Happy 2005. Let’s hope there are fewer wars and natural disasters in this twelve-month cycle. For those who want to help victims, check out a local group that does a good job of actually delivering aid to victims: http://www.nwmedicalteams.org/ Also, if you are employed by “the man,” see if your company matches donations, that makes your dollar stretch even further.

Onto less serious matter: Music. I am in love with the soundtrack of Garden State (the movie also impressed me) – especially “New Slang” by the Shins, and a rediscovered favorite, Simon+Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York.” More soundtracks? Don’t hate me, but The OC Soundtrack (Mix 1) was my favorite album of the year. Hey, you’d be surprised by the indie cred on this collection. I just loved everything on it (except for Phantom Planet’s “California” – that gets annoying if you listen to the chorus over and over.) I wish Rufus Wainwright’s “California” had been on it – that song is genius. And Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” Both these songs were featured in the first couple of episodes, but aren’t on there.

I also have to admit a certain excitement about the beginning of the new season of “Alias” – my current “Buffy” substitute. It is supposedly much better than last season. This is really the only television I watch religiously these days, unless you count “The Daily Show.”

In the middle of my move and packing up for school. My brain is fried and I feel unable to focus on anything for more than five minutes. This could also be because I am recovering (slowly) from the flu. Our new place is walking distance from a library and a grocery store. I haven’t lived anywhere that was “walking distance” to anything since I lived in Cincinnati.

Feeling very grateful right now for many things. Good friends, kind acquaintances. One special thing to be thankful for? A very nice note from Rhino, announcing they had accepted a poem for their Spring 2005 issue, which I received on New Year’s Eve. I’ll take an acceptance over champagne any day 🙂

New year’s resolution? To have better health. And to appreciate stretches of non-acute-illness or injury more. I am also resolving to tackle some health-related topics in my magazine writing, which have mostly been limited to food or technology. I read so damn much health research for my own stuff, someone else should benefit from it without having to dig through doctor’s journals and academic papers etc. Will send queries after I’m done with graduate residency.

One exciting thing: I have started working on a second poetry manuscript. It feels good to work with some new subject matter, try out some new styles. Yes, I know the first one hasn’t gotten published yet. But fussing with it anymore feels wrong. I don’t write much in the middle of a move – like many Taurus-types, I’m happy when my routine and domecile are firmly established – but I am collecting and tinkering, which still feels like good work.

Also: I rarely find something in American Poetry Review that is absolutely essential reading, but the new issue’s essay on Ecclesiastes by Alicia Ostriker was not only stunning in its intelligence and compassion, but gave me a feeling of…dare I say it…hope? faith? in the powers behind the universe. Good reading for those who, like me, turn on the news only to be deluged with spiritual angst.

Poetry finds you where it can…so here I was going over all these new poetry books I got for Christmas, and then I noticed this book Silverfish Review Press sent me (for just the cost of postage!) when I entered their book contest. It’s called “Dime Store Erotics” by Ann Townsend, and it kicks. Do you know that thing where you’re reading a poem and you could swear you or some future (better) version of you wrote it? That’s what happened to me with that book. Check out the poem “Mall Life.” Great, funny, sad, weird stuff. Plus, any poet who writes about her childhood obsession with the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” gets my respect. Anyway, now I have found another publisher to love and respect. How many can there be?

My new graduate residency and my move “off the island” are drawing ever nearer, which means everything, everything is in boxes. We still put up a Christmas tree and ordered a little ham, because dang it, I want to celebrate even if we are in the middle of chaos. Haven’t been writing much but have been hopping around playing Dance Dance Revolution in a sadly obsessive way.

I’ve been rearranging the poems in my first book MS and decided to rename my MS for a new set of submissions to various contests from “A Thousand Tongues” to “Becoming the Villainess.” Perhaps less poetic but more indicative of the post-feminist, pop-culture/mythology-oriented themes. Hey, time for a vote: Is Villainess a real word? And who likes the new title better than the old one? Leave a comment if you have any strong feelings about any of this.

In merry old Seattle, the lights on the houses are bright, the moon is shrouded in fog, and Santa is just waiting to drop a winning-contest announcement on my house at midnight on Christmas Eve. It could happen, right? Yesterday Santa brought me two rejections. I must have been naughty instead of nice.

Best holiday wishes for everyone out there. May happy elves bring you new shoes.

Thought the last blog entry was just too darn depressing to leave up much longer, so I will chime in from Cincinnati, Ohio, where I am visiting my parents, in-laws, several brothers and friends, and various pets. The pizza here is very good, I don’t know that Cincinnati in general is at the top of many culinary scales, but for pizza, they’re up there. I think I have eaten pizza for dinner three nights in a row. Pepperoni, fig and proscuitto, apple and apricot, some veggie-combo, and one which was some disgusting combination of pineapple, bacon and onion, which I really can’t recommend. I have also been staying up til six or seven in the morning every night, which may be b/c of the time change, but also because my brothers and their friends are genuinely fun to hang out with. PS Watching a bunch of twenty-something guys try to be manly while outdoing each other at the game “Dance Dance Revolution,” esp. after they’ve drunk a lot of whiskey, is very, very entertaining. One of them was a nuclear physicist. There’s just something extra funny about that.

While I’ve been gone, one of my good friends (also a poet) as been watching my house and cats and very kindly e-mailing me when any poetry news comes in. Only poets can accurately ascertain which mail may be of interest to other poets. So, while it’s been mostly rejections, at least I don’t have to worry that I’m missing some incredibly important time-sensitive poetry-related correspondence, like some famous poet writing that I’ve won a book contest but if I don’t get back to them within 48 hours the prize will go to someone else, not that that is likely, but it’s the kind of insane thinking that I’ve succumbed to on other trips. Thanks N!

The trip has been good and making me realize how much time I normally spend by myself, since we are staying at my parents house and my brothers are staying too and various people drop by all the time, and there is very little alone time. The guys are all playing video games as I write which gives me a little break. I consider myself very social, but since I’ve become a freelancer I usually spend about six hours a day alone working. I guess that’s a lot, and I’ve gotten used to it, even though I thought I would miss the social interaction of either the office or a “regular” grad school program (I’m going low-res.) It has really boosted my writing productivity, which just proves the old theorem – solitary time=more poetry. I did manage to sneak in a poem tonight, which was good. And snuck in some visits to some other poet-blogs, for fun. Now, back to the Xbox madness.

Received three rejections this week, and am trying to face up to the fact that I have to have some serious female surgery when I get back from my holiday trip home to Cinci this year. For some reason, though I have never really been a particularly maternal type, facing up to not being able to have kids someday has really gotten to me. I know this because every poem I write lately has to do with women who can’t have kids. I can’t get this one Bible verse out of my head. It’s about a woman, Hannah, who is upset, nearly crazy, over the fact that she hasn’t had kids yet, and her husband says “Why is your heart grieved? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” So I have to write a poem about that. There are a lot of assumptions about women who don’t have kids – that they are selfish, that they spend all their time on themselves, that they aren’t whole. I went to get my nails done yesterday and the girl there was saying, “Oh, you’d be such a great mother – why don’t you have kids?” And I was like, “Hmm, I don’t think you really want to know all the icky scientific details that would answer that question.”

Also, my mother was really sick yesterday, she had to go to urgent care and they diagnosed her with kidney stones. It’s her birthday today, and that was her body’s very special birthday present. Hmph. Sometimes I think we women would be better off if we were just little floating brains attached to attractive and fashionable clothes. OK, that’s a weird image. I apologize.

Okay, here’s a problem only a poet would have. I have a poetry reading on the 20th of January and the 20th of February, and since the surgery takes a few weeks to recover from, I was like, how can I best fit this surgery in so it doesn’t affect the readings? Typical shallow me.

I remember doing a report on the female reproductive system with my best friend in 6th grade. We giggled the whole way through it. At 21 she had a twenty-pound cyst removed from her ovaries, and now I am facing getting the works removed. Guess we should have paid more attention to the “what can go wrong” portion of that report.

Sorry to be a downer this week. I am sure I will have more cheerful news soon. It’s raining and cold outside, typical Seattle Christmas weather, that makes me not want to leave the house. On the plus side, I did get the opportunity to watch Zorro, Lara Croft Tomb Raider, and The Mummy all in a row last night. What I should have been doing was finishing a book review and a profile of a chef for Seattle Woman Magazine. Glenn started packing up the house yesterday for our move. So we are going home to Cinci, coming back, packing up the house, celebrating Christmas, starting the move on the weekend of the new year, then I go to my residency in Forest Grove, and when I come back, we’ll be in the new place. Then, the surgery. A very exciting upcoming month and a half, that’s for sure. I should check my horoscope. It might say, the stars see travel, gifts, educational opportunity and a horrible hospital stay in your future. Also, my complaint? How come horoscopes never predict death? Surely someone with that particular sign dies every day. I guess the Onion’s horoscopes predict something like that.

Happy Thanksgiving! You know I try to subject you to as little of my actual poetry as possible, but since I wrote this poem a little while ago when a friend and I discussed keeping gratitude journals when we felt the most grumpy, and it seemed appropriate to the day, I thought I’d go ahead and post it:

Keeping a Gratitude Journal

For string beans, rubber bands, black cat calendars

green tea, green trees, tiny green frogs

envelope glue, mango lip balm, marabou

halter tops, high-heeled shoes, hair mousse

comic book heroes, Slavic jaw bones, cheese

scratching mosquito bites, the deep breath at the end of a swim

his face beneath your hands

your skin beneath a copper coin moon

your breath in and out slippery as fish

the can of sea glass half-full

that you still can applesauce by hand

that you can wake, one more morning, your one last chance.