Umbrella Issue 4 has some lovely poems, especially Intervening by Janna Layton and The Green Gaze by Penny Harter.

Yeah, dead things. Damn. I need new drugs or something.

wordcount widgets

After the debacle with Raintown, I went back to my earlier position of “Publication? Who needs it!”

So, I’m not very happy to come to the realization that I think I might need it.

I’m feeling incredibly isolated from poetry, and I’ve finally added two and two and understand that when I’ve felt this way in the past it’s been because I have isolated myself through resistance to publication.

It isn’t the publication in and of itself that can ground my writing. It’s the attempt to take part in the larger conversation.

But, oh god, I’m so tired. I don’t want to think about submissions and picking and choosing and working so hard. But when I don’t, I don’t do anything with poetry. It’s either the hard road or no road. Am I ready for no road?

Maybe my mother was right and the whole poetry thing is a phase. I’m just slower at getting over my phases than normal people. (Oddity, I nearly wrote “real people.” Apparently, I think I’m Pinocchio.)

We are in Kentucky. The drive down last night was horrific and I charlie-horsed my neck and couldn’t turn my head for the last fifty miles. Finally this morning I was feeling better and we went to the in-laws’ where Steve ate something that disagreed with him and spent the next several hours barfing. In the meantime, I end up corralled by the sister-in-law who was talking about a children’s play area and said, “”Not to be racist, but that’s because the niglets haven’t come there yet.”

Hey, bitch, if you actually don’t want to be racist, how about not, you know, BEING FUCKING RACIST?

She’s lucky my shoes are new or she might be wearing one home up her nose. Bitch. BITCH!

New haircut.

I can now make my hair look exactly like Heat Miser’s hair. Ha!

The expression isn’t far off, either.

Thanks Rik and Scavella.

… there’s that guy (played by that guy) who hires Fletch to kill him? I need a Fletch.

Why did I agree to go to the in-laws’ for Thanksgiving? Am I actually as stupid as… wait. I’m not going to finish that, you smart asses.

“So, are you still writing poetry or are you over that phase?”

I need a headslapping smiley.

We had to have him put to sleep tonight.

I haven’t been well, feverish and dehydrated. For a while, I couldn’t even cry. I guess my body finally decided it could dehydrate itself a little more.

Dammit.

I have an alien!

You too can save an alien (though it annoying requires Facebook, which I hate).

Still, they are cute. The item clutched to my alien’s side is a rubber chicken, a la Magnum, p.i.