This Just In: Iraqi Raids are 'Ugly Business'

Daphne's forbidden words in poetry
or
a moment of silence for the word "prolific" (ding)

parallax palimpsest tenebrous ponderous brooding revolution moon carapace osselets auscultation pretension asymptotic lotion cleanse mingus forlorn platitudinal quixotic fuck wheat from chaff undulate third eye

now how to makeapoemouttadem? eye is no poet.

and the colored girls sing doop de doop doop doop de doop doop dooo

"Sometimes, I like writing poems for scientists. You know, at my school there was actually a class named 'Physics for Poets.' I have egocentric dreams of writing stuff for nonexistent class called 'Poetry for Physicists.' "

" 'Fuck' isn't shocking if you use it as a semicolon."

"Whatever happened to poetry? I miss that stuff."

Word. Head feels like amphetamines and wet cotton, chemistry and old letters.

Yet another addition to the Classic Books & Movies lists all over the net:

100 Great 20th Century Works of Fiction by Women via Feminista
Bold text = Read it
Asterisk = Read it over & over

Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings *
Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye *

Beryl Bainbridge, The Bottle Factory Outing
Toni Cade Bambara, Gorilla, My Love
Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
Pat Barker, Regeneration
Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth
A.S. Byatt, Possession

Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
Ana Castillo, So Far From God
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
Ivy Compton-Burnett, Elders and Betters

Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa
Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
Margaret Drabble, The Radiant Way
Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca

Buchi Emecheta, Second Class Citizen
Louise Erdrich, Tracks

Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie's
Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe *
Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry
Marilyn French, The Women's Room

Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
Nadine Gordimer, July's People
Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley
Janet Hobhouse, The Furies
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God *

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Maxine Hong Kingston, Tripmaster Monkey
Joy Kogawa, Obasan

Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird *
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Olivia Manning, The Balkan Trilogy
Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead
Mary McCarthy, The Group
Carson McCullers, Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Terry McMillan, Mama
Isabel Miller, Patience and Sarah
Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
Lorrie Moore, Anagrams
Toni Morrison, Beloved *
Bharati Mukherjee, Wife
Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women
Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head

Joyce Carol Oates, You Must Remember This
Edna O'Brien, House of Splendid Isolation
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find
Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle

Grace Paley, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
Dorothy Parker, Stories *
Jayne Anne Phillips, Black Tickets
Marge Piercy, Braided Lives
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar *
Katharine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
Dawn Powell, The Golden Spur
E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead *
Mary Renault, The King Must Die
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things *

May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing
Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
Anita Shreve, The Weight of Water
Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept
Jane Smiley, The Age of Grief
Susan Sontag, The Volcano Lover
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Christina Stead, The Man Who Loved Children
Gertrude Stein, Three Lives

Elizabeth Taylor, Angel
Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club *
Anne Tyler, If Morning Ever Comes

Jane Urquhart, Away

Alice Walker, The Color Purple *
Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
Eudora Welty, Stories
Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome *
Antonia White, Frost in May
Jeannette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway *

It would appear I have some reading to do.

It is enough to lean against
the fabric of your flesh.
It is enough to lie
in the domestic morning.

It is enough to watch light
expand through windows
rising and falling
between our bodies on this bed,
this room this continent.

We grow wise watching leaky faucets,
faded wallpaper, mismatched socks.
The coffee boiling on the stone
prepares us for the network news,
shopping malls, miracle cures
and tomorrow always sitting on our bed.

But in this rush of years,
we have not lost the pure imagined past,
the here-it-is, the pitch, the pinnacle
of time shining from within a million
summers or the music so intense it disappears.

We invent a lifetime out of small things,
free the air between our fingers,
diagram the star, dream them into
daylight and admit the future
which is here, always here
like a clock that runs forever.

-- Ruth Daigon

John came out to his parents! Hurrah and much love.

In completely unrelated news, Lawrence wins against Texas, 6-3

from the NY Times article:
The Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay sex Thursday, ruling that the law was an unconstitutional violation of privacy.
...
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.

"The court has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda," Scalia wrote for the three. He took the unusual step of reading his dissent from the bench.

"The court has taken sides in the culture war," Scalia said, adding that he has "nothing against homosexuals."
...
As recently as 1960, every state had an anti-sodomy law. In 37 states, the statutes have been repealed by lawmakers or blocked by state courts.

Of the 13 states with sodomy laws, four -- Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri -- prohibit oral and anal sex between same-sex couples. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia.

Thursday's ruling apparently invalidates those laws as well.
...
Texas defended its sodomy law as in keeping with the state's interest in protecting marriage and child-rearing. Homosexual sodomy, the state argued in legal papers, "has nothing to do with marriage or conception or parenthood and it is not on a par with these sacred choices."

The state had urged the court to draw a constitutional line "at the threshold of the marital bedroom."

Although Texas itself did not make the argument, some of the state's supporters told the justices in friend-of-the-court filings that invalidating sodomy laws could take the court down the path of allowing same-sex marriage.

The case is Lawrence v. Texas, 02-102.

Z is a zonnet or fairy
that goes about dressed rather airy
It frequents shady bowers
Loves ripe fruit and sweet flowers
(Cotsen)

I have tiptoed down shady paths and peeked under sunlit bowers

but all I found was an oak-tree elf.

x

If you can think of a reason why I should not do this, email me quickly. Ye gods.

Devoted professional couple with two extraordinary children (a seven-year-old and a four-year-old) seeks two highly intelligent, amiable, responsible individuals to serve as part-time, live-in personal assistants, helping with child care, educational enrichment, and certain other activities, at various times during evenings and weekends. Each assistant will have a private room (on a different floor from the family's residence), with private bathroom and kitchen, in a luxury, doorman apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and will be free to entertain visitors in privacy.

Assistant will be "on call" for 34.25 hours each week, but will actually work on average only 16 to 20 hours, leaving the balance of the "on call" period free for personal activities or relaxation in his or her own room. We would welcome applications from students, writers, musicians, artists, or other candidates who may be pursuing other professional goals in the balance of their time.

Compensation will be at the rate of $19 per hour actually worked (on a pre-tax, fully legal basis); payment will be guaranteed for a minimum of 17.125 hours per week ($325.38/wk), with extra compensation (at the same hourly rate) paid for any work beyond this minimum. Three weeks of paid vacation will be provided per year, no charge will be made for rent, and health insurance will be provided. These are year-round positions for which we would ask a minimum two-year commitment.

If interested, please email resume.

[Edit: a friend responds, "Within three weeks, you will find a plausible reason to want to kill your employers." Good point. My mother said the same thing. Would I really want to be on call for two years? I think if ever I want to take care of children, I'll have a few myself. Alas, the high pay & free rent are not to be.]

{when everyone had been addressed but}

the women in my head
are growing restless, pulling at the crime scenes of their bodies,
wrestling with the police line tape that binds them together like
memory or genetics. i stick my fingers in my mouth and blow, a whistle
so loud it is heard on pages five continents away. their searchlight eyes
widen as i tell them: ladies, i have had enough. today, we’re going to
do it differently. i’ll tell you what. grab a beer from the fridge. turn on
the radio too loud, open the window and dance. inflate the body bags
into balloons and set them free into the sky. put on a party hat.
remember how to laugh until your throat hurts. tell me a story that
ends “and they lived happily ever after” because this is your poem and
it’s a party and nothing bad will happen to you here. when everything
else has fallen apart, this will still stand; this is your memorial, your
sanctuary, your legacy. come on in.
         stay forever.
                 welcome.

-- Daphne Gottlieb, from "Sanctuary"

Home and Away

[paper for now]

For All You Know

I could call myself Lilith,
or Edith or Ed. I would not change
the way I look to you. You know me
too well. You know me not at all.

I've stories to tell you: my religion,
for instance, I've spoken to God
but he was a flock of crows, and who
would believe it? I have an aunt
who murdered her husband in bed,
drew a target in lipstick, then
punctured the bull's-eye with methodical
whimsy. My mother gave birth
to a blue doll struck dumb
from the start. I've seen whales
leaping, rattlers give up the ghost.

For all you know, I've given up
writing lies that could suck you
into orgasms of small mercies.

For all you know,
I could be simple,
cook a fine meal,
hike without sweating,
carve Christ figures in secret.
For all you know,
I could let you cry in front of me.
I wouldn't say a word
and say everything.

-- Lorna Dee Cervantes

timing

After we made love we went out
for dinner. I tried not to eat
my linguine faster than her. I
figured that if we couldn't have
a simultaneous orgasm we could
at least finish eating at the same time.

-- Hal Sirowitz

*
Watch for low branches while you're moving the earth
out from under. fresh air
is best above the trees (come out
the moon misses you) and who knows?
maybe we only have this by the ocean.
*

"It takes brains not to make money," Colonel Cargill wrote in one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over General Peckem's signature. "Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money."

"T. S. Eliot," ex-P. F. C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and slammed down the telephone without identifying himself.

Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.

"Who was it?" asked General Peckem.

"I don't know," Colonel Cargill replied.

"What did he want?" "I don't know."

"Well, what did he say?"

" 'T. S. Eliot'," Colonel Cargill informed him.

"What's that?"

"'T. S. Eliot'," Colonel Cargill repeated.

"Just 'T. S. -"'

"Yes, sir. That's all he said. Just 'T. S. Eliot'."

"I wonder what it means," General Peckem reflected. Colonel Cargill wondered, too. "T. S. Eliot," General Peckem mused.

"T. S. Eliot," Colonel Cargill echoed with the same funereal puzzlement.

General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes gleamed maliciously. "Have someone get me General Dreedle," he requested Colonel Cargill. "Don't let him know who's calling." Colonel Cargill handed him the phone.

"T. S. Eliot," General Peckem said, and hung up.

"Who was it?" asked Colonel Moodus. General Dreedle, in Corsica, did not reply. Colonel Moodus was General Dreedle's son-in- law, and General Dreedle, at the insistence of his wife and against his own better judgment, had taken him into the military business. General Dreedle gazed at Colonel Moodus with level hatred. He detested the very sight of his son-in-law, who was his aide and therefore in constant attendance upon him. He had opposed his daughter's marriage to Colonel Moodus because he disliked attending weddings. Wearing a menacing and pre-occupied scowl, General Dreedle moved to the full-length mirror in his office and stared at his stocky reflection. He had a grizzled, broad-browed head with iron-grey tufts over his eyes and a blunt and belligerent jaw. He brooded in ponderous speculation over the cryptic message he had just received. Slowly his face softened with an idea, and he curled his lips with wicked
pleasure.

"Get Peckem," he told Colonel Moodus. "Don't let the bastard know who's calling."

"Who was it?" asked Colonel Cargill, back in Rome.

"That same person," General Peckem replied with a definite trace of alarm. "Now he's after me."

"What did he want?"

"I don't know."

"What did he say?"

"The same thing."

"'T.S.Eliot'?"

"Yes, 'T.S.Eliot'.? That's all he said." General Peckem had a hopeful thought. "Perhaps it's a new code or something, like the colors of the day. Why don't you have someone check with Communications and see if it's a new code or something or the colors of the day?" Communications answered that T. S. Eliot was not a new code or the colors of the day.

Colonel Cargill had the next idea. "Maybe I ought to phone Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and see if they know anything about it. They have a clerk up there named Wintergreen I'm pretty close to. He's the one who tipped me off that our prose was too prolix."

Ex-P. F. C. Wintergreen told Cargill that there was no record at Tweny-seventh Air Force Headquarters of a T. S. Eliot.

-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

i'd like to break his skull like a fucking piñata, read his thoughts one by one.

x

dare you
to take me on
I dare you

the vicarious various. the inevitable-evitable.

I wanted the everyday reassurance of being mutilated. The way a crippled deformed birth-defected disfigured girl can drive her car with the windows open and not care how the wind makes her hair look, that's the kind of freedom i was after. -- Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil. --Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense. -- Henry Miller

thou shalt not complain about
anything I might have to fix

It's always embarassing when some woman
rolls up her blouse sleeve to show you a bruise
not sexy even, just colored like a charcoal
sunset, the fingerprints of pain.

We have been trained to ignore the cries
through the motel wall. After all, maybe
he's paying for it. Some women like
to be hurt. You know how cats sound then.

It is as if she stripped in the committee room,
so awkward, so tiresome, her trouble
scattered around the room like used
underwear, not bustiers but nylon slips.

It's comfortable here in my office,
the corner office finally. It's cosy
on my twenty-fourth floor with balcony,
here in the compound with a guard at the gate.

You weep into my telephone, leaving
desperate messages on my answering machine.
You write me long handwritten notes
I throw into the paper shredder.

You buttonhole me in the hallway,
stand beside my table while I consume
my brioche, march outside with signs.
I step into your hard luck on the street.

Don't you understand your pain bores
me? I am all for free expression
except for those who whine,
who weep, who moan, who scream.

I will listen gladly to any complaint
I share; I will sign on for any charity
I don't have to smell. I only object
to demanding     change     from me.

-- Marge Piercy

x

Iris

Iris is writing a poem while I read the paper at her apartment.
she blows a cigarette ash right into her shoe.
it doesn't seem to bother her.

I read the peom later and it doesn't make much sense.
then again, nethier does she.
it's Sunday and I'm at her place again.

she plays Strauss and techno on the stereo
as people drop in on her all day long.
it's just that kind of place.
friends stop in and stay for dinner.
her roommate is dying but we don't talk about it.

(she's the one who fixes me when I'm falling apart-
stitches me back together with nicotine and tea)

she's the kind of girl that can make a dress
out of a garbage bag.
she always somehow looks better than I ever will.
there's a lot of drag queen in her.

I lend her books and give her CDs.
we borrow pens and money from eachother's bags.
we're beyond the permission phase.

she's not dating anyone now.
she gets cushes on guys and girls but nothing happens.

she travels to places I've only seen in magazines.
she's got friends with no last names.
you can't take a bad picture of her.
she falls out of bed and somehow looks glamorous.
I paint her toenails backstage before a show.
she's so pretty when she smiles.

we can finish each other's sentences.
she laughs a lot.

there's something wrong with her
but she won't say what it is.

she's the only friend who hasn't turned on me yet.
but she will.
they always do.

-- Nicole Blackman

                    and the process of beginning again is
always so difficult. and yet we do it, because we
are reader. so we must.

                               Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.

x

We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch. In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

-- A.S., from What the Dead Know