Sad & New

I went to a going-away party for my friend Todd last night. We met in Matthea Harvey's poetry forms class 3 years ago and I thought he was the biggest jerk in the world. The one day I loved him and invited him to a party I gave. Ever since, we've been very close friends. He's a very talented poet and is one of the most intelligent, widely read people I know. So, I'm toasting him here: Good luck Todd in NYC and congrats again on getting into Sarah Lawrence's MFA Program!

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Last night I found out that one of my poems has been selected from the Open Competition for the Best New Poets 2006 anthology. Much excitement.

BOMB

I am freaking out! I just got an email from Nicole @ BOMB Magazine letting me know that Susan Wheeler selected my five poem-entry to be the recipient of BOMB's first-ever poetry prize! I am so honored and thrilled! If you've read BOMB, you know what all of the excitement's about -- Matthea Harvey is one of their poetry editors. The poems are from my manuscript in progress (which I hope to finish by the end of this year). Yay!

(jumping up and down)

(now going back to finish my Bennington packet)

(carry on)

Frio

My husband and I just got back from the Frio River in the Texas Hill Country. My family rented a 3 bedroom house near the river for a week. The houses are all named after television shows (ours was called Green Acres). Imagine: a 1500 sq. foot house with 13 people sharing that space. It was fun, though. Jeff & I floated down the river (a 3+ hour trip) on rafts with my sister Lynne & her fiance Keith. He and I also went on a walk and got really close to the neighborhood deer, much to my excitement. I got sunburned pretty bad -- even on my eyelids! I'm beginning to tan now, hopefully no peeling.

Came home to good news: Poet Lore accepted one of my poems for inclusion in their next issue!

Renovation & Publication

Renovation Journal asks me a few questions in their monthly column.

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Great, great news from Kevin Prufer: Pleiades has decided to take one of my poems for their upcoming issue!

Snakebite

This is all I have been doing:

WITH SIGNS FOLLOWING

"And these signs shall follow them that believe”
—Mark 16:17

In 1991, Reverend Summerford was head preacher at the Church of Jesus with Signs Following, a congregation of snake handlers. Prone to heavy drinking and enraged by his wife's infidelities, he forced her to plunge her arm into a cage of rattlesnakes, then write a suicide note.

It’s like every sign she’s followed before until she says I won’t
open the cage this time. She keeps thinking of a tongue, its red
silk spooled around her wrist. Its sound of hiss, almost hush
(what have I done). A myth striking her body: the afterlife
predicted in poison, a tongue forked inside the silver cage
(the Lord has not returned as you’d said). Her fists, opened,
numb (let me be wrong). The burning, the tongue darts
the air, her fingertips. (Where are the signs?) A blood clot’s
black bloom (the hour has not yet come) between fang
and palm. The venom lights into her (I’ll be ready
when I’m called). The hiss song in the dark—
two red beads spill across her arm (suck out the poison
with your mouth), the tongue biting itself to death, biting
away the red bull’s-eye of each print, the little bleeding flags.

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True story: I got the idea for this poem from tonight's epidode on A&E's City Confidential. I thought it was a good fit for what I am working on in my manuscript.

New Poem

First Joyful Mystery

THE ANNUNCIATION

A secret enters through the fingers and lights
her flesh. The desire is to turn away, to go

back to pressing olives into oil, to mending
the tear in her blue dress. What does it mean
if this is hallucination and guilt? Her body

fills with sex and blood. She wakes to its ruin
on her clothes. The thought arrives through

the open window, a moon pulling her up
to its grave face. She kneels to the dirt floor,
Gabriel with his right hand beckon. Come

here, he says, let me touch each breast,
your belly. She wants to return to bed, fall

into dream. But his song is fire, and they lean
toward each other. She lifts her eyes, stands
in spite of her awful burn, her shallow breath.