I was listening to Dirty Boulevard by Lou Reed and I noticed, as I always do, Lou's tender invocation of children and their being savaged with clothes hangers. And I thought: that's sweet.
February at Poetto. Headphones on, headphones off. My mother calls from Maine to tell me how far offshore my brother is — a little farther every time she tells it.
Roxy is compartmentalized like a submarine. Everything sealed in its own chamber. Vapor-locked. And everything she does seems to me both erotic and remote. Her ordinary demeanor is of Aphrodite regarding pigeons.
On invisible winds that can kill you, and why Italians are correct about this. The neck is particularly vulnerable. Hence: scarves in June, no fans, sealed windows, damp hair = death. To Americans it's baffling because we have no equivalent folk illness — we'd just say 'you slept weird.'
What happens when a seventeen-year-old French poet walks into an MFA workshop? The students talk about craft, earned imagery, and problematic language. Rimbaud stands and reads The Drunken Boat.