If a gal's going to write poems about space probes, Galileo, Newton, Da Vinci, Kepler, transiting exoplanets, Democritus, liquid hydrogen, & Alan Shepard peeing his spacesuit while waiting for Freedom to launch, a gal who wants to be taken seriously has got to take Physics 101, like, right now.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Physics 101: I Should Have Seen It Coming
If a gal's going to write poems about space probes, Galileo, Newton, Da Vinci, Kepler, transiting exoplanets, Democritus, liquid hydrogen, & Alan Shepard peeing his spacesuit while waiting for Freedom to launch, a gal who wants to be taken seriously has got to take Physics 101, like, right now.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Verdict: 2010 Saturnalia Book Prize
A few weeks ago I posted about being a finalist in "two national contests." Yesterday I learned that Campbell McGrath chose my book, The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, as the winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Book Prize.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Celebrity Poem Assignment Using Dorianne Laux's "Cher"
CHER
I wanted to be Cher, tall
as a glass of iced tea,
her bony shoulders draped
with a curtain of dark hair
that plunged straight down,
the cut tips brushing
her non-existent butt.
I wanted to wear a lantern
for a hat, a cabbage, a piƱata
and walk in thigh high boots
with six inch heels that buttoned
up the back. I wanted her
rouged cheek bones and her
throaty panache, her voice
of gravel and clover, the hokum
of her clothes: black fishnet
and pink pom-poms, frilled
halter tops, fringed bells
and her thin strip of waist
with the bullet hole navel.
Cher standing with her skinny arm
slung around Sonny’s thick neck,
posing in front of the Eiffel Tower,
The Leaning Tower of Pisa,
The Great Wall of China,
The Crumbling Pyramids, smiling
for the camera with her crooked
teeth, hit-and-miss beauty, the sun
bouncing off the bump on her nose.
Give me back the old Cher,
the gangly, imperfect girl
before the shaving knife
took her, before they shoved
pillows in her tits, injected
the lumpy gel into her lips.
Take me back to the woman
I wanted to be, stalwart
and silly, smart as her lion
tamer’s whip, my body a torch
stretched the length of the polished
piano, legs bent at the knee, hair
cascading down over Sonny’s blunt
fingers as he pummeled the keys,
singing in a sloppy alto
the oldest, saddest songs.
Dorianne Laux
Thursday, July 22, 2010
I woke up this morning thinking about Twiggy. Twiggy was this young woman from Northern London who was discovered in 1966. One day she was a shampoo girl in a beauty shop, and the next she was The Face of the Year.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Unibrows & Feminism
Friday, July 9, 2010
This and $2 Will Get You a Popsicle Department
It's been a great July so far. I've been to my favorite community pool two times for lap and family swim (best of both worlds), have gone U-pick strawberrying with my daughter, and I finally figured out how to stopper the blow-up Orca whale kiddy pool. It makes for a great cooling off spot in the heat of the day, icy lemonade in hand.