Newtown

In this land of 300 million guns,
logic is a defenseless child. 

I love my country, 
I hate its paranoia 

Where they trade on our apathy
to stockpile their crazy. 

The cost of their "freedom?” 
The lives of the innocents. 

A well regulated militia--
well, Obama is a socialist. 

“I hunt.” 
'Nuff said. (Hunters are such sacred cows?)  

Self-defense?  
Man up. Statistics say otherwise. 

Guns for teachers! Guns for everyone!
Are you fucking kidding me?

Ignore this futile exercise. 
Every word since Friday comes out like shrapnel. 

And still, we bleed. 

--

These links have offered me much insight, if little solace, in the days following the Newtown massacre: 

So You Think You Know the Second Amendment? 
Guns Have Never Saved Us

Gun Deaths Vs. Gun Ownership by Country
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence 

Statistics on U.S. Gun Violence

Connecticut's Rules For Purchasing This Gun

Portrait of Eleanor Holding a Shell

(Eleanor Holding A Shell, by Frank Weston Benson)

Eleanor, 

how his sunlight adores you

Transforming your frock 

into waves and white horses

Igniting your hair 

with King Neptune’s touch.  

Yet how like Hamlet to me

you are with your token!    

Your youth arrested 

by the pearl of a whisper 

A crossroads suggested

in the purse of those lips 

Grave before beauty        

and the silence within.  

Whereupon the gulls cried out 

or your feet got drenched

The conch slips free

and Eleanor—I hear your laughter

As your father pauses 

to mix ochre and ivory 

and you take his light, 

running.  

Gut check: Reviews

(Self portrait in a letter, André Breton)

Here are some thoughts on reader reviews:

1. You are nowhere as good as your best review, especially if said review was written by a friend. (Thank you, friends.) 

2. Likewise, you are not the sum total of your most negative review. Or, rather, the thing about your writing that person hated could very well be the thing the next person savors. 

Which leads me to...

3. Writing is subjective. 

4. Reading is subjective.

5. Writing and reading are subjective. 

6. Resist the temptation to respond to your reviewers, even if you really, really want to.  

7. This one's tough: try to absorb the constructive parts of the bad reviews, especially if they consistently reinforce your own worst suspicions about your writing.  

8. By the next morning, say "Fuck 'em." Prove it. Stop refreshing your Amazon page every hour. You're not a lab rat. Earn back some self-respect. 

9. Start over. Write. Do it because you love it. Do it because you must. Write for selfish reasons, because in my very possibly worthless opinion selfish writing gives way to honest, universal writing. Stop short of self-indulgence, though. 

10. Be grateful for the ego check. Be thankful you have readers at all. Remember when publication was once a distant dream. Count the stretch marks of your progress. Treasure them all. 

Stand tall. Climb the next hill. 

Tumble to the bottom. Repeat if desired. 

It's better with the blindfold off. 

Plum Blossoms in Paris: Free eBook

Just a heads-up: the eBook version of Plum Blossoms in Paris is free on the Kindle, Nook, and iBooks, now through November 30th. 

Thanks to my publisher, Medallion Press, for running this promotion. I'm curious to see what the results will be!  

Lascaux Flash

Photo by Catherine Vibert

There's an exciting flash fiction contest happening right now I wanted to tell you about. Using the photo prompt above, submit a piece of fiction (250 words or less) by midnight, September 22 for the chance to win the grand prize: $250, a virtual medal and publication in The Lascaux Review. Instructions for entering are here. 

I submitted a guest entry--titled "Orange Juice"--which can be found here. 

My thanks to Stephen Parrish and Wendy Russ for running such a quality contest and literary review. Good luck to all the participants!  

Autumn Rhythm

(Autumn Rhythm No. 30 by Jackson Pollock)

Again, September 

where the leaves begin their long surrender

and I hold fast to every before and after. 

Above me, a cacophony of geese, recycling their

rites of spring, fashion themselves into a lopsided 

victory sign, sticking their faith in the future's eye, 

and I salute them, metaphorically at least. 

Remember when poetry was something that happened to you, 

when it pierced you through and through and through? 

When it kissed your knees and encased you in light? 

An apple of Newton’s, God’s own Eureka! 

Of course you do, and I’m happy— 

so pitifully glad to be a part of the mad, happy dance—

yet there’s something to words that makes one a surgeon, 

prone to the dissection and rearranging of miracles. 

So that even as sunshine slides down my sleeve

and empties my pocket of gold and debris, 

a part of the self hangs back, detached,

making of the present a more beautiful past. 

“It was different back then,” 

but the difference is in the remembering,

as we stuck each moment like buddhas on pogo sticks, 

so Zen we thought eternity could be numbered in 

the days before Christmas.

Players on an infant stage, not knowing such

scenes would grow heavier with replay,

we ignored the warning in our grandparents' examples

—bodies bird-light, faces sharpened into arrows—

backs bowed over with layers of sediment.    

  

Is it possible the phoenix looks to us for inspiration?    

We are the only backward-looking, forward-driven creatures of nature

and autumn is our renewable feast, a creaky time machine set on ache 

one more chance for the leaves to scatter  

so we might leap backward and fore, transitioning

forever, into our piles of lukewarm nostalgia, waiting to 

see where the colors will land so we may jump 

again 

Deleted (WTW)

Pulled for submission

Although the subject of the poem is a little

macabre, it was inspired by a moment of perfect

solitude on the lake dock above. I happened to look at 

the plank of wood I was leaning against, when I saw 

my name inscribed there. Sort of hard to see

in the picture, but it made me smile. 

Ark

(Pine Trees painting taken from here)

I’ve been finding it difficult

lately to have much faith

in the things I once

took to define me. 

Like writing, for instance,

that need to impress

on the world

what I make of it.  

Why bother,

the mind asks, 

(not unreasonably, I think)

when it’s been said often enough 

and better-- 

Why contribute to the 

overcrowded amphitheater? 

I don’t know.

Maybe this lack of ambition is

merely depression’s indifferent 

cousin or a bug I can’t shake or 

maybe it has something to do 

with the wintery landscapes

I keep plumbing in my sleep,

brushing the snow from

my head and my shoulders

before I am fully awake. 

(This is not true.)

No, the mind is not

complacent; it apprehends 

and grasps; it has learned things 

along the way, in spite 

of itself.  

Logic holds that we must be the

craftsmen to our artists’ dreams

or the hunger will die

and days’ll pile up like 

existential episodes on the DVR. 

So everyone is invested in some-

thing, even if it’s just the notion  

of a personal narrative.

Everyone picks a religion. 

And so I reach for you.

Paul, 

when we are locked to-

gether inside our mortal

storm, like a boat unto

water or--wait, no

like just 

you and me

--bodies free of

any editorial eye

You looking 

into me 

Me looking 

into you

That is honest.

That is end and epiphany. 

And so I say: 

I may never write again. 

And so you reply,

Sarah. There is snow in your hair. 

The Feasts of Lesser Men

For a limited time, Independent Publisher gold medal winner Stephen Parrish is giving away his novel for free on the Kindle. I had the great pleasure of being an early reader of The Feasts of Lesser Men. Here is my Amazon review: 

Stationed in Germany during the final days of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, Jimmy Fisher is a Private First Class with the US Army charged with safekeeping his country's top-secret operational plans.

He's also a first-rate scoundrel with a fondness for buried corpses (and their gold fillings), pissing off officers (and sleeping with their daughters), and his favorite neighborhood whore, Melina.

What Fisher lacks in ethics and honor, however, he makes up for in daring and in a sincere, if reluctant, loyalty to his bumbling partner-in-crime, Chuck Cybulski. Soon these qualities are turned against him: Fisher is forced to turn spy. As the web of intrigue infiltrates the dark German forest surrounding him and extends its threads into a beatific French countryside, the question of whom Jimmy is betraying becomes ever murkier and more entangled. Can any one country--or any person--really be trusted?

Stephen Parrish is a deft writer and a keen observer of human nature, with a brilliant mastery of detail and verisimilitude. In this book he utilizes all the tools in his arsenal, every color in his palette. It's difficult to make the reader root for a character as nakedly opportunistic as Fisher, but he pulls it off with bold strokes, dark humor, and a bracing authenticity. As a reader, he took me out of my comfort zone and plunged me into a world of shadows and misanthropes, arrested by moments of understated, if exquisite, tenderness and beauty. Jimmy Fisher is not a man built for love; he's not a man who cares a fig about redemption unless it comes on the other end of a wink and a payoff. Parrish gives him a taste of both. Not until the final, shocking scene will the reader decide how much, or how little, Jimmy Fisher has changed, as the snow begins to drop and the curtain falls.

You don't need a Kindle to read the book. Just download a free reading app tailored to your specific needs. Or email Steve within this free five-day period and be sent a pdf file. 

Trust me. The book is worth it.   

Sea Legs

She thought she was sick. 

She was sick. 

Or maybe not.

Maybe, maybe not. 

Lord, what a bore she’d become. 

The symptoms were holes around a moving target. Did thinking about fatigue make one tired? Was the bloating as bad as she thought or a natural phenomenon magnified by the distorted lens of her perception? That bit of queasiness: it didn’t qualify as nausea. No. A few pounds lost--thanks, stress! The irregular periods, the disturbing dreams and emotional instability? Fuck you, stress.  

They’d found something in her blood work. Finally--a something. The doctor gave her some medicine, a cure. 

“That should put your mind at ease.”

She’d laughed apologetically. “I’m such a head case.”  

Why apologetically?  

Leaving the doctor’s office, Woody Allen’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters dogged her thoughts. Woody, the quintessentially neurotic hypochondriac. God, what a joke. 

Her steps slowed near the car. Of course, they’d found something in Woody, too, hadn’t they? It had turned out to be a nothing much, but it was enough of a something to vindicate the second look. 

So why did she feel so goddamn ashamed? So queasy with self-loathing?  

Why, coming home again, was she still dissatisfied? 

She set the prescription bottle on the counter, grabbed her laptop and started another Google search. A spider dangled from the painting of crocuses she’d started two months ago, swaying a little in the breeze. When it touched the floor, the dog licked it up and spat it back out. It scurried off. 

She wondered if she wasn’t crazy and looked out the window. 

Lord, it was spring.