It has been too hot for the bees to want to hang out or whatever they do in their hive, so they’ve made a beard on the outside that changes shape throughout the day, spreading out, getting denser, larger, smaller, more elongated. Right now, the crack through which they normally go is entirely covered by their bodies except for four holes that they’ve kept open. Watching how they move when they’re all together, they really do seem like one entity. People in traffic look like that.
The thin book, really more of a pamphlet, that I’ve been working on just needs to be printed. It’s called Not That Far. It is a good book for hot weather because it’s very short. I’m going to take it to the reading on August 4th.
August is already happening and it isn’t August. I’m getting ready (laying out and printing a small book) for a reading on August 3rd with Amelia Gray at the Neptune. This is in Seattle and if you’re here, come! I really like what she has here. I’m looking forward to getting a copy of her book, AM/PM, at the reading.
I guess I’m a little nervous about the reading. I’ll probably bring cookies, like I did when I defended my thesis against my nervousness with more cookies than people were willing to chew.
Cookies. What else?
I got applied, and by some process was selected, for a scholarship to the Wave “three days of poetry” happening around here in August. The day before that begins, there’s going to be some sort of literary death match. Matthew Simmons, Ryan Boudinot, and Matt Briggs will try to match each other to death.
I twittered. Not sure if I will again.
A new thing of mine in The New Yinzer should be up soon. Claire Donato guest edited this issue.
Adam Robinson (Publishing Genius) said some nice things about Dewclaw. Adam contributed to Dewclaw finding a decent printer. Thanks Adam!
I moved into a house with a juicer. Most of the water in my body is now apple-celery-ginger-mint juice. It’s hot here. Seems like I stick to every surface.
We tried some honey from our bees! Adam thinks it tastes like sorbus, but I’m not so good at discerning where the bees are getting their nectar. Not yet.
Time comes in. Its head is full of funnels. I thought it was a tool shed. I shut it out.
One of the funnels fell on the floor. It was a hole in the floor. I had to step around it, like in a dream, by opening and closing my mouth. Big deliveries were on the way. Everybody wanted a product that was like an empty jar. Socially, it was really useful to have the emptiest jar.
Money filled in all the empty spaces. You had to reach down to the bottom and pull hard. When it gave way, you could fall backwards. It was best to want to fall hard.
Being political meant staring blankly at a camera. All of my political friends owned cameras. I got stuck between their lenses and had to shout for someone to get me out. That’s how I met time. Nobody could ever get it on camera. It was always getting out of the windows it made with its own arms, like a stooge. It was the last of the really good body humorists.
Berries pop out of it, and flowers. Birds fly around in it and drop dead out of it. A cat keeps cleaning itself of it. Molecules of water form a sprinkler of it, and kids are somehow detached from it, never wearing their shoes. The inner ear is its drum. It keeps you marching through. The future is a pressure in the inner ear that becomes an ache at night before a storm.
I’ll be back in two weeks. Have fun, summer.