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(Photo by Nicole Steinberg)

I'll be heading for the annual Maine sojourn in a couple of weeks--even further out in the islands. I hope my iPhone won't even work. Or maybe I will just make a vow not to use it at all.

I will spend most of my time kayaking and hiking and reading and cooking. I will spend a significant amount of time working on a new book, because I decided I should have one--in fact, already have one in progress.

I forgot to mention I have poems in the new behemoth LIT, the happy-birthday yellow 10th Anniversary edition. I invited Caroline Knox and Maureen Thorson to join me for the former-editors' retrospective. And the rest of the issue (huge, as aforementioned) looks to be super too. I just got my copy Saturday, and am slowly going through it. Congrats to the current staff on a terrific celebration of "our" journal's decade! (And please note and bookmark the new website.)

Seeing a couple of my own poems in LIT forced me to realize I have been a brat about sending things out, even when I have been kindly invited. I don't do this on purpose. The weeks between invitation and deadline just drift by and nothing goes in an envelope or email. I will try to be better about this. Maybe I'll think about that in Maine too.

Tweakjob: Win a copy of Sandra Simonds' Warsaw Bikini

Details at the Bloof blog.

Bloof 2009-2010

BOYER + DAVIS + KNOX

Not here

Here:

A kid I knew, whose mother

was stabbed by a stepfather and whose brother was shot at a football game while I watched, he came down the stairs, or his lookalike maybe, was coming down the stairs in this mall we were in, with another kid behind him, and a woman, all carrying clothes with hangers dangling. So I said, hey what are you doing but the woman pulled her gun. I told everyone to get down. When the bullet ripped over the top of my head I felt my scalp open, but I knew I wouldn't die. I won't die, I assured everyone. I felt for blood and wasn't disappointed. I wondered where the inappropriate palm trees came from. Their shadows were sort of distracting.

So I looked down then, thinking I'd have blood on me. My green tee shirt said I RAN TRACK AT MINEOLA PREP. I thought, I'll have to shave my head for the surgery. It's my chance to grow it back in blond. I was thinking, It's been twenty years since I've been a blonde. And where'd that kid go? I forgot to say bye.

The argument is love.