Anatomy of a Dress

Will you send me a postcard?

4414 Worth St. #1
Dallas TX 75246

…Not the broken but

still flowering dogwood. Not

the honey locust, either. Not even

the ghost walnut with its

non-branches whose

every shadow is memory,

memory . . . As he said to me

once, That’s all garbage

down the river, now. Turning,

but as the utterly lost—

because addicted—do:

resigned all over again. It

only looked, it—

It must only look

like leaving. There’s an art

to everything. Even

turning away. How

eventually even hunger

can become a space

to live in. How they made

out of shamelessness something

beautiful, for as long as they could.

Carl Philips

I don’t know whether it feels really wonderful to be relieved of responsibility or if I am a lot more miserable than I allow myself to realize, but I am having a lot of trouble physically getting back to Dallas.

I was supposed to leave this morning and could not bring myself to. As I have to work tomorrow night, I have no option but to drive home in the morning. But I seem to be in the process of staying up all night, which oughta make it good and excruciating to GET UP in the morning and GET TO WORK tomorrow evening.

I don’t want to go back to the stinky apartment I share with my ex, I don’t want to go to work at a loud, smoky bar and I don’t want to go back to being broke and scared and remarkably alone. Ugh DON’T WANT TO.

I think I should try making a list of things I am looking forward to returning to, but other than checking to see if I have any acceptances/rejections in the mailz, I can’t think of much. The Un, I think, would call this the very healthy disengagement from my life in Dallas, the necessary gathering of escape velocity I have been anticipating, but had no idea would start building to such enormous proportions so goddamn fast.

Just called the University of Virginia to find out when they’ll be notifying poets — the END of MARCH?

YEAH RIGHT. Go stand in the corner with University of Washington!

Having a marvelous time in Austin with Erik. We got Texmex and margaritas, met Erica and her lady Meghan at Shady Grove, went to a party at the Belmont and talked all night. Katz’s for lunch, and now we’re going to a barbeque with my nutty family.

We’ll be picking up lots of beer…

ACCEPTED to the University of Washington, with NO FUNDING.

BAH!

Only One Set in the Singer’s Eyes

He got drunk looking at a woman from his past
And this is what he wrote down on a paper sack
In the tavern one night while I watched him:
Your body is a plantation
I worked on for seven years, all of them solid,
Deep in summer it’s uncleared timber, backwater
Ditch and slough, the years of the bad-assed
Sax, the years of bad cotton, nights and crops
I went shares on, evenings with gars,
Lord God Almighty didn’t it rain,
So long, say love, say night honey, pull
A stump, court with your crowbar,
The bedrooms like trembling bridges,
Like women holding mirrors in the spring,
And here I am, the snow all around me,
A match in my mouth, like the high water,
Crazy, sad, and dangerous, a log
Chain on your floor, what love
There was, bee on the rose, buried in the year
Book in the attic, common and pretended sleep,
No one loses their shadow because no one
Is a boat on a river without wind,
And there are screws on the window sill
Never will be sunken to hold a pane,
You can listen to the rain, you can lie
Yourself back into bodies you never
Touched, cruelty, cruelty, cruelty,
That’s what I told her.

The Light the Dead See

There are many people who come back
After the doctor has smoothed the sheet
Around their body
And left the room to make his call.

They die but they live.

They are called the dead who lived through their deaths,
And among my people
They are considered wise and honest.

They float out of their bodies
And light on the ceiling like a moth,
Watching the efforts of everyone around them.

The voices and the images of the living
Fade away.

A roar sucks them under
The wheels of a darkness without pain.
Off in the distance
There is someone
Like a signalman swinging a lantern.

The light grows, a white flower.
It becomes very intense, like music.

They see the faces of those they loved,
The truly dead who speak kindly.

They see their father sitting in a field.
The harvest is over and his cane chair is mended.
There is a towel around his neck,
The odor of bay rum.
Then they see their mother
Standing behind him with a pair of shears.
The wind is blowing.
She is cutting his hair.

The dead have told these stories
To the living.

Frank Stanford

amazing.

University of Washington is calling poets today, emailing rejections and mailing waitlist letters. My silent phone and empty spam folder/inbox indicate that I may be waitlisted.

Also: I just told Purdue we have to stop seeing each other. Sad. Will I ever see Marianne Boruch again?

Guys this is rull nerdy but a bunch of my little prospie friends from Alabama have emailed to tell me they’re going to UA next year and I’m all giddy kthxbai!

We did not make ourselves is one thing

I keep singing into my hands

while falling

asleep

for just a second

before I have to get up and turn on all the lights in the house, one after the

other, like opening an Advent calendar

My brain opening

the chemical miracles in my brain

switching on

I can hear

dogs barking

some trees

last stars

You think you’ll be missed

it won’t last long

I promise

I’m not dead but I am

standing very still

in the back yard

staring up at the maple

thirty years ago

a tiny kid waiting on the ground

alone in heaven

in the world

in white sneakers

I’m having a good time humming along to everything I can still remember

back there

How we’re born

Made to look up at everything we didn’t make

We didn’t

make grass, mosquitoes

or breast cancer

We didn’t make yellow jackets

or sunlight

either

I didn’t make my brain

but I’m helping

to finish it

Carefully stacking up everything I made next to everything I ruined in broad

daylight in bright

brainlight

This morning I killed a fly

and didn’t lie down

next to the body

like we’re supposed to

We’re supposed to

Soon I’m going to wake up

Dogs

Trees

Stars

There is only this world and this world

What a relief

created

over and over

Michael Dickman