Glacier Grey

My essay "Glacier Grey" now out in the new special creative writing issue of GREEN THEORY & PRAXIS JOURNAL. It's in pdf format, read on screen or print the whole thing if you want! (Not great for phone reading though).

Billy Sheehan: The Greatest Bass Player In The World

My essay "Billy Sheehan: The Greatest Bass Player In The World" now up at ENTROPY:

Passing Influence—poem

This appeared in FENCE way back in 2001. My first 'big' publication in a 'big' literary journal:

 

Passing Influence

                                    for Susan Wheeler

This is the best part, hate which now

brings you the whole head in reality–

the man’s SUV slides down the road.

Dancing on the (I don’t know the word) tile

you look down slowly;

this is exercise or punishment.

For only a few minutes you have reeled in, forgetting to

lose (you forget cacti), and before it was obscure:

the driveway which surrounds this dry desert

is the dawn entrance of rapists. In this life

they catch children at the critical moment

and undress the bodies in the heat.

The real stupidity, you know, is always

                                    paying the asking price.

Then the plane lands, and the man

lights your joint and takes a stone from his briefcase

and leaves a ship of idiocy in the seat.

You are sinking; he has bent your arm, whispering

you are under the boot of a man.

Clumsiness is insect-like, it means punishment.

So you did everything expected, and in your pain

you remembered not to ask whether it was irrational

or only a steady pool on the floor. Loss, fade

distinguish, worms crawling in the dirt,

a maze of arrivals uncrossed like coathangers around which

during pleasant days, voices make mounds of death.

Every night you have locked a door and turned on a lamp

that leaves only the best comfort.

He calls to say he is ready to come. There is

nothing. Now you can’t recognize the abyss

for what it was, now in there, under the dying river,

a goatman is leaving you, nervously straight; promising death.

The ghost of Frank O'Hara—poem

Published in RATTLE back in Winter 2009.
 

The ghost of Frank O’Hara

The ghost of Frank O’Hara taps me on

the shoulder whispering

                                        and what about

the humor what about talks with the sun

and things that happen at the movies out

of sight of parents don’t forget the thirst

of being in Manhattan in the heat

and Coke the drink

                                remember too your first

love passion music though it might not come out

in words it’s there in you but I was sad

and said what good is humor in a poem

when people die Manhattan Fire Island

we

      bought falafels which we thought weren’t bad

and walked to Central Park for space and some

children were laughing and he said ask them

Information Doesn't Want To Be Free by Cory Doctorow

My review of Information Doesn't Want To Be Free by Cory Doctorow, now up at ENTROPY. Click on pic to go: