Monday, November 24, 2014

Hot damn! another Pushcart nomination


Thank you Savvy Thorne and everyone else at Conclave: A Journal of Character (http://www.conclavejournal.com/issues/issues.html) for nominating my poem, "Our Lady of the Red Potatoes", for the 2016 Pushcart Prize. I'd been working on this poem for six years, and submitting it along the way without landing anywhere. Couldn't give up on it, though.

For those who don't know about Pushcart, or who wish to know more, here is their website:  http://www.pushcartprize.com/pushcartpress.html


Our Lady of the Red Potatoes 

Our Lady of the Red Potatoes
has set her altar on a city bench.
She hunches small. No star-blue mantle
shielding her from winter light.
Hunger-thin and gray, not old,
in Rhino Records’ parking lot she calls
Red potatoes, red, six for a dollar.

Her eyes squeeze shut. I watch
her roughened hands
read each potato’s face.
She listens for their low voices.
Her hands receive the messages
her gods have scrawled there.
Behold, she hands to me
six red potatoes, red, six for a dollar,
thin-skinned potatoes bigger than my fist.

I rasp potato peel, twirl out their eyes,
prepare to receive the mystic meal
of red potatoes, red, six for a dollar.
No healing or redemption from our lady,
just nature’s artless poison, pure green gift
of alkaloids, red potatoes green as glass.
They are fallen from the earth into the light,
sun-stroked like their lady.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Rosewater: the most dangerous profession


We just saw this film, written and directed by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. It is hard on the system but worth the distress, and very much worth seeing. This is the only film I can remember since "Z" that shows the risks journalists routinely suffer. Did you know that, proportionally, more journalists die while working than any other profession or line of work? If you are not upset to know this fact, you should be.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Neon in a strip mall


The only remaining business in a strip mall. It's a good Thai restaurant, and we've been going there for 30 years.