Friday Round Up

Let me begin this post by sending positive thoughts and get well wishes to the fantastic poet Brent Goodman. He had a heart attack on Thursday morning and had to have an angioplasty to clear a 99 percent blockage in an artery. He's doing better now and has been told to take a month off. I'm expecting lots of great poetry from you, sir! 

I was delighted that the Pew Research Center found Modern Confessional and used it as a source for their article Blogs, Not Press, Feature Gay Marriage Story. The story points out that social media is giving the majority of coverage to the gay marriage issue. Here's the original blog post that Pew used in its article.

Work on the sequel to Conquering Venus has come to a halt because I'm still trying to figure out a direction for one of the main characters. Two roads diverge in Paris and I have to figure if Martin takes the one less travelled. In the meantime, I'm writing new poems. That seems fitting since it's National Poetry Month. Another poets' dinner is taking place this weekend at Agave, a fabulous restaurant that serves delicious Southwestern food, so I'm feeling all verse-y. 

Speaking of poetry, here's one of the prose poems that appears in the latest issue of Tears in the Fence.

My Mother Demonstrates How To Escape From A Plane Crash

Although she has never flown on an airplane, my mother sits on a low stone wall at the entrance to the cemetery and tells me she wanted to move to New York City and become a flight attendant. I am kneeling in green grass in front of a chest of drawers searching for socks not worn at the heel, the sky above us blue and tufted with motionless clouds.

My mother will die never having her stomach drop, never feel ears popping from the altitude, the heaviness that settles into limbs, the shallow breath that comes with thin re-circulated air, the way a body adapts to unnatural, human flight.

When she was a girl, a flight attendant was one of the most glamorous jobs in the world. The crisp uniform, jaunty hat, kid gloves and matching luggage all reeked of worldliness, something to benevolently hold over the heads of those other girls who spread legs instead of wings, invited high school sweethearts to climb aboard and permanently ground them.

In this place where I will bury her, my mother stands at attention, mended socks on her hands, and demonstrates the drill she learned from a manual: The exit doors at the front and rear of the plane, and with her arms outstretched as if poised to fly, the escape hatch over each wing.