Planets, Heavy Bodies

Washington says snow

2012-01-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

Bad break-ups are bad, but don't move cross-country.

On the bright side, I'm deciding what to do with my next few years, and it's different than what we all expected.

On the brighter side, have you pre-ordered Temporary Yes yet?

today

2012-01-19T19:18:00.000-08:00

Temporary Yes is now available for preorder.

as of

2012-01-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

I'm traveling across the country, so holla at me.

January

2012-01-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

You can find me for your new year here. Hello again.

I'm in Atlanta a while

2011-12-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

if you are too.

Leave a Mess

2011-11-12T09:42:00.001-08:00

Leave the cigarettes unfinished when you go. Leave summer still
to happen and all the leaves gone red or yellow sealed for keeping

after you’re gone. Leave friends at dinners, holding places for you,
empty chairs that won’t be filled by talk or toasting in the quiet months

since you have gone. Leave the kitten set for scratching messages
into the skin, the wine still bottled, the doors blown open for visitors

and registries of cold. Leave love untold, the telephone still dead
and unaware that you have gone. Leave the wind in every ribcage,

beating code to say that you have gone. Leave airplanes ascending
altitudes and clocks to be reset when you have gone. Leave

skin underneath your fingernails for evidence of what has made you
go. Leave the mouth of every stranger filled with gossip at your

leaving, every tooth tuned to departure, every standing, sitting,
falling body well-tempered for goodbye. Leave everything and every-

one you’ve touched with fingerprints to be washed clean of upon
some future bath time or dusting. Leave the steady ironed outfits

swinging softly inside doorframes and the laundry set to spinning
in the washer, dryer, tornado season where it was when you had

gone. Leave the furniture upended, every book and dish
and conversation bloodied and chipping paint against the wall. Leave

handprints on your spouse’s cheeks and handprints in the pockets
of your favorite jeans when you are on the way out and going.

Leave words you’ve said not to spark a cinema or any attentive
undertaking in the guise of Where have you been? but leave an all-

around Hello for any potential admirer who might slip a note of praise
into your skull when other eyes have turned to go. Leave all mistakes

for reckoning in figures now that you have gone. Leave no voice to say
Gone, Gone Away, when you’re out-out but have not yet gone.

Last Poem

2011-11-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

You’re the you in this poem,
the one where I’m dead in the orange room,

the one where I’m dead abroad. In this poem,
I’m dead in a hospital room calling

coma with old lovers, calling languages
I can’t remember speaking while awake. You’re

the you in this poem. If we’re both what we
should be, you’ll be dead before I come home.

Zelda, where you left me, down the stairs

2011-11-08T12:10:00.001-08:00

If you believe it the way she tells it, she married him
because she’d heard somewhere that married people

never go to jail. What remains
of the bubble bath sucks at her body like dry skin.

Everywhere, he is. Everywhere he is
he is knocking on some windowed part of her,

he is touching in her some memory he put there.
He speaks in books to other women, color-coded.

On preparing for a visitor -

2011-11-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

I have stolen you and will continue to do so.
Blinds open and dusting, we fill each other like
powder. There are poems in which you remember
what it felt like to touch before you touched me.
In some poems, we’re touching and you’re remembering
another someone – on a stool or in a parking lot,
teeth broken against your mouth or palm or thigh. I
arrange the books by color to find where you’ve been
unintentionally inside.

Break Glass to Extinguish

2011-11-08T12:08:00.001-08:00

Killing is a thing we do in measure,
One by one. The sunflower first –

We display in bit-lip pride to
Relatives and company come full

Starch. Aunts look on its molding
Vertebra for laughter, clutched

And clawed at, like the end of last
Year’s favorite anecdote. Friends

And other visitors pinch
Browned and barnacled leaves

For souvenirs to say we’ve grown
A thing that would not live.

The dog with its own unmatched
Skeleton is something more

Of a loosed grenade. The stitching
Of its pink and slept with elephant

First must separate
To reveal the powdery tooth fillings

That birds will use in winter
To cushion themselves against an

Over and over cold spell. The food,
In heaping handfuls of anything already

Dead, must wrongly expire. A holocaust is
Where we fit our hands

Around that hound’s pinched middle
With our increasing tightness until the only

Weight is what emptiness can
Be amassed inside one once alive

Creature. We clean the bones in
White vinegar and, with dried beans,

Fill to whole one milk jug to make songs
For the funeral parade and home again.

The sound is steady beating like a year
Lived to end in any unloved place.

When I’m lucky – in dreams,
Alone – nine or so lovers

You took once or longer
In various seasons of summer

Or rain and all the unofficial
Women you pressed in fantasy or

Memory onto the pages of one
Red notebook, perfectly bound,

Make lovely, arching swan dives
Off of cliffs and rooftops or

Any other precipice high enough to turn
A stomach into circles within its own

Casing. Their necks go cracking and skin,
And I am free of them enough to stretch

Awake in sheets that must be
Burned to unfasten their mistake.

And love, when it comes time for its
Undoing, is not nearly half the trouble.

October

2011-11-08T12:06:00.001-08:00

Every following car is someone to be lost.
It takes so many hours of daylight to convince

Oneself that love can happen and only
So much nighttime to think it won’t. Of every

Man and woman, girl and boy we’ve touched
There are strangers

Still, before and after everything else.
I found one of yours in a book

And then another. I found one of yours
In a bar, looking like Halloween

(though August, I tell you, who could forget)
With a hand shoved into mine like a cigarette

From a stranger outside the bar after
Where I waited to be told Forever. I love you

Forever. I found one of mine
In the aftermath bath time and much later

By way of hello. I found one
Of the ways I still love you stinging in morning-

Time, there at the knife-ready stop
Light where all the best roads meet and pass

One another in the fashion played forward by
My stiff and remembering heart.

Elizabeth

2011-11-07T10:16:00.001-08:00

It is not wholly against convention to marry every now
and then. When it comes

to love and other bodily functions, a man, of any height or
kind, is expected to go hastily awry. When he loved

that woman,
that fat woman with no look to her except the spread

of short and unremarkable legs, and planned to marry
and be married to her, he said

that he’d gone crazy, suicidal, off the ship again
in the way that always ended inhospitably

straitjacketed and shouldn’t that excuse everything,
every pronunciation of love. She wore

a ring. On her hands that would no longer hold
the sum of men she’d opened for, knowing all the while that

a face so plainly horrid would never earn more than
the angry touching of some previously broken hearted man,

she wore a ring. What plea could be made after
but insanity in its most gruesome,

unadulterated form. What potential is there in a man
who exalts so easily

in that bent knee for which the world tilts at the weight
of her acceptance, that woman,

all fat and unremarkable women that require and result in
continual forgiveness for the act.

take note

2011-10-31T06:45:00.000-07:00

If you've been meaning to read my chapbook BIRDING from Thunderclap! Press but haven't ordered it because times are tough or whatever, now is your chance to read it for FREE!

Really, there's no excuse not to. It's the perfect way to ease your stomach growl before TEMPORARY YES comes out in February.

if you want

2011-10-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

The news goes that I am now without facebook.

If you want to contact me, you can do so by emailing me at katherinelainedixon at gmail dot com. If you don't have my phone number or address and would like either, there's a possibility that I will send them to you via email should you make the request.

If you just want to keep up with my day-to-day nonsense you can follow me on twitter @katlaine.

date up

2011-09-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

I have nothing to say except that TEMPORARY YES is officially set for release FEBRUARY 21, 2012 - -

- - and here is the cover:

Pretty, eh? Greg says the font reminds him of Men in Black.

$$

2011-08-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

The new Artifice is now available for pre-order.

winged

2011-07-24T08:00:00.001-07:00

Also, my chapbook Birding is now available from Thunderclap! Press.

massive

2011-07-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

You can order this chapbook now from the lovely Dancing Girl Press.

tuesday noise

2011-06-14T19:06:00.000-07:00

I need to write more interesting blog posts so that the people who find my blog via other blogs in which people write interesting blog posts will not think less of the blogs from which they've come.

moments

2011-06-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

Recent highlights for this gal include journeying for a round of the Literary Death Match, which was great fun and should probably happen everywhere.

The always wonderful and talented Molly Brodak and crew have launched a new project called Aesthetix and would appreciate your submissions if you're interested and definitely your future readership even if you're not interested. But you will be, I'm pretty sure.

I have this feeling that I will finish some of the things I'm working on soonish, so that's something.

under

2011-04-27T15:48:00.000-07:00

I pitched in to thunderclap!'s Poem-a-Day-April today in honor of the final hours of National Poetry Month. Amanda Deo has muscles.

another

2011-04-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

Ryan Bradley gives a sweet review of my Don't Go Fish at Cow Heavy.

On Larkin, Later

2011-04-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Unbearable, no, and Seamus Heaney was wrong. Give me anti-Romantic Larkin any day, and don't tell me the Romantic jazz is necessary to make Larkin palatable. I refuse to believe that "bad" Larkin must be balanced by "good" Larkin -- or that "good" Larkin is anything more than real-life Larkin's attempt to thwart potential criticism or to simply appease audiences. "Bad" Larkin cannot be overcome by "good" Larkin; "good" Larkin, I think, works to reinforce the badness.

(Bad in this instance refers to the cranky, thinking, uneasy, misanthropic Larkin that appears in some poems, and Good refers to the lilting sort of Romantic Larkin that exists in other poems.)

What does rescue "bad" Larkin from ultimate gloom is not "good" Larkin but the form in which "bad" Larkin is presented. Form - the careful rhymes and meter - prevents (okay what may possibly be construed as) the more negative sides of Larkin's literary persona (for those that can't stomach a little dourness) from becoming just too negative.

Take for example, "Talking in Bed:"

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this care for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

Though thematically dreary, this poem's precise attention to form and the lovely linguistic turns that result - and not the existence of other, more Romantic poems - makes this poem palatably dreary (if still dreary).

Form also serves to create finer nuances in the darker Larkin. In a poem like "An Arundel Tomb," form subverts Romantic interpretations:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

The slight deviation from the rhyme pattern in this final stanza - the off-rhyme "prove" and "love" - reinforces the imposed artificiality of love suggested in the entirety of the poem and perhaps also jabs at the artificiality of his own Romanticism presented in other poems.

Whatever it is, leave Larkin to his stewing and keep your Romanticism to yourself.

Later, on Schuyler

2011-04-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Il va neiger dans quelques jours
FRANCIS JAMMES

The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound,
this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center.
I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs
the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments
recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey.
Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event”
and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance
to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all
the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops
and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation
of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids,
Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends
It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West
Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it.
A smile in the street may be loads! you don’t have to undress everybody.
“You didn’t visit the Alps?”
“No, but I saw from the train they were black
and streaked with snow.”
Having and giving but also catching glimpses
hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise
and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. It may snow
falling softly on lashes of eyes you love and a cold cheek
grow warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.

The formatting, of course, is off, but here we have James Schuyler's "December" front and center. (I am eating corn on the cob. Rather: peeling wayward kernels from the page.) Several classmates have touched on Schuyler's month poems ("February," "October"). They're all lovely, but now that it's April, "December" seems the most appropriate.

We talked about Schuyler in terms of windows and painting, and I think this poem nicely reflects this kind of discussion. With Schuyler there is always a distancing of experience - images caught through glass or emotion wrangled from art. In "December" there is a constant contrast between seeing and experiencing. "Il va neiger dans quelques jours," French for "It will snow in a few days," precedes the poem and starts the trend: snow is coming but isn't happening, isn't something to be presently experienced.

But that's exactly how Schuyler seems to like things. The poem reads very much like a defense of this sort of lifestyle - what he thinks he sees. Christmas happens as objects, as memories, as Katherine looking through shop windows. There is no Frank O'Hara-esque direct experience, yet even so the speaker cannot help falling in love. He isn't a Californian; he's a man learning the alps through a window in winter.

where we've gone

2011-04-05T20:35:00.000-07:00

Perrin Carrell and company have electrocuted this new poetry roundup they're calling allwritethen. Sounds pretty nifty to me, so I promised a shout out. You can also find me in there somewhere.

Did I tell you?

2011-03-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

My full-length poetry collection Temporary Yes is now officially forthcoming from these awesome blokes next year. More news is coming along that front in months ahead.

In other news, Miss Luna Miguel - one of my favorite slices of Spain - gives an interview here that nicely globalizes the now-literature that sometimes seems so strictly American.

I also listened to this podcast this morning while I was trying to not look like a girl whose tonsils sometimes leak blood.

art as poem

2011-03-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

Jane Freilicher
Copper Sky
oil on linen; c. 1960

There is a good deal of sickness in these words, so be careful. What I like about this painting - what a poet might like, so far as the assignment goes - is its careful rearrangement. So much of Freilicher's work focuses on landscapes or still-lifes or some combination of the two. Though terribly pretty, they are most often recognizable. (A vase of flowers is a vase of flowers.) "Copper Sky" is also a landscape, but it does something different. Its colors do not follow the patterns of a traditional sky scene. Blotches of white are interspersed in blue; yellow appears unexpectedly, etc. This changes the painting's syntax, making a sky is a sky is a sky something new, something unfamiliar.

And here may we mention -- there's not an awful lot of copper for a painting (I actually typed "poem" and deleted) called "Copper Sky." What copper is there is carefully masked. In this way the artist averts the viewer's expectations and maintains a surprise-for-always look.

The adjustments Freilicher makes in her painting style for "Copper Sky" could easily - and excitedly - translate into adjustments in poetic language and thus prove inspiration for poems boasting uniqueness in style, syntax, or any number of compositional details.

further ado

2011-03-10T17:58:00.000-08:00

When Katherine Sullivan asked me to expound upon my facebook rants on so-called neo-dadaist poets, I followed up with this long piece on the subject.

for the books

2011-03-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

Turned 21 and aren't we all damn well glad.

I stand on top; (resolution in 'Skunk Hour')

2011-02-21T09:55:00.001-08:00

Unlike the other poems in part four of Life Studies, Skunk Hour receives a special dedication to Elizabeth Bishop, which speaks to its ability to provide overall closure to the collection.

The poem itself opens on the typical Lowell landscape: a splattering of maladjusted individuals shoved up against a backdrop of ill seasons and dark nights. The old familiar suspects remain - each skinny attention to detail, the ever threatening sickness [a not right everywhere], the slowly decaying empire [an allusion here to Paradise Lost], etc. In this way, Skunk Hour fits neatly within its own family tree.

This poem is somehow not weighed down - like many of the other poems in the collection ultimately become - by the illness that still warps the comprehensive vision. Counterintuitive as it might be, the skunks are the big heroes of the hour. The poet, though seemingly alone - distanced from humanity by the forces outlined in earlier poems, is not alone. Enter the night creatures: waste-feeding, disease-carrying varmints that cause passersby to plug their noses. Even the cream in which they submerge their heads is sour. Which brings us back to Elizabeth Bishop. There is something concordant between the two: despite the dead and dying relatives, despite the bleak surroundings, despite the terminal decline of the family's reputation, despite the rampant madness, they will not scare. The correspondence continues; the skunks dig deeper and deeper into the garbage pail. The same can be said of the readers and writers of confessional poetry. With this final poem, Lowell seems to usher in their hour. He stands on top, breathing air rich with creative potential, himself the mother skunk leading a column of kittens into the muck. And despite the personal and sometimes uncomfortable nature of the subject matter, the personal failures and dissolution, they persist.

line

2011-02-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

See: review of Don't Go Fish at decomP

additionally,

2011-02-05T20:12:00.000-08:00

KMA Sullivan & Co. launched the new Yes Yes press over this blustery AWP weekend. I've been enlisted to do some blogging there along with many smart and interesting people, so expect more details on that later in the month.

while you are not safe I am not safe

2011-01-31T07:59:00.000-08:00

*Note: This blog will temporarily hold assignments for my senior seminar, which means fewer loose thoughts and more guided ones. Right then.

It's inappropriate to discuss Ginsberg in anything but a gruff monotone, so first imagine that. We've been talking in terms of the start-stop that the first section of Howl adopts in its quest for the success of the ethereal over the material, an endeavor that boasts the inevitable end of roughened pavement or toilets bowled over with an aftermath of glory. There is a cycle of uplift - through drugs, sex, art, etc - and land-heavy - back to the mechanized materiality of the wake up, with the only true resolution being the existence of the poem itself, the good to eat butchered life that lives and keeps living.

The second and third sections of this poem present a bigger, more emphasized repetition of this layout. To begin with, part II: Moloch, the incomprehensible prison that is reality. Transcendence, in Howl, does not come easily or without risk of penance. Part II is just that - the ultimate return; the machine in Fritz Lang's Metropolis that swallows up whole workers, toilers, lovers of mind. Never may one achieve the temporary solace of absolution through written word without the follow-up presence of the anti-imaginative force that is the downhill torrent of Americana. The pattern plays this way:

Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!

The whitewashing of the American high, the American brilliant, happens again and again (in Ginsberg, too: Your machinery is too much for me. / You made me want to be a saint.) until all is returned to the lowest street from which the material empire is constructed.

How then may one supersede this drowning, this jumping from roofs? Howl's third and final section offers up a coming home to and through the breakdown of the rational mind. In this, Carl Solomon becomes not the sheepish recipient of a legacy but a tool through which Ginsberg may achieve finality - a finality that is, yes, the best and worst insanity in its repudiation of the American collective. In order to reach that longed-for transcendence, one must, in a sense, experience the mental unscrewing or loosening of the rational, an act that is embodied by the rock-land, both the Rockland mental institution and the earthy juxtaposition to the metal sheen of Moloch. It is only in this supposed madness that Ginsberg is able to establish the poem's only real sense of togetherness (the repetitive I'm with you... / I'm with you...), a human connection that the first two sections aim at but ultimately fall short of.

It is perhaps this connection that allows the semi-safe passage of the "sea-journey across the highway of America" - a reference to the truth-drowning river of section II - even if it is only a success achieved in dreams. This coming-free of the mechanized American reason experienced in the third section allows the realization of the human holy in the poem's footnote (completed oddly before Howl itself), in which Ginsberg again documents (this time in the lighter tone of the miraculous) the dirty-wonderful of human experience.

post in several mouths

2011-01-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

Anna-Lisa Marí translates an early poem of mine into Spanish. Thanks also to Luna Miguel.

now

2011-01-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

a little late

but

a poem here

&

poem things here

also, news coming
also, new things coming

I've had two bouts of tonsillitis thus far this year, but now I'm getting regular steroids injections -- and things seem to be on the mend. However, I have not grown in height or gained any significant muscle mass, much to my own dismay. I'm having those sad puppies out in March if all goes according to plan, so, you know, happy birthday to me. One big happy healthy.

before I go

2010-12-26T17:24:00.000-08:00

a poem

& the snow is so quiet and clean-smelling

November

2010-11-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

I have this irrational desire to have my hair cut; to allow the laundry to accumulate endlessly.

It is the great tragedy of consumer culture that I must buy jeans in the middle of pre-winter widening.

on october books and other nonsense

2010-10-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

Here again are some of the books I've read over the month of October. Okay, maybe I read some of them in September, but all I do is school all of the time, which means I don't have time to think things or say things or remember shit. So check plus for that. So yes, here are books and some things I liked/did not like about them.

the failure six Shane Jones

I liked this one probably more than Light Boxes, which I read sometime in the summery months. I like, in general, the way Shane Jones doesn't try to unfuck things. I like the way everyone dies and doesn't die. I simultaneously like and dislike that as a reader I am completely ignored. I also like that my copy came signed even though I ordered it off of amazon.com. Maybe they all come this way. Thanks amazon.

AM/PM Amelia Gray

I like flash fiction much more because of this book. Not that I didn't like it before. But now I may not like it. Haven't decided yet. I like that everything in this book is pointed. Like when I bite off just the sides of a fingernail and unintentionally stab myself later. I didn't like that I was hoping for more lateral integration. What I actually needed when reading this book was to paint up a character tree. But of course I was too lazy, so this is probably my fault.

Prose. Poems. A Novel. Jamie Iredell

This picture is going to show up abnormally large, so now I feel nervous that I don't have enough to say. I really like how Iredell uses the prose poem in a sonaturalbutstillunusual way so that I forgot that I was reading poems even when I didn't forget that I was reading poems. I like the way the people and the landscapes become intertwined and irreversible. I don't like the way that boozing becomes a long range crutch throughout the book. Like nothing is happening right now so I/we/they got really fucking drunk and that was that. Probably true to life/bad ass, but I mostly read this in one sitting, so enough was enough.

grease stains, kismet, & maternal wisdom Mel Bosworth

I really like the way that this book lies. How some things happen or don't happen and I'm never sure which but it doesn't matter because that's how it is. I like how the characters are real enough to be somethings and still unreal enough to display little reminders of the way memory changes everything. I don't like how there is so much & We Were In Love and not much Maybe. I'm also not crazy about the title. It works, but it's also the entire book.

A Common Pornography Kevin Sampsell

I like the structure of this book. Probably a memoir works best when it's episodic because that's mostly how memory works anyway. When I was reading an episode or two between classes I thoroughly enjoyed them. I felt full. When I sat down and finished it all, each episode began to hollow out. Post daddy death, the book becomes pretty campy. If I read it again, I'll just skip that part and pretend it ends sooner.

A Little Middle of the Night Molly Brodak

There are some stunning poems in this collection. To the point where I would read one and couldn't do anything else for the rest of the day. There are also some poems that feel out of place or ear marked, but there is enough awesomeness here to anchor the rest. I would take more Brodak anytimeanyplace.

Daddy's Lindsay Hunter

Blogger says no more pictures, but you've seen it. I really like the quirky terribleness of this book. I like how uglywonderful it made me feel. I don't like how some of the stories read like other stories I've read within the past year. This is probably not Hunter's fault and probably says something about contemporary literary tendencies or something about how I've been recently attracted to grit. But I don't need to say this book is wonderful because 780 people have already said this.

The short of it is I would recommend all of these books, and you should probably read them. Maybe then you'll have something to say next time I try to avoid you in passing.

As an aside, I've spent a long time thinking xTx was a man. Sorry about that dude.

fish on fish: a conversation with Hazel Dixon-Cooper

2010-10-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

Hazel Dixon-Cooper has been a professional astrologer for more than twenty-five years, and is the author of the internationally bestselling Rotten Day astrology book series. She writes the daily horoscopes for Cosmopolitan.com, Cosmo Mobile for your cell phone, and a weekly horoscope for Cosmo Radio: Sirius channel 111 and XM channel 162. She is a research member of the American Federation of Astrologers and teaches astrology workshops. Additional information can be found on her website.

KD: I am honored to be a stop on your blog tour this month, especially since – as I’m sure you’ve heard echoed again and again since its debut – Born on a Rotten Day has enjoyed a long standing residence on my bedside table. Work on a Rotten Day is your latest book. Tell me, what sort of gruesome details can readers expect to uncover about their workplace?

HDC: Thank you, Kat, for being part of the tour, and for the kind words.
In Work on a Rotten Day readers will learn how to deal with the more gruesome aspects of their jobs. They'll discover how to better handle the boss, avoid conflict with coworkers, protect themselves from backstabbers, and stay motivated even in a job they dislike.

KD: Considering the state of the American and global economy and the ever fluctuating unemployment rate, do you feel that this new book speaks to those who are unemployed and on the job hunt as well as those who are currently employed?

HDC: Absolutely. I offer advice throughout the book on how to stay motivated in any situation. Further, I specifically included a section, "Ace an Interview" which shows readers how to be aware of and control their own shoot-yourself-in-the-foot behaviors, as well as career advice about what jobs might appeal to his or her Sun sign.

KD: Will this book be formatted in the manner of your previous books? What sort of chapter subheadings can we expect for each sign?

HDC: Work On A Rotten Day is my first hardcover. It has a pop-out chart of the zodiac with brief descriptions of each sign and colorful artwork throughout. There are many sub-headings. Some are: Learn to Kick Your Own Ass, From Fed up to Fired Up, Know What You're Dealing With (boss), and Coping with a (sign) Coworker.

KD: You are sort of the all-around astrology gal. Can you talk briefly about your astrology work outside of the Rotten Day series? Is there any part of your job that you favor more than others?

HDC: I write the daily horoscopes for Cosmopolitan.com and a weekly horsocope for Cosmo Radio, Sirius/XM. My favorite part of my job is corresponding with my fans around the world. I've met so many wonderful people.

KD: What was the least enjoyable aspect of compiling the manuscript for Work?

HDC: It was all enjoyable, but it takes a lot of effort to write a book. Organization, research, meeting deadlines, and with the Rotten Day series, sticking to the astrology of the topic. In this book it's how the Sun signs behave on the job. I think the most difficult was finding job-related quotes from well known people. I use famous quotes in all of my books and I had to dig a little harder for work-specific ones.

KD: Is a person’s sun sign the hands down most important determinant of leading characteristics? Or are there other astrological factors? How do you handle people born on the cusp between signs?

HDC: The Sun sign is only the beginning. The Moon sign, Ascendant (rising sign), Mars, and Venus form the basics. The natal chart is a snapshot of where the planets were at the moment of birth. It's as multi-layered and diverse as is each human being.

A true cusp is only about a 36-hour window, not the three or four days as commonly believed. Although you are the sign you're born under, you may have a few or many traits of the cusp-sign, depending on other factors in your chart. I tell people who are born on a cusp to read both signs in either an astrology book or their horoscopes.

KD: Okay, now for a few rounds of quick response questions. In your opinion, what sign makes for the best astrologer?

HDC: Any sign can be a good astrologer with study, practice, and a geniune interest in people.

KD: On average, how long does it take for you to properly pinpoint a person’s sign?

HDC: If I'm trying to guess his or her sign, two minutes to never!

KD: If you were stranded on a desert island with only one other person, what would you like his or her sign to be?

HDC: Ouch! I refuse to answer on the grounds it will look as if I'm playing favorites. :-)

KD: Which sign makes for the best one night stand?

HDC: Gemini

KD: I’m also fascinated by the fact that you answer every letter you receive from readers and fans.

HDC: I feel that if people take the time to write to say they enjoy my books, I should acknowledge that, even with a simple thank you.

KD: Do you have a most memorable fan letter?

HDC: My most memorable fan letter was from a guy in England who took exception to his sign's description in my first book, "Born on a Rotten Day." He was a Libra and blasted me in the email. I wrote back and said that he was acting exactly as I'd described in the book, and reminded him it was intended to make us laugh at ourselves. He was shocked that I'd responded and ended up laughing about it. I made a friend.

KD: What’s next on your agenda? More books perhaps? Care to offer a sneak peek?

HDC: My immediate goal is to start consulting again. Although I offer free, brief answers to fans who write with questions, I've had so many people ask for in-depth charts that I decided it was time.

I do have a book idea rattling around but I'm still in thinking mode so can't offer a sneak peek. However, speaking of sneak peeks, your readers can go to my website and get a peek at Work On A Rotten Day.

KD: Thank you so much for your time. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of your latest book!

HDC: Thank you for having me here today, Kat. I enjoyed it so much!

A lucky reader will win a signed copy of Hazel's newest book. Comment on this blog for your chance to win!!
(Make sure to sign in with or leave an email address where you can be easily contacted within your comment.)

morning commute

2010-10-09T06:31:00.000-07:00

I have this little poem in today's protestpoems.org soapbox. Maybe rioting is in order, I don't know.

clap(!)

2010-09-29T17:11:00.000-07:00

The Thunderclap! lady issue is here, and you can maybe find me in it if you look through an hourglass.

wednesday again but actually the same

2010-09-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think I'd like to be one of those people who make sloppy / ugly / mostly unshowered look endearing. This will not actually happen because I would not like that at all.

Yesterday I went swimming and I found a contact in my swimming pool. It was stuck between my toes and it felt like a jellyfish. I touched my eyes to make sure I could still see. I don't know where or when that contact came from: it wasn't mine, and I can't remember ever losing one in the pool. Or anywhere, for that matter, except in my own eye. Once I lost a contact in my eye at Jmom's house and it came out again the next day after I had already replaced it with another contact. I was unintentionally wearing two contacts in the same eye and it reminded me of the time when I was 14 and a girl, Rebecca Lane, showed me how to pop someone's eye out. She learned it in karate, and I'm still pretty sure that it's true. I was unintentionally wearing two contacts in the same eye and I started to cry because I kept imagining eyeballs coming out everywhere and both contacts came out of their own accord.

This may not have happened, but it seems like it did. Milta says it has something to do with the moon.

wednesday

2010-09-22T15:20:00.001-07:00

I've been spending my night hours drinking hot tea and smoking cigarettes by the pack. I'm pretending to be a person who writes things other than myself.

Here Kat, rub the sin out of your feet with this PedEgg.

2010-09-15T13:32:00.001-07:00

I walked the twelve miles to the parking deck and up the thirty flights of stairs to my car. A rubbed-red car filled with exactly the kind of hipster assholes I usually avoid came whipping around a corner as I was fumbling with the keys in my pocket. As a reinforcement of their assholeishness, they threw a handful of poppers at me as they passed. Yes, those things that break into small fireworks at the mention of pavement (and, when released in the echoing concrete of a parking deck, successfully recreate the experience of the London air raids). That's the kind of week I've been having. Actually.

on halves

2010-09-02T19:29:00.000-07:00

In honor of my half birthday, a list of the cool people who are also having a half birthday today (or would be, if they weren't dead):

Dr. Seuss
Mikhail Gorbachev
Lou Reed
Tom Wolfe
Jon Bon Jovi
Karen Carpenter
Edgar Bowers
Sam Houston
John Irving
several popes
Kurt Weill
Sholem Aleichem
David Greenglass (the spy who leaked the atomic secrets)
several leaders of foreign countries
one Osmond
Edward Condon (the guy who thought up quantum mechanics)
Chris Martin
several congressmen from midwestern states
& two of my lovely professors, Debra Taylor Bourdeau & Karen Graf

See you peeps again in March.

latent & manifest

2010-08-05T19:57:00.000-07:00

New poem in the Freud issue of blossombones.

Momchik is in town for the month of August, which means that we've finally begun filming the long-awaited DAWN sequel: OLD SUN. Tonight we met a fellow with a hearse and convinced him to shoot a scene with us. Yes, I rode in the hearse. Chalk that up to another never-have-I-ever drink. In my gaudy black wig. Momchik wore a sheet and her signature blond man-wig to be the ghostly version of her usual self. Usual-not-usual self.

On Bush's "Sickness" etc.

2010-08-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

The Silence of Sickness. Zachary C. Bush. Gold Wake Press. 2010. 62 pages.

Bush's "Silence of Sickness" brilliantly presents neo-imagistic happenings against a background of a most surreal "Nebraska." Far from being traditional (really? who would think that?), each poem is understated in the manner of a skin virus, in the manner of the uncountable memory (How many times have you lost your keys since she left?). There is a quietness present in every "lost" action and inaction, a beautiful assemblage of the unspoken elements in life and the moments that remind us of death. Well worth a read and a re-read.

meanwhile

2010-07-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

Poems at:

decomp

soundless (also, an interview)

If you'd like a review copy of DON'T GO FISH, let me know.

news(es)

2010-06-23T16:49:00.000-07:00

My chapbook DON'T GO FISH is now out from Maverick Duck Press. If you're feeling rainy, you can order it here and review it here.

I'm leaving for Italy tomorrow. For the last week, Milta and I have been haphazardly assembling dresses. These dresses:

I call these the Sistine Chapel Dress & the Hail Mary Dress. What you can't see about the latter is its lovely lacing.

The Ultramarine Dress & the Sibyl (aka Don't Scribble Sibyl) Dress

We had, of course, intended to make more, but time ran out -- and so did space in my suitcase.

[insert sound]

2010-05-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

Thunderclap Press is publishing my chapbook BIRDING late June.

dress up

2010-05-22T10:02:00.001-07:00

poems in Canada

again --- again

2010-05-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

I'm pushing back everything I have for you in favor of wandering. This is the time of the year I usually spend in the desert, avoiding pollen and keeping time by Zuni watches. Thanks to the magic shot I received last year when all of my internal problems began, my respiratory health has been at its best this year, so I have not needed to pack and run as the yellow dust storm continues at full force.

Thus I shall not be returning to my lovely New Mexico but instead wandering through the unexplored territories of upstate New York. Only for ten days. Or two weeks top. No month+ long retreat, unfortunately (though goodness knows I need it). Then it's back here to prep prep prep for classes in Italy and the much dreaded GRE. AND at that time I will be busy infecting you with reviews. If you've sent a book or chapbook for review, fear not. It will happen. As usual, I'm behind, and I don't seem to mind.

At the moment, I'm not planning to haul my laptop around with me. So keep your DDQ poetry submissions flowing but be aware that responses may not come until the first of June(ish).

In other news, I've selected a possible cover image for Don't Go Fish. I'm wrapping up a new little chapbook to be shopped on my return, and then it's on to the big big job of flushing out a full-length scenario. So many exciting things! I really can't wait to come back from NY refreshed and full of new poem ideas.

Also, I am now accepting orders online for custom art. Paintings can be made available in a variety of sizes, prices, themes, colors, etc. If you are interested in a custom painting for your home or office, see my art page for more information. The page is soon to be updated with recent pieces and more general information, so check back often.

(aside)

2010-04-19T16:14:00.001-07:00

Also,
Maverick
Duck
Press
has
picked
up
my
latest
chapbook.
It's
called
Don't
Go
Fish.
It
will
be
out
in
June.

A Review Appeared: with apologies to Jeremy Spencer for extreme tardiness

2010-04-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

On Shane Jones's A Cake Appeared
Scrambler Books, 75(ish) pages

When I'm left with an empty house for more than 24 hours, something strange happens. I clean. I pour myself a stiff drink. And suddenly - like magic - a cake appears in my oven, and I am alerted to its arrival by a sweetly obnoxious buzzing of the sinuses.
The same strange something happens to Shane Jones, I now know, only minus the alcoholic housewifery.

A Cake Appeared, which too mysteriously appeared in my oven, explores the nature and function of folktale in a postmodern world - that is to say one without the necessity of the origin. Where appearance is part and parcel of reality. Things happen - or don't happen - in brief episodes of pure creative bliss. And somehow, like magic, it works.

It works because Shane Jones says that it will. And Shane Jones is somehow channeling (through an oven, no doubt) the spirit of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, which makes each of his poems if not out and out terrifying, then certainly Scary dressed up as adorable good fun. The boyish double-spacing, with the aesthetic sophistication of a handwriting primer, smartly taunts the reader with the present possibility of absence -- just what is each poem not saying? -- and the poignant suggestion of flaw in the seemingly harmless bedtime stories that shape us.

There is, a la Blake, a noticeable shift in the pillowing narratives offered on the sly through the guise of rollicking poetry.
(See Innocence:

I brought
my pet dinosaur to the zoo once and introduced him to the gorillas. I
heard him whisper this is my pet human and when I turned from the
gorilla cages I saw all the people in the zoo were ash colored.

)

(See Experience:

I promise to myself each year that I will set the trees on fire. I have
imagined what burning trees would like like through the blue stained
kitchen windows. I can see the leaves as ghosts burning and flying and
curling through the air. And each year I find myself in bed like all the rest
of you, small and sweater clad.

)

This split is walled off by the long-stand-alone-(available-from-Cannibal-Books)-poem The Nightmare Filled You With Scary, which is heart-wrenchingly sad and laughably clever all at once (another mystery). Before TNFYWC, the appearances are restricted to cakes:

Happy birthday, said the artist. Everyone forgot about the dead bird. The
fiddlers danced in front of the fireplace. A cake appeared.

Post TNFYWC, the appearances are less delicous:

I walked into the bedroom and a cage was on the bed. Not a small cage,
like a bird cage, but a big cage, like a gorilla cage. I yelled for you and you
came running into the bedroom holding a pint of blueberries. "Where did
you get that?" you said. I walked around the bed, inspecting the cage. "I
didn't get it," I said. "It just appeared."

Need I bring up the Blake allusions yet again?

All in all, A Cake Appeared is a tasty treat, doused with a bit of the uncanny and baked with love at 9000 degrees of stifling truth. Buy it, really. Or else Shane Jones and I will eat you with our Sunday tea.

PS: Please excuse the butchering of the line breaks and overall presentation of poem-selections here. (Blogger, you've foiled me again!) Be a dear and buy the book to see things as they were intended.

skip skip skip don't skip

2010-03-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

DIVINE DIRT QUARTERLY'S ISSUE 2.1 IS LIVE.

& it is awesome.

I'm going to have many things to say in the near(ish) future. Lovely people keep sending me lovely things to read and review. & I have every intention of doing so. Hopefully soon.

In the meantime I am plugging through the semester and reading submissions for DDQ 2.2 and painting (a lot) and making time for Momchik (who is spontaneously in town) and fretting over whether to completely dismantle my thesis ideas or close my eyes and write a long-winded something and (best of all) planning all sorts of new poemprojects (though the writing of these projects is currently on hold). & sometimes, like now, I remember to sleep with the lights turned all the way off.

hint

2010-03-06T13:21:00.001-08:00

March is something that happens:
Pollen! & I am suddenly aware of my face.

Also, on the 2nd I earned another decade and, subsequently, less time.

exfoliate: pineapple juice

2010-02-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

New poem out today at tinfoildresses. A poem for Cricket who I love because he won't read it but will still complain that he doesn't understand exactly what I meant by it. Actually a poem for everyone else.

Miss Kristy Bowen has released the list of Dancing Girl Press's 2010 titles, and it promises to be an unforgettable year. Planetary Mass is slated to debut in the fall.

Meanwhile, February splinters by.

midweek interruption

2010-02-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

I don't bitch nearly as much in my daily life as I do in my blogging life. Not even fractionally. This occurred to me today as I was waiting for my passport appointment. Of course they were behind. Of course my 3:10 appointment was moved back and moved back and all I could think about was all of the reading I had yet to finish for my morning classes.

And then it all came down. The fury.

In actuality, it was more of a sigh while I leaned against an ugly set of medicinally pink cabinets.

Really I'm a patient thing. A passive thing. I've got loud, bitchy genes, but for the most part I prefer to listen. Currently, my [imagined] rage is entirely directed at my poetry class. [I hope this will be my last complaint.]

I have no intention of being terrible but IF I HAVE TO SPEND ANOTHER ENTIRE CLASS PERIOD LISTENING TO PEOPLE GO ON AND ON PRAISING THE MOST AWFUL POEMS I'VE EVER READ I MAY POSSIBLY COME APART AT THE JOINTS or spontaneously break out into tentacles.

This is not a highly subjective critique. Most of these poems suck. As objectively as anything can suck.

---> Now there are some good ones. Please do not let me forget them. Some are quite good. Or fantastic. Or at least workable. <---

It's not the suckiness that bothers me. That I expected. It's an undergraduate poetry class. All you have to do is sign up. Some of these kids have never written a poem in their lives.

It's the endless praise that bothers me. On the first round of poems, I made a polite attempt to mask my ruthless criticism. I sat quietly in class. I wrote back-handed compliments on papers. This round my restraints are at their thinnest. I've really had to try not to write THIS REALLY REALLY REALLY SUCKS PLEASE DROP THIS CLASS AND END OUR MUTUAL MISERY all across neatly typed poems.

And these people are giving themselves and their classmates false hopes. And then there's Ralph, who offers the coveted praise: This is very close to a publishable poem. And I want to scream out ARE YOU KIDDING and double dog dare him to find one place that would willingly publish a line of it.

And then I want to hand him a copy of Viktor Shklovsky's Art as Technique with all of the good lines bolded and in caps so that he can't miss the idea of "POETRY AS ATTENUATED, TORTUOUS SPEECH" --- and maybe he'll have a revelation and realize that he's been spreading this 'poem bubble' philosophywithnobrain crap to hundreds of students since the beginning of time. And maybe he'll repent and live on a mountain and write anarchy through poetry and garden herbs and teach kindergarten or something very Wittgensteinian.

Maybe.

And all of this makes me feel so snobby. I've somehow become a literary snob. How did this happen, I wonder? I consider my own work with the utmost humility. This is not a[n imagined] rage based on superiority. It stems from lies. And bubbles.

This is a cleansing. So that I am not the picture of perfect nastiness in class tomorrow. Thank you. Next time we'll do this over hot tea.

how to undo a lie without taking it back

2010-01-28T19:00:00.000-08:00

If you read my last post [I psychically know you did], you probably read this poem, which I turned into my poetry class and for which I received exactly what I was expecting. A thorough trouncing of UMMMMMMs in the oral discussion and mixed reviews in the written discussion.

It was either a) THIS POEM IS BRILLIANT or b) I DON'T GET IT. WHERE'S THE STORY?

And [thankfully thankfully because this is what I had been waiting for all week] one THIS DOESN'T RHYME. I ONLY LIKE POETRY THAT RHYMES.

The rule in poetry class discussion is that the poet cannot say anything. She cannot respond or explain.

Which means that (as badly as I wanted to pull handfuls of hair out of my head and scatter them around our circular discussion table like easter eggs) I could not say THIS IS NOT A NARRATIVE POEM -- NOTHING HAPPENS -- THERE IS NO STORY.

My favorite FAVORITE [I mean THE WORST] part was when my poetry professor, Ralph, gave us his poetic philosophy, which went like this: "Each poem is like a little bubble. And it's the poet's job to convince the reader that everything in the bubble is true. That the bubble is a real world. If the reader must come out of that bubble during any point in his or her reading, the poem fails."

At this point I was digging a hole under the table and hoping to fall through and land in some other classroom. Ralph says: poetry = genre novels + crappy films + pop music. With salt on top. Kat dies.

I cannot wait until our midterm conference when I can finally tell him how wrong he is about everything. And especially how I will jump off of a building if I ever write a poem that is a bubble. If I ever write a poem that doesn't pop at least twelve bubbles. And then stomp on the kid blowing them.

So there was that.

And then today was wonderful. It was warm, so I painted a picture and made chocolate chip cookies. I went shopping with a friend and bought things that I don't need.

Tomorrow I need to accomplish two things:
1) Take my very dirty long white coat to the dry-cleaners
2) Stand in line at the post office to apply for a passport

Because I'm tired of walking around in a dirtyish coat and because I'm going to spend six weeks in Italy this summer.

This week the poetry assignment is to mold three sessions of automatic writing into one poem. I never thought that taking a class on something I love so much could make me so miserable.

Also, I've been wondering. What ever happened to the Chapbook Review?

in which I plan to tell a lie, or, a new poem

2010-01-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

This week my poetry professor wants poems that imitate poems from an anthology called '150 Poems Worth Reading'. These poems are, of course, exactly what you would expect.

Because I like to only pretend to follow assignments as they should be followed, I pretended to write an imitation of Elizabeth Bishop's 'The Fish'.

Instead of waiting to pretend to care when my classmates offer pint-sized criticism come Monday or Wednesday, I sent it to an Ana to aid in expiration.

You can read it here unless you are in my poetry class, in which case you will spoil your appetite.

Do not expect more than a casual nod to Elizabeth Bishop. Do expect a casual nod to JM Wahlgren who shared a lovely letternotletter poem with me earlier this week.

peppermint good morning

2010-01-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

New poem in Unscroll IV. Excellent ensemble.

Last night had a dream about snow and lemurs. An original combination. Today it's cleaning. The end of Woolf. Marx. Hegel. Whatever else can be gotten to.

End.

procedural

2010-01-11T16:51:00.000-08:00

I started reading David Mitchell's Black Swan Green on my second trip to the hospital, picked it up again for the extensive third trip, and now I fear I'll never finish it. Granted, I spent most of my time there doped into the wallpaper, so reading was sparse and disjointed. But now, I even look at the front cover (which, honestly, was the very reason I bought it in the first place) and think hospital, no thank you.

Now I've got this nice afternoon of reading left to finish it up and more than sufficient excuses not to read it. The semester has started, and it's a week or so before the heavy reading starts -- but already I've got Virginia Woolf and a little book of '150 poems worth reading' to preoccupy me.

This feels dirty. I have left books unfinished before. There was Wilkie Collins's No Name that I willingly abandoned. Several books I ran out of time for in a literary genre class last semester. But this is a light thing, a clumsy, nice-featured novel with no particular grudges. In short, a hospital book. Something completely repulsive. I've literally hidden it in a corner under my desk behind my do-it-all-and-grumble-about-it printer. It feels abandoned. Unloved. Unwanted. I know it.

Did I tell you I have holes in my stomach? Yes. Not ulcers. Holes. The lining has been all rubbed away in five places. Cue pain. Cue hospital. Multiply.

But now there's acid prevention, a quiet bread and yogurt diet, non-aspirin-based pain meds, and the good, solid hope that things will heal themselves (and I won't -- here comes the secret gore -- have to have my stomach replaced).

Today in one of my brit lit classes, we briefly discussed the Victorian obsession with vampire fiction. The real monster of course was syphilis and other venereal (what they called blood) diseases. I can certainly see this relationship resurrected in modern vampire madness. [The only test subjects I have are a friend's divorced&bitter motherfromhell and her widowed&desperate best friend. Formal studies to begin shortly.]

If I were to fit into this equation, it would involve David Mitchell instead of vampires.

post roll over

2010-01-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

2010 is good. Post hospital, all cheer. Sleep, but cheer.

And snow. Snow. Georgia snow.
And we're talking Atlanta snow -- not mountain snow.

School is back. I have a stupid schedule. But I am grateful for this because it is still not nearly as miserable as six classes miserable. Plus much time for the darling.

Nora is a cat now. I am not a cat person. Luckily she is the prettiest cat that I have ever seen.

First day of classes and my only weekend assignment is Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse. My favorite book. I honestly only signed up for a 20th century brit lit class because I KNEW there would be Woolf. I call this an excellent decision.

&&&&&& SNOW (!!!!!!)

PS. People who 'don't believe in' global warming are stupid.

hospitalia

2010-01-05T16:25:00.000-08:00

Um. Twilight Zone.

I spent several days sharing a room with a woman who, at 75, experienced the abrupt death of her short-term memory. Surprisingly, she handled this cheerfully. Crazy things can happen, she'd say. Again and again. After day two, the nurses came to me when they had questions for her. I know everything about this woman. Her date of birth. Her sister's name and phone number. Her church and pastor. Her son, daughter-in-law, grandchildren in Philadelphia. Her night nurse. Who sent the flowers on the windowsill. When she'd arrived. Where she came from. What happened.

After several days, a nurse took pity on me and moved me to a private room.

Crazy things can happen.

news from the front line

2009-12-30T19:07:00.000-08:00

This blog never had any intention of becoming a medical journal. I swear. Fresh from the doctor's office after another outburst from The Mystery Disease, this time in my stomach and esophagus. We are now treating it like an (or multiple) ulcer(s). Which means bye-bye Vicodin and hello frozen yogurt. New meds and the mac-and-cheese diet, which is okay with me except that it means actually eating. I've dropped two pounds with my lack of appetite. Two pounds doesn't sound like a lot, but keep in mind that I started at 105. Bottoming at 103 officially makes me a stick. But I haven't noticed because my tummy's all puffed up like a kwashiorkor child.

Not funny, I know, but bear with me. It's been a very long couple of months.

Fingers crossed that these new meds work. Lots and lots of fingers crossed. Because if they don't, it means a) there are serious complications or b) it's not actually an ulcer (and I'm really really hoping that it is; not because ulcers are wonderful, but it is nice to have a name to blame instead of The Big Mystery).

If this has been an ulcer all along (or some ulcer related trouble), I've only succeeded in making it much worse with all of the pain meds I've been popping since November. Much much worse. Thank you hospital visits for giving me no answers and the wrong prescriptions. This now means that the maybe-ulcers could be spreading to my other organs or drilling holes in my digestive tract and letting toxic fluid leak out (cough cough may I again mention that all the doctors HAVE been able to tell is that there is a lot of mystery fluid in my abdominal cavity) or - because I like worst case scenarios - the ulcers could be big and bad and mean gastric cancer.

So. It's a nice, painful wait to guess and check with these new meds. But I'm strangely positive about this. Trying to be, at least.

New Year's Eve. Tomorrow. Everyone's making their to-do-2010 lists. I'm not much for resolutions, but if I were, here's what my list would look like:

1) be well
2) write more
3) finish what I start
4) apply to grad school
5) be accepted to grad school :)
6) eat

Six is a nice number, I think.

Milta has heated a bag of beans for my back. It smells terrible, but it's supposed to ease some of the pain - we hope - so it's worth a shot.

I hope that you are well. I send you all my yellow thoughts for your new year.

blunt force drama

2009-12-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

Alright, blog world. I need answers.

Not in the existential sense. Just biological. Or pseudobiological, which is probably what the medical field amounts to.

Another round of The Mystery Disease sent me, yet again, to the hospital for another round of tests and another round of - you guessed it - inconclusive results. All that I've managed to discover is that there is still excess liquid floating around in my pelvic cavity. Which could mean nothing or anything but certainly doesn't explain why I've been experiencing a crippling pain from my sternum down to my abdomen.

Here are all of the things that The Mystery Disease isn't or probably isn't caused by:

1. a ruptured ovarian cyst: the most compelling theory after the first incident when my abdomen exploded; fails to account for the full-body pain of TMD round two; still, I am waiting on my next period to start a new kind of birth control that will hopefully prevent any future cyst eruptions.

2. my oh so diabolical uterus: I actually had a doctor tell me that my intense chest pain was caused by a miscommunication between my ovaries and my uterus; yes, I do and have always had awfulawfulawful periods, but really? I'd call that a miscommunication between doctor and patient.

3. Crohn's disease: a group of very intelligent, nonmedical people offered this suggestion, and it seemed fitting to me at least, the idea of my immune system literally eating away at my digestive tract; the latest CTs show no sign of this, however.

4. acid reflux: might explain the esophageal pain, but doctors ruled it out early on; plus it doesn't account for all of the other pain areas.

5. my gallbladder: Milta still holds strong to the theory that my gallbladder is actually to blame for all of this; she had trouble with hers for many years and is quick to diagnose it in others.

What The Big Mystery IS or might be is still ... a mystery.

I'm now taking a super antibiotic, just in case there is some infection involved, Vicodin, and super Ibuprofen. All of which make me nauseous and tired and unwilling to do much but lay. I'm not in OUTRAGEOUS pain (though the pain is not entirely gone, more muffled or half-suffocated), but I still feel like shit. And there's no telling what will happen when all of these pills run out.

In summary, I'M GOING INSANE. Or my insides are going insane. Or some combination.

To top it all off, I'm not writing. Haven't been writing. Can't write. It's not even writer's block -- it's the fuzziness in my brain. I can't even comprehend how a poem should work right now. Or I sit down to stare at my thinking notebook and the nausea kicks in and it's back to bed. This is the worst of it.

One of these days spring semester is going to start and I'm going to need to actually live again.

HHHEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPP !!

before you go go

2009-12-18T11:24:00.000-08:00

Issue 1 of Divine Dirt Quarterly is now live!!
A big thanks to everyone who contributed and the best sort of shout-out to Andrew Bowen who pulled everything together so beautifully and made the whole project possible.

As for me, I've been stuck in bed with another bout of the mystery disease. This time it's severe chest and back pain, which a (yet another) new doctor blames on my uterus, or rather what we're now calling dysmenorrhea. While I don't doubt that my uterus is capable of plotting against the rest of my body, I still can't easily equate uterus with chest pain or breathing troubles. Regardless, I've got a new batch of the good pain meds -- these are apparently given to women in labor, which does give me the strange urge to writhe about some and scream obnoxiously just for the sake of attention.

Cold and rainy here in the south. Momchik and I are haphazardly throwing together the new [bmb] project. Thanks to my immobility we've barely managed to shoot 3 out of a whopping 42 planned scenes. And we have just over a week to finish. Because of the size, we will be selling OLD SUN on dvd rather than sharing it for free online. Don't worry. There will be plenty of copies at dirt cheap prices. We may even throw in the soundtrack as a bonus. And expect lots of bonus features on the Old Sun dvd. It'll be one awesome bargain.

Here in bed I've successfully devoured the obscure combination of movies that people have given me over the years (or maybe just left at my house, who knows). These have included Meet Joe Black, Roman Holiday, the musical Rent, Chasing Liberty (which I believe is supposed to be an update on Roman Holiday but is perfectly atrocious), and a random selection of House episodes. I seriously need to be healthy. And fast.

Oh I was given a BCG inoculation. It's a vaccine for tuberculosis, and I believe it is illegal in the US. That's what my sister told me anyway. It's given all over the world to promote general well-being, prevent such ailments as the flu and cancer, and increase longevity of life, but the US government does not want US citizens to have it -- so says the doctor who smuggles it in from France and administers it for free out of his office. My sister was given the vaccine six years ago because of chronic bronchitis and hasn't had it (or any other major illness) since, so apparently it's good for something. My injection came with an anecdote about a Nigerian priest who, at 98, flew some great distance to receive the inoculation because his father, who was also a priest, had had it and had lived to be 155 years old. I have no intention of ever living that long, but I would settle for a more manageable uterus.

Yes. Many hopes that things will be looking up tomorrow. Patrick and I are planning to attend a party at our favorite professor's house, and I will be very upset if this pain business kills that.

Alright. Enough wallowing. Get to readin' that DDQ now, ya hear?

Also poems here in case I haven't told you.

more good news

2009-12-02T05:11:00.000-08:00

After months and months of waiting, I've finally heard from Kristy Bowen of Dancing Girl Press. She really is the busiest lady in publishing.

The early morning news was a YES for a chapbook I finished up over the summer, when I was very much immersed in the private study of nuclear physics and obscure space particles. The ms is called Planetary Mass. More details to come.

Also, new poems out in the Ballard issue of > kill author.

wow (oh wow)

2009-11-30T14:47:00.001-08:00

Lynn Alexander of Full of Crow has nominated my poem 'Scales' for a Pushcart.

I am (very) excited.

The poem can be read here.

new (and leafy)

2009-11-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

Poem out today in #6 of Leaf Garden Press, and considering the weather, it could not be more perfect timing. That is if you live in the south. Elsewhere, you will have to pretend.

You can even download the entire issue for free (!), which is wonderful for spendthriftiness.

i am mostly fine

2009-11-18T12:36:00.000-08:00

I accidentally caused a string of worry in my social atmosphere when I made a point of screaming AS LOUD AS I HAVE EVER SCREAMED on Monday night when my abdomen filled with tacs and needles that I myself had not swallowed or absentmindedly slipped through my bellybutton as some means of entertainment during a slow lecture.

I was taken to the hospital. Because I disagree with a five hour emergency room wait (and people think Canada is bad, sheesh), I was taken home. In the morning, I was taken to the urgent care office. From there I received the unstructions TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM OR RISK AN UNTIMELY DEATH. I was again taken to the hospital. I settled for a two hour wait -- that later turned into a nine hour wait; leaving the waiting room is such a tease.

The first opinion: my appendix is actually a balloon. I drank two large cups of a mysterious clear liquid that tasted exactly like what I imagine an oompa loompa would taste like and then wiggled and boiled when my veins were filled with a distressingly hot liquid. Under the spinning space-ready cat scan machine, two doctors took pictures of my appendix and sent those pictures to a radiologist who sent them to a third doctor who informed me that my appendix did not show up in any of the pictures because I am so thin that it is impossible to take pictures of my insides, which made me wonder if I am actually a ghost or if I even have insides at all.

They did, however, see excess liquid floating somewhere in my pelvic region, which led me to believe that I am harboring the melted version of the wicked witch and led the doctors to their second opinion: my ovaries are actually a war zone. I was given an ultrasound, which was not at all what it looks like on television. The jelly was not even cold. There were cameras inserted in unimaginable places. AND I heard my ovaries whispering to each other. It sounded a lot like what bats sound like when they are sleeping upside down, and I felt guilty for intruding on a private conversation or a secret meeting of the war council. Again, pictures were sent and sent and sent and there was little to be seen beyond one leftover grenade.

I am home home home now and confined to my bed until further notice. This is all one misplaced disaster.

small successes

2009-11-15T06:40:00.000-08:00

This is a busy time of year. Bee bizzy.

This weekend alone I have accomplished much more than I usually manage to accomplish: including two papers spewed out on Saturday, the compilation of a group paper (still an absurd concept, in my opinion), preparation for two presentations (one on the art and folklore of Guatemala, to be squeezed into three minutes, and another on a seventeenth century English tabloid), laundry, full meals, and a small amount of time with Ellison's Invisible Man.

All that's left is to memorize the phonology, morphology, etc. of Middle and Early Modern English for an exam tomorrow. And a slew of meetings this afternoon.

I'm more excited than ever for grad school. I'm excited even to apply. Still a year away before I can seriously plan out a good portion of my life, but I'm ready.

Oh, I now have a full poetry line-up for the first issue of DDQ! These past three months have been a wonderful learning experience, and I'm feeling much more well-suited to the job. It should be an incredible first issue.

Is it really almost 10 am? Yikes! I miss my slow Sundays.

maps

2009-11-01T10:32:00.001-08:00

new poem out in this month's elimae

dialectal

2009-10-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

New poems out today from Otoliths.

It is perfectly acceptable to read aloud in an Australian accent. Even encouraged.

misnomers

2009-10-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of Kat Dixons. This is something I've come to accept. There are a lot of Kat Dixons, and a lot of them write poetry. Bad poetry.

This is good and bad.

BAD because I NEVER want to be confused with BADpoetryKatDixon.

GOOD because one day when I look back on notsogreat poetry that I've written that has been published and is available for viewing by people I would rather not read notsogreat poetry, I can blame BADpoetryKatDixon.

Long-term rewards are a sticky business.

Patrick is flying in from New York tomorrow, and I am cutting birds out of construction paper. Hot tea is very much in order.

homeland

2009-10-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

New headquarters for alphabetical fascinations:
one size fits all

full of

2009-10-04T12:45:00.001-07:00

three new poems now in full of crow

available for viewing at leisure

churn, burn, turn around

2009-09-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

A very nice rejection letter today. A reminder
that I need to WRITE.

On the plus side, lots of new stuff out this winter.

Nora

2009-09-20T09:51:00.001-07:00

Patrick and I have a kitten.

more news

2009-09-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

Out today: KISSISSIPPI from Gold Wake Press!

happy launching

2009-09-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

DIVINE DIRT QUARTERLY is up, running, and seeking submissions for its inaugural edition!!

Also [bmb] can be found at its new home.

Happy Labor Day.

[bmb] on the move

2009-09-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

If you are hunting for [bad movies better], you may have noticed a shift in its headquarters. We are currently making the leap from youtube to vimeo! In the meantime, past [bmb] productions are sprawled between the old place and the in-between place.

For viewing ease, the latest [bmb] video is posted here. I will make some attempt at maintaining a running preview of up-to-date projects as well as announcing forthcoming projects.

Meanwhile, a [bmb]-specific home is coming soon. All of my creative worlds are spinning into each other at the moment, and I need space.

Yes, keep an eye out for new headquarters and also for OLD SUN, [bmb]'s large-scale winter production, coming this December.

august all over again

2009-08-26T14:21:00.001-07:00

The good news is that I'll have several tangible poems to give you this winter, some in boxes. The bad news is that I'm not writing any right now.

new

2009-07-25T12:39:00.001-07:00

Poem in summer blossombones.

Check it out.

rounding

2009-07-02T21:18:00.001-07:00

Too, there are times when I really
cannot open doors for myself. This
puts me a step behind feminism.

I am semi-pleased to say

2009-06-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

that PLANETARY MASS is complete. Now it is a matter of repairing the damages, the bite marks taken from elbows. It's the same when I make the effort to run on the treadmill and suddenly discover that I have to pee or blow my nose. Floating.

I promised myself that once it was over, I'd save time for reading books, for enjoying the summer before it's gone. B U T Momchik isn't here yet, and I'm already making poemplans in my head.

I've spent the morning in bed with the first issue of the Chapbook Review. These are the terribly clever ideas I'm sorry I didn't give not-birth to. I know - a shower is in my future. Possibly even the brushing of teeth.

finish

2009-05-04T12:12:00.000-07:00

Note: This was actually meant for my English blog. I guess it got confused.

I’m all caught up in predicting bug-bites, and I don’t want to say that my alphabet is a life plan. The future is a big thing to put down in one sitting.

Someone inadvertently asks it – why don’t you do something important? – like it’s a casual exchange or a polite nothing by which to measure the distance between real conversations. It’s not something to plan tea over, but it happens, on an accidental tongue. When it does, it is only unlucky in that I do not have pockets. Be it an unnoticed wardrobe mistake or an incurable case of wrong-place-wrong-time, it has never happened that the question has slipped out on a day when I have a safe place to stow away my hands. It happens – something important? – and my nervous fingers are already pulling at air, searching out an earring, a rubber band, a table cloth.

There it is: nuclear physics. Two protons, almost fluorescent in their quickness, meet in a little room underground to consider long-term commitment.

In another room, a full minute ago, someone thought up psychic parties. “I see you’ll be – a doctor.” Never mind the blood.

What they didn’t see was the romance, the way sea quarks touch and die, touch and come to life again.

Everyone’s assuming. Even the boy from the music hall: “I know your type, you girls who wear black eyeliner.” Politicians make a difference, and lawyers make money. (Never mind the blood.) The justifications never fail them, even the parties, even the psychics. I was folded over a curb, waiting for pancakes, when I rescued the worm, who was shockingly ungrateful, and everyone knew exactly what I would do with my life. (Do gypsies wear black eyeliner?)

It’s a matter of tactile deficiency. Stitches do not reveal their letters to the untrained fiddler. (Why is it so often said that English majors can do anything?) Why don’t you – settle down and be very linear so that we will have no trouble when we plan your memorial service? The truth is I’m not listening. Studying medicine would mean I’d have to recognize my entangled vocal cords and finger wiring as a birth defect.

Here’s what you’re after:

Checklist: The very first thing I intend to do is start again. Desert then – I will try to get in the habit of breathing unpolluted air.

Then business: college round two. Creative writing, philosophy.

Grad school. PhD. Linguistics, maybe.

(Learn what is worth talking about and exactly what to say.)

An interlude for the statisticians: There is mathematics to the coupling. Arrangements can be counted, coded into a fractal geometry for language, one hat-shaped curve. The base twenty-six can be pieced together to form any number of combinations – four for the standard tuning of a violin, four for the strings and strings of my DNA.

Two protons meet and are gone.

Someone said it, and I bent down to remove the napkin from my feet. It was dusty under the table, and I thought of all the things that could be growing there. When I reemerged, my face maintained its perplexed expression, which was enough to satisfy the inquiry. My fingers went to folding and unfolding because maybe it’s not enough. Pockets keep hands warm but also hide them.

When the party soured we stretched out on our backs and drank everything that was left. “I see now how you can write,” she said. “It’s very small. It’s in the way you sit on the floor when you’re wearing a full skirt.” Subtract the number of wine bottles and she may have been close.

“Do you mind if I record this session?” Not a bit, I said – my own little psychic party goody bag. He asked my birthday, counted the dead people that follow me around, said I had strong ties to the east. “A doctor, maybe. Or you’ll write.” It must have been the look on my face that made him change his mind.

little

2009-04-28T09:38:00.000-07:00

Today I rediscovered the poem you
caught in the history of the
world but forgot in a
(moment's) notebook. I
guess that makes it
twice found.
(Not everyone wanted to see you.)

satur(n)day

2009-04-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

I feel that if I buy a typewriter it won't
matter how many c's are in necessary.

Visiting

2009-03-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

I am often impatient and rarely time things well.

two twenty-two

2009-03-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

Nineteen, sure. My best to the Seuss and a day late to Mister Chopin.

blue-green

2009-02-24T18:38:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking again in a different sort of ocean. This time it tastes like nuclear combustion behind my teeth.
The juice spilled out on Sunday - all because I was sitting on the little rug in the big room at the Hippie House, letting my little dog make a big mess of hair all over my black t-shirt. A dust mote drew my wandering attention to the bookshelf, where I always notice the most ridiculous titles, ones I have somehow failed to notice previously, though they've always been there.

This title: SOLAR SYSTEMS

The jacket was dustier than the overcast sky, so I thought it might make for an interesting tour. I stood on my tiptoes, even climbed up on a chair, but it wedged itself on some pouting, wooden lip. Milta came and retrieved it for me. She seemed a lot taller before I started wearing heels.
The solar system in 1969 was a different sort of place. (-- The oceans were too; did the Pacific have a garbage patch even then?) I learned that Mercury is the smallest planet and that Jupiter accounts for 71% of our solar system's planetary mass. (Yes, I even remember the figures.) Neptune and Pluto, still a planet, warranted only a page each, while every other planet had a sturdy handful.

Of interest: Venus is our almost-twin. In 1961 Carl Sagan decided that Venus could be terraformed, or made habitable for silly things like us, just by using a blue-green algae from Earth that eats carbon dioxide and reverses the greenhouse effect. Wait - - back up. REVERSES THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT? Sign me up.

My black t-shirt was practically white with little dog fur.

Why, oh why, Milta, I cried out in my over-the-top-sides-and-bottom voice, can't this be done on Earth if it can be done on Venus? We've already got everything we need. She shrugged and told me that MW had walked through DDT showers in the navy every time he docked. I took this to mean that things don't make sense.

I wikipedia-searched Carl Sagan, terraforming but didn't find much.

If I were better than I am I would give up language and figure these things out.
But then, I wonder, what would I say?

Pull

2009-02-18T06:09:00.000-08:00

I haven't been writing.
No, sometimes I just can't keep my mouth shut.

For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign

2008-10-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

I've borrowed a title from Jean Baudrillard because it is the most appropriate summary of my recent social upheaval.
(Allow me to preface my self-explanation with the promise that I do not purposefully seek trouble; it never makes its way into my daily agenda yet seems to have declared a fixed position in my day-to-day life. I justify this fact by telling myself that I merely notice all of those silly, unnecessary constraints on freedom that most people take for granted. Once noticed I am thus inclined to thrust these constraints into a spotlight with a "SEE? SEE?" gesture and ask everyone I come across why we let these silly things persist - why are we okay with them? Because that's the way it is - - no, not good enough.)

An aggrandized introduction for a simple issue: signs.

The trouble began almost a month ago when I shamelessly hoisted a rather large OBAMA sign in my bedroom window. In any other window, the sign would have gone unmentioned, but I live on campus -- more specifically, my bedroom window is directly adjacent to the front entrance of my building. All of the poor souls entering or exiting the building (done quite often now with an endless string of touring teenagers with parents in toe parading about) are practically forced to gaze upon my blue-eyed Obama sign. Still, for several weeks, all was quiet on the home front.

The first complaint came in the form of a dowdy RA named Emily. My purpose is not to slight Emily in any way (though public policing is a touchy subject) but rather to introduce the first visible action-figure in the University's Repressive State Apparatus (yes, Dr. Morgan, I was listening), that leering counterpart to the Ideological State Apparatus that is the very embodiment of "University." Here we have her: the typical RA, a smiling big sister who welcomes students into residence life with her friendly-but-not-too-friendly aroma of academia. She's young, she's likable, she's everything the University wants in a student - - mindful of her mindlessness. For a minute we almost forget that it's our big sister who pulls our hair and steals our favorite candy bars.

Emily came wielding a declaration: I must remove the sign! She cited a rule, which I asked her to produce specifically. She wielded a copy of the resident's handbook; still I refused to kill my windObama. Frankly, I was not very polite. Out-in-out mean is more appropriate. I really should seek out poor Emily and apologize to her. As soon as this scuffle is over, that is.

Since Emily's visit, additional RA's have come knocking on my door, each equipped with a bullying attitude and a synthetic sense of righteousness (with the exception of Lize, who is lovely). I've been threatened with "official hearings" and "reports" of some kind.
With only two weeks left until election day, the time has come to plead my case to you, dear ones, as you are an unbiased party.

Here are the facts:

The Residence Life Handbook DOES include a rule about window decorations. It says:

Decorations may not be visible from outside the apartment, with the exception of holiday decorations which must be:
1) appropriate for the holiday being celebrated;
2) displayed only during the time period immediately surrounding the holiday;
3) appropriate for a community living environment; and
4) must comply with all fire and facility regulations.

It then goes on to forbid live trees and empty alcohol bottles.

So should I feel the need to litter my window with ghosts, menorahs, or turkeys, I'd be free to do so.

When the RAs come knocking, my initial response is usually "Election Day is a national holiday - back off!" Unfortunately this is not exactly true. Election Day is NOT a national holiday; because election processes are decided on a state-by-state basis, holiday status is granted by the state government. Georgia is not one of the states patriotic enough to declare Election Day as such. (We did secede from the Union after all.) There have been several initiatives to make Election Day a federal holiday, renamed Democracy Day. A bill, HR 63, was raised in 2005 by Michigan congressman John Conyers but died in committee; its sister saw a similar fate in the Senate. In 2007 the bill was reborn but was put on the back burner.
Today it stands with 110 cosigners, waiting for consideration.

That being said, Election Day IS recognized as a "National Day of Importance" ...
Halloween, however, has no such standing. It is not recognized as a holiday or as important. Halloween may be perfectly wonderful, but its window propaganda has no more right to litter windows than my WindObama. Less, in my book.

The University is an institution that promotes socio-political awareness!! It cannot put stipulations on that endorsement! That would be (and is) blatant hypocrisy. Althusser would have had a field day here.

While I was typing this I received yet another visit from those shiny-toothed RAs. It's official: I've been "written-up". I feel like a misbehaving child. How silly: I made it through twelve years of public school without one violation of the rules, and here I am, a sophomore in college, with a big slap on the wrist. I am to schedule a hearing immediately. "Official determination of charges will be made by hearing officer." Charges? Sign in window. The tag team of RAs that came to inform me of my fate filled in the "Reason for Notice/Alleged Violation" area with: "Political sign in bedroom facing outside. Repeated times asked to take down (with several RAs) and stands strong about issue."

I've been encouraging many to protest this rule by taping signs in their windows - any sort of sign they could think up - and many have (thank you!!).
Now I'd like to ask you to fine tune your efforts. Got a political opinion? Paste it up! There are campaign headquarters locally that would be more than happy to provide you with signs. (The Obamastore is on Cobb Parkway. There HAS to be a McCain store just as close.) Handmade signs are awesome too. If you don't support a candidate or aren't a citizen or whatever, you can encourage others by taping up the word "Vote" - get creative! Make it personal!

Our freedoms are important. Let us not forget what we stand for, or we shall surely fall.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Dastardly Things

2008-10-15T09:42:00.000-07:00

It's a shame that the weather has been so delightful as of late.
In the south, summer crashes into December, gets a bruise on its knee, crosses its arms and pouts until March when freeze-tag is out of fashion and follow-the-leader is the game to be played. We've reached the reckless, top-speed months now, ready with band-aids and aloe vera for the next unstoppable collision. Welcome to late October, the Spider Season. Our temps - - still a gasping 83 degrees, and while the rest of the country is out on a biannual shopping spree for the latest jean fads, I can relax in my short shorts in the grass and show off my curving calves.
So why the sad face with such smiling weather?
I write best when it's uncomfortably morose outdoors! Hurricane season is a favorite (despite the repetitious news hour) with its endless string of gray. But Georgia hasn't seen rain since dinosaurs, at least, so I've been out of luck.
Tish tosh. I'll bite my lip and twiddle my pen until January.