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I'd like to say I'm crafty, but I'll be honest and say I nick a lot, especially web-style wise. This page is no
different - the content and style are borrowed from The
Writer's Almanac. Previously, I just had default text styling, but felt this was more appropriate. Plus,
the Writer's Almanac site has a nice design. Think of it as a bow to those who are better at their crafts than I.
Thank you, poets, Garrison Keillorm, and nameless web designer(s). Thank you. TUESDAY, 28 FEBRUARY, 2006 (sitelink) Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen Poem: "The Bear's Money" by Louis Jenkins from The Winter Road: Prose Poems by Louis Jenkins. © Holy Cow! Press. Reprinted with permission. Every fall before he goes to sleep a bear will put away five or six hundred dollars. Money he got from garbage cans, mostly. Peo- ple throw away thousands of dollars every day, and around here a lot of it goes to bears. But what good is money to a bear? I mean, how many places are there that a bear can spend it? It's a good idea to first locate the bear's den, in fall after the leaves are down. Back on one of the old logging roads you'll find a tall pine or spruce covered with scratch marks, the bear runes, which translate to something like "Keep out. That means you!" You can rest assured that the bear and his money are nearby, in a cave or in a space dug out under some big tree roots. When you return in winter, a long hike on snowshoes, the bear will be sound asleep. ... In a month or two he'll wake, groggy, out of sorts, ready to bite something, ready to rip something to shreds ... but by then you'll be long gone, back in town, spending like a drunken sailor. TUESDAY, 24 JANUARY 2006 (sitelink) Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen Poem: "Street Moths," by X.J. Kennedy from The Lords of Misrule (Johns Hopkins University Press). Mature enough to smoke but not to drink, Grown boys at night before the games arcade Wearing tattoos that wash off in the sink Accelerate vain efforts to get laid. Parading in formation past them, short Skirts and tight jeans pretending not to see This pack of starving wolves who pay them court Turn noses up at cries of agony— Baby, let's do it! Each suggestion falls Dead to the gutter to be swept aside Like some presumptuous bug that hits brick walls, Rating a mere Get lost and death-ray eyes. Still, they keep launching blundering campaigns, Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight: Blind moths against the wires of window screens. Anything. Anything for a fix of light. THURSDAY, 6 OCTOBER, 2005 (sitelink) Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen Poem: "Wild Card" by Cathryn Essinger, from My Dog Does Not Read Plato. © Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Reprinted with permission. The local newspaper reports a Houston housewife has found a three foot long snake indigenous to California in her electric toaster. I need to talk to this woman. I want to know what kind of bread attracts snakes, if she goes to church on Sundays and if she believes in chance. While I have her on the phone, I want to ask about other irregularities, such as the Osage orange that showed up on my front step, a fruit so large no creature could have carried it. And what does she make of the wild card I found in a pile of leaves-a Jack of Spades masquerading as some variety of oak? Or the crow who paces the patio, carrying a packet of taco sauce, dipping his beak casually, as if hot sauce were his natural food. I'd ask about the mouse I found this morning in the dog's bowl, frantic, half drowned, the small cap of his skull bobbing like a tiny buoy. Still, he swam, betting against all odds that some housewife might appear on this Sunday morning, looking for eggs or waffle mix, and the opportunity to tip the bowl onto a sunny porch where a small thing, who has never questioned the implacable nature of the universe, could have another chance. |