The way that the sea fails to drown itself every day. And entendre alludes all those not listening. The way unfertilized chicken eggs fail to have imagination, dozened out in their cardboard trays, by which I mean they will never break open from the inside. The way my imagination (née anxiety) has bad brakes and a need to stop sometimes. The way I didn't believe it when he told me we were going to crash into the car idling at a red light ahead of us. To know our future like that seemed unlikely. But to have time to tell me? —Nearly impossible. I may have broken several ribs that day but I will never know for sure. I'm okay, I guessed aloud to the paramedic. It doesn't matter if you're broken if you're broke, I moaned in bed that night, after several glasses of cheap red. I thought it would make a good blues refrain. I made myself laugh and so I made myself hurt— Memoirs by Emilia Phillips, goes the joke. A friend of mine competes in beard and mustache tournaments, even though she can't grow one herself— Once, she donned a Santa Claus made entirely out of hot-glued tampons. It was as white as the spots in memories I doubt. The first woman I kissed who had never kissed a woman before couldn't get over how soft my face is, even the scar. Once, a famous poet said what's this and touched my face without asking— his thumb like a cat's tongue on the old wound. He must have thought he was giving me a blessing.
from the book EMBOUCHURE / University of Akron Press
"The Maine Arts Commission has launched its search for a new state poet laureate to succeed Deer Isle poet Stuart Kestenbaum for a five-year term....'We are so grateful to Stu for his wonderful work as poet laureate,' said Arts Commission Executive Director David Greenham." viaTHE ELLSWORTH AMERICAN
What Sparks Poetry: Rion Scott on Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" "I often think about the precision in Hayden's language. The words that take on the work of casting several meanings. 'What did I know, what did I know/of love’s austere and lonely offices?' I know all the words he used, but in this formation, with the repetition, the odd use of the word 'offices' and its proximity to the words 'austere' and 'lonely,' the words seem alien and strange in the best way."
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