A Reading At The Julie Fisher Publication Party For Skittering Thing

I just stumpled across this on that google device. Other than some WYPR The Signal recordings and "Readings From Nether Lips", one of my favorite recordings. Thank you Christophe Casamassima for putting it up on Box and thank you Julie Fisher for the great introduction and for that tango behind the Taco Bell in 1966.

https://app.box.com/s/62e905b6974e5b4484cd

I'm Reading with Chris Mason for Lily Herman's "Ablutions" series at The Carriage House

I'm very excited to have been asked to read with one of my all time Baltimore cultural heroes Chris Mason December 3rd at The Carriage House, where the legendary i.e. readings series took place. We're reading for Lily Herman's new series "Ablutions". It's been quite a while since I've read out and I've got a couple different books going so I'm looking forward to airing some new material and hearing new Chris Mason gems of wisdom and humor.

Here is a link to The Carriage House on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/carriagehousebaltimore

The Starship Lands In a Clearing

This is my piece for LitMore's "The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions", an art show inspired by lines from Chris Toll's poetry. My line was "The Starship Lands In a Clearing".

Now Let Us Finish Up Praising Genius Guy and Return To A Daily Life With Slightly Less Pixie Dust & Baseball

Okay, this final piece, my own fairly corny one, will wrap up Shattered Wig's adieu to Commander Adam Robinson. I mourn (in a reasonable way, knowing he'll be quite happy in Atlanta and how often did I truly get to see him with my own bulging eyes in Baltimore anyway?) not only his leaving, but the end of one of the high-water marks of the Baltimore writing scene (at least in my view/world). Chris Toll and Blaster transmigrated, Bob O'Brien moving, Amy Peterson moving, Adam Shutz of the cocktail-fueld Artichoke Haircut soon to be in Texas.

But Hell, there have been many high-water periods here or at least a lot of highed up folks. The Andrei Codrescu, Anselm Hollo, Joe Carderelli, Sandy Castle, David Footlong Franks in his prime period surely has to be a favorite of many. I came in on the end of that, but I did get to hear Anselm Hollo savor and play with the name of my poetry/sound tape project with John Berndt, "Readings From Nether Lips". I was working in Second Story Books on Greenmount, around 1984, and Hollo and Codrescu came in. There was a little magazine rack by the door and I had placed my tape prominently at top. "Nether Lips", he said, slowly rolling the words off his tongue, "nether lips". That was truly a nice payoff moment for a lowly poet.

Let us now slowly close the glorious rumpled gilt-edged curtain of Adam's period here in Baltimore when Publishing Genius took spark and went from being a little peeping chick to becoming a re-tooled Godzilla whose feet are sticky with the corpses of action heroes.

"Have you seen Adam caper? I swear, he is so light-filled he capers," the Sun remarked to the Moon. "He reminds me of myself, how I dapple the leaves bringing artists and lovers joy. He is at play in the fields of the Lord and the little bit of pale flesh visible above those really long sports socks are quickly reddening from my powers."

"I don't know about him prancing about or what have you," replied the Moon, "but I have seen him bearded and bitching about bottled water in that book of his, the book with the cover that reflects his visage in an acrylic smorgasbord of colors. He is pulled by unseen tides and draws strength from the darkness he escapes into to desecrate statues and rile his soul with strong liquid spirits. In that way he is like me, for I disturb even the great oceans and when I get full so do the emergency wards."

"He passes through things easily," said the Stream. "He brings clarity and refreshment to those he encounters. And just as people don't mind their feet wet passing through me, they don't seem upset when he leaves a little something on their shoes at late night parties or bbq's after softball."

"He quite often pats my logs," said the Beaver. "Like myself he is consistently constructing, the people he encounters are his environmental tools. But he is not graced with my fine protruding teeth."

We interrupt this sagging Nature Trope to let backdoor phrenologist and former cricket impersonator Rupert Wondolowski have a word as he is wheeled out into the hospital courtyard for his daily airing.

"Yes, to fully appreciate the storehouse of creation that is Adam Robinson, we must scale the mighty fortress that is his forehead. Whereas fellow poet and Publishing Genius stablemate Chris Toll had a vast lunar landscape of a head, Adam's forehead rises formidable and imposing as the front of the mighty Alcazar of Segovia. Not grotesquely cone-like or too high up there, nothing that needs to be covered with a stovepipe hat, just an impressive, strong facade that gives notice that great things are formulating behind it.

To not frighten civilians or the weak of mind he often covers it with an old Milwaukee Brewers hat that has been repeatedly trod upon in the mosh pits of Christian Rock concerts. When tiny Mike Young lived in Baltimore he would often curl up into the overturned hat and take naps in it while Mark Cugini took selflies beside it.

What was I speaking of? Adam Robinson? He was very kind to me once, he published a book of my writings. Did you know I was a writer? Why are you turning my chair around? It's such a beautiful day, why is that orderly taking his belt off and giving me that hideous look? Oh what a world, what world!"

tax time couch

tax time couch

when feet mayonnaise
the party under the balls
sprays heavy shower teeth
above the ears
a breath of burnt tin
and rye toast
a chance operation
of wet marks
in this world
at least
a little bit longer
after running a jukehouse
for three years
in Envelope Alley
tremblified

Megan McShea Rekindles The Fire of The Ancient Party

Long ago, when hairs gathered around heads, when more than five Baltimore poets would be home from touring or the madhouse at the same time, when Chris Toll and Blaster Al Ackerman still trod the earth like parallel universe Lenin and Marx respectively, when young Adam Robinson and Stephanie Barber still held partiers rapt with their wide-eyed tales of the fur trade in Milwaukee in the 1800's, when Amy Peterson still graced Normal's Books & Records on occasion before her step up into the rarefied world of modern New York and its tony celebrity filled co-ops, oxygen bars and petitions against mopery, before Ric Royer The Theater Lad, was thrown into the pee-stained trunk of a Dodge sedan by seedy barstool bard Gene Grigoritis, his fingers removed one by one over the course of nine days (Ric had already lost one as a child in Disneyland, bitten off by the Alexander Hamilton robot), each digit shearing videoed and posted to Youtube then sent to gadfly Tao Lin, with the thoughtful message "I bet this bitch's finger is bigger than your Johnson you poser" - before the writing scene spun out like the final crunchy tableau of "Fast & Furious XX" and toppled from its glorious peak, many disparate souls united by their weirdness and love of morphological word formation, jarring metaphors/contrasts and sometimes plain old oddball oddness scat goof met up every few weeks to become One Big Mind and Write As One With Many.

Usually within the comfort of Megan McShea's afghan-filled cottage where plump Sugar the cat would brush your ankles, yard sale Latin record finds would spin and Megan and Amy and Bonnie would quietly contend for "Most Raven Haired". Sometimes we would sit out on my ragged third floor balcony back when I lived in the Pego Mansion of St. Paul Street across from the Catholic High School.

(Ancient Party editor Megan McShea with author, artist and legend Al Ackerman in Austin in his post-Baltimore years)

Wherever we met, Blaster Al could be counted on to be there with beer and an anarchic spirit to keep the proceedings moving and not too academic and Megan would stir up the poetry machine gadgets to keep rust from forming.

Many nights after hours of scribbling, cutting up and jabbering the circle would fall briefly silent and someone would say "Hey, where's Lauren Bender? Did she take all the Hazelnut Breadstick Pop Tarts?" And there Lauren would be, stuck up in a ceiling corner, wide possum-eyed like a dollar store mylar valentines balloon temporarily forgotten as the young lovers moved into the love room to drop the needle on some Barry White.

(above - Lauren Bender mooshing Sugar the Cat)

But all things (almost all?) end. Or erode/evolve/mutate. Even though they feel natural as breath and just as rejuvenating as they are going on. Such be our writerly coven meetings. Oh they will still happen somewhere with some of us, but Blaster and Chris Toll are huffing ether and playing prepared harp with John Cage on the astral plane, Adam Robinson independent publishing pinup boy is off to Atlanta, Amy is in New York comforting Laurie Anderson and so on and so on, time marches on.

Luckily, though, Megan hung on to our sheaves of scribbles and pored over them, jiggling the ink until gold nuggets rose to the surface. Not only that, she assembled the best into an actual beautiful book and is throwing a Now Party for The Ancient Party at the Windup Space Sunday April 13, 3pm to 5. Come hear some reading from it, gaze upon it, pry greenbacks from your moneysock to buy for your very own. Here's the Your Face link:

The Ancient Party

Here are a few lines from "The Goofball Oracle" to whet your appetite. The Goofball Oracle exercise was everyone would write random questions and place them in one hat and random answers placed in a second hat. Questions would then be pulled from one hat and random answers from the other.

"Hey, what do you guys think of Pammy's new Bummer?" - "The sound of the louvre covered in mallo-mars."

"Was Lincoln a happy drunk?" - "A neon rose garden at the end of the world."

"How many of you are in there anyway?" - "Love is naturally pungent".

Or perhaps a "One Minute Story", s story written within 60 seconds, will win you over:

SKELETON
The way his skin sat on his frame, his skeleton, the whisper of ribs like an automatic round. I still see this sometimes and feel the recoil. Memory does that, transforming the banal into the fantastic.
- John Eaton

(John "Lucky Charms" Eaton, who has been trapped inside the Zoltar Fortune Teller booth on Coney Island since the last writers group gathering.)

SKELETON
The skeleton dancing across the lawn. The skeleton peeping out from behind the shower curtain. The skeleton in the bread box, smaller than the others, so obviously it was the baby.
- Blaster Al Ackerman

Here is one of the "Biographies". Each writer would write a false biography and then mouth the words to the other writers. Then each person would write down what they were lip reading.

"Mortimer Hadley" - by Megan McShea.

I am Mortimer Hadley. I was born in Challenger, Mississippi, along the shore of the Missouri River where seventeen dogs had recently died of exposure to second-hand smoke. No one really understood this at the time, but it would prove to be a fateful pre-episode to my life as an epidemiologist. I attended the Milton Military Pentecostal School for wayward boys until the 9th grade, when I ran off with my guardian angel and began practicing medicine on unsuspecting rural families. Some of my favorite and locally renowned diagnoses are Pale Ghost Disease, discovered in Fallow Holler in the Ozarks, Hollow Stem Fever, which overwhelmed a colony of rabbits in eastern Kansas, and Haddock Mouth, which infested a flock of tiny angels in my hometown of Challenger.

(Lip reading version by Bonnie Jones of "Mortimer Hadley"):
I am Putpott Riding. I was born in South Beach along the coast of whenever. It was heavenly and moldy. Although it was really strenuous for me in the formative years in Ecology I did my. It was wild but right after I was wasted in my family. Memory of an envelope water. Was a rabbit. Fine, back alley. Jaguar.

Well, to paraphrase Blaster, you don't want to sample too many of these deadly treats at one time. But I will leave you with a ritual, the rules of which were worked out in collaboration. This one was written by myself, Ric Royer, Bonnie Jones and Megan McShea.

How to March Into Jerusalem With Your Battle Dress On, Go On Girl!
1. Receive only the absence, not the presence.
2. Wave and pat pouch cloth. Form leg trumpet.
3. Make it ouchie in the Humvee.
4. Make sure that Kirk notices you by wearing so much makeup you look like a clown and appearing at his big gig at the MTV Music Awards with the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots and tell him you're pregnant.
5. Buy a custom fitted mouth guard, the kind for teeth grinding not hockey. Put your head down, groan a little, channel Cormac McCarthy, bend at the knees, wipe that tiny bit of spittle. Rush.

Come join in on the festivities April 13th at the Windup and hoist a glass of something for friendship, collaborations and a Spring much deserved.

Mole Suit Choir's "Campfire Spacesuit" Hits The Streets and Ehse Airwaves!

Anyone who has stood within hearing distance of me the last year (yikes, it's been close to a year!), knows how excited I am about this project, The Mole Suit Choir, with the supernaturally talented and inspiring Liz Downing, who once stared down the horror of The Pig Boy of Booger Holler in Alabama. How is it that Alabama people have come to have such powerful influence on my life? Very weird.

This collaboration was first talked about at a wonderful Shakemore Festival and was given extra urgency by the passing of three close comrades. Singing again really gave me solace as some of the people who loomed largest in my personal vortex moved on to the next stage of this cosmic riddle. If not for Liz I might have become glued to the couch and just watched Breaking Bad over and over in a loop, the seasons spinning around me faster and faster.

Through a strange twist of Fate, Dr. Shugg Stew Mostofsky caught our second show at the Windup Space. From a languid sprawl on the leather couch he said he wanted to put an album out by us. The next thing we knew, Wee Ginger Lad Greg Hatem of Heart of Hearts and Mr. Mocassin was hopping about my living room with microphones and a portable recording deck. It was all very blissful and is now captured on glorious cds and cassettes.

Here is the link to Ehse headquarters where you can get a free download or order a cd or cassette:
www.ehserecords.com/ss009/

Or you can use your human legs to cruise on over to Normal's in Waverly, True Vine in Hampden or Soundgarden in Fells Point:

We've gotten some really nice words about the record already. Here is some beauty from scribe China Martens:
"Glen Burnie, Poland meets Extraterrestrial, Alabama in Outer Baltimore from Inner Space: somehow they found each other, on their porches (I think it was Liz that knocked on Rupert's door, incredulous he answered, and without fear bundled up all his fears. Together they struck the matches and watched them burn, aglow, like bread crumbs soaked in firecracker rock worms); and picked up old instruments to continue digging their way out of the spinning yarn and into the fire. Come sit and warm yourself".

And here are some kind words from David Beaudouin:
Think George Jones & Tammy Wynette just back from an unexpected interdimensional jaunt, bringing with them sweet melodies, brilliant songwriting and the secrets of the spaces behind the stars. That's Mole Suit Choir, currently the leading lights in Baltimore's burgeoning neo-folk scene. Created by poet Rupert Wondolowski and painter Elizabeth Downing (both as well accomplished musicians), Mole Suit Choir gets to the heart of things as the best music does, with two voices entwined in high, lonesome harmonies accompanied by guitar or banjo. And like the best music, their oddly familiar songs will echo in your thoughts long after the lights go out. Highly recommended.

Come check us out Sunday, November 3rd at the kindly Metro Gallery on Charles Street, 7:30, for the official release party. Joining us will be Nathan Bell and Liz Durrette, plus readings by Stephanie Barber and Megan McShea.

themetrogallery.net/events/

Murder Your Darlings' Review of Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Rupert Wondolowski's Mattress in an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea

Mattress in an Alley, Raft Upon the Sea, poems by Rupert Wondolowski. New Orleans: Fell Swoop, 2012.

Wondolowski's zine-format collection begins with "1963," a snapshot of the year Kennedy died, which sets a bittersweet tone for the collection. In "Sometimes," he continues with sardonic humor: I grew up next door
to a friend with a former
Miss North Carolina pageant
winner for a mom
who always left the door
open using the bathroom.
Plus I went to Catholic School.
I never had a chance. (lines 7-14).

Wondolowski's world is surreal and dangerous. "Anything Pointed, Edged, Angled or Blunted" describes:
...a gang in the remote Peruivian jungle
[which] kills people for their fat
-keeping the liquid in little vials hanging from their belts. (lines 16-21).
What can one do to guard against something like this? "...there's no way/to walk the/night streets/without your fat." He says (lines 33-36). This is so horrifying, it can't be real, right? But reality is darker than anything one could dream up. "Before Work" demonstrates this. It describes a visit to the doctor. "This is not where the shit goes down, this is/where we find out if you can take the shit/coming down." (lines 18-20).

But there are moments of joy. Wondolowski looks back to Superbowl Halftime commercials, old toys from childhood, pills. "Spring Makes Me Small," is one of the more upbeat poems, despite itself:

I am not as cheerful
as my shirt would indicate
or as horrified
as my hair


in between the seething
pause
fur can be futile
and jackals make good dads


tumble me this yoga mat
a sun rises from my
ribcage into my esophagus and
there just isn't room for it.


What stands out throughout the collection, of course, is Wondolowski's wit and cunning observations. There are many standout poems. "Some Late Night Thoughts of Mortality While Staring Glassy-Eyed at Karen Black," I mean, how could that not be a great poem? There's an underlying joie de vivre in these poems that I'm thankful to Wondolowski for sharing. In the final poem, "For Everly," he sums it up: "Drop the feeling nto a river and watch it spread/in far reaching ripples." (lines 7-8).

* * * -CL Bledsoe

Sorie Kondi of Sierra Leone, Baltimore RetroCineFest, Justin Sirois on “So Say the Waiters,” and Rupert Wondolowski on… pills.

Sorie Kondi of Sierra Leone, Baltimore RetroCineFest, Justin Sirois on “So Say the Waiters,” and Rupert Wondolowski on… pills.

Richard & Olga

Richard and Olga

Richard Nixon looked so lost among the beaming young  gymnasts, a hulking mushroom cowering before elves.  As if he was a different species from them altogether.  As if the B movie monster in the cheap gorilla costume stepped out of his tinfoil saucer into the Land of Oz. He shambled stiffly in a suit that wouldn't accept the gray body inside it.

If a bird would have landed on his dowager hump he would have crumbled into an oily lump of salt.

Feeling claustrophobic surrounded by all the apple-cheeked faces exuding lithe fresh energy, President Nixon accepted his Press Secretary's  idea to take them out to see the South Fountain on the White House lawn.  Young Olga Korbut, the astonishing gymnast from the Soviet Union, "The Sparrow from Minsk", was tickled by how awkward this ungainly American who wielded such power was made by her and her peer group's presence. The dappled sunlight on this beautiful day batted at his hooded eyes, causing him to sweep his left forearm over his face as if he was beating back flies.

Olga and the other gymnasts poured out onto the freedom of the White House lawn, released somewhat  from the gravity of the media staged moment.  Charming Olga broke loose from the group and performed a tuck back, followed by what came to be known as "The Korbut Flip".  Camera shutters whirred and snapped as if a giant sack of hummingbirds had been released into a small glass cage.

Olga came to rest only a foot or so from the gently cascading fountain.  She beckoned the American president toward her, holding up her one hand tipped as if in invitation to dance.  Nixon's temples buzzed in mild agony, his neck itched and nervous moisture worked down his pale leg.

"You're a little girl", Nixon stated, as if he had just stumbled upon her and this was the first unit of classification he could transmit back to the Mothership.

Olga giggled and everyone who watched her felt her effortless joy.  "You little boy," Olga said, utilizing what little English came readily at hand.  She then leaned down and plucked a random buttercup, held it briefly up towards Nixon's chin, then laughed, spun, and tossed it into the fountain.

Nixon's heart jumped watching the tiny yellow color spin toward the fountain.  What was he to do?  He couldn't break the code of all the smiling faces.  Mouths agape.  All the years, all the tense conference rooms, Kissinger's thick marceled hair spread out before him like an untouched golfing range - in this sunlight he couldn't remember the purpose following all the chains of demands.  One anxious trail led to another brief rest, then right onto another anxious journey and he could make no sense of all these delicate creatures whose smell was so light and beguiling, reminding him of walking as a child through his father's lemon grove.

 A low moaning sound was reported to come from deep inside him, but like a Tuvan throat singer, there seemed to be multiple voices in multiple pitches issuing from a basement radiator.  Reporters thought Nixon was hugging Korbut and there was an orgy of clicking cameras, but only the most astute and mechanical shutterbug blocked their human emotion and instinct and kept recording as the president attempted a muddled spin and threw young Olga from the height of his shoulders into the cascading shallow water of the man-made fountain.

Much more was ended besides Nixon's presidency when Olga was lifted like a wet doll by Russian security and loaded onto a nearby helicopter.

---Rupert Wondolowski

"A Visionary Friend Is Gone, Long Live His Vision", for Chris Toll

A Visionary Friend Is Gone, Long Live His Vision
for Chris Toll

Though not a licensed phrenologist and not able to afford calipers, I would have to start with his head, his majestic hairless skull. "Ambient light from a Lenin Lightbulb", is how Bed Bath Blavatsky and Beyond put it. He had thought it into a handsome planet of clearly defined paths, culverts and landing strips for minute travelers of all dimensions to set down on. His poems of quiet passion were the generator for untold powerful landing signals. Often when out at night he would gently bow his head and rub a spot, saying "I've brought many visitors with me tonight."

There are those of us who sculptors should memorialize into busts and those of us who would be more suited to jello molds. For the virulent, languishing in a potato sack as they bleed out in a donkey cart across the border as their captor bitches to a neighbor "No se puede vender el dañado gringo", is the only proper final tribute to their cranium.

For my friend, Lost Astronauts Who Knew Too Much work in a sealed chamber in deep space with the DNA of Helen Keller, silky webs spun by spiders surrounding Poe's crypt and the tears of broken hearted catholic school girls to create the hands that will one day bring the dimensions of my friend's dome into such glory that Rodin's bust of Balzac will shrink into a PEZ dispenser out of embarrassment.

About his small smooth arms what can be said that has not already been stated by a multitude of paleontologists about those of the late lamented T-Rex? The surprising disproportionate strength of them could perhaps best be measured by the incident when he shared the dias with populist poet Billy Collins. My friend got up to read right after Collins had read his somewhat musty, frequently trotted out, "Mother's Day" poem. Shaking hands with Billy before taking his place behind the podium, the shake went a few moments beyond the norm and Collins' face contorted into a wide grimace before a small shard of bone pierced the skin of his forearm. I will leave it up to YouTube viewers as to whether there was a trace of a smile on my friend's lips as Mr. Collins tried to muffle a shriek of agony.

It would take a book to enter into his heart and do it justice. Nancy Drew in fishnets would find Jesus in there playing lightning bolt toss with Dr. Strange. Drinks hoisted aloft to the downtrodden in a vast castle filled with toys, Bob Dylan passed out on a giant feather bed covered with absinthe bottles.

I woke up to my friend gone from my planet this morning and the goneness had gained immense weight. Shrugging into a shirt my shoulders had an attitude - "Yeah right, go ahead, put a shirt on." Even my car windshield had tears on it on such a cruel sunny day. My friend you should hear this, this beautiful song that's playing. My friend you wrote such beautiful songs.

--Rupert Wondolowski

September 6 Release Party for new Artichoke Haircut issue

Very excited about being in the upcoming new issue of this smart young magazine.  These kids know their way around the language and the booze and handle both of them with aplomb, wit and sophistication.

Plus I will be fresh back from the ocean and hopefully rejuvenated from the brutal summer that is on its way out.  The light of mid-August is incredible.  Every year it hits me as if I've never seen it before.  For me it always feels like it holds more promise and excitement than the first breezes and soft light of spring.

Here is the lineup for the Artichoke Haircut reading:


Magazine Release Party
As always, we are featuring some great talent from our brand new magazine:

Lily Herman
Barrett Warner
Carabella Sands
CL Bledsoe
Brooke Carlton
Justin Sirois
Sid Gold
Rupert Wondolowski

and more to be announced.


Doors open at 8:15pm, readings start at around 9.

Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon The Sea Coming Soon

I am extremely proud to announce that noble and rugged Fell Swoop Press in New Orleans, run by poet Joel Dailey, is putting out a new chapbook of mine - Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon The Sea -  very shortly unless Joel comes to his senses.

Here is an interview with poet and publisher Dailey in Harriet magazine:



Fell Swoop! An Interview with Joel Dailey, Destroyer of American Literature : Harriet Staff : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation


Mattress In an Alley, Raft Upon The Sea will be a 20 page chap chock full of new soaring absurdo-miserablism.

Before Work

With each question, the doctor's voice
drops to a wispier whisper.
Soon you'll be curled together motionless
on that perfectly stiff paper covered recliner,
forgotten to all but the clicking tick hands of clocks.
There are already two crisp gowns in the room.
The little blood pressure station wheeled in perky
 is like R2-D2 in its robot pal appearance - bright\
 new light industrial rubber and chrome and
padding and gauges.  A thermometer attached
 that only needed six or seven
seconds of your time to let you know
 your factory was not overheating.
With your finger in that pressure
clasp you are the Toscanini of pointers
or perhaps a starter superhero.
 The vibe at the desk is mellow, man.
This is not where the shit goes down, this is
where we find out if you can take the shit
coming down.  You're ready.  Promise.

Snow, Tree Forts & Alcohol

There were rock battles in the claymines.
Shingle tile fights in the tree forts.
Crabapple wars in the backyards.

The one kid with a ridiculous last name
that was a foodstuff that doubled as yet
another slang word for penis killed his
girlfriend while the rest of us were
sort of thinking about college.

The one brother of the guy who put his
cousin's eye out with a whipped roof
shingle that had a couple rusty nails
in it killed a friend in a bar fight.

The fellow up the street who
looked like a young
Michael Stipe or Gene Wilder -
big puffs of cottony hair swarming
his slender face - and was involved in
high school theater one year ahead of me
held out until he was an adult to kill his wife
and leave her body out in some far flung field
in order to be with a bar maid or waitress.

The skinny blonde who always had A's
and liked to pick something out of his
eyebrows and eat it all the time, reacted
to the deaths in Bhopal by saying "Those
people lived in tents. How dare they ask
for so much cash for damages?"

And I keep thinking of my parents
hounding me, saying "Why don't you go
out and play football with those boys?"

Sometimes

Sometimes at retail I sit quite still.

You are going to North Carolina and I like your spats.

Don't confuse Glory Hole

with religion.

Or religion

with the sacred.

I grew up next door

to a friend with a former

Miss North Carolina pageant

winner for a mom

who always left the door

open using the bathroom.

Plus I went to Catholic School.

I never had a chance.