editorial miscellany

I am behind schedule with the Freud issue of blossombones. Life has been weird. I have been weird. It's coming soon! I promise.

Also: Just a heads-up: we're open to submissions again beginning August 1st for an all-poetry issue. All concepts/themes are welcome.

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All Who Wander Are Not Lost

Have you checked out The Annandale Dream Gazette? I could wander around in there forever.

I like these things

I like these things

1. ) Cauliflower. I like it. You should roast it in the oven with olive oil, salt & pepper.

I made a pasta & roasted veggie thing today (because I am working later & won't have time for a proper dinner). It was an awesome combo of roasted cauliflower (so carmelized & delicious), toasted walnuts, GARLIC & olive oil, parsley, lemon, and pasta. I have a giant vat of leftovers which I will probably eat for the next two days & that's just fine with me.

2.) [[ the internet place of rebekah silverman ]] You should visit. Check out the hipster bullshit rainbows. Also, I like knowing what people are doing with their veggies, especially if they get random stuff from their CSA. Mostly I'm just jealous because I didn't do the CSA thing & I wish I did. The farmers' markets will spring up soon enough, I hope.

3.) Book trades! Do you have a book? Do you want to trade? C'mon, it'll be fun.

4.) Coloring books & crayons. Kind of like therapy. Only cheaper.

5.) Sending people gifts for no reason whatsoever. It's way cooler than sending birthday presents. Gift-giving should be random & unexpected, not obligatory.


I don't like these things

1.) Stupid migraine headaches that last for six hours. That was yesterday. It sucked.

2.) Curry. It's gross.

3.) There's a fly in my office. It's big enough to knock over the furniture. I hate that.

This Is Not a Poem

Today is stormy and pretty and orange-gray and there are blackbirds under the canopy and I have black cherry soda in the fridge. I am saving it for something, but I cannot say what that might be. When I imagine the future there are less people and bigger plants and we all wear tunics. I am reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin. The house is full of books and this makes me feel comfy and safe although this is probably an illusion. I have the whole day to myself tomorrow and I am thinking of roasting a big head of cauliflower and eating it.

I have all kinds of ideas these days but have been lax in writing them down.

I have had too much time to spare and I fear it has made me lazy. I seem to move slow, as if walking on sand in backless shoes. I want to sit on the porch and smoke cigarettes except that I have never smoked cigarettes and in fact, don't even like to be around secondhand smoke but somehow the idea is appealing and brings to mind a previous era and I would like to revisit a past that I have never lived.

I have decided I might like to spend a year traveling in one of those shiny silver campers. I would make homemade jewelry out of semiprecious stones and colorful beads and sell them by the side of the road and cook meals over a campfire and meet all kinds of different people and it would be wonderful.

:: If I were a better person I would dream of falling and I would pull weeds every other day and twice on Sunday ::

I wonder what it says about my psyche that I am always dreaming of severed heads in glass jars? They float in greenish liquid and there are nerves and arteries hanging from the neckstumps like roots and for all the world they remind me of hydroponic lettuce except sometimes they twist about in the fluid and seem to smile as if happy to be free from the burdens of daily living. I have been told that normal people dream of falling off buildings but I have never had this dream.

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I went outside last night to light the barbecue grill and noticed we have monstrous, jungle-sized weeds in the backyard after all this rain and I might need some kind of metallic thing with many clawed mechanical appendages to remove them. They are spiky and awful. I think I saw some poison ivy, too. Maybe I'll just stay inside and pretend it isn't there. I feel guilty about the yard, but life has been crazy with work and transition planning for Z and literary events and racing events and weddings and baby showers and trips to the doctor and the dentist and that sort of thing. It's a miracle that the grass isn't three feet tall by now. I never intend for the yard to look weedy and neglected but somehow, it always escapes my notice until it's a godawful mess. Crud and double crud.

Let's be honest: I really suck at this whole suburbia thing.

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I do, however, like sitting on the porch at dusk with a glass of iced tea and a book. That's actually pretty nice.

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My poem, "The Reaper's Wife" is featured at on the Mythic Delirium website! (Scroll down a bit.) The illustration by Paula Friedlander is *gorgeous* isn't it?

Scroll down a bit more and read "Song for an Ancient City" by Amal El-Mohtar. It will leave you all short of breath and stuporous for it is unbelievably beautiful.

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Life is pretty good, despite the severed heads and monster weeds, I think.

Notes from the other side of the wormhole

My brain is in an ordinary place, where I dream of dogs and tomatoes and little saltbox houses from the 1950s. Perhaps this is what contentment looks like. I am, for the most part, surrounded by good people. This is metaphorical, as I live in the fourth circle of hell, somewhere in middle America, USA. Luckily, the world remains a beautiful place filled with hilarious strangers and brilliant books and childhood friends and smeary watercolor sunsets and spicy ginger ale and I love it so much sometimes I cannot bear it. Actually, this might be a parallel universe and the real me is living somewhere else, surrounded by talking chickens and automatons with purple metallic skin. I can't really be sure. This might be the summer of sci fi, as I just finished reading The Sparrow and think it's one of the best novels I've read in a very long time, perhaps ever. I didn't want it to end and it made me want to laugh and hit things and travel to previously unexplored worlds but only if I could hide in the unpopulated forests. Terrifying and beautiful. I watched two really fabulous movies last week: The Man From Earth and Moon. Highly recommended. I want to spend more time pondering the nature of reality. All is not what it seems.

This Is A Ghost Story

I often dream about the dead. These are the hauntings I know best, the ones that take place in dreams.

The dead man follows me, pale and powdery, mustachioed and aged. I don't know him, or at least, I don't remember. I am not afraid of anything composed of mist, ethereal and unbodied. I approach him. He is saying things. Ugly things. I recall how they make me feel in the dream--angry, embarrassed--but I can't remember what he says. I try to disperse him with my breath, blowing at the misty apparition as hard as I can. The white, powdery coating is gone, and the ghost is corporeal. His face is dark and rich as garden soil. I am horrified when I realize he is something solid. His head is obsidian, perched upon a rickety set of ivory bones. I don't want him to move. Unless I can immobilize him, I am certain he will pursue me forever. I take his leg bones, pull them up behind his back, and draw his legs through the ribcage. He is a bone pretzel. I am frightened by by my own capacity for violence. Until now, I have always seen myself as a woman incapable of intentionally causing bodily harm. This has changed. I am a different person when threatened, animalistic and cruel. There is another woman in my dream. Perhaps an alternate version of myself? She carries a small box, containing the essence of a female ghost. It is the anima, part of the old man's soul. The boxed sprite calls out to the twisted bones. She escapes from the box, and the corporeal ghost is young again, with long hair and a muscled torso and bright, dark eyes. He looks at me and it reminds me of that moment in Rear Window, when Raymond Burr sees Jimmy Stewart watching him from across the courtyard. Chilling.

I always wake up before the worst happens.

I cannot stop thinking about this dream. According to my Dream Dictionary:

Ghosts signify "unused or wrongly applied intellectual activities." You are chasing a phantom. "Often an expression of guilty feelings, pangs of conscience."

I am especially intrigued by the image of the female essence in a box. Surely, Freud would turn this into something overtly sexual. Oh, Freud!

Speaking of Freud, I have a big chunk of time off next week, which I intend to use for getting the latest issue of blossombones together. We should go live sometime around July 1st. Stay tuned.

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Also: REQUITED!

My latest series of poems has much to do with spooky things, monsters of both the human and supernatural variety. Four new poems are up in the latest issue of Requited, which is a fabulous journal. Be sure to visit them and check out the gorgeous words of Kristen Orser, Arlene Ang, James Tadd Adcox and more.

Radio Silence

I have been quiet. People out in the great gray midwest are tense and troubled and this makes me feel like I need a little quietude.

Sometimes, I wish I were more oblivious.

It's been a keep-your-head-down-stay-out-of-trouble-expect-the-worst kind of week and I see no signs this will get any better. I am considering a career as a pizza artist or high-class panhandler. I would like to be a stage magician or a professional psychic who sees omens in your lawnmower clippings or a babysitter of rare fish or a zombie film set cleaner (I would not like to be a zombie who cleans film sets but rather, an ordinary woman who cleans up the fake brains and entrails and eyeballs left lying around after a zombie film has wrapped).

I would like to be a bartender on an alien planet and serve shocking pink and electric blue drinks that have a charming tendency to smoke and swirl inside beer mugs and brandy snifters.

I would like to open a tea house / independent bookstore / art gallery / playground for grown-ups. We'd *totally* have a big wavy slide and serve popsicles and fudgesicles on hot afternoons.

I think it would be pretty groovy.

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I cleaned the bejeezus out of my bathroom today. I also organized drawers full of buttons and hairclips and safety pins. I put everything into categories and stored them in ziplock bags. It's quite possible I have officially gone insane.

One must create order in a disorderly universe.

On being human, reading books, and shameless self-promotion

Every now and then, something will grab my attention and I awake from the stupor of dailiness. Yesterday I stopped in the middle of the road to let a family of geese cross. There were two big ones and four grayish-brown, fuzzy baby geese. I love the way they cross in a straight line, with the little ones walking between the big ones. It reminds me of people. It is so easy, in the midst of going to work and paying bills and folding laundry and taking care of everybody to forget to be awake. I am guilty of this. I am happy when I see the unexpected. Yesterday was one of those A+ days where I felt wholly alive. It was balmy and beautiful and there were families of geese. I bought gifts for a few lovely people, who are getting married or expecting a baby. I had a strawberry-mango smoothie. I found some nice organic veggies which I plan to cook this weekend. I'm thinking about roasted cauliflower and brushetta with sauteed peppers and basil and fresh mozzerella. I want to make foccacia with pesto and carmelized onions and crispy red potatoes. I hope this happens.

I picked up a few books for myself and this lifted my spirits. In general, I am not one of those people who love shopping. I don't care much about clothes and I hate shopping malls. I notice that cars full of elderly women with bouffant hairdos pay no attention to pedestrians but I forgive them and mind where I cross. I am not as cute as a baby goose. Someday, if I am lucky, I will be a woman of a certain age and I might dye my hair blue and extend my cupid's bow with bright red lipstick and wear a plastic hair kerchief and take tiny samples of grape jelly and coffee creamer home from Greek restaurants. I'm looking forward to this.

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Currently Reading:

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros

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There is something about opening a book that makes me feel like myself again. I plan to read both The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell, some Ursula K. LeGuin, lots and lots of contemporary poetry, other stuff. Artifice is blogging about summer reading and Kathleen is blogging about books, too. I hope you are reading something this summer. And next fall, winter and spring as well.

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And Now, For Some Shameless Self-Promotion:


My contributor copy of Mythic Delirium #22 arrived yesterday! It's gorgeous. You should check it out.

Also! CYBORGIA is now available direct from Mayapple Press. It's official. W00t!

I cannot remember the last time I wrote a poem.

I am easily bored. Fortunately, I am very good at entertaining myself. I enjoy my days off beyond what is reasonable. I like the rain. I miss cooking but working nights makes it difficult to plan meals and such. Tonight we are having garlicky pizza bread and homemade brownies and freshly brewed iced tea. This makes me happy.

Last night I had a dream that I lived in a tiny little house without indoor plumbing. Aliens in gas masks descended from a nuclear mushroom cloud while singing their plans for world domination. They ate everyone on earth who was ill or injured, leaving only the perfectly healthy people alive. They used the heads of the deceased as Jack-O-Lanterns and they drove cars made of giant mammoth bones and had terrifying mouths with long teeth. I tried to escape in a R.V.

I don't think I made it.

Sometimes I think I should write screenplays for surrealist horror movies.

Sometimes I think I need therapy, or at least some designated quiet time.

Brief

Sometimes I write whole blog entries in my head and forget them later. I am dreaming of houses these days--the split-level house I grew up in, creaky Gothic mansions in miniature, houses with shattered windows that remind me of jagged, broken teeth. I am sure this is meaningful, but I am too tired to parse this out.

My weekend was busy, exhausting, hot. Still, I find I like working outside, among the pepper plants and the hibiscus and the Gerber daisies. There are babies in lacy bonnets and Scotty dogs and the occasional breeze. Yesterday I watched the thunderstorm roar across the parking lot.

I think I should try to worry less, enjoy the details.