When I get ready to read a book, I better have back up. That means at least one book of poetry
to accompany any longer nonfiction or fiction work I’m trucking through. My intake requires a balance.
Also, as a poet, I want to stay in a constant state of study. Going to readings, dragging my finger
over unique structures I admire, and losing my mind over new discoveries. Like the first
book pictured above, “Crush” by Richard Siken. I’ve mentioned his name to few poet-loving friends
and they all nod in agreement and understanding. Perhaps I’m behind the time. I have Marty
McConnell to thank for the discovery(she asked the readers of her journal to name their
favorite queer poets, and Siken’s name appeared in multiple comments). So thank you, Marty.
I read 4 of his poems and sent him a message immediately to let him know how much I
appreciated his work. That’s another thing I’m working on with words: giving credit loud and
instant when it’s due.

Other books in the picture above, stacked beneath Siken: “Wellspring” by Sharon Olds. Renee
gave me a gentle nudge in checking her out, and I studied her work for a project in poetry class
last semester. I’ve read two of her other books and I’m already swept away by this one.
Knowing how little she reveals outside of the page(in regards to her childhood and past) makes
her words even more stunning and intense. Good poetry is like being knocked over and not wanting to get up.

Next is “It’s So You,” edited by Michelle Tea. Various individuals contributed to this collection to
discuss personal style. Including Eileen Myles, my favorite. I will read anything that Tea is involved
with, honestly. But first, the book beneath that: a collection of letters between Vita Sackville-West
and Virginia Woolf. Oh. My. Goodness. Joseph described it best by calling it a “torrid love affair.”
Expect more entries on here in regards to the book as I delve deeper into it. Vita is such an interesting
spirit–the introduction refers to her as almost being “professional” when it comes to breaking
up marriages and having intense affairs with other women. She adores Woolf’s writing, and
Woolf takes to her because she is very mothering. I love knowing that “Orlando” was written with
Vita in mind as Orlando–that it is a book referred to as “the longest love letter ever written.”
Every time I start reading, I think of my dear friend Jess and how much she loved Virginia Woolf’s
work. I owe the exposure to Jess and Jess alone.

In between various housekeeping things, I started rolling my plethora of change tonight. I’m
tipping $120 and I still have a ways to go. Who knew? Change seems so random and everywhere
and not mattering too much. But oh when you archive it…the currency really shows itself.
I guess the word “change” is appropriate here.

In other news: another doctor appointment tomorrow. This one is a check up, some various
tests, and I’m going to see about getting this mole on my chest removed. For as long as I can
remember, I’ve had a beauty mark smack dab in the middle between my breasts. Two other
women in my family have one in the same place, which is kind of funny. However, mine is the
biggest, and I think I spy the first two or three warning signs of the ol’ “time to get the thing removed”
handbook. I’m used to seeing it, but parting won’t be such sweet sorrow–piece of mind
acquired is much better. Be done with it.

I have a busy, busy weekend in front of me(including a documentary on the Paris ballet), running
parallel to the warning of a snow storm coming our way. As usual, people are getting very excited
and anxious about the promise of severe weather, understandably so. I prefer to just wait and
see though. I’ll put on my boots and deal with it. It’s February, so I’m not surprised, and I’m
not disappointed. Spring is next. It’s coming, no matter how much people complain and detest the
current temperatures. It’ll pass.

That’ll do. And now, to bed.

I’m awake. After hours of a manmade sleep. It is like going to bed in an actual bed and waking up on a piece of
driftwood in the middle of the sea. You know, drifting. I couldn’t make a fist when I first woke up. Now I can.

I woke up with a migraine and tried to be tough. Pleaded with the head and limbs to behave long enough for me to
get to work and do my job. Bargained with the self. Okay, so you have class tonight. Forget about class. Focus on
getting to work. Get to work. Focus on doing things.

Sat in the meeting with three fingers pressed to the left temple. Pushing and pushing against the pressure there. I
was trying to think past the instinct of getting up and heaving in the trash can. Meeting adjourned and I made it but a
coworker is worried and gives me words of encouragement. Appreciated but I can’t do much with them.

Realize that my hair is a mess. I tied it back but it’s coming loose.

I walk to my supervisor’s office and he already knows I’m sick. I leave for home after a 1/2 day of effort, and every
step on the concrete hurts. I wish I could explain it without sounding silly. It’s a painful vibration from each foot
connecting–the tuning fork travels all the way up to my head somehow. I get on the bus. I spread my scarf out on
my lap because I don’t have a plastic bag and I’m going to lose my breakfast. I’m sitting in the very back, casually
glancing at the others sitting nearby, trying to imagine their reaction to me cupping fabric around my mouth. I play
the little mantra in my head (It’s-okay-it’s-okay-it’s-okay-you-are-almost-home). I thwart the instinct and stumble onto
my street. I am walking like a drunk but I’m sober.

I slept and now I’m awake, reeling in the afterbirth of what comes with the usual. Disoriented and alone but not really
lonely. More like relief, to be honest. I do not want anyone to see me this way, and I’m kind of glad that I don’t have
to call and tell anyone about it. It’s too hard and too sad and “I’m tired of this” roles off my tongue like the easiest
thing. I’m not you–I can’t make it through my Monday. This is the only time I want to be different, something inanimate.

I think about my supervisor bashing FMLA after I told him that it might be my only option in terms of health and job
security. I don’t want to believe his naysaying when it comes to protection. What else can I do? It’s easy for someone
that isn’t dealing with a chronic illness to be so jaded and dismissive. I want to prove him wrong. I’m also incredibly
worried that he is right, that the protection promised will not be for my benefit in the end. I have 3 various doctor appointments
this wee so I will just have to see. Then what? Tests, worry, hope? Waiting?

I tell myself everyday that I am more than pain, more than an illness. But some days I have a hard time listening.
Some days I sleep and I sleep and I wake up on driftwood, and I wait for nothing except an acceptable time to go back
to bed because I don’t feel well enough to do anything else. Afraid to make plans because I don’t want to break them,
afraid to speak because I can’t do shit with your pity.

It’s 8:48pm. I stop here. Reasonable time to retire.

Tattered reams of movies
used as sheets, kicked off by the lazy birthday waltz
of your feet in dreaming–
a slow pedal kick through water or
twitch of shock when the old friend comes back
explaining “well I was never really gone.”

Three people are asleep in the theater,
each one missing a different plot
slow light disappear then lifting
across a cleft chin, cracked lips, furrow sloping into bridge.
Mistake and misery bypassed while
the rest of the audience cries or pretends not to cry
(the kind of thing we do because
we always assume that someone’s watching us)

There is a drift and leaving.
A departure that swells in us,
blocks out the other bodies, the traffic,
the kind of slumber that requires walking and function,
days of it you can stack into nickel pisas
the kind of mess you can make with you whole heart
the undecided blue of the room
(it could be early morning,
it could be just beginning night.

“Everything that isn’t urgent falls away in revision…”

“Poets aren’t rock stars. I’m not sure they should be. Poetry rattles you, and it’s hard to pay for that,” he offers.
“I’d hate to see poetry commodified. It keeps it safe and sacred.”
- Richard Siken

Saying Your Names
Chemical names, bird names, names of fire
and flight and snow, baby names, paint names,
delicate names like bones in the body,
Rumplestiltskin names that are always changing,
names that no one’s ever able to figure out.
Names of spells and names of hexes, names
cursed quietly under the breath, or called out
loudly to fill the yard, calling you inside again,
calling you home. Nicknames and pet names
and baroque French monikers, written in
shorthand, written in longhand, scrawled
illegibly in brown ink on the backs of yellowing
photographs, or embossed on envelopes lined
with gold. Names called out across the water,
names I called you behind your back,
sour and delicious, secret and unrepeatable,
the names of flowers that open only once,
shouted from balconies, shouted from rooftops,
or muffled by pillows, or whispered in sleep,
or caught in the throat like a lump of meat.
I try, I do. I try and try. A happy ending?
Sure enough — Hello darling, welcome home.
I’ll call you darling, hold you tight. We are
not traitors but the lights go out. It’s dark.
Sweetheart, is that you? There are no tears,
no pictures of him squarely. A seaside framed
in glass, and boats, those little boats with
sails aflutter, shining lights upon the water,
lights that splinter when they hit the pier.
His voice on tape, his name on the envelope,
the soft sound of a body falling off a bridge
behind you, the body hardly even makes
a sound. The waters of the dead, a clear road,
every lover in the form of stars, the road
blocked. All night I stretched my arms across
him, rivers of blood, the dark woods, singing
with all my skin and bone Please keep him safe.
Let him lay his head on my chest and we will be
like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed
to pieces. Makes a cathedral, him pressing against
me, his lips at my neck, and yes, I do believe
his mouth is heaven, his kisses falling over me
like stars. Names of heat and names of light,
names of collision in the dark, on the side of the
bus, in the bark of the tree, in ballpoint pen
on jeans and hands and the backs of matchbooks
that then get lost. Names like pain cries, names
like tombstones, names forgotten and reinvented,
names forbidden or overused. Your name like
a song I sing to myself, your name like a box
where I keep my love, your name like a nest
in the tree of love, your name like a boat in the
sea of love — O now we’re in the sea of love!
Your name like detergent in the washing machine.
Your name like two X’s like punched-in eyes,
like a drunk cartoon passed out in the gutter,
your name with two X’s to mark the spots,
to hold the place, to keep the treasure from
becoming ever lost. I’m saying your name
in the grocery store, I’m saying your name on
the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal
covered with frost, your name like a music that’s
been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud,
a kick in the pants, a lungful of glass, the sails
in wind and the slap of waves on the hull
of a boat that’s sinking to the sound of mermaids
singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple
profound sadness when it sounds so far away.
Here is a map with a your name for a capital,
here is an arrow to prove a point: we laugh
and it pits the world against us, we laugh,
and we’ve got nothing left to lose, and our hearts
turn red, and the river rises like a barn on fire.
I came to tell you, we’ll swim in the water, we’ll
swim like something sparkling underneath
the waves. Our bodies shivering, and the sound
of our breathing, and the shore so far away.
I’ll use my body like a ladder, climbing
to the thing behind it, saying farewell to flesh,
farewell to everything caught underfoot
and flattened. Names of poisons, names of
handguns, names of places we’ve been
together, names of people we’d be together,
Names of endurance, names of devotion,
street names and place names and all the names
of our dark heaven crackling in their pan.
It’s a bed of straw, darling. It sure as shit is.
If there was one thing I could save from the fire,
he said, the broken arms of the sycamore,
the eucalyptus still trying to climb out of the yard —
your breath on my neck like a music that holds
my hands down, kisses as they burn their way
along my spine — or rain, our bodies wet,
clothes clinging arm to elbow, clothes clinging
nipple to groin — I’ll be right here. I’m waiting.
Say hallelujah, say goodnight, say it over
the canned music and your feet won’t stumble,
his face getting larger, the rest blurring
on every side. And angels, about twelve angels,
angels knocking on your head right now, hello
hello, a flash in the sky, would you like to
meet him there, in Heaven? Imagine a room,
a sudden glow. Here is my hand, my heart,
my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from, but I can’t go through with it.
I just don’t want to die anymore.
- Richard Siken

I’m listening to Lucas Silveira cover Orbison acoustic, not yet tired and wondering when I will be, though I’m not keen on
bowing into it. For the past week I’ve been dreaming intensely–not good, not bad. Just intense. Speaking of intensity,
my therapist dropped some reality in my lap today(the kind I’ve been so busy with avoiding), and I spent the rest of
my day eyeballing other people in a curious way. As in where are they going, where are their scars, what of ailments,
relationships, phobias. Like I cracked open a book and ushered all the words in. I made eye contact with the inanimate too–
buildings, houses, fences. Concentrated on the humming in the concrete beneath my feet while the bus was passing.
I simply reminded myself to be a part of it. It as in everything, as the planet I’m on is not necessarily the one in my
head(the lack of vegetation, too harsh sun, smirking tundras). I’m on the actual one, where things are happening faster
than I can kick ‘em, and I better look up and enjoy it. Get the hell out of my head. Tell the worry not to wait up. I probably
won’t be back when the streetlights come on.

In the news last week, I fell over an article about Heidi Montag and her plastic surgery. She’s quite proud of it, and quite
forthcoming with the information–yes she spent tons of money to change her face, yes she had TEN procedures
done in one day and spent about $30,000 to do it, and yes. She would do it again.

And that’s all I will say about it. For the rest of this entry I’m going to praise the process by which we age. Naturally.

Here we go, 2010. Year for the pen. I have a bit of poetry coming out in various publications this year, and here is the
first one. I’m sitting among some personal favorites so I’m feeling good. Click below to read. My poem is on page 73.

link!

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
By Dan Majors and Sadie Gurman, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteIn the first hours after the devastating earthquake in Haiti,
while news reports of damage and death were still sketchy, three men huddled on the North Side last night to plan local
relief efforts.

“The first thing you do is share the pain,” said Luke Hingson, president of Brother’s Brother Foundation. “Then you share
the work.

“You talk to each other, and if you know anybody who has been affected, you feel sad about it. The next thing is ‘How
do we help?’ “

Mr. Hingson was meeting with Dr. Leon Pamphile, a native Haitian and executive director of Functional Literacy Ministries
of Haiti, and Russell Bynum, the organization’s chairman, to discuss what aid can be rendered now as well as what will
have to be done later.

“There is a strong connection between the people of Pittsburgh and Haiti,” said Dr. Pamphile, who founded Functional
Literacy Ministries, a Christian nonprofit organization, in 1983. “There is a strong desire to help in education, health
care and to provide hope for those who are hopeless.”

There are more than 100 Haitians living in Pittsburgh, many of them in East Liberty and Point Breeze. That number does
not include the students at universities, Dr. Pamphile said.

Many of those residents, he said, were calling him last night, desperate for any news from the island nation, which is
about the size of the state of Maryland, with a population of more than 9 million. News, however, was scarce as lines
of communication were disrupted by the quake.

“The phone has been ringing nonstop,” Dr. Pamphile said. “People are concerned, and they’re unable to get through.”

“Right now, we’re just hearing anecdotal stories about buildings being destroyed,” Mr. Hingson said.

The effort to help didn’t take long to get started, mostly because it was already in place. Churches and community
groups in Pittsburgh have been contributing educational and medical aid to Haiti for decades.

“We’ve been active in the country for 40 years,” said Mr. Hingson, whose charitable group has been headquartered in
Pittsburgh for 50 years. “We work with a number of groups in Haiti. We send medical supplies and other things through
Christian ministries. There is an enormous number of mission groups and medical teams that go to Haiti each year.”

Brother’s Brother has provided more than $3.4 billion in medical supplies, textbooks, food, seeds and other humanitarian
supplies to people around the world in more than 140 countries. It sent more than 50 medical shipments to Haiti last
year, Mr. Hingson said, and had already been planning to send another shipment before yesterday’s earthquake.

“There will be Pittsburgh hands on the ground in Haiti in about a week,” Mr. Hingson said. “These are people whose lives
have been damaged, and we have to help them. And then you have a rebuilding process. We’re talking about need, not
just today, but need four months from now, maybe years from now.

“We can deliver, because we have. But we don’t have the same personal connections that some other people do. People
who live in Pittsburgh who are from Haiti or have family there and have day-in, day-out connections there. There are
groups that have a daily interest in Haiti.”

Functional Literacy Ministries is one such group.

“We have had a medical and educational mission in Haiti for about 26 years now,” Mr. Bynum said. “We have about 70
reading centers there. We have a clinic that we just built in Thomazeau, in the mountains outside Port-au-Prince, in July.
And we already were in the process of getting a group to go to Haiti to convene with doctors there to do some medical
mission work.

“The doctors and teachers we bring in are native Haitians, so this is really hitting us very deeply. Because we know the
people.”

Another organization with local ties, the Friends of Hopital Albert Schweitzer Haiti, a nonprofit based in Point Breeze, was
working to help earthquake victims. The organization focuses on cultural awareness, as well as the health and economic
needs of people in central Haiti’s Artibonite valley.

Hopital Albert Schweitzer’s main campus is more than two hours from Port-au-Prince, near where the earthquake struck.
The hospital employs more than 500 people and has 120 beds.

Friends president Lucy Rawson said her husband, Ian, the managing director of the hospital, was driving home from a
village near the hospital when he felt his car wavering on the road. He was able to e-mail her about 6:30 p.m. Eastern
time, she said, but she had not heard from him since.

“He said his car was going from side to side on the road, and he ended up in a ditch,” Mrs. Rawson said. “He got out to
see what was wrong with the car, and all these people were screaming and shouting. He thought they were worried about
him. Then he realized they were worried about something else.”

Their homes and cars were shaking around them.

“He said, ‘We’re all OK,’ ” she said. ” ‘Surprised and shaken, but OK.’ “

Numerous charities are accepting donations to aid relief efforts in Haiti. Donations may be made to:

• Brother’s Brother Foundation - Haiti, 1200 Galveston Ave., Pittsburgh 15233, call 412-321-3160, or visit
www.brothersbrother.org.

• Functional Literacy Ministry of Haiti, 1064 Premier St., Pittsburgh 15201, call 412-784-0342, or visit the Web site at
www.flmhaiti.org.

• UNICEF also is helping with relief efforts. Call 1-800-4UNICEF or go to www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake

Proximity is always on the lip of my mind. If I’m walking somewhere, I think in invisible string–tethered to this, to
that and to nothing. Corners snapping connections and the bus coming drags another taut, reels me in and I get home
somehow, like a magic trick. I am here and then I’m there, and so my used-to-be present place is now another
then. It’s a game of vision and space. The only thing I think about when I am sitting still is the pilates teacher
talking softly and matter-of-fact about people who draw their shoulders in as if protecting their heart. She says you
have to sit up straight and push back, let the bloody beast be pulled to the ceiling on a string. You can practice this
and feel strong and proud of everything your body is carrying around–the guts, the thoughts, ghosts of cells once
regenerating now gone. I imagine them like the atom bomb fall out–shadows burned into the sides of houses.

Once I said to someone, “I think it’s all about my proximity to others that I focus on to keep me sane.” Whatever I
am between the things I can immediately define. It’s silly and true, really. Silly that I think this and vocalize it and
true that the line remains blank until I can flail out my threads and figure it out. The proximity. My here to your there.

Lately I’ve been spending a thick amount of time by myself, and I’m starting to see another side to
the nickel. Realizing the distance, the mattering distance, is the self from self. The solitude is taking string and
tying knots and staying close. Is it what we do alone that truly defines us? Those coffees at tables with books and
pens and headphone-less walks from the bus stop to the front door. After I take out the key but before I turn the lock,
the second the shower shuts off. That precisely solo and definite half of a breath that escapes us right then. I’m
talking about that. When I focus on those type of things I can’t help but feel some relief, as if the best chorus is in
an endless song–how you can have nothing to do with any of it yet own a universe.

I think about getting older at weddings, when I note the wonderful amount of gray in my hair and around kids, like
my niece. I like talking to her because I have to simplify things a certain way–I have to explain or ask with a certain
absolute, and I hear the wonder come back in my voice when we have an interaction. Last year I carried the
getting-older bit like a pinched nerve; I turned 28 and the state of the current dawned on me in a new way. At first
it was the coat that didn’t fit but choked me, or that amusement park ride where the floor drops away and you’re
clenched to the wall with force and speed as it continues to turn. A bigger hopeless than the usual insecurities. Is
this something that everyone feels at one point or another? I had to give it time, but I settled into it. After all I will never
fear a clock, only the blank pages and the moments wasted when I didn’t write. I say that with an affection.