Paparazzi on Stray poets!

Here are some photos of the most recent Stray event.

If you're wondering why I am about to cut a balloon with a nose hair clipper, it is because I read "Hamster" while my voice was high on helium, and I couldn't find regular scissors. It was brilliant. My voice gave out right at the last line. I almost passed out while practicing for this trick. Who said poetry isn't dangerous?

At the end of the reading, we made improv collaborative poems with volunteers from the audience. They turned out beautifully. Highlight: "I'M FROM BERKELEY!"

At the end Brittany Newell played "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" and we popped popper things and streamers went everywhere and we affectionately told people to go home and/or to the after party.

A poetry reading has never been this fun.

Back from San Antonio

You are a mensa genius.
You are a table; dining; dish, course; genius.
The night sky is dissolving your mensa
secunda in it's inky saliva.

***

Too much Latin in this brain.

In other news: I am planning a novel.

Some topics of the novel: egg salad sandwiches, meta novelists, the problem of omnipotence, therapy, pseudo-spies, man's relationship to the creation of God, illicit love, death on a toilet.

More to come! I haven't written in a while. Too busy studying ethics and whatnot.

A Nudge chapbook will be published this quarter. Keep your eyes like you keep your grapes: peeled, you rich asshole.

Amazing poem that was emailed to me this morning:

I want to wear your orgasm like a jacket.
I am cold and you are hot
like a polar bear on fire
on a toast day in the armpit of a sauna.

What is that? Brilliant.

Charles Simic -- Perhaps a little naive?

From a recent interview with Charles Simic:

Poetry doesn’t need much promotion. It is doing quite well in this country. I gave a reading the other night in Concord, N.H., with two former poet laureates — Donald Hall and Maxine Kumin —and 740 people came. That’s a lot of people!

Hmm, methinks Charles needs to do a little re-evaluation.

Happy V-V-V-V Day

Tonight I will be at the Seattle Art Museum for a love themed reading hosted by the Seattle's Poet Populist Cody Walker, who is a great guy as well as a great poet. You can read a poem by him and listen to him read it here at Slate.


This is my favorite romantic scene from a movie:



Selection from the draft of my first love poem:

"It was when you addressed your printer--
jammed and cheap--
that my arteries finally hardened into
the sweetest, fattest love.

I told you to give the printer a love tap.
You told the printer that it had a big penis."

Oreo Tweezers and Nudge sells out (almost and literally and possibly almost literally)

I'm currently working on a draft of a poem that starts out like this:

My great gift to man will be
the Oreo tweezer.

No more frozen digits.
No more milk tainted by the hands of man.
No more Oreos drowning in the milky abyss.

The world will never be the same.

Children will cry less.
People will die less.

This is what I will give back to mankind.

***

Some people say I’m the next Rambo.
Some say I’m the next Einstein.
Some say I’m the next mother of Bambi.

My poetry is getting very weird.

The Daily did an article about Nudge, which starts

"Mash together a young McSweeney’s, a Wholphin and a dash of The Sun, add a couple of underground record labels and a lot of youthful enthusiasm and you might get something close to Nudge..."

Finer praise could not be spoken.

Also, we're almost out of our first 88 copies of Nudge. We completely sold out at Bulldog News, so pick up your copies at the UW bookstore (soon) and The Henry fast before they're all gone.

Also, I will be giving a reading with Owen Curtsinger and Kaitlee Venable in Parnassus next Friday.

Here is Nudge

Here is Nudge, nudging Zyzzva, Poetry Northwest, and McSweeney's at Bulldog News. It can also be bought at the Henry Art Gallery. You can also bribe me with ice cream or pandas to send you a copy.

Look out world!

There's an open-mic tonight (in an hour) in Parnassus. Claire Fox will be reading my poem, "Pussycat," from Nudge.

Siberian Dwarf, and illustration by John Morse

Illustration by John Morse

I used to breed
Siberian dwarf hamsters
and name them after Norse mythology Gods:
Locke, Belldandy, etc.

Coincidentally,
those were also names of hot babes
on an anime show that I liked.

Once, one of them fell
into a pot of boiling water.
My mother plunged her hand in
and retrieved the cooking thing,
alive and perhaps slightly more edible.

A year later, that delicious hamster
ate another hamster.
I never felt closer to God.

Illustration by John Morse

John Morse has done an incredible illustration of Dr. Broom.






Mind you, this is the poetic character Dr. Broom, and not the real Dr. Broom. Also, that is not what I look like--thank god.

I like this poem by John. Sometimes I read his poetry at Stray meetings when a person is going to the bathroom or on the phone. If I could, I would replace hold music with readings of John's poetry.

Dr. Broom

Dr. Broom is a very good dentist. He has a small office with two chairs. He is catholic and has children. He was in a fraternity. Dr. Broom made my teeth clean. I wrote this poem for Dr. Broom:

Dr. Broom
has a skeleton on his notepad.
In large sweeping gestures,
he praises my teeth
and my youth.

I lied about flossing.
I lied about my life goals.
He put Mr. Sucky
in my mouth to extract the lies,
but the damage had been done.

Tartar is nothing to worry about.
Wisdom teeth are nothing to worry about.
Getting old is something to worry about.
Don't worry;
I'm Dr. Broom.

You have nice teeth.
You have a nice day.
Here's my card.

See you in six months,
Dr. Broom. Stay clean.


At the Stray meeting we made very good plans, and I am very excited to see those plans in action. However, we have to wait for some bureaucrats to finish their donuts and sign some forms, so I don't know when those of those plans can be actualized. That's ok. We have much better non-bureaucratic-dependent top secret plans.