NaPoWriMo: Shafer April 3 PM

One Shining Moment

Them bears won't sleep
well tonight; the Gators
got 'em by the neck now.

Not the shiningest moment
for college basketball,
think my cohorts and I.

I'll go to sleep before
the game even ends,
and dream of early March,

when no animal was king,
when the jungle was
the widest open in years.

Non-Frequency Reading

Infrequently we will inform you of non-Frequency readings -- don't Freq out!

I will be reading poems with musical accompaniement by Ben Murphy and Tom Siler tomorrow night at Daniel Morrow's going-back-to-England party.

That's Tuesday the 4th from 9pm at Mymoon restaurant: 184 North 10th Street between Bedford and Driggs, Brooklyn, NY.

Take the L train to Bedford. You won't regret it.

NaPoWriMo: Jason April 3

7am-

He has a hangover
that makes anger
and self pity
a short drive
and patience
a long walk
over
a vast horizon

NaPoWriMo: Shafer April 3 AM

Opening Day

This morning's kind of fuzzy:
I think Jim Behrle is going to visit
the baseball players of Opening Day,
and Lauren is worried about JD
Salinger -- says that brain-eating
New England freak is a menace.
I put Barbadian hot mustard
on my oatmeal -- on purpose,
and Lucas is muttering
about moving back to the 'Burg;
upsetting.

But Scott has tickets
to the Mets on Wednesday;
Wednesday is me 'n Scott's
Opening Day.

NaPoWriMo: Jason Ashbaugh April 1!

Nice Boys

With your blessing
I'll ride in from the north
and sit my horse
on top of a mesa
just outside of town
waiting on the signal
-a lone rifle shot-
Then down I'll
fly and take
Incubus' name away
for it has no place
on a veggie-pop band
it's a $9 handle that
best befits death-metal or
at very least
slo-core

I'm sure they're
nice boys and all
but it just ain't right

NaPoWriMo: Shafer April 2 PM

Straw Wrapper Ballistics

Like a monster comes a smog
of laughter from outside,
where the cafe has been overrun
with sentience. The napkins
make a fine "Hello!" for anyone.
The plan for the next four hours is:
cross our sipper/stirrers
and try not to run.

NaPoWriMo: Shafer April 2 AM

This Morning Is A Black Bean Recipe

In the further adventures
of my father and I:
his black beans
are cooking on my stove,
and even though
my black beans
are different from his,
he's still here with me
this morning,
all the way from Texas.

NaPoWriMo: Shafer April 1 PM

I've Got A Weird Goodnight

Goodnight said the eel
to the otter, but he
didn't go to bed. Instead
he shut his eyes,
and as he slept
he dreamed in such a way
that he couldn't say:
"am I in bed, or am I
at work, am I in bed,
or am I at work,
am I in bed?"

Onward NaPoWriMo-ers!

Ada Limon and Jen Knox are NaPoWriMo-ing via Ada's new blog!

NaPoWriMo: Shafer April 1 AM

Good Morning April

Hello April, you
fine bright cruelty,
you are all over
the place up here;
I'll take myself out
to the ballgame
this month; I'll
cram myself into
an early Coney Island.

Freq of the Week!

FREQUENCY READING SERIES
Saturday April 1st at 2 PM
at the Four-Faced Liar
165 West 4th St. (between 6th avenue & 7th avenue)

(212) 366-0608
A,C,E,F, or V to West 4th
FREE

Paul Foster Johnson's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Logopoeia, Bird Dog, Octopus, and Lungfull!. "Quadriga", a chapbook of his collaborations with E. Tracy Grinnell, will soon be published by g-o-n-g press. With fiction writer Sherry Mason, he curates the Experiments and Disorders reading series at Dixon Place in New York City.

erica kaufman co-curates the belladonna* reading series/small press and is the author of the chapbooks: from the two coat syndrome , the kickboxer suite, and a familiar album (winner of the 2003 New School Chapbook Contest). Her poems have appeared in Puppy Flowers, Bombay Gin, The Mississippi Review, and elsewhere.

Stacy Szymaszek is the Program Coordinator at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church. She is the author of the chapbooks Some Mariners (EtherDome Press, 2004), Mutual Aid (gong, 2004), Pasolini Poems (CyPress, 2005) There Were Hostilities (release, 2005), and hyper glossia (belladonna* books 2005). Her book Emptied of All Ships was published by Litmus Press.

NaPoWriMo is gearing up.

Of course, every month is National Poetry Month here at I'll Show You Mine, but April is NATIONAL National Poetry Month, and Reen will be gearing up her NaPoWriMo Project in which all are invited to participate.

This year I will join her in writing two poems a day for the month of March. I will also join her in writing poems with a (loosely) common theme. I think I will write one poem in the morning and one poem at night, and I think they will be somewhat narrative and semi-autobiographical.

As I did last year, I will post poems for non-blogging poets who'd like to participate. Just send them to shaferhall a la gmail. And we're as fast and loose in this pursuit as in all others, so don't worry if you have to start late or can't quite write every day. Maureen'll still love you.

Fun Fishes Will Find Me At The Freq

Fishes,

FREQUENCY READING SERIES
Saturday March 25th at 2:30 PM
at the Four-Faced Liar
165 West 4th St. (212) 366-0608
A,C,E,F, or V to West 4th
FREE

Saturday, March 25th will feature Chris Tonelli, Justin Marks, and Carol Novak.

Chris Tonelli lives in Cambridge, MA. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Verse, LIT, GutCult, New York Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Sonora Review , Asheville Poetry Review, and Redivider. His chapbook, Wide Tree, is available from Kitchen Press.

Justin Marks has poems in, or forthcoming from, Fulcrum, The Literary Review, McSweeney's, Typo, Word For/Word, RealPoetik, canwehaveourballback?, Black Warrior Review, Coconut and others. His chapbook, You Being You by Proxy, is out on Kitchen Press (http://www.kitchenpresschapbooks.blogspot.com/). His full length manuscript, Twenty Five Hours in Iceland and Other Poems, was a finalist for the 2006 May Swenson Poetry Award. He is Editor of LIT magazine and lives in New York City.

Carol Novack's writings can or will be found in many publications, including The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets, Anemone Sidecar, Big Bridge, Diagram (web and print), elimae, Milk Magazine, Mindfire, Muse Apprentice Guild, Newtopia, Opium, Pindeldyboz, Retort, Ravenna
Hotel, SmokeLong Quarterly, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Word Riot, and Yankee Pot Roast . Her prose poem/fusion "Destination" was selected as a "best" of Web Del Sol fiction at Sol eScene (Series 20). Carol publishes and edits the "edgy and enlightened" multimedia journal Mad Hatters' Review: http://www.madhattersreview.com, hosted by Web Del Sol, and she is co-editing an anthology of innovative, "intoxicating" fiction, Butterflies of Vertigo. Carol's launching the Mad Hatters' Poetry, Prose & Anything Goes Reading Series at the KGB Bar on April 7th. Her burgeoning blog, http://carolnovack.blogspot.com , provides additional details.

Frequency

For those of you who are keeping score, the online Frequency Series Schedule has been updated to reflect the current season.

MarPoWriMo Etceterizes!

A Clean, Well-Rested Possum in Fancy Dress

"Is that a possum, or a prince?" people asked,
when the clean, well-rested possum rolled into town,
dressed as he was in fancy dress.

Never had anyone seen a possum dress so fancy
or groom so cleanly; never had anyone seen a possum
rest so thoroughly.

"Princes can be possums, and possums can be princes,"
said the well-rested possum sagely. "If you folks
would rest more completely, you could see more clearly."

The town folks "harrumphed" but decided to try it,
and when they awoke, they resumed chasing the possum
with a broomstick and a renewed, well-rested vigor.

The Durge Report

Sybil Durgin "was talking for some time about the travelling wilburys and how the guy from elo must be pissed. he had his short, brief moment playing with genius. his name in lights, with theirs. then roy died and his estate pulled the rights. you can't buy the first record anywhere and the second doesn't hold water at all. then george died and the dream did too. for a while, a sweet while, it was george, tom, bob, roy and jeff. even if people didn't really know who jeff was, it was still jeff. now if people even remember the travelling wilburys at all, its george, tom, bob, roy and that guy from elo. man, is he pissed!"

Blog Template Solidarity #2

Lori in Austin has a blog just like ours!

ICWAPAA #2

High School Isn't Harder On Anyone Than The High-Schoolers

No one was as confused as I was
when I found that box of glass eyeballs
in my locker. My high school
did not even have a prosthetics program,
so those eyeballs must’ve traveled
a long, long way to get there;
it must’ve been a long way to travel
to confuse me.

But I don’t like to look confused;
am I too proud? Or is it an older aversion --
maybe I don’t want to look weak
in front of the other high school students
lest they gang up on and eat me.

Those may have been idle musings,
but at the time they were enough for me,
all of a sudden every other human creature
was a danger to me and my eyeballs
(including the extra ones -- possession
being so much of the law back then.)

So I knocked over all of the tables
in Mrs. Caldwell’s third period,
and then I righted only one of them,
on which I stood and said to the gathering crowd:
That’s right! Look at me! I’m crrr-
aazy! And I’m a-gonna put your eyeballs out
one by one, so buy my one-and-only
brand-new prosthetic eyeballs now
before they’re gone.

And after that I was OK for a while,
on that ship of cutthroats called high school,
until I joined the water polo team --
everyone’s so mean to the water polo team.

For Your Enjoyment

Here is Steve's movie about a biker who's scared (or not scared?) of an Italian guy's dog. I play the biker.

In the interest of blog-template solidarity...

...I (via Erica) give you www.adamandpetergoto.blogspot.com, which is of the same species as I'll Show You Mine.