So I won the lottery last Thursday while I was at work!! No, not really, what really happened was I was a finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council poetry grant, which comes with a monetary prize. I am so excited!!! It makes me feel like I won a million dollars, or that my poems did. It was nice to get outside validation on my poetry even though I shouldn't really need it.
Also, I got an acceptance to a journal I've been trying to get into since 2009. That was sugar on the icing. And, she writes, looking outside at the small snowflakes coming down, much needed cheery news.
I'm counting Poetry Monday a success, both last week and today. I've gotten some poetry stuff done that needed getting done and tried to focus on the busy work of poetry that isn't as fun as writing is. Or as fun as reading is, for that matter.
And for reading, I'm getting back into Bluets by Maggie Nelson. It's a fascinating exploration into the color blue. I'm certainly learning a lot about it. For example, that "Epicurus, proposed...that objects themselves project a kind of ray that reaches out toward the eye, as if they were looking at us" (21).
To SeaJocelyn Casey-Whiteman
I am a brilliant animal
but when the world unfurls
the black hallway
of its appetite, I shut myself
inside, inside
this self, a shock
of Russian Dolls shellacked and shelved
among the men who wear the winning suits.
Some hands
were so warm it took time
to feel them find my throat.
I have all these halves
to look after. They give people ideas.
My eyes, carved sharp and wide,
have had to multiply;
it's wild how much they see.
Dear Monsters, keep your Old Brain
games far from me.
I edge fire with heed.
Not for ash, nor smoke
but truth, a better way to breathe,
Inside me, something found has its beat.
I drive myselves to sea.
I drive myselves to sea.
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