Personal

Stole my brother's headphones last night to do a reading of He doesn't write poetry anymore. I was going to do Surrogate as well, but couldn't get it quite right. I guess that's not such a bad thing because the last reading was also about Doc. I'm still taking reading requests for anyone that has something they'd like to hear out loud

Speaking of, Doc has decided to make me useful for the summer and give me a job. I'm up there all the time anyway and he had some spare cash in his budget; I'll have to fill out all the usual paperwork tomorrow, but at least I'll have something to do for the next few months. He won't admit it, but I think I annoyed him into it because I'm always asking him for another story to read and he can't write them that fast I'd really like to be able to read over the entire collection I mentioned in the poem, but he won't give it to me because I'll probably find something wrong and then he'll have to do even more revising. I guess I should give him a break for a while

It works out well for me because babysitting really isn't my thing. Russ is cute, but he's not that cute. I think my grandmother is still planning to keep him though; I don't know details like what my hours are going to be, but I doubt I'm going to be around the house much at 30 hours a week. Summer also kinda sucks for me because the air circulation in my room is weird, so it's always an oven in here. Right now, I have the ceiling fan on, a floor fan running, and the window is open.

Which sucks because I'm supposed to be working on radio scripts. I need to tighten up the one I wrote for Roald Dahl; I was going to do a short about how he nailed everybody in England, but I don't think that will fly on the radio. I'm also supposed to be editing two more for Doc (Walter Tevis and Edna Ferber), but I can't think when it's this hot. Next round we're gonna try and dig up some Arkansan authors for some local flavor. I really do think I've gotten a lot better at writing in this format; it took me forever to do the first one, but I got Dahl written in a day. Working for Doc makes me feel accomplished.

My grades also came in and I'm fairly pleased. I never got in contact with the teacher whose final I missed, but he gave me an Incomplete for that class which is better than failing. I'm not sure what the protocol for Incomplete is, but I'll ask tomorrow. Aced the Independent Study, C in Fiction II, B's in everything else. Not a bad year at all.

I haven't gotten a single DLD suggestion. I guess the notebooks have lost their intrigue? Just think - whoever sends a DLD suggestion will be in the lead! Is everyone busy, or are good literature suggestions that scarce? Anyway, if the notebooks have gotten boring, or if the contest is just too rigorous to bother with, I'd appreciate someone letting me know.

Around dA

This week's Saturday Spotlight interviewee was *glossolalias!

#Elocutionists Contest Folder is now open for submissions

I put together an article on managing your inbox messages!

I also made a bunch of lit tags over the past few days, primarily to kill time, but also to test out the new Scheduled Submit option dA has recently made available. If it works, it should submit two lit tags a day for the next week Fun right?

A contest about romanticizing the everyday.

Six word story contest over at #Heart-of-Poetry.

May Mixup Madness!

Features!

with thanks to frosttwo roads diverged in a soulless dawn
and you pull over,
idling on the shoulder of route 50.
it's a polaroid morning and
the world is as grainy
and sleep-heavy
as your eyes,
and one million miles
is not far enough.
it plays back, filmstrip,
blurred along the length of
optic nerves,
and here you are:
facing a choice between
on
and
out.
and this?
this loosejointed, hollowbodied
weightless ache--
this is what
gone
feels like. ButtonThere's a reason you're called Button,
because names aren't just something to be
thrown around with reckless abandon
so I'll give you the reason:
buttons hold things together,
they make use of holes in the fabric
with tiny threads as their only tethers
rather than simply giving up and letting go;
they're small, but they are also incredibly tough and
they might get scratched and chipped, 
but that never stopped a button from holding on
and even with all of this, they still manage to be as cute as-
yes that's right- and perfect friends, too
because no matter what happens they'll never give up on you.
So I thought I'd let you know just how grateful I am
(and how greatful you really are), that I'm proud to be friends with 
one 
so 
strong. Car RideRaises volume.
It's still too quiet. weight of the worldand suddenly--
it was like the world decided that
it didn't want to carry its burden any longer,
so it shifted the weight
into the hollows of my bones
and told me that
it was my problem now. Someone Smokes.Sistine was supposed to be named after the Chapel, even though her parents aren’t religious.  It sounds nice, her mother chirped after she was free from the membranes and amniotic fluid of the womb, still damp to the touch. Neither knew at the time that her mother had really gotten the name from a stripper she’d run into during a drunken night in her early twenties.  The original Sistine wore Lucite heels and underneath her trench coat only had pasties stuck to her nipples.

This Sistine is not like the first.  She wears flats when she’s out walking the sidewalk and is only willing to show an appropriate amount of cleavage w Post-ItI like to write my words down on post-it notes
in barely legible print.
Writing the words so closely together
that you hardly know where one word ends and the other begins.
Making each small page seem like a giant secret
that should be stored away in drawers and at the bottom of my purse.
Do not read these messy notes,
for they hold too much of me. Psuedo-philisophicalDear Reader,

It is 4:03 and I exist.

My nail polish is chipped away to white specks and borders and I don’t know why I do this. Paint them to peel them, create for the sake of destroying.

I destroy everything.

It’s an unconscious compulsion that I don’t notice until everything is in tatters - and still smaller I’ll make them. Break down until they only exist because matter cannot be destroyed, the bits are somewhere.

All things are somewhere. Different LanguagesPoisoned waters can
Be the sweetest and most clear
And rain clouds pure white just a littlei love you just a little, today.

the way your eyelashes rest against your cheeks as you sleep,
morning light soaking into your face and
highlighting your sun-kissed skin and soft angles.

the way you squeeze your eyes shut tight for a second
before you open them,
almost like you're trying to wish yourself back to sleep.

the way you smile, even if it's not at me,
even if it's at the little message on your cell phone
reminding me that you weren't even mine to begin with.

i love you just a little, today,
but it's more than i can ever hope from you. behind the doorSchrödinger's tiger
has a lady's gentle mien
and dagger-sharp teeth. A bottle, a piece of paper, some wordsThings that remind me of you:

The night sky.

The dark.
Winter.
The rumbling of thunder that follows lightning.

When my music, for some reason,
is on shuffle and I hear a song
that I used to listen to
two or three years ago.

Dark blue, grey and black.
Black, yellow and grey.

How my fingers get harder to move,
yet still I carry on typing,
and the muted excited happiness
that moves under the keys.

… … …

I think of you day to day
and how you crumble under my
hands in the strangest fashion –
not beautiful, but something like it.
I can watch the shards fall for
days, weeks,
and every time I blink you’ll
be Pictures of a LilyOnce upon a time there was a young girl named Lily who had freckles on her legs that formed starry constellations over milky skin and almond eyes which were always wide open whenever she found a pebble the shape of a petal or a bug with more legs that she could count. She and her parents lived by a cottage near the woods, along with many other people who had found home there as well.

Like all people in that special, secluded place, Lily had a shadow that talked back to her and took her photos all day, in a process so magical and otherworldly that it was shrouded in secrecy and only the shadows knew about. All Lily had to do was to carry an e