what news! Karen Lepri’s FIG. I and Shelly Taylor’s Dirt City Lions are now available for $7 each!

have you read shelly taylor's black-eyed heifer? i think you better:

"to keep from decline, ask her where it hurts."

i have been looking at photographs of detroit for two hours.

i feel like going there.

and i've been reading about effigies and writing myself a future letter and drinking water. now to teach.

here is what happens to donuts in a filmmaker's lodge. other things happen too.

yesterday was rb's bday

there is a lot i have to tell you about sundance--the best being that benh's film won the grand jury prize in the us dramatic competition. this film will blow up your mind into one hundred thousand pieces. it was the last award of the night. it got incredibly tense when they were in the process of announcing it. we got back last night. i have a very stiff neck. i will tell you stories in a little while. here is a little of the nyt article:

"The standout of this year’s Sundance and among the best films to play at the festival in two decades, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” isn’t an obvious studio-dependent title. Directed by Benh Zeitlin, who wrote the screenplay with Lucy Alibar, the film is a magical realist tale, as well as a hero’s journey, set in a gloriously mythologized part of southern Louisiana nicknamed the Bathtub"

this week i have been listening to ukranian pop, having wild dreams about superheroes, and watching this--

which is the most amazing thing.

two weeks ago i bought an airplane ticket to go to ireland. after i did it, i became very emotional.

last night these astonishing poets read in a place with deer on the wall:

: julia

the new hlr is out! it has exciting work by all these beautiful people: Lily Ladewig, Carrie Bennett, Karen Lepri, Dawn Pendergast, Mark Lamoureux, Molly Brodak, Jeff Alessandrelli, Linda Russo, Becca Jensen, Deborah Poe, Sarah Mangold, Michael Flatt, Christine Gardiner, Jefferson Navicky, Matthew Johnstone, Monica Mody, Jennifer Stockdale, John Duvernoy, Jane Lewty, Maryrose Larkin, Cori A. Winrock, and Ashley Van Doorn. Cover art by Patrick Costello.

here is an example:

Lily Ladewig

Poem for the Pussy Willows

Marriage is nothing like surrender. When I reach for the shotgun it’s just my way of saying hello stranger. I pretend I’m like the meadowlark. I rip up the garden again. So many acres for so long and I can’t tell where they end or my skirt hem begins. My pockets holding onto my hands. My hands too quick. Working these little traps. You in the field at daybreak. Dressing the buck for its purple meat. Me buttoning this blouse. Up to my neck in it. Autumn came and there I was, eating the most tasteless plums, wearing aprons. My chin like an ax. Every day I get a little older. I get haunted in the pussy willows. I’ve decided to take a delicate turn to the tree line. Pussy willows. Yes. Pussy willows yes please. Come. Somebody needs rescuing.

i've been in bed all day with drought-like sinuses. i bought a spray that contains aloe vera and sea salt, but it doesn't seem to help much. i've also been diffusing eucalyptus and doing peppermint steams. maybe tomorrow my face will be regular again. this is what i have been reading today:

emily pettit's goat in the snow:

we like to think of shipwrecks
as beautiful fuck-ups
and that goats' eyes are the secret to goats.

anna moschovakis's you and three others are approaching a lake:

because each date must be celebrated somewhere in this world
each moment of courage or loss or revolution
when something pushed something and something fell down

the other things i have been reading are miranda july's new book, it chooses you (it's about the penny saver and has interviews with people who sell objects. there are photographs by brigitte sire) and forest of eyes (selected poems of tada chimako, t. by jeffrey angles).

i hope you're having a nice weekend.