Inbox

Welcome to Goodreads
This week is going to be crazy
check
Birthday & Graduation Party
FW: new email account
Thank you for your submission to Drunken Boat
Your submission has been received
The Plume Newsletter
Notice: Mudlark
Your statement is available online
Publishing Genius News
Important Information Regarding Your Account
Be a Friend (or Enemy) of Wallace Stevens
Christine invited you to Reunion 2012!! on Facebook
You have $121.81 Cashback Bonus—cash it in!
Flower and Fade: R. H. Blyth and D. H. Lawrence
Dictionary.com and marriage
Did you forget? You have Free Product Credits waiting
Garnet Poems: An Anthology of Connecticut Poetry Since 1776 (flyer attached)
Support Chris Donovan's Minimum Wage Proposal
test
Your statement is available online
Please Confirm Your Registration
Your recent download with your Apple ID
Welcome to iCloud
test
ivory headline font
Redeem your $102.90 Cashback Bonus!
petrarch
FW: Grammar Girl’s 101 Words—BG (SP)
pop
gil
test
ad

Forces of Nature

blizzard
brushfire
cyclone
earthquake
erosion
hail
hurricane
lightning
mudslide
poet
sandstorm
thunder
tornado
tsunami
typhoon
volcano
jk

Tonight We're Going To Party Like Prince

Tonight we're going to party like a little red corvette.
Tonight we're going to party like purple rain.
Tonight we're going to party like a raspberry beret.
Tonight we're going to party like when doves cry.
Tonight we're going to party like nothing compares 2 U.
Tonight we're going to party like the holy river.
Tonight we're going to party like America.
Tonight we're going to party like automatic.
Tonight we're going to party like the beautiful ones.
Tonight we're going to party like thunder.
Tonight we're going to party like diamonds and pearls.
Tonight we're going to party like controversy.
Tonight we're going to party like la-la means I love you.
Tonight we're going to party like how come u don't call me anymore.
Tonight we're going to party like i feel for you.
Tonight we're going to party like i hate u.
Tonight we're going to party like mountains
Tonight we're going to party like my name is Prince.
Tonight we're going to party like NYC.
Tonight we're going to party like Alphabet St.
Tonight we're going to party like space.
Tonight we're going to party like pink cashmere.
Tonight we're going to party like thieves in the temple.
Tonight we're going to party like a sign o' the times.
Tonight we're going to party like Mrs. Robinson.
Tonight we're going to party like the future.
Tonight we're going to party like the truth.
Tonight we're going to party like a peach.
Tonight we're going to party like cream.

Ten Things So Far I Did This Morning Barely Started

Sleep in.
Think fresh.
Pass gas.
Brush teeth.

Shower, shave.
Get dressed.
Nothin' fancy.
Step down.

Eat Heart-
To-Heart
Drink Silk.
Sit down.

Look back.
Half-hour
Lifetime.
Write down.

I wanted to write something like

I wanted to write something like Words for Love
I wanted to write something like The Rain
I wanted to write something like Some Trees
I wanted to write something Like musical instruments / abandoned in a field

I wanted to write something like Often I Am Permitted To Return to a Meadow
I wanted to write something like Every Morning I Forget How It Is
I wanted to write something like The Cities
I wanted to write something like Stray Animals

I wanted to write something like The Lion for Real
I wanted to write something like The Coming of Light
I wanted to write something like the 1st Light Poem: For Iris
I wanted to write something like lighght

I wanted to write something like A Step Away from Them
I wanted to write something like A Little Boy Lost
I wanted to write something like a New Song in an Old Style
I wanted to write something like All of the Fruits Had Fallen

I wanted to write something like a Letter In November
I wanted to write something like December
I wanted to write something like Sleep and Poetry
I wanted to write something like The Snow Is Deep on the Ground

I wanted to write something like I Climb Alone
I wanted to write something like I Went into the Maverick Bar
I wanted to write something like I Remember
I wanted to write something like Mountain Words

I wanted to write something like French Poems Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
I wanted to write something like Dream debris
I wanted to write something like Musical Variations
I wanted to write something like the martyrology

I wanted to write something like Geography
I wanted to write something like Rivers and Mountains
I wanted to write something like Andalusian Fog
I wanted to write something like The World Is Round

I wanted to write something like The Flea Market in Kiel
I wanted to write something like a Song of the Andoumboulou
I wanted to write something like What the Tree Said Lifted
I wanted to write something like The Fire Mumbles On

I wanted to write something like Early Spring
I wanted to write something like Clouded Sky
I wanted to write something like In a Dark Time
I wanted to write something like Whitman in Black

I wanted to write something like Ye Goat-Herd Gods
I wanted to write something like Floating Gardens
I wanted to write something like The Burning Babe
I wanted to write something like Thou Shalt Not Kill

I wanted to write something like The Madonna in Me
I wanted to write something like The Force that through the Green Fuse
          Drives the Flower
I wanted to write something like My Hate
I wanted to write something like Busking

I wanted to write something like The Moon
I wanted to write something like The Woods
I wanted to write something like The Tortoise
I wanted to write something like A Deer

I wanted to write something like The Why of the Wind
I wanted to write something like Ants Dissolve in Moonlight
I wanted to write something like Elephants in the Zoo
I wanted to write something like They Loved These Things Too

I wanted to write something like a Highway to the Sky
I wanted to write something like Some Litanies
I wanted to write something like a History of France
I wanted to write something like Reading Moby-Dick at 30,000 Feet

I wanted to write something like Wire
I wanted to write something like Pax
I wanted to write something like China
I wanted to write something like Loop

I wanted to write something like The Welder
I wanted to write something like The Ticket Collector
I wanted to write something like Don't leave me / all alone. Wait
I wanted to write something like a Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

I wanted to write something like There's a certain Slant of light
I wanted to write something like Cold Water
I wanted to write something like The Constancy of Dirt and Joy
I wanted to write something like THE LOSS OF ETERNITY

I wanted to write something like Six Buildings
I wanted to write something like Sleep in Ur
I wanted to write something like a Moment Fugue
I wanted to write something like The Death of Guillaume Apollinaire

I wanted to write something like The Age of Gold
I wanted to write something like Nothing So Far
I wanted to write something like Goodbye
I wanted to write something like Walking Away

Thirteen Things I Did Today

Started Invisible
Spat in the sink
Drove like an ass

Vetted app files
Requested finals
Took two ibuprofen twice

Ate at my desk
and laughed at the Dilbert
where his boss is a ficus

Cleared the table
Washed a glass
Scooped out dessert

Read to Dash
Tucked in Vaughn
Left Invisible at work

Dash's List of What He Loves

Trains
Trucks

Mommy
Daddy
Vaughny
Sharma

Everybody in the world

Wet floor signs

Things To Do When the Good Demon Departs

after Robert Herrick

Check blogs.
Email friends.
Brush teeth.
Watch Lost.

Pet cat.
Check her dish.
Head upstairs.
Hear rain.

Hear sirens.
Not sleep.
Head downstairs.
Pick up toys.

Turn on light.
Sit back down.
Move mouse.
Make list.

G Reader

Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore
Is This What Turning Fifty Brings?
Hard to be an International Festival When . . .

Beedrop Says
Fantasy Anti-Homerism
Burned Erasers

Apropos . . .
Hart Crane
Sucka MCs Should Call Me Sometime

Do Ewoks Celebrate Life Day?
Dreaming in the Language of Lake Placid
Doing Lions in a Garden

The Fragrance of Connecticut
Through the Palace Wall
Stoned Love

What I Know About My Mémé

She was born in or around Québec in 1897.

She spoke English as a second language long before it was a concentration and when any of my friends would meet her they couldn't understand a word she said.

Her first husband, last name Juneau, was so bad she cut him out of what few pictures she had of her and him together.

She and Mr. Juneau adopted Agnes Wyman who would become my grandmother and go on to vouch that her adoptive father was not a nice man.

Eventually she married Robert Jones who I have no memories of, only a few pictures, my mother's stories, and one dream from when I was very young in which I find him dead in the bathroom of his hospital room (he died in the bathroom of his hospital room).

She and Robert Jones adopted Agnes's daughters Bonita and Anita and renamed them Marie and Alice, the latter of whom would become my mother.

They lived on a floor of a multi-family home on Washington Hill in Waterbury, Connecticut.

They survived the flood of '55 during which they saw people stranded on rooftops on the streets below.

As one half of Ma and Pa she forbid my Aunt Marie to go to college; my mother was allowed to attend nursing school because she was going to go one way or the other.

For a short time not too long after I was born in '73 my mother and father and I lived with Mémé and Grampa Jones in their small ranch-style home on Frost Road.

After Grampa Jones died and my parents divorced, Mémé suffered a stroke which paralyzed her left side.

She lived the rest of her life in a wheelchair.

She loved Lucille Ball.

She watched The Carol Burnett Show, I Dream of Jeanie, The Price Is Right, Wheel of Fortune, and General Hospital.

She taught me how to play solitaire and concentration, which she called memory.

She kept a pin cushion in her bedroom.

She loved Social Tea cookies and bread dipped in maple syrup.

No christmas tree ever looked as good as the christmas tree in her living room.

She had the best pillows there, too, including a black velvet one from Kansas City with Arrowhead Stadium on one side and Royals Stadium with its glittering fountains on the other.

She always wore an apron and a shawl.

She had to let my mother bathe her sometimes.

Once, some teenagers broke into her house, while she was there, and stole her TV.

In 1985, after my mother had remarried and we moved into our own house for the first time since I was two or three, Mémé sold her place on Frost Road and moved in with us on Williamson Drive.

She couldn't help spilling crumbs on herself which Corky our golden labrador-bassethound mix happily lapped up.

She taught me how to make crêpes, which I've long since forgotten.

On Saturday mornings before it was time to go to my dad's I went to her room and we watched wrestling together; sometimes I got there early and we watched Roller Derby first.

Her favorite wrestler was Rick Martel, the sharp-looking Canadian-born AWA champion and one of the good guys.

She died in 1987 in the middle of the night in the room beneath mine on the day the Challenger space shuttle blew up.

Later that year my mother asked me to swear on Mémé's grave that I wasn't the author of a nasty letter written to a girl in our neighborhood, and I did.

Ten Things I Do Every Day

after Ted Berrigan

wake up
shower
eat Heart to Heart
play music
drink tea

smile (almost)
fear death
wipe ass
say Hey
eat bran flakes

read something
like the news
hate the news
hug or kiss
wife and kids

lie to myself
spit in the sink
blink
breathe
& rub my eyes