The Camel Saloon nominated me for the 2011 Pushcart Prize for my poem “Waiting Room” !!! I am very excited about this honor, and I am so happy for this poem. “Waiting Room” is the opening poem of my NAU thesis, Diagnostics. It is a very different poem for me, but it’s a poem that I’ve always enjoyed. If you haven’t read it yet, head over to my Poetry page and check it out (as well as the other great poems at The Camel Saloon).

Myth

by Natasha Tretheway

I was asleep while you were dying.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,

the Erebus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking

you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.

Again and again, this constant forsaking:
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning.

But in dreams you live. So I try taking,
not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow.
The Erebus I keep you in–still, trying–

I make between my slumber and my waking.
It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow.
I was asleep while you were dying.

This might be a nerdy thing to advertise, but I am proud of it, so I am going to share it. For the first time, I have been featured in a department newsletter because of my recent publications. Here is the link:

The Doer: The Department of English & Rhetoric Newsletter
Issue 13: 1 September 2011

I hope that I have more publication news to report soon. Right now, I am proud to share that I have received three personalized rejection letters in the past two weeks. It’s so good to hear that many of my poems are close to being accepted! I am staying optimistic and re-submitting to different magazines immediately after hearing results. It’s just about finding the right market and home for these poems.

Here, Bullet

by Brian Turner

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

The Indian Girl’s Song

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sleep of night —
The winds are breathing low
And the stars are burning bright.
I arise from dreams of thee –
And a spirit in my feet
Has borne me — Who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet! —

The wandering airs they faint
On the dark silent stream —
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint —
It dies upon her heart —
As I must die on thine
O beloved as thou art!

O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast.
Oh press it close to thine again
Where it will break at last.

Here’s a cat poem. Also a shoutout to the wonderful Sacha Siskonen (her blog here) for giving me T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats several years ago. It’s a good book to have on the shelf for times like these

The Song of the Jellicles

by T.S. Eliot

Jellicle Cats come out to-night
Jellicle Cats come one come all:
The Jellicle Moon is shining bright -
Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats are rather small;
Jellicle Cats are merry and bright,
And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.
Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,
Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;
They like to practise their airs and graces
And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise.

Jellicle Cats develop slowly,
Jellicle Cats are not too big;
Jellicle Cats are roly-poly,
They know how to dance a gavotte and a jig.
Until the Jellicle Moon appears
They make their toilette and take their repose:
Jellicle Cats wash behind their ears,
Jellicles dry between their toes.

Jellicle Cats are white and black,
Jellicle Cats are of moderate size;
Jellicles jump like a jumping-jack,
Jellicle Cats have moonlit eyes.
They’re quiet enough in the morning hours,
They’re quiet enough in the afternoon,
Reserving their terpsichorean powers
To dance by the light of the Jellicle Moon.

Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats (as I said) are small;
If it happens to be a stormy night
They will practise a caper or two in the hall.
If it happens the sun is shining bright
You would say they had nothing to do at all:
They are resting and saving themselves to be right
For the Jellicle Moon and the Jellicle Ball.

The Emperor of Ice-Cream

by Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Token

by Barbara Anderson

My mother keeps an artificial wallet
in her pocketbook to fool the hoodlums of the city.
Thick with newspaper torn into money,
it is the wallet not chained
to the inner security zipper.
FUCK YOU it says on the transparent plastic folder
for credit cards and photos of loved ones.
FUCK YOU on the window for identification.
In case of emergency, she carries it everywhere
invisibly as the belief in god
or knowledge of karate. Any god can tell you this,
she knows, that everything she’s ever saved
is just so much dinero in the sky,
small change to the sun.
But to ride the subways in the heavy metallic hour
before the rush, as the train burrows
from one man-made darkness into another,
between fluorescent stations
yellowed to the color of the moon—
everyone needs something besides
themselves to conceal for ransom.

The Next Day

by Randall Jarrell

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I’ve become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I’d wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water–
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work–I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her and I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I’m anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

The Munsters

By David Trinidad

Among cobwebs amd
dust, Lily sits in
the parlor reading
this month’s issue
of Tomb and Garden.
In the lab, Grandpa
hangs upside down,
dreaming of a fara-
way Transylvania.
Up in his bedroom,
Eddie sleeps off
the effects of last
night’s full moon.
When the doorbell
rings (to the tune
of a funeral march),
Spot roars flames.
Herman stomps to
the front door and
opens it. Hair on
end, Marilyn’s date
runs screaming down
Mockingbird Lane.