FEB

Reminds me of Cleveland and Langston Hughes poems.   Icicles in the bathtub and sledding into creeks.  The smell of my mother's coffee, of her hands.  The dog catching snowballs in his mouth.  Holding hands and linking arms, breaths like smoke. A slow gratefulness etching its way into the facial muscles of people I used to see every day.  Quiet gifts of their own type.

I slipped into a puddle off a curb while holding a head of kale on my way to eat said kale and a faux-kielbasi dinner at a friend's house three blocks away from my own.  I stood up quickly, so as to persuade my body it did not get hurt, that I would be fine, and so as to not have onlookers come up and ask me if I was okay. (Am I afraid to be cared for?)

The film Groundhog's Day has not yet failed to make me shed tears. (Or at least, it has made me cry the last two times (once in 2009, once in 2010) I watched it—(and watching as a kid doesn't count, because, at that point, I had not yet realized that life was long and that being angry in yr everyday did not take you any closer to a more desirable life situation).)

Two snow (icy rain) days at the school I work at in a row.  Two days of not doing things I should be doing, despite free time.

Here's a story told to me by three five year olds from the aftercare class I teach:

There was a burger, his name was burger.  He smelled like burgers.  He was walking down the street and he went to Max & Ruby's and he started jumping up and down grouchily.  And he poofed out his eyeball and he went back home and started flopping the eyeball down.  And then he ate his wife and he had some childs.  He burped.  And then he went to piano.

Started sprouting some lentils and brewing kombucha again.  It is cold in my house and the kombucha is growing at a very slow rate.

I am reading poems February 12th at Phil Kim's poetry night @ Kafe Kerouac w/ Tory Adkisson (poems), Phil Kim (poems), Marie Corbo (from Cleveland, songs), Mary Lynn Gloeckle (This is My Suitcase, songs) and Zac Little (Saintseneca, songs, roommate love).

I think about my parent's lives.  Their drives and days and relationships.  How they imagined their parent's days were.  The dialogue between those imaginings.  That gap thats gap-able.  Intractable, still.  

I'm going to be tabling / hanging out at Chicago Zine Fest on March 25th-26th.  Come say hi.

Hearing back from grad schools sometime within the next couple months.

Monster House Press (w/ newly added members Aaron Miller, Maryn Jones, & Andy Gardner) is currently editing / designing James Payne's poetry chapbook Austerity Pleasures, to be released sometime in February or March.

I think I'm starting a band.  We'll see how that works out...