--YOU RECOVER QUICKLY


…I started reading Erica Wright’s poetry collection, “Instructions for Killing the Jackal.”
I started reading it in the bath tub.
I nearly drown reading it.
Holy hell is she good.
I wish I had some of her skills.
I think she’s a teacher. Maybe I should move to where she lives, attend her classes that she teaches, and try to learn some skills of my own.
Here is a sample, from “Misbegotten”:

“I’ll hold you if you must rest in me.
What prize I’ve won. What ilk. For hooking necks
of bottle with rings—plastic, dirty, bent.
carnivals stroke the young and the lived-in
couched in country witched with miscarriage.
Doorsteps become you. Silence. Bruises.
Fear I’ll let you linger, pathway-bound and blue
like stillborns. These become you.”

See what I mean?
Do yourself a favor and buy Erica’s book. It’s only $14.

…It’s my dad’s birthday on the 27th.
I went to the store to get him a card. I hate buying cards because they’re all so cheesy. Usually I just get one with an arty photo on the cover and nothing inside and then I write my own soliloquy.
But I think my dad likes sappy cards and on one’s birthday one should more or less get what one desires, right?
At the store I went to they are big on selling greeting cards. They had The Great Wall of China filled with them.
And they were all very organized, too, with helpful title slides.
What was weird was they didn’t have a single title slide that said, “Happy Birthday for Dad.”
They had them that said, “Happy Birthday for Mom.”
Happy birthday for religious Mom”
“Happy birthday for funny Mom. Romantic Mom. Religious Grandma. Granddaughter. Sister. Sister in-law. Niece. You niece. Aunt. Friend. One Year Old. Two Year Old. Three Year Old… 16 Year Old.”
But none for Dad. I found that peculiar. Being a father myself, I was also a little perturbed.
And there you have my rant for the day.

…Otherwise, I like these things:

-"I think you do your best when you're doing it for someone else. Think of when you're first in love, what power that gives you. You're like superman--because you're doing it for someone else."
-"There's a real wisdom to not saying a thing." Willem Dafoe

-"He has outsoared the shadow of our night." John Domini

-"But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live." Steve Almond