Two poems in Red River Review

Honk-honk! This little duckie has two poems up in the May 2006 issue of Red River Review.

• On Her Cheeks
• The 35th Secret Love Poem

The current issue features wonderful work from many familiar names: Nathan A. Baker, Christopher Corbett, Deborah Dana, Sari Grandstaff, Garth Hill, Corey Mesler, JB Mulligan, Martin A. Ramos, Anastasia Selby, Scot Siegel, Barbara Ann Smith, Laura L. Snyder, Sarah Wagner, Kirby Wright and Ng Yi-Sheng.

   Submission date: 31 March 2006
   Acceptance date: 26 May 2006

Recent rejections:

Received my 2nd rejection from Acumen:

   Submission mailed: 22 May 2006
   E-mail reply: 25 May 2006
   Thoughts: Sigh. Still hitting water. Based on the guidelines, if the editor keeps the poems for more than a week or month, it means you've hit part of her battleship. No such luck yet.

Also received my 2nd rejection from 10th Muse:

   Submission date: 26 May 2006
   Reply date: 26 May 2006
   Thoughts: No luck with this one either. But, damn, is the editor fast. He gets my kudos just for this.

Survived day 15 in 30:30:

Yay! I've uncorked a bottle (not mine) and drank halfway to celebrate. Another 15 more to go....

Poems list:

12. soccer
       (from An Encyclopedic Guide to Counteracting Bad Luck)
13. 'I'll be gone before you find this'
14. For Six Whole Years I Only Saw Bits of Seinfeld
15. It hadn't always been like this

With the driving lessons going three times week, I've thought of giving up. Wanted to give up, actually. But my conscience made these funny, obscene gestures at me and I relented. [from afar, looks like Michi, especially the hair]

Haven't touched a computer game for two weeks now and the few times I get the urge I don't even know what to play anymore. How depressing.

Bestish prose poetry ever:

Thought I'd share my discovery of Michael Brooks Cryer's poems in the autumn 2002 issue of Spork. Hee. Have been going through their archives with wild glee.

Here's an excerpt from Lessons Before Traveling. His poems are found here:

Alexander the Great always took his pens and pencils wherever he traveled, mostly because he wanted people to think he was writing things down, but in reality he just liked the way they looked behind his ears. Different from the yellow pencils we now know, his were black like thick lead rods, and his pens, although very similar to 20th century pens, were never used for writing. Even though some speculate that Alexander enjoyed his pencils in his right ear and his pens on his left because of an early reading disability, no one knows why the boy never quite felt comfortable fashioning both at the same time. Specialists have even falsely compared Emily Dickinson to Alexander because of her pens and pencils. Emily did in fact wear pencils—the number depending on her mood—twisted into her wiry hair as she wrote. But not Alexander....

Isn't that wonderfully ticklish?!! This guy outweirds even Michi. I'd bet my favorite sneakers on it.

Recent musical discovery:
(yeah, aside from discovering that Neil Young and Bob Dylan are still alive)

K.D. Lang's version of After the Goldrush.

Listening to it like crazy. Thanks, Michi!!