{revisions + additions}

(1) Zipporah tells Moses to scram

forget how you found us, how my six
sisters ran when the shepherds yelled
that we had no right to the water even if
our father’s flock staggered from the heat,
how they gathered around my shouting
as if thirsty themselves, how you stood
between us, how I hated loving you for that.

forget my father’s offer of me, the bread
at our wedding, how you promised that night
your roamings were over, how I watched
your hands go still on the blanket
and believed you. forget my feet
swelling and my belly swelling
and the nights in the field praying

for a boy, promising any god within earshot
everything. forget that when Gershom was a boy,
and so strong, we knew it was a god of the field
to thank and no blood covenant necessary, but you
went ahead with the cutting, at night, while I slept
exhausted with the birth.

forget how I swore no allegiance to the god
who sent you into the desert, so bone-hungry,
so sick with demands, how when Eliezer
was born I held him all night for weeks
until the time for you to bloody him had passed.

do you forget the lies? that you are
Egyptian by culture but by birth, a Jew?
how we hid that from my father, sure
we’d lose everything, and now this
volatile deity of yours fills this dusty
inn room with lightning, sets
the boys screaming, and I know

it is your blood or Eliezer’s and if only
for the minute you stood between me
and those thirsty men I take the flint knife
to our youngest, touch the skin
to your feet, watch the lightning cease,
surely you are a bridegroom of blood
to me, forget me now, follow that god
to heaven, hell or Egypt, I’m going home.

(2) Zipporah calls Moses home

find me, holy with the scent of mourning,
giving away grief like coins. come pliant
and hoping, truce a burning olive branch,
come that obvious and urgent. dusk pulls
across my shoulders, a derelict shawl –
find me here. unlatch the mouth so far shut
from me, loose the jubilee waiting there,
the promise. gather our sons
into your pockets. their chins
carried your defiance
all the way to Midian.

Moses, I am the burning bush. the plagues,
the pharoah’s throat, the Red Sea. I am where
you began before either of us lost our mothers,
before the reeds became our beds, before
your God invented himself.

when I broke you from me, I became the sand,
the staff, the brother who welcomed you
and no place is home now, the boys
will not sleep alone, they refuse to eat
unless facing the door, they are
your feet. they stand in the dust
waiting – we are your people.
set us free.

(3) life with Moses post-exodus

Zipporah means bird, and I do not fly. I stay
with this man, his god a stranger to me
whose call is stronger than mine, stronger
than the boys who drag at his calves
every time he leaves, no matter what
he promises, how quickly he says he’ll return.

Zipporah means bird and I am brown
as wet sand, a brown bird that does not sing
or fly, but nests in a father’s house
gathering stones and cloth and watches
the windows, sure every movement,
every bird is him returning.

Zipporah means bird and I am no bird,
this name an accident of birth; orphans
have no names, those who found me
in the reeds called me this, how
could they know, a Cushite girl
so brown, they should have returned me.

Zipporah means bird and I would give
all I have and have known to be back
on the river, nameless and thrashing,
someday I’ll weave reeds into three
caskets cursing his god and my mother
and take us into the water to await his return.

*

{Zipporah on Sunday and more}

Yesterday we had our theoretically monthly louderARTS meeting/workshop, and it was all God all the time. No really, it was bizarre. Once all the work-work stuff was done, we headed into workshop mode, and since only Abena and Matthew had actually done the exercises, we took a half hour freewrite based on these three exercises:

OPTION ONE:

write a poem of instruction or command, telling someone specific how to forget you.
_________________________

OPTION TWO:

choose an object, a thing.
(example: a heart)

list at least twelve things it is NOT
(example: a valentine, two-dimensional, broken, green, visible)

list at least twelve things it IS
(example: wet, beating, sacred, four-chambered, talkative, on the table)

list five people affiliated with it
(Jesus, my mother, Joe the guy from the Home Depot)

a place

an action

what you might ask of this object

Option three was a string of words to use in the poem.

Somehow everyone's writing involved religion in some way. Wierd, huh? I mean, mine involved Zipporah and Moses because I'm writing that for a show Abena's directing, but otherwise it's very random.

Anyway, folks came up with some GREAT stuff, even what Matthew insisted was trash held promise until he wrote "jubileeve these prices?" to work in the cue word "jubilee."

Here's what came out of my Sunday. I think there's probably a third poem to round out the series, but maybe that's my bias toward threes.

Zipporah tells Moses to scram

forget how you found us, how my six
sisters ran when the shepherds yelled
that we had no right to the water even if
our father’s flock staggered from the heat,
how they gathered around my shouting
as if thirsty themselves, how you stood
between us, how I hated loving you for that.

forget my father’s offer of me, the bread
at our wedding, how you promised that night
your roamings were over, how I watched
your hands go still on the blanket
and believed you. forget my feet
swelling and my belly swelling
and the nights in the field praying

for a boy, promising any god within earshot
everything. forget that when Gershom was a boy,
and so strong, we knew it was a god of the field
to thank and no blood covenant necessary, but you
went ahead with the cutting, at night, while I slept
exhausted with the birth.

forget how I swore no allegiance to the god
who sent you into the desert, so bone-hungry,
so sick with demands, how when Eliezer
was born I held him all night for weeks
until the time for you to bloody him had passed.

do you forget the lies? that you are
Egyptian by culture but by birth, a Jew?
how we hid that from my father, sure
we’d lose everything, and now this
volatile deity of yours fills this dusty
inn room with lightning, sets
the boys screaming, and I know

it is your blood or Eliezer’s and if only
for the minute you stood between me
and those thirsty men I take the flint knife
to our youngest, touch the skin
to your feet, watch the lightning cease,
surely you are a bridegroom of blood
to me, forget me now, follow
that god to Egypt. I’m going home.


Zipporah calls Moses home

find me, holy with the scent of mourning,
giving away grief like coins. come pliant
and hoping, truce a burning olive branch,
come that obvious and urgent. dusk pulls
across my shoulders, a derelict shawl –
find me here. unlatch the mouth so far shut
from me, loose the jubilee waiting there,
the promise. gather our sons
into your pockets. their chins
carried your defiance
all the way to Midian.

Moses, I am the burning bush. the plagues,
the pharoah’s throat, the Red Sea. I am where
you began before either of us lost our mothers,
before the reeds became our beds, before
your God invented himself.

when I broke you from me, I became the sand,
the staff, the brother who welcomed you
and no place is home now, the boys
will not sleep alone, they refuse to eat
unless facing the door, they are
your feet. they stand in the dust
waiting – we are your people.
set us free.

*

oh, and here's the poem that spawned the second exercise -- even stranger, people hadn't read it before the workshop, and IT TOO is full of religious imagery. louderGOD, anyone?

Sacred Heart
by Lee Briccetti

Even as a girl I knew the heart was not a valentine;
it was wet, like a leopard frog on a lily pad,
had long tube roots

anchoring it in place.
And smaller roots like lupine and marigold
and bleeding hearts' roots I traced with my finger

while transplanting in the garden.
Jesus had a thousand bloody hearts
planted in our flowerbeds beneath pink flowers;

they could see us through the ground.
I had a book about a girl who lived in the earth
near the tree roots, who cut off her finger

and used it as a key. I wondered if I could love like that.
I studied the painting of His chest peeled back
to show light around the Sacred Heart.

And in the bedroom at my grandmother's where I slept
against the trees, I was the spirit
inside the room's heart, my life inside me,

something that could leave through the window quietly.
I heard the fibrous closing and closing
inside my body and prayed to stay alive.


***

myth of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts

this body is a plastic bottle dense with daisies, arms packed with the unplucked, unanswering, open your eyes. the hip is a machine like any other. we acrobatic, adolescent, unhinge our jaws like bottle tops, your arms a zoo of cables, the forearms, their clutch, each ligament bundled electric, my back a knot of snakes arching their diamond mouths, held. in this, the body moves before the brain, skins racing out before us unleashed, all id, this tongue is not habitual not all known though every night, every night meeting, what could we confess tonight on this familiar bed with our sure mouths rapacious, rapturous, a lick for each repeated secret, the eyelid’s canopy a forest we enter nightly willingly lost, losing, a grapple of fingers and we halfway dreaming enter as if hunting a thing known only by myth, loving the thing the way camouflaged men love the huge elusive grizzly, the ancient uncatchable fish, all the history in a drawn bow, rifle, in a harpoon, make no mistake, Ahab loves the whale, it’s his own back he sees rising from the water, each sinew of your hands has a name, it is my name, it is the scrawl of the daughter we don’t make, it is the word hunger in the erasable language of chalk, we erase it, we hold on.

~

we are an avalanche of sweat, halves unpeeling, your chest rising the scent of something cooked, new bread after all this kneading, our hands dissolving into tendon, small bone, nail, we raid the sheets for pieces, I want your thumb for my back pocket, to roll across my desk while writing, to hold in my mouth like a lost child in a department store, trying to be brave.

~

in the morning you are a cave’s mouth, an invitation to curl senseless and sticky with the night’s exhalations, to paint the windows night, unplug the clock and ignore the song of the ice cream truck already trolling, the landlord’s baby’s stacatto wail, old men yelling in Spanish while they feed the pigeons, the ragged pigeon at the window looking in on us, the accusing day, the nagging light, if I enter through the navel you might not even wake, spend the whole day with your face, directional, unibodied, I pass through and out the other side of you in time to unlock the door, lay down on the couch, kiss you and say in the dream just now I was all daisies, you all machine, we were cast out for fear of what, together, we might make.

hey NYC folks -- if you're up for traveling just a wee bit into Brooklyn Friday night, come by this lovely local establishment to hear some fabulous singer/songwriters as well as a couple duets Rebecca and I have been working on.

good stuff! and it's FREE!

10 p.m. at Stain Bar
www.stainbar.com
766 Grand Street, Brooklyn
(L to Grand St., walk 1 block west)

FREE! (2-drink minimum)

Rebecca Hart, singer/songwriter, www.rebeccahart.net
Heather Shayne Blakeslee, singer/songwriter, www.heathershayneblakeslee.com
Clare Burson, singer/songwriter, www.clareburson.com
and occasional poems by Marty McConnell, www.martymcconnell.com

*

{this is what I do over lunch}

exercise stolen from Tony Brown. holy anafora, batman!

good morning, sunshine.

Marty is going through a rough patch
Marty is neither acid-tongued nor sensationalistic
Marty is a top choice for convention planners, corporations, civic organizations, church groups and non-profit agencies
Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
Marty is the main force behind the creation of the Acorn Naturalists Catalog
Marty is also highly concerned about the strains placed on soldiers
Marty is resigned to listening to people ask.
Marty is leading efforts
Marty is proudly sponsored by
Marty is widely known
Marty is the author of Core Web Programming
Marty is the rather submissive friend of Stahl's
Marty is awake in New York.
Marty is a master of the quick stroke, as evidenced by the following passage
Marty is very organized, efficient and makes the best use of time
Marty is passionate about the Rangers
Marty is also taken with the concept of grace
Marty is gone
Marty is in England preparing to tour
Marty is touring non-stop
Marty is skateboarding
Marty is vindicated
Marty is at the point of giving up
Marty is a five-month-old baby
Marty is one of twelve "healing spirits"
Marty is too rigid
Marty is the versatile backbone of many deck types
Marty is expected to stall and dissipate over the Mexico/US border
Marty is often labelled in brief author biographies as a spokesman for his generation
Marty is a graduate of the Department of Highway Safety Management Fellows
Marty is being "hung" by Mad Dog Tannen
Marty is in high demand as a voice-over talent
Marty is not an outdoor cat
Marty is screwed
Marty is placed in an incredibly difficult ethical dilemma
Marty is often asked by hosts about his preferences in travel
Marty is helping the porn operators better market their wares
Marty is pleased with the successes of the past five years
Marty is also an original co-sponsor of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act
Marty is in the eleventh grade at Beverly Hills High School
Marty is starting to feel more like the right fit for INXS
Marty is now Lecturer of Tuba and Euphonium
Marty is not much of a catch
Marty is not cheered by the gesture
Marty is always available to speak to you
Marty is out of the lineup indefinitely
Marty is a very giving person
Marty is totally oblivious
Marty is called a chicken
Marty is on her own to come up with the identity of the true murderer
Marty is also the local harbormaster for the City of Kodiak
Marty is fired
Marty is committed to continuing her work on this issue
Marty is gonna be one mean mother of a NHRA drag racer
Marty is thinking more clearly than the Bush Administration
Marty is the cat's pajamas, but Marty is a Republican's Republican.
Marty is so attractive that it causes problems for Willie.
Marty is very aware of the controversy.
Marty is, I think, right to complain about the unfairness and injustice
Marty is writing this volume
Marty is recognized for much more than just being prolific
Marty is never confronted by the depth of this statement
Marty is undeniable
Marty is just a good-natured dog shaking off fleas
Marty is more at home on a supercross style track than ever before
Marty is an anti-social realist
Marty is sooooo cute in person
Marty is apparently suffering from dissociative identity disorder
Marty is recently married, recently widowed, and recently arrived in the old West from an East Coast city
Marty is on a distinguished road
Marty is going to win.
Marty is showing off a three-set photo display of Johnny Cash
Marty is skilled in every aspect of wilderness survival and wilderness lore
Marty is a genuine "heroine"
Marty is right and wrong about this
Marty is less than thrilled about being the subject of a magazine article
Marty is widely published in CVD and epitaxial silicon technology and training
Marty is really the greatest asset I have
Marty is no longer soliciting feedback
Marty is the best poster in here, by a mile.

(exercise: type your name followed by "is" in quotation marks into Google. arrange. see what happens. I find this wildly entertaining.)

{so cute it hurts}

{hey, that's me! in Harlem!}

neato:

http://www.current.tv/studio/people/JA -- look at "Aurally Spoken"

details:

Hey all you synonomUS lovers and lovettes,

We now have a chance to take this poetry/music/dance/everything else and the kitchen sink artistic jamboree of the minds and souls we call synonymUS to the next level, on TVs in over 25 million homes. In February one of our own, Jeremiah Alexis, put together a mini documentary on synonymUS and handed it in to Al Gore's new network, Current TV. Fast forward to August, this documentary, "Aurally Spoken" has hit Current's web site, with a chance to hit TV screens very soon. Just go to Jeremiah's Current Page http://www.current.tv/studio/people/JA and click the video you want to see. In order to greenlight it (Directions to do so are right underneath the video screen) , you have to join the site, but that only takes a minute (you will not get spammed to death), so please take the time, as the more greenlights the videos get, the greater chance that they will be put on the air.

http://www.current.tv/studio/people/JA

*

{I swear I am going to donate an electric fan to this place}

I keep forgetting people actually read this ungodly indulgent journal. everything's fine, I just never think to post when I'm in a good mood.

was hoping to write something cheerful today, got ridiculous instead, but so it goes. got a copy of Southern Poetry Review in the mail, which means I must have entered their contest last year and lost. the poems in this magazine are, for the most part, incredibly innocuous. must look back at the spreadsheet to see what on earth I thought might win.

so I don't write enough poetry "of the moment," which is so popular now. here's today's attempt.

it’s cooler out back, but the view from here is priceless
a Williamsburg tale

nothing extraordinary about the orange kangaroo
outside the 30-minute photo shop that also sells
lotto tickets and (if you know who to ask for)
highly decent pot. the fluorescent kangaroo plays,
for a quarter, she’ll be coming ‘round the mountain
when she comes. a song adapted by mountaineers
from a so-called negro spiritual, now played
by a fiberglass kangaroo ridden by a pink-shirted
Dominican four-year-old while her mother
plays the lotto with the numbers of her dead
grandmother’s birthday, the year she came here,
and one based on that dream with the pigeons.
of course I made up the part about the pot,
the kangaroo's saddle is empty, and the t-shirted
four-year-old who might also be Puerto Rican
just leaned in the door of this coffeeshop, lured
perhaps by the silver mannequin tilted to display
its broken hip before her mother, maybe on her way
to play lotto or buy groceries or whatever
mothers do on hot Saturday afternoons, stopped
to call her with a Spanish not of my high school
and the tone common to all mothers of the curious
which I was, always wandering off, my mother says,
saying every time I was found again, I just wanted
to see, but it’s true about the song the kangaroo
repeats with her mescaline eyes and tempting
red seat, it spread to the railroad men
in the Midwest and now nobody remembers
the words to When the Chariot Comes.


*

distance your most constant companion


*

Thursday

dream of the doors closing, metal sliding toward itself, reluctant mouth. now that it’s out, the nausea recedes. the mouth unkilns, was never fire, only at the ready. this softness, a counted blessing. things joining said to be marrying, but no wedding here, no, not everything open is a mouth. a trick of the gerund, the passive, lay it down. the dream I inherited: the last day of class, a final exam, where was I the whole time? last night: how did I miss a whole course on humor and wit in poetry? where is the room, the door? and in the dream I wake from the dream to think, this was my mother’s.

{airplane ramblings. read Li Young Lee's memoir, "the winged seed."}

August

the self of jade and lightning is another self entirely, one who does not – cannot – apologize or waver, who does not alter when she alteration finds. Shakespeare knew her, the genius self, no conductor, all burn. the child in the airplane seat incanting come night. come night. come night reaching for the overhead light, the knowledge and simultaneous bliss, the turbulence beneath us, each. teasing out desire from need, the skin grows taut again, loses that barbarous fleshiness, the extra. how much it costs to be certain, how many glasses of wine in the dark with a best friend’s cigarette, voices raking the walls, screens, to the fence and up, there is refusal here, I am a teacup or lost ocean, discarded bay overgrowing, the lagoon where the mermaids comb their seaweed hair and carve their woman wrists with sharpened seashells. all this, held in the bilious sea of stomach, rockinghorse heart; to not want, what a heaven.

the daisies have pitched all their petals, no more loves me, loves me not, no more wishbones or checking our palms’ mutable lines. the self of jade and lightning goes eyes open, molding hunger into her own spine. her bitterness is not salted, not lime. good morning.

*

nothing holy has a chance. nothing held so gifted or dear, no unscripted minute. but the script itself disintegrates, a satchel of lies and riffraff expressions, love a sad shadow of the last building we entered together. I want to make a statement now, about distillation or the symbology of treadmills, something sloppy and obviously metaphorical to drive you away. all of our hymns are conditional. half-built bridges we cross in our sleep. I don’t want a crucifix to be the last thing I give you, but we don’t get to pick our omens. not when our birds of prey are pigeons.

*

are we ever prepared for landing? with whole neighborhoods plotted neatly below, couldn’t we just stay, without the nausea of dropping, without the descent to pillow, to pill, to look each other in grounded eyes and say want. pattern. desire overcome by desire, weed over weed over daisy, reluctant cactus. all going. what water here, your choosing, mine, whose hand gathers the park trees like broccoli, each trunk stem snapping, a bouquet? to whom do we offer it, four hands bleeding? if not to each other?

*

to want options like infants. to talk about marriage like a mermaid raking her unpassable hair straight. the leg asleep is the body’s most honest part. suddenly you remember to say I love you in messages.

if I give you this wall, will you eat it back to daisies? to less than the city we circle and land in, dissolving in hierarchies of steel? with all the smoke, who’d not be lost? but I am found, love, and sick from the mirror to project buildings shaped like crucifixes from above. sick with knowing and knotted like a highway. if I waited too long to tell you this, it is because I love all your bones. forgive me; even now as I fly toward you where you are not, I watch the buildings and ignore the ocean.

*

I take the long way home, congratulating myself on my own frugality, the few soft bills unpeeling, knowing this another suspension, in no hurry toward an empty room. everything is as heavy as fruit here; tonight the moon will be a plum under which I will unpack, marry the shoes left uncoupled across the evening linoleum, make soup. I will paint and try for whole minutes not to think of you, to remember what I knew about alone, before your smell burrowed (invited) into everything, even the wall I want to eat down to seed, to the last tooth and its joining thread, the skin flap refusing to release. what’s growing, what’s emerging underneath? listen, love, I’m trying to ask you everything.

___

maybe it's been coming apart for months

at the bottom

of a very rickety roller

coaster

{punishment}

On Sunday night, while working on stuff for the auction (which is finally, exhaustingly, successfully, over,) I watched Evita. The musical. With Madonna. For this I am being punished by the gods by not being able to get DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA -- sung by Madonna with more pathos than anyone who's taken seven voice lessons should be able to muster -- out of my head. Once in a while I think, ah, it's gone, and then once I realize that it's gone, it's triggered again.

meanwhile, everyone's at Nationals. I'm at work. arg. is it Friday yet? am I on my way to Chicago?

don't cry for me, Albuquerque. the truth is, I never left you.

*

{revision & yay}

I get to Chicago at 9:08 a.m. Saturday. Andi Noel and baby Saeorcie scoop me up from baggage claim and off to Wisconsin we go. and I don't come back until Tuesday. That means three solid days with no subway smell and no spreadsheets and no Stain bar... wonder if I'll get any writing in. I have Rachel's manuscript to look at, so I will (necessarily) be somewhat productive.




lies about midnight

the mannequin’s chipped and hollow hip echoes
the left breast, broken open to black. you wonder
why I need you to grip me there, why your hand
slips inside my chest easily as a fish hook. most days
busy keeps the falling at bay and nightly you
and sleep patch the bones back to fiction, whole;
the streak of blue in your dear, purchased optimism
comforts me. my ragged feet defy all attempts
to keep the body from the poem / we should
celebrate. another season of breathing, another year
without tumors, I watch you sleep and the ants
quit their itching, the flies settle into corners,
I think it might also kill me to be happy.

*

lies about midnight

the mannequin’s chipped and hollow hip echoes
the left breast, broken open to black. you wonder
why I need you to grip me there, why your hand
slips inside my chest easily as a fish hook. most days
busy keeps the falling at bay and nightly you
and sleep patch the bones back to fiction, whole;
what does not kill us sometimes kills us. the streak
of blue in your dear, purchased optimism
comforts me. my ragged feet defy all attempts
to keep the body from the poem / we should
celebrate. another season of breathing, another year
without tumors, I watch you sleep and the ants
quit their itching, the flies settle into corners,
I think it might also kill me to be happy.

*

{another in the series of feminist pantoum which I believe to be plural all alone}

Eve & me, the unsaid part

was born in the mouth, dizzy with want,
nobody’s bait. the body’s a burglarized mirror,
the hot source, this kiln at the ready,
all this and a shoebox, leave the lid on.

nobody is bait. the body’s burglarized mirror
claims checkmate but nobody wins
all this and a shoebox, leave the lid on
so the trash collector suspects nothing.

claim checkmate. but nobody wins
when the jaw is an axe, sharp tooth.
so the trash collector suspects nothing
mutter apple, apple, apple, apple.

when the jaw is an axe, sharp tooth,
first the face, then a rib, now a hip
muttering apple, apple, apple, apple,
a chorus of bone against itself,

first the face, then a rib, now a hip
this kiln has no fire, is no mouth reciting
a chorus of bone against itself.
how do such things mend.

this kiln has no fire. is no mouth reciting
what’s the consolation prize for quiet?
how do such things mend?
might as well shovel ash onto stone.

what’s the consolation prize for quiet
girls in long kilts fingering the pin? she
might as well shovel ash onto stone
as say anything. to be or to furnish

girls in long kilts fingering the pin she
disappears, a plastic knife into milk,
say anything. to be or to furnish
such an excuse one must vanish a little,

disappear, a plastic knife into milk,
a blade good for nothing. a tongue.
such an excuse one must vanish a little
like hands unfisting in pockets, a surrender.

a blade good for nothing, a tongue
was born in the mouth, dizzy with want
like hands unfisting in pockets, surrendering
the hot source, this kiln at the ready.

*

{bags of coins and other futilities}

I've been attempting a poem-a-week minimum, and doing pretty well, particularly since I've taken up residence at Stain every Saturday and given myself hours to write. Last Saturday I went shopping instead, introducing Rebecca who despises shopping like only one other woman I've ever known, to Beacon's Closet and its many and vari-colored joys. Anyway, the point is that between that and a quick mimosa with she and Kyra and a side trip to a place that makes scents -- not perfumes per se, but things you put on to smell like things like roast beef or hyacinth or wet asphalt -- and then going to the regional slam in Brooklyn, I did not write.

And Sunday, oh Sunday the universe has declared "Marty gets nothing done" day. Every single thing I try to do on a Sunday falls apart of late. This particular Sunday I tried to write at home, got nowhere, ended up napping, had planned to meet Vandana to watch her play chess in Washington Square Park and try to remember how, decided that I should bring the boatload of coins from the container on my dresser in to the Food Emporium and cash them in. Why not? Then I'll feel productive! And efficient, because it's on the way.

But no, no. It's Sunday! So I get there with my 10-pound Happy Birthday gift bag of coins and the machine is out of order. What to do? I start walking toward the park. Briefly consider going home to drop off the bag. Realize that's ridiculous. Consider giving it to the girl panhandling on the street, but my blood sugar is too low to make a decision. Get some Jamba Juice (no bananas!) and decide to give it to the next homeless person I see.

SOMEHOW, I walk from 13th and University to Washington Square Park and encounter NO HOMELESS PEOPLE. Not one. Is Giuliani mayor again? Have the cops been arresting everyone napping on the pavement in this five-block radius? The bag of coins now weighs at least 30 pounds. It's like a strange, shifting, boneless infant on my hip. I get to the park, sure to see someone in need there.

But it's hard to tell the hipsters from the homeless sometimes, and I don't want to insult anyone. I also don't want to approach anyone truly insane and give them a Happy Birthday bag of coins -- you never know what someone's triggers are going to be.

So I see a man collecting bottles and cans from various trash receptacles around the park. Aha, I think. This man works harder than I do. He shall have the coins. But he does look crazy, though it's hard to tell without staring. And staring is bad. So I notice that he's left his cart of cans and bottles quite a distance from himself; assuming, I'm sure, that no one's going to steal a monstrous big cart of recyclables. I casually stroll by the cart, pause, set down the Happy Birthday bag of coins, pause actually trying to figure out which is the northwest corner where I'm supposed to meet Vandana, and walk off. Coinless, lighter, wondering if the wish for good karma negates the karma.

Point being, no poem. And look how much time I've spent telling you all about this.

{woo hoo -- raffle plus BONUS PRIZE}

Hello friends. I hope you can take a minute to glance at what we're offering as the louderARTS Project presents our First Annual Raffle -- the prizes are so great that I'm buying people raffle tickets as gifts.

Any of these amazing bundles could be yours for just $5. And the more tickets you buy, the better your chance is to win! All proceeds go to support the good work of the louderARTS Project as we file for our nonprofit status and continue to present NYC the best in poetry and performance. Also, scroll down to the end of this message for a partial list of the great stuff you can bid on next Monday at the annual POETS AUCTION!

The raffle will take place at Bar 13 (35 E. 13th St., Union Square) next Monday, August 8. You don't need to be there to win, but don't you want to be? Don't you want to carry a magnum of champagne off the stage in your hot little hands?

And as an added BONUS and incentive to actually come to the show Monday, we have a fourth basket that can only be claimed by someone who is present at the time their ticket is drawn.

*** Basket One – Sexton's Little Secret

- Magnum of Champagne (value: insane! how cool is this?)
- iPod Shuffle (value $100.00)
- l'Occitane Shea Beauty Essentials Gift Basket (value: $138.00)
- Rattapallax Magazine and accompanying CD
- handmade journal
- Homemade cupcakes

*** Basket Two – The Bukowski

- Magnum of Vodka (value: ridiculous… you could buy a book every day for
a month!)
- Gift certificate to bookstore (Strand) (value : $50)
- Rattapallax Magazine and accompanying CD
- iPod Shuffle
- handmade Journal
- Homemade Caramel Brownies

*** Basket Three – Ted Loves Sylvia

Dinner for Two : $50 gift certificate to Joya Restaurant Cobble Hill
Sylvia Plath's Complete works
The Teddy Bear Love bundle
Smokin Lovely by Willie Perdomo
4 Movie Passes, United Artists
Handmade Journal
Homemade Lemon Dream Cake

*** Basket 4, the BONUS BASKET

2 tickets to Blue Man Group
$25 gift certificate to Bluestockings Bookstore/Cafe
Bullets & Butterflies Anthology
Movie passes
an assortment of Bar 13 drink chips
and more surprises to come by Monday...

*** Each raffle ticket is just $5! Drop me a line and let me know how many tickets you want... how many chances you'd like at all this great stuff...

And come by on Monday for the raffle drawing, the Poets Auction, and lots of great poetry.

AUCTION ITEMS:
Professional mambo dance lessons at Yamulee Studio!
Original artwork by Anis Mogjani, Juan Diaz, Kristine Gotilla, and Diane Santiago!
A vintage coney island hot dog steamer!
Handcrafted marionettes from Mexico!
A tarot reading by Rebecca Hart!
A chess lesson from Vandana Saras!
A free tour of the city on the big red tour bus, by George McKibbens!
Bread of the month from T'ai Freedom Ford!
Three writing workshops with Roger Bonair-Agard!
A journal of writing exercises by Marty McConnell!
3 two-hour dance classes with Eliel Lucero!
Salmon dinner and serenade... cooked and sung by Elana Bell!
A double palm reading for the winner and five of their friends by Kelly Tsai!
Writing exercises on demand for one month!
2 limited-edition chapbooks by Jane LeCroy!
poker lessons from Matthew Charles Siegel!

and much more!

louderMONDAYS * every Monday at 13 Bar/Lounge * 35 E. 13th St., Union Square * 7 p.m. * 2-for-1 drinks all night * open mic + featured poets

www.louderARTS.com