Changes...

This has been a big week. I successfully defended my dissertation, participated in the graduation ceremony (and snuck out early), and introduced my family to Chicago and Indiana. My family, of course, was proud of me, but they were a bit disappointed that my new "doctor" status does not enable me to dispense prescriptions. Now, I'm going to enjoy my last week in Indiana, before I travel down to Texas for the summer, and before we move on out to Los Angeles. Lots of changes ahead...

"In Support of Corporate Farms"

I've just discovered that another of my friends, the notorious Cody Lumpkin, has a poem appearing on Verse Daily. Cody, Leslie St. John (see my previous post), and I once shared a hotel room at a literature conference in Louisville. I wonder if this means that I, too, will soon have a poem that appears on Verse Daily. Probably not, since I don't tend to write much poetry. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Cody doing yoga, or I would post that as well.

"In Support of Corporate Farms "

Stalin scythed wheat in Russian Georgia, Mao waddled knee-
deep in a rice paddy field, and Saddam Hussein tended his uncle's
melon patch on the banks of the Euphrates. Mussolini

would be the type of dictator to keep a tomato garden.
I think this might say something about human existence:
what the land makes us do. The disenfranchised Cain giving

the boulder to Abel. Closeness to a speck of ground
only makes us want more. To kill whoever needs to be killed
to get it and to hang them by their fat calloused toes
under the drying sun. Marx had it wrong. The revolution

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Things That Bend

My lovely friend Leslie St. John has published this equally lovely poem, and it appears on VerseDaily today. (Oh, and the picture above, is of Leslie.)

"Things That Bend "
After Dorianne Laux's "What's Broken"

The inch worm in the window sill, curling

In a bank of light. Snow-soaked porch steps,

Old pinewood floors. The neck, the back—
My body bends into another body. Firelight

Bends around his shoulders, a half-moon
Around stars, around the tops of trees.

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