Entry Day II: Kathy’s POV

A new resident has brought in a unicycle as his item of questionable existence, and the plus-sized models are a-flurry with excitement. TYRA convinced them they can learn fluid movement by cycling down the staircases, but so far it has resulted only in carbuncles and exposed bits of skull. Caravaggio takes advantage of their unconsciousness to paint them, re-arranging their arms and legs to relive stabbings in his past.

I whisper down the hallway, “A little to the left,” but puddin’ fixes me with a hairy eyeball. I raise my blue glass bead to thwart her ill intentions. I used to want a muse so bad. Now I want to muse so bad.

I feel feverish, and the roof of my mouth tastes of zinc. I don’t know why I wanted a muse in the first place anyway: I do not want anyone to tell me what to do ever again.

There is a Charming Man guesting at The Pinch Punch. He isn’t much of a stabber, but his anecdotes are amusing as all get out. The howling girl’s cries have turned to giggles, and she enlists the martens to comb out her hair each morning. Is this the start of harmony? Is charm the great equalizer?

I refuse to believe that anyone is better than me. But even the small pets snub me at evening prayer.

Ch. 1 here
Ch. 2 here
Ch. 3 here
Ch. 4 here
Ch. 5 here
Ch. 6 here
Ch. 7 here
Ch. 8 here
Ch. 9 here
Ch. 10 here
Ch. 11 here
Ch. 12 here
Ch. 13 here
Ch. 14 here
Ch. 15 here
Ch. 16 here
Ch. 17 here
Ch. 18 here
Ch. 19 here
Ch. 20 here
Ch. 21 here

lightening things up

Poetry Market Crash

I have a lot of sadness regarding the internets lately. And because of it I am going to write a cranky post that is actually about writing and not about celebrities, which I will probably later regret.

Today I would like to blame the internets for everything mentioned in the article, "The New Math of Poetry," which everyone has probably already read except for me because I have been trying to avoid the internets as much as possible, out of sadness.

This article basically says how everyone on the planet, including my cats, can now a) have their work published in journals and b) have a book out because there are so many journals and presses. It also says that way more people are writing and publishing books than are actually reading them. It's sort of like the credit market crash: every writer gets offered a book just like every financially defunct human (including myself) could get a credit card in 2005. The result being that there's a glut of sucky books out there, and an excess of writers who think they're famous even though no one is actually reading their books - there are just all of these books floating around out there unread! And allegedly good books aren't being read either, because there's so much clutter that nobody even knows what's good anymore - because they can't find it.

I have wondered about this for a long time - especially lately with the excess of online "journals." Do we really need more journals? And why does every writer feel entitled to start one? Well, now someone else has said it, in this unnecessarily long and overwhelming article that has confirmed my suspicions that the internet is just a gross place where people create press for themselves, regardless of the quality of their work. Then we "network" by telling other people about our press (which we actually created ourselves) and they publish our books, even though really our press (and maybe our work) is bullshit.

Of course I'm all for there being more good books in the world, and that's why I like little presses, which is not what this article talks about at all - all the little presses that create books that are beautiful and strange and that I love. So of course there's this cuter and fluffier and more positive flipside.

Really this is just another example of me being cranky about living now instead of in the woods near Walden Pond...

Puddin’, Audiodiary #3

I had a muse once, although I did not know it at the time. Her name was Lucy. She was a fairy tiny and light as a mosquito, but badass, with bangin' hair, and kung fu moves that she demonstrated on the teacup piglets--whacking them into the side of the barn so their brains fell out. She threatened to remove my mother from my periphery; after all, she was a muse; this is what muses do. She glistened and glittered, as muses should. She was my alter-ego, as muses should be.

She adored me; she adorned my shoulder at all hours of the day, so that I noticed her only in the rarest moments, usually at daybreak, when she was whacking the teacup piglets into the barn. Or making me perfect coffees, and cakes that tasted like the world I’d never seen: Argentina, South Pacific, Pakistan. I liked the taste of the arctic cakes best: pure as wind, they blew through my whole body, they exhilarated my insides. Her mixing bowl must have been so tiny. Her cakes were the size of a thimble.

I did not tell her how I loved those cakes best of all, but she knew. She was my muse.
She gave me maps of the icecaps, handdrew them on the inside of my mind like wallpaper. What she whispered to me at all hours was: flee.

I did not understand that we shared a language. I could barely hear her at all, except in rare moments, at daybreak. I could not picture the icecaps--what existed there? After arriving, who would I become? None of this mattered; I knew.

I didn’t know she was my muse. I did not choose her. I did not feel it when she left. I only noticed years later, brown and lumpen, that she wasn't there, that I hadn't tasted her cakes in decades.

This is how one falls through the skylight into new life: by chasing what doesn’t exist.


Ch. 1 here
Ch. 2 here
Ch. 3 here
Ch. 4 here
Ch. 5 here
Ch. 6 here
Ch. 7 here
Ch. 8 here
Ch. 9 here
Ch. 10 here
Ch. 11 here
Ch. 12 here
Ch. 13 here
Ch. 14 here
Ch. 15 here
Ch. 16 here
Ch. 17 here
Ch. 18 here
Ch. 19 here
Ch. 20 here

Whose muse? The Plus-sized Models Flaunt It

Caravaggio begs us to pose, granting us access to his extensive selection of wigs and swimwear. We swagger the hallways in his trunks, our breasts swaying, tiny monkeys clinging to our nipples to preserve our dignity.

We cannot sit still long enough for him to paint. We are meant to be captured in the present, to prolong a single moment by means of flashing light and electric sensors. Photography is so much more efficient.

He pops around corners, menacing us with knives. We submit, and he embraces another medium, sculpting us, removing ears and eyebrows, but no inner light emerges.

Ch. 1 here
Ch. 2 here
Ch. 3 here
Ch. 4 here
Ch. 5 here
Ch. 6 here
Ch. 7 here
Ch. 8 here
Ch. 9 here
Ch. 10 here
Ch. 11 here
Ch. 12 here
Ch. 13 here
Ch. 14 here
Ch. 15 here
Ch. 16 here
Ch. 17 here
Ch. 18 here
Ch. 19 here

let's go to japan and hang out in kitty cafes

i found THIS on chris killen's blog. it is awesome.