by Lee Upton

More prose, but this time at least the words weren’t boring. There’s cleverness here, perhaps the wrong kind, summed up by the final lines:

What I didn’t do took
an eternity —
and it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Yeah, that’s cute.

I managed to get one test message through, but my attempts to edit haven’t been successful. Bah. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Aubade by Idra Novey

Enjoyed the first four lines and then, er, no idea whatsoever.

———

Wrapped in Dust Mites by James Grinwis

My read early this morning disappointed me. But since Blogger wouldn’t let me post, I didn’t bother writing a review. My reread a while ago pleased me strangely. There are a lot of things going on in this poem, lots of disjointed images that I pretty much liked without reservation. So, this morning boo. This evening yay. You be the judge.

I’m dreaming of all the ways I can be a slacker today, my birthday.

I’m not going to work. Slacker!

I’m going to sleep in. Slacker!

I’m going to try to do my WEE reviews, but if I don’t, haha! SLACKER!

Pardon me while I revel in my laziness.

Ooh, reveling was tiring. Now I need to go to bed.

NaPo has kicked me in the pants today. I can’t gather any words and put them in little rows. Stupid stupid stupid.

We Argue about Regret by Laura McCullough

I was charmed by this poem, though it took a while to hook me. To be honest, I would only have skimmed it were it not for my new review shoes. Something about the way it sat on the page made me think of rigidity and I spied quotation marks (my nemeses!) right off the bat. But I did read it and was happy to have done so. Not a big flashy poem for certain, but one that captures something real. And it has a linebreak I love:

tell, the best truth includes one
lie.

———

Keel of Earth’s Axis by Mong-Lan

This poem has some lines I admire, but the whole ends up not striking me. Granted, I haven’t had my caffeine yet today, and it’s Sunday which my brain has claimed as a day of rest (along with the majority of the rest of the week). Strangely, I didn’t get the sense the poem would reward further reads.

Temptation

That’s the tempting itch, the thought of death
that makes a bridge abutment whisper fly.
It’s why I keep no toasters near the bath,
no rope stored on a rafter. Bottled lye
stays at the store. It’s easy to eat earth
or bullets, but too hard to mention why.