I Plan to Live

Being a writer (or possibly being an adult in general) is a lot like being a shark. You really can't take a moment to rest on your laurels and enjoy your work. "I totally bit the crap out of that seal, it never saw it coming. I think I'll just sit here and awkwardly rub my stomach...area with my fins for a little while." "Wow, I can't believe I finished that story -- and on time, too! I think I'll celebrate by playing Bejeweled for the next two weeks." It kind of amounts to the same thing. In order to be truly effective -- in order to truly live the writer's life -- you can allow yourself a moment of satisfaction, of self-reflection, but then you have to move on to the next.

I went through a really great six-week period of productivity, where I was able to write pretty much every day, finished off three or four different short stories (that are currently 'in a drawer,' marinating before an editing pass), and produced fairly grandiose plans for how my work would go from here on out. I had gotten over the hump, once and for all, I thought. Now that I had discovered and removed whatever had been blocking me from writing I could move on to all those things I had wanted to do but never had the discipline or energy for.

Then December hit and I was write back to square one.

To be fair to myself, there were a lot of mitigating circumstances. We had an unexpected visitor from out of town for a couple of weeks. My full-time job went a little nuts, so most of my willpower and energy was going towards that. The holidays are coming up, and this month is pretty much a blank check to drop any and all discipline that you've built up through the year. The holidays are pretty much an anti-Lent, a non-stop gauntlet of celebrations that you make it through. All of that partying catches up to you on the other side of New Year's, when you're staring down a pretty long stretch of holidaylessness and a laundry list of resolutions you've made and are grimly determined to keep.

I'm going to try to head that off right now. Last year I thought I had the resolution thing cracked -- basically lay out pods of three over-arching goals that could be achieved in six weeks. Then take one week to double back, look over what I had done, see if I could make the habit stick a little better or more easily. Then set three new goals and repeat. That lasted about as long as the other resolutions did. By February or March, all sense of structure to my goal-setting goes out of the window.

This is all a fairly roundabout way of saying that I'm still not very shark-like when it comes to writing. I'll have a strong burst of will and creativity over a fairly contained period and when I've finished with that I'll sit back and praise myself for my progress. By itself there's nothing wrong with the impulse to be satisfied with your work, but if your satisfaction leads you to think that you're 'done', well...that's a problem.

Creative people are never 'finished'. We take breaks, vacations and hiatuses from our work, but we're never done. Even as I write this there are more ideas beating down the barricades of my brain, half-finished short stories are begging to be completed and the few bits that are finished are asking me to make them better, to show them to the world. There's still so much left to do.

Sharks need to keep moving in order to live. If they stop, they suffocate. Stillness is death. Motion is life. For them, it's that simple. For me, it certainly can be. I've stopped to admire what I've done for the past two months long enough. There's very little to show for it, and so much more that needs to be shaped before it's ready for everyone. It's time to get moving. Hopefully for longer, this time.

The Feminine Question

I think one of the worst things you can do as a writer is to write from an inauthentic place. You see this a lot when folks try to go somewhere different with their stories -- say, a comic-book nerd tries to write a protagonist who comes from an urban background. The dialogue often rings false at best, and can descend into outright racism at worst. (Note: this is not a pre-emptive strike against Ultimate Spider-Man. I've got more faith in Bendis than that.)

However, it's really tough as a writer to stretch out if you're forever telling stories with the same kind of protagonist. You don't really get fulfillment just writing about what you know. The drive is there to imagine what it's like on the other side of the fence as it were, to take the life of someone radically different and try to find common ground. Or at least explore the differences. The temptation is there, I know. And I try not to knock someone for at least trying to think outside of their box, even if the results of their artistic exercises tweak me the wrong way at times. After all, there really aren't that many stories being told about people like me -- a gay black Buddhist who really likes his modern fantasies.

It wasn't until I thought about stretching out with one of my own protagonists that I really thought about why. I'm interested in writing a medieval fantasy from the perspective of a post-teen girl (around 19 or 20) because, well, it's a good vehicle for me to explore my ideas about the mythology of the feminine and how they can be applied in the messy reality of the 'real world,' so to speak. We've explored the masculine ideal through superheroes and anti-heroes and fairy tales and all kinds of other things, but...the idea of the feminine, the specific attributes that the female gender role brings to the table, is woefully under-represented. At least from what I've seen.

I don't need to talk much about what a minefield this idea could turn out to be. Just reading the words "feminine ideal" might be enough to cause most of you out there to cringe. It might even be automatically offensive. How would I feel, after all, if some white guy were to write some collegiate bullshit about the "mythology of the black experience"? Add to that the fact that I'm coming to this idea from a place of relative ignorance. I left my mother and sister behind over twelve years ago and fell in immediately with the gay crowd. I'm a gay man, and almost all of my friends are gay men. Regular, frank contact with a woman almost never happens.

That being said, all dialogue has to start somewhere. If a white guy who's lived in the suburbs all of his life wanted to write a story about a black man living in the ghetto, where would he start? Should he even be allowed to try? I almost guarantee you that his first stab at it will feature misconceptions that will lead to subjects that are uncomfortable, even painful, to talk about. It definitely wouldn't be an easy process. But I think it's absolutely necessary to tell a story that even has a whiff of authenticity.

I have a feeling the same goes for me and that same desire to tell a story through a woman's eyes. Not only that, but to have a story where what we've come to think about women features heavily. There's likely to be a lot of things I get wrong. There's probably going to be a view I hold that is just...sexist by its very nature. I'm quite worried that even having the audacity to say "This is the female hero I would like to read" could come across as belittling or trivializing that experience. That worry isn't going to stop me, though. At least not at first. I'll be putting up a few vignettes of stories in the coming days and weeks to see if I can get a handle on my protagonist. Constructive criticism and honest feedback is welcome, of course. As are suggestions.

But honestly, what do you guys think? Is it possible to tell the story of a minority authentically if you're not a part of that group? What's necessary for it to ring as true as it needs to?

What Kind of Writer Do I Want to Be?

This is a question I'm sure most writers don't give a lot of thought to. Most of us just sit down and write what interests us, what we're passionate about, and after enough time and practice a pattern begins to emerge. For most of us, we leave the packaging to someone else and try our best to make writing as organic and nebulous as possible. That is, after all, what gives us the best results.

To be honest, I'm not sure that's going to work out for me. When I read a blog or story I particularly like, my first response is something like "I want to do something like that." And thanks to a wide variety of friends, I'm exposed to all *kinds* of writing. Obviously, I'm not versatile enough to write in every style I want to, so I think it makes sense for me to sit down and think about exactly what I want to be doing with my writing. What do I want to sound like? What's my ultimate goal with this kind of thing?

It's not an easy question to answer, even though I feel like it's something I should be asking of myself. What interests me? Why do I want to talk about these interests with a wide audience? What am I hoping to show people?

I think when it comes right down to it, I'm fascinated by the act of storytelling and what we get out of it -- as a society and as individuals. I think the symbols we use and how they relate to the aspects of ourselves we admire is very, very telling. Most of the time, we don't even realize what we're doing, what we're saying by who we choose to obsess over, tell stories about and connect with. It's that cultural subconscious that's really intriguing to me. I think there's always an undercurrent running through a community that will tell you what it's about if you're able to crack the code. I think, ultimately, what I want to do is talk about that in my stories.

Storytelling, to me, is a worthwhile pursuit because it's such a powerful tool of self-reflection. Our storytellers show us who we are in ways that we would otherwise find incredibly painful. They hypnotize us into seeing the parts of ourselves and our society that we would rather not see. Our stories, at their best, force us to be honest but also enable us to handle that honesty with grace and compassion. If you're able to do it just right, you can take the blinders off of someone's experience with a well-constructed story. You help people to see things exactly as they are -- or exactly as you see them, at least.

Right now I've been focusing on the idea of stories as entertainment, because I think that's what a story needs to do at the very least. No one's going to let your story affect them if they're not entertained by it; so you need to figure out how to package your presentation in a way that's gripping and fun. There's no shame in wanting to write a story just to entertain; in fact, a lot of our 'serious' writers could really stand to remember that lesson. Entertainment, ideally, shouldn't be the only reason for a story's existence, but it's got to be a big reason. If you're going to sermonize or lecture, there are other avenues for that. Ayn Rand may have had an interesting political idea to espouse, but she absolutely sucks at story-telling.

Ultimately I'd love to be the kind of writer who had something to say about the role mythology plays in our lives, in all of its forms. I would love to playfully tweak our fascination with pop culture while at the same time illuminating its purpose and elevating it beyond its admittedly shallow nature and reputation. I would love to explore the alchemical process of mixing truth in with a stew of symbolism, metaphor and misdirection so it can be made palatable. And I would love to entertain while doing it.

So there we go. Now that I've outright said it, I guess I have a direction to point myself in. That direction might completely change once I get some actual practice under my belt. We'll see. I just think this is a talking-out-loud conversation with myself that needed to happen.

The Reading List (May 2011)

I'm coming up on the end of my self-imposed month-long hiatus from all things poetry, so now I'm going to have to start digging through the poetry I wrote for National Poetry Month 2010. In a way I'm kind of dreading it; you know there's a lot of pain in discovering how awful you were even just a year ago. There are a lot of poems that I've written where I just sit back and wonder, "What the hell was I thinking?"

It'll help, of course, to remind myself to be gentle with my work. There's always an idea struggling to get out and even if it was born misshapen and ugly, there's the chance that it could turn out better with the proper shaping.

In the meantime, I've been reading more than I have before. This is intentional, of course. In order to be a better writer, I'm going to have to be a better reader; the two practices go hand in hand. If I don't search out writing that's exciting and engaging to me, how in the world am I going to figure out how to steal...er, imitate it?

Ryan also got me a Kindle for Christmas last year, and I really want to be better about using it. It's meant to make reading easier, and by God it does! I just have to get into the habit of wielding it.

So far I've picked up Storm Front by Jim Brooks, On Writing by Stephen King and Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. There's quite a few others on my list, but I'm trying to work down my list before I start filling the damned thing up with stuff I'll never get to. Hopefully by keeping the book list small I'll have more incentive to read what's there. Right?

Anyway, the Kindle is a really great device. It's ultra-portable, carries quite a lot of books (you can even subscribe to blogs, newspapers and magazines that will automatically update in the background whenever wi-fi is turned on) and best of all is quite easy to read. There's no glare on the screen, the words are crisp and clear, and it's really easy to navigate. If you download the Kindle app across multiple platforms (I have it for PC, iPhone and iPad), then it'll automatically fetch your most recent page and pick up where you left off. Awesome!

Now that the plug is out of the way (I'm waiting for my free book downloads, Amazon), I'll talk a bit about the last book I finished. Storm Front is a pretty neat concept -- a pulp detective novel crossed with modern fantasy. I've been a fan of that cross ever since reading Gun, With Occasional Music several years ago, and Brooks manages the blend a bit more seamlessly than Lethem did.

The plot is fairly basic when you get right down to it. Harry Dresden is hired to investigate the disappearance of a family man who's been dabbling in magic. At the same time, a particularly gruesome magical crime has been committed, and the police call Dresden in to investigate. The governing body of wizards in this world, the White Council, believe that he's up to no good and are just waiting to catch him in the act. It all comes together for a pretty explosive climax, just as you'd expect it to. The big mystery, the thing that drives you along in the novel, is figuring out how.

It's a bit difficult to explain how the novel works from a storyteller's perspective. I'm not used to looking at books from that angle, and I have even less experience talking about them that way. Functionally, it all fits, but there's something about the style of it, the artistry that makes it just a bit lacking. You can tell that Brooks is still getting his feet under him with this stuff, and he's being pretty careful about the positioning of the pieces. The characters all have personality, but you can't help but see the mechanism underneath the artifice, driving them to be in the right (or wrong) places at the right time.

That isn't to say that Storm Front is unenjoyable. It's fun, and the world that Brooks introduces us to is pretty intriguing. A lot of the writing, though, feels intentionally "grabby," with beats and turns of phrase that are only meant to grab our attention. It's like sitting next to someone who's rehearsed the same story hundreds of times so that he's got everything down but figuring out how to make it all sound natural.

In other words, it's pretty good, but you can also tell that it's a first novel. The style is unpolished but competent enough to stay out of the way of the narrative most of the time. I'd expect that everything gels pretty well in future novels, actually, and it's cool to see something that's polished enough to be of publishable quality but still rough enough that you can see how the story was shaped.

So yeah, after this next little bout of reading, I'll be downloading the second in the Dresden series for my Kindle. First though, Stephen King and another rough draft of a novel written by a friend.

At some point, I *really* have to catch up on my comic books...

Allowing Yourself to Suck

I’m writing a lot more than I used to these days, which is a good thing for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I’m getting a lot of practice under my belt, and for another it’s training me to look at storytelling from a more critical, ‘insider’s’ perspective. While enjoying something on an emotional level, I can also take it apart piece by piece, figure out what works and what didn’t, compare and contrast how I would have done something with how it was ultimately presented and learn that way. Learning to write and learning to read like a writer are very interconnected concepts, and it’s rather exciting to feel like I’m getting my legs with what’s essentially a new language.

One of the not so great things about writing more often is facing down the fact that I’m simply not very good at it yet. Most of the time my characterization is poor, my dialogue and description isn’t very efficient, and I’m not yet practiced at juggling a bunch of eggs in a scene. Paragraphs will run from description to internal monologue to action without very smooth transitions, so scenes feel jarring and a bit schizophrenic. It’s a lot harder than it looks to switch gears from function to function in a single scene, so it makes me respect the fact that people can have a scene do multiple things (introducing characters, establishing motivation, reinforcing themes and moods) so effortlessly.

It can be a little disheartening when you share company with people who are so good. I’m lucky enough to be married to a very good writer, and I’ve known quite a few people who seem to have a natural talent for it. Back in Arkansas, so many people just have this innate understanding of how to tell a story, and they make it seem like the easiest thing in the world. I’m not sure if that ability was ingrained in them or what, but now that I’m trying to blaze their trail on my own I see that I have a lot of catching up to do.

And that’s a really difficult thing to accept: the fact that compared to a lot of your peers, you suck. No one wants to have one of their worst fears realized -- that they’re just not very good at something they desperately want to do. It’s a pretty strong blow to your pride and it makes you just want to give up. I know there’s a lot of times where I just want to throw in the towel, to say that it might be better if I just gave up the illusion of being a writer. No matter how good I get, I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never be like *them*.

There are multiple ways out of this trap, but here’s the idea that worked for me. It’s the idea of impermanence. No matter what state you’re in, no matter how firmly entrenched you think you are, every state is passing. I suck now, that’s a fact. But if I keep working at it, if I keep paying attention to my mistakes and working to correct them, then I’ll get better. Eventually, I’ll suck a little less. And a little less still. And then I’ll be OK. One day, if I work hard enough, I might even be pretty good. All it requires is dedication and patience, and the belief that the current state of sucky affairs will not last.

So right now I’m working on three different short stories that aren’t very good. One I’ll likely edit and post online, another I’ll submit to a zine I somehow got let into, and another I’ll try to submit for ‘legitimate’ publication -- though it might not be up to snuff until next year. Sure, none of these stories might not be the best on the web, or in this particular zine issue, or in that anthology, but I’ll have worked hard on them. And I can use the experience to put a little distance between myself and my current suckiness.

This tack might not work for everyone, of course. Sometimes it doesn’t help to have a kind of mantra when you’re feeling down on yourself. “I suck right now, but I will still do the best I can. Later, I won’t be quite so bad -- as long as I work hard now.” Maybe it’s not productive to think, “I suck at writing, so what? I’ll do it anyway.”

Does anyone else have suggestions? What do you tell yourself to push through a time of self-doubt?

National Poetry Month Aftermath

Most years after I write a collection of thirty poems for National Poetry Month, I shut them away in a drawer and I never think of them again. This is pretty unfortunate -- not because you guys will never get to see such great work again or anything, but because I'm effectively robbing myself of much of the creative process. The raw material has been formed, and now it's just waiting for a delicate hand to shape it into something distinct and beautiful.

I won't lie to you, most of the poems I write in the month of April are just stinkers. They're half-formed ideas that I just threw up to meet the deadline, without much thought or car put into them. But who knows, maybe there's a seed in some of those that's been fertilized by all of the crap. And beyond that, there are actual poems that I really liked and, with nurturing, might even be worth submitting to a place or two later on down the road.

Writing poetry -- or anything at all -- isn't really worth the effort it takes if you're not going to see the process through. I have over a hundred poems written over the past four or five years that I've thrown up in various journals and subsequently forgotten about. It's time to dust them off, see what's worth pursuing, and see the projects through to their bitter end.

I still need a little bit of space from this most recent batch of poetry, so starting in June I'll look through the poems I wrote for last year's National Poetry Month and grab the twelve I like most. From there, I'll edit one a week, submit them to peer review, and eventually, start looking for places that might want to publish them. Hopefully by year's end there'll be at least one poem that's been published somewhere. Either online or in print. I'm not picky!

Another thing I've come to realize is that I have little patience for reading poetry. There are a number of factors for this -- a lot of poems written by people who are just starting out use words that are archaic and impressive-sounding for false inflation of their ideas. That is, they're making relative mundane statements and observations, but using lofty language to try and mask the fact. I don't know if it's my age or experience, but it's easy to see through and just immediately makes me want to bail on the work with no further effort.

By contrast, you have poetry from a lot of the 'establishment' that feels impenetrable without a Master's degree in the humanities. That's equally discouraging; I've got nothing against work that makes you think or something you can enjoy on multiple levels, and in fact the work of taking a poem apart is pretty rewarding. But I think too many people make poetry so dense there's no entry into it without specialized knowledge. It's difficult to be a 'casual' poetry fan.

Maybe I'm just reading all of the wrong people, but the result of this is that I'm just not reading poetry at all. And I think that's resulted in a degradation of my work. The areas of the brain that decipher metaphor and other poetic tricks are the same ones in play when you create poetry. And thinking of poetry as a realm of expression for people only interested in emotionally disconnect word-logic puzzles or emo kids with little to say makes your own work suffer. It's absolutely not true, but it's a hard stereotype to shake. When a part-time poet feels that way about his craft, you know the medium is in trouble.

So, what to do? The obvious answer is to read more poetry, put up with the chaff to get to the good stuff. I could brush off my old favorites -- Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, Charles Rafferty -- to remind me that it's possible for poetry to be emotionally rich and complex, yet accessible. Or I could ask the three friends I know who like poetry who they recommend. But maybe I could encourage a bit of discussion here.

So, what do you guys think? What poets would you recommend to reawaken interest in a disillusioned reader? Have any of you ever experienced poetry burn-out before? What did you do to get out of it?

Poem #30: Self-Portrait

He is of a dark complexion with hair that indicates laziness or perhaps avoidance.
There is the makings of a shaped body dominated by a large belly;
he loves food but also loves the idea of discipline.
He has the kind of frame that you hate to see go but you love to watch leave.
Secretly thrilled by his color, his hair, his teeth, his feet,
loves the idea of these as slipped seemings for his inherent nature.
Tries to be subtle about said nature, but fails at it; it's all around him
if you really look. He alternates between pride, sloth and whimsy
which means he'll never be as consistent as he likes
but he'll keep trying; it's his own stone, and he'll roll it up the hill
any damned way he pleases.
Worries that his eyes are too dark, longs to steal the spark he sees in others,
imagines himself as Pollack slashing colors on huge canvasses --
transmitting a wordless reality that will never be understood
because it can't be explained.
Then he realizes what pretentiousness that is and tries anyway.
Embarrassed, he knows other people will always say it better
and that he'll just be a finger pointing at the finger who points at the moon.
Sometimes, he accepts that.
Others...
He loves and is loved.
He is preoccupied with endings because he can never get to them.
And there are a million things he will never get to do.
He sees himself as small when he is not.
He sees himself as poor though he is not.
Once he realizes his potential, he will live up to his responsibility.

Poem #29: Why Running Is Best

Most of the time, it's just terrible.
You're sweating and huffing, you have to control your breathing
and your gait. You must watch out for the people around you.
People never cheer you on; at best they nod and step aside
while looking at your generous belly or the way sweat drips
from your second chin. They never congratulate your effort
to look better; they merely think how much worse you'd look
if you weren't doing that.

But every once in a while, an inhale will force your back straight
and your eyes up, and the colorful world you've ignored for a mile
is right in front of you. There are houses that broke someone's back to make,
a family who lives inside and tends to the roses and poppies.
There are bees brushing pollen on the backs of their legs before they lift
like tiny helicopters, delivering their payload to the next petals, and the next.
There are dogs, babies, cats, toys and sunlight.
There is wind and scent and traffic lights and cars
and there's you, a part of this scene moving through
not perfect, but not bad, with every right to be there.

And when you collapse, soaked and exhausted
on your bed there's the knowledge of tiredness earned,
a sense of accomplishment that won't replace the construction of a good home
but gets you just close enough to believe that you can do anything,
if you just push yourself for one more step.

Poem #28: A Diary of Sins

I've written down the things I'm not proud of
and laid them out for you in a neat little line.
You might think this puts a distance between myself and these acts
but that's not the way I see it:
speaking is quick and thoughtless --
I just make my tongue and lips work in the way I've rehearsed
but writing, writing is a slow thing that demands your attention.
You can't put something to paper without meaning it,
and I've meant all the words you'll find there.
So, if you please, write my absolutions in the second half,
tell me that God's grace is with me and that he still finds me fit.
But choose your words carefully, Father. I'll know if they're thoughtless
and there is nothing worse than committing sins not worthy
of your full attention.

Poem #27: The Enlightened One

It doesn't matter how old he is; he wears his age well.
When he makes tea, he makes tea; when he washes the dishes,
he does so fully.
He has his habits, but he is not burdened by them --
they are merely comfortable clothes that serve their purpose.
There is always the capacity for surprise; he's seen a thing or two,
and his educated guesses are very good, but he realizes
that you can never truly know anything, and he is comfortable with that.
He sees people as people first, everything else second.
He is aware of the reality that whoever speaks to him wants something,
and he is not resentful of this: desire is a natural thing,
even when it drives people to unnatural, destructive behavior.
He is happy to provide what is demanded, as long as it is his to give.
Complication is something he can navigate by cutting through to the simple realities,
though he is aware how everything can be colored and subsumed
by their relationships.
He is appreciative of the smallest things.
The way the sunlight hits the leaves,
the curves of his lover's back,
the timing of tension's release,
the clockwork tick of a good story.
He wakes up the same way he goes to bed,
quietly, simply, with contentment purring in his heart
even through the noise and chaos of the world around him.
He is not perfect by any means,
but he is flawless in his imperfection.

Poem #26: Depths of Mind

To him the world is always colorful
and something must be monochrome to catch his attention.
It's why he loves the old movies with Bogey and Bacall,
lives for those visionaries who make a strong statement in either-ors.
He's tired of living in a world with shades, variations on a figure
that could mean anything depending on its relationship to everything else.
Black is so much deeper than grey.
White is so much more pure than cream.
The older he gets, the more he finds himself dancing around extremes,
mistaking dim bulbs for the sun, playing havoc with his navigation,
losing all sense of perspective for the sake of the simple.
Sometime, once he's grown comfortable, even two options will start to annoy him
and he'll try his best to ignore anything else
but the light he dances around, crashing over and over again,
burning the choice out of smooth, smooth brain.

Poem #25: The Star

When you look up at it, it's hard to imagine it being huge and hot.
From down here it looks so small, so cold and sharp,
just one of a myriad dotting the sky with the faint light it's managed.
You never think about how much energy it's expended
to shine down on you, the distance and time it's taken to be there.
You never think about what it's really like, an enormous fire
raging out there in the void, providing heat and motion to a universe
that would be dead otherwise. It expands and contracts,
breathes and expires -- mindless but alive. And we especially never think
how long ago it really existed, or the fact that the night sky we see
are little more than photographs, a celestial photo album with family members
who may or may not be there now. We see them as they wish to be remembered,
strong and young, in their prime, full of spit, full of fire.

Poems #23 and #24: Catfish/Wearing Bees

Catfish

Father went away every weekend to a place we couldn't follow
and he'd always come back with things I'd never seen before.
One time, it was a dead bird he'd wrapped in his handkerchief
for me to see; I was fascinated by its tiny eyelids, the way the skin
matched its feathers, the scales on its legs.
Sometimes he would bring home a rock or a giant pinecone
and those were interesting enough until I forgot the stories
he'd always given me with them. With the words gone, so was their luster.
My favorite, though, was when he brought home the fish.
Always in the detergent bucket, with water and silt in the bottom,
always cramped, nimble bodies curved around the sides,
wide eyes staring in terror at the air-breathing giants above them.
I never knew how they died, but I would follow them from the yard
to the kitchen, where Mother was ready with her knife.
Her incisions were clean and practiced, right up the belly,
under the cheek, and the smell of them was sweet and watery
just like the candied blood soaked through the newspapers.
From then on, my nose took over --
I smelled everything from the cast-iron skillet,
the onions, the bacon grease and Crisco, the lima beans,
the sugar and flour, cheese, potatoes, the leaves and dirt outside.
Then, the dish, in three sections:
succotash, boiled vegetables, and a brown mass
lightly breaded and vaguely fish-shaped, without its head
but with all of its terror, still but sizzling.
It was the most amazing thing to me, the journey of that catfish
from its magical place to mine, the last it would know.
And it never occurred to me the suffering that went into that simple plate;
the work of my father, of my mother,
the life of everything else.





Wearing Bees

He claimed they did it because he smelled so sweet
but we knew the secret: a tiny cage where the queen
was held captive. Her knights would come first,
trying to draw her out, and then curious onlookers
rubber-necking the scene of the accident.
One bee would leave and dance the story to his friends
and they would come, a massive cloud
dimly aware that something great was happening,
that order had been disrupted, if only for a little bit.
They were content to be a part of it just to be near her,
the only order they needed. This is the love of a serf for his master,
something the old man would never understand.
"See?" he would say, and smile.
I always noticed how they would move away from his teeth.
"My breath is like honey to them."

Poem #22: This is the Way

Hollywood always imagines we'd know about it
because to be honest it's more dramatic that way.
But I like to think that we'd be doing what we've always done --
picking a good wine for the salmon with lemon sauce,
lying on the rooftop with a best friend, looking at the stars,
making love with the lights on so you can see each other.
Then, suddenly,
there's a flash
and a rumble
and then nothing is ever the same again.