Re: The Penultimate Post

Katie Moulton,

I don't know a lot about doing readings, having never done one myself. However, I do know one really important thing about this reading in particular: You'll be just fine.

You've got material. Even if you revert back to some tried-and-true lines from your days of Gasson Hall glory, so what? And hey, slip in a few new lines and see what happens.

Tell your anxiety to shut its filthy mouth and ask your gut a few questions. Is this poem ready? If yes, ask it where it thinks the poem should go. If it says second-to-last, don't ask it why (or even lecture it on expanding its vocabulary with "penultimate"). Just trust it. And if it gurgles in response, that's still the anxiety talking. Take a Tums and try again.

And the bio is just a nano about yourself. If you were a nano, what would you be?

Writer Power,
Tom

About the Author:
"Tom Forsythe, born in a land of deer hunters and pregnant teenagers, has since escaped to Boston where he writes and does 50 pushups each day. Embarrassingly, he has no upper body strength and consistently lies about his ability to do push-ups."

Performance Anxiety

I just got asked to fill in at a reading tomorrow night put on by the lit journal River Styx. It's my first time reading in St. Louis, which now seems very, very far from dear old French Press, Gasson Hall, and Brookline Booksmith. ...and I may be freaking out. Just a little.

I have ten minutes, and now, suddenly, it seems, no material.

How do you decide when your work is ready to be read to an audience, if ever at all? How do you order them? How do you write a two-sentence bio, including one sentence which reveals some tragic or embarrassing element of your nature? (Seriously.)

Please help. S.O.S. (Save Our Sonnets?)

Ok, so it's not Poetry...

I just got a piece in my first paying publication, and wanted to share:
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/

(Yay!)

The Quick and the Read

Today, for only the third time in my life, I received a submission response within 24 hours of initially sending my work. It was a rejection, so I'm batting .333 on short turnarounds at present, but I'm not bitter. Instead, I remain in awe of the efficiency and pizzazz of these quickdraw editors. Therefore, in honor of speedy reads, I hereby declare a showdown. I challenge all of us to complete a short-short story (let's say 500 words or less) by no later than this time a week from today (okay okay, we'll say by high-noon on Tuesday for good measure). Bring your six-shooters and your spurs.

Hell Week

An example: my car has broken down every day for four days. And that, friends, is one of the better things that has happened to me this week.

I too had photos to share, but needless to say, the powers that be wouldn't let them upload, no. While thwarting my attempt, the powers that be also erased them and the hundred or so other pictures stored on my camera and noplace else. To me, they are now the powers that be-otch.

I've been thinking about my very-recent writing under the term Living Expenses. I will now spew some barely-formed poetry into the blogabyss.

What kind of karma do you think that will warrant?

Shelter

If we are always in danger
Of being No one, No where,
Then why are our Selves so
Inescapable, like waves spiking the lifeboat,
Towered and internal as nausea,
While we cling to the closest huddled body:
A pink face in a yellow slicker, a finger curling for ours,
Our finger providing the placehold in space
For a Some one who might be Any one, but is
Beside us, for now.



Service

This is what I am talking around.
The pile of speckled ice and the plastic cup
Around it. Another example: the stewardess’
Hand on the lip of aluminum, and yours
On the other end. How her eyes don’t
See yours, how you notice.
Though you keep the window shade
Pulled open, its oval slot of light
Her eyes stay wide
Buttons unbuttoned down her front jacket panel,
While you have always found it hard
Not to blink in others’ faces.
Look again, look harder
When she sweeps the aisle soundless
In recycled air, and just so,
Just so, reproach yourself
With remembering how she harkened
To every ding of every blue vinyl-back seat. For two hours
She is your mother overhead
And don’t you think she gave you all
She could? After all
Ginger ale
is fine, please,
Thank you.



Misplaced Rib

I handle the baby like I’ve caught him
mid-fall. Fingers spread like
a glove, careful with his right
half-shoulder, the tiny red patch
where they told the mother
she’d broken his collarbone.
Careful not to touch, to protect
without touch, to circle the memory of
Your deep-creviced shoulder
blades, fingerholds
in the wooden fence.
He’s lived through four days now.

My palm cradles his skull,
soft as old peaches you’d
toss for impromptu batting practice:
a branch, your gathered hands,
juice streaming over the backfence.
I held your head this way
and tried to feel us growing,
that first April, in borrowed beds.
Fingers mapped the pitch of bone,
walked the chalk lines inch by inch,
traced curves through your dusting
of hair, tried to feel where I’d fit.
I was new. And then

I was new again.

The baby’s not mine
until I hold him, then
I’m ready to steal
anything he cries for
over the wall, through the stand
of pine to the opened-up ground
where I hear they play ball now,
and his little up-down chest
cleaves into mine. There between us
is your breath falling and your breath
rising, your pleated canyon,
your misplaced rib
(did you give it to me? did I lose it for us?)
and baby, the sun is shining
on all the scars we were born with.

My writing Desk. Bother.

Greetings, Attic Office.

I've tried countless times to upload a video tour of my writing desk. Those attempts being fruitless, I thought to myself, "Hey dummy--this blog exists primarily for writing, does it not? And this desk is also, potentially, designed to be written on, yes? So, why not write a poem, or some such thing, about my writing desk?" I bet you all wish you'd thought of it. But you didn't. Or maybe you did, and were too lazy; or maybe you actually wrote a piece, but determined that it was mediocre and, in defiance of Kim's impetus to share everything, kept it yourself; or maybe you simply decided that such self-indulgent behavior was frivolous and not worth anyone's time. Well, the first describes my delay; the second, a road (evidently) not taken; and the third--well, that one never occurred to me in the slightest. So, here it is.

The Desk: An Arrangement of Wood and Metal, or the Crux of All Man's Creative Endeavors? (Probably Somewhere in the Middle.)

This room--this one, right here--

Used to be wallpapered

In typical juvenile fashion

Germane to a time of fluff

And the deeply unsettling knowledge

That there is something wrong

First with pink and blue toy soldiers

Expressions: vacant

Mouths: nonexistent

Then with athletes and non-sequiturs

(RUN! STRIKE! HIT!)

Outlines: Indistinct

Logos: Unfamiliar

But how rude of me

The desk is what concerns us

I guess the afore(was)mentioned

Because that's how things used to be

But not how they are

No NOW

The walls are khaki

The comforter: also

And the desk: black as two coats

of semigloss can get

Except where daylight comes through

On chipped corners, worn edges

The things that call it home

(Now this is where it gets mundane 

But also enlightening

That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all)

Are as follows

An unpredicated list

Of objects collected and acquired

(That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all)

A cork board

(Well it isn't made of cork

But you get my meaning)

Supporting a framed facsimile

The good ol' family crest, Ryan

The silvery disembodied heads

Of three griffins

Malo mori quam foedari

A motto suited

For my pelt-clad ancestors

Though more of a novelty to me

A calendar, free

In some anonymous issue

Of a not-quite-girlie mag

Some hardworking latina miss

Or maybe just pretty

In elaborate stilettos

I'm not sure how she's helping here

(But hey, want is want, m'I right?)

And, obeying gravity

The device on which I "write"

A tool of versatility

Both in use and in cause

Of headache

An IKEA lamp

Adjustable angle and brightness

A necessary evil

Or perhaps just inescapable

And, ah, the cup of pens

With a souvenir letter opener

From Toledo, where Spaniards once went

For all their decapitating needs

And pencils, let's not forget them

After all, there was a time

When we were encouraged

To say what we felt

Until we said what we meant

(That's what I hear this poetry bunk

Is about, after all

[Hey, it works here too])

To our right, a stack of yearbooks

Taking care of nostalgia and regret

Seventh grade timid and pencil-necked

Eighth grade bolder

Though with even less fashion sense

Ninth's an odd one

Snapped hastily in front of a white wall

And apparently none too excited

(But I won't bore you

Suffice it to say

I grow handsomer and handsomer)

There are other books, too:

Man's Search For Meaning

Outdated travel guides

Novels by Vonnegut and some guy

Who went to Princeton

And here's one I don't recognize

101 Best Cover Letters

A pinch, a prod

From my mother

Who wants the best for me

But is still lousy at subtlety

There's stuff in the drawers, too--

But that's another poem, people

Did I mention my desk talks?

If not I should have

He says and I quote

In an acidic baritone

(Perhaps unbefitting its appearance

But what do I know about that)

"My name is Colin's workspace, desk of desks!

Look on my hard, flat surface, and despair!"

He's not very original, you see

With any luck

I can help him with that

Though you'll forgive me

For being skeptical

-Colin Ryan

Going to Bed and Writing: No Longer Mutually Exclusive

My desk is actually a bed, with a deceptively desk-looking table next to it. That sentence, much like spinning quickly in a circle, makes me dizzy. My bed is red, unmade and has lots of stripes. This is key to the writing process. As is my backpack, which somehow found its way beneath a pillow, since my notebook lives inside.

My deceptively desk-looking table holds my computer, where I type things I have written in my notebook. Having two monitors is the opposite of stripes with regards to their usefulness to the writing process. They allow me to do many things at once to distract myself from my Word document. Though, I could make a fortune in monitor real estate. Anyone looking for a few extra square inches? Or perhaps a monitor timeshare?

Having spent so much time in previous apartments writing in closets, bathtubs, behind couches, etc., I also have an actual writing desk. It lives behind the camera and is not included here because it is entirely barren and I've not written at it once. It feels too conventional. And not the good kind of convention where they give you yogurt parfaits and keychains/letter openers/polo shirts sporting various corporate logos. There is no swag provided for being normal.

I know this is all mind-blowing information. But, please, don't take notes. You can come back and read this post whenever you want. Over and over and over again, I expect.

Where do you write?