The Northville Review was nice enough to publish my poem "Rolling", which is always nice. It's one of the oldest ones I have so it's nice to finally see it in (electronic) print. Thanks to Erin over there.

I don't usually tell stories about my poems, but this one's kind of funny. The poem itself is true - it really happened, although it's much funnier when I tell the actual story. You really need to see how my brother flailed his arms. Anyway, I used to use it as an example of how a poem doesn't have to rhyme when I was teaching in Paterson and the kids loved it. I had never sent it out anywhere, but the kids would tell me how much they wanted to see it in print so they could feel like they knew me before I was "famous." So I hope one of my old students runs across "Rolling" and I hope they've finished theor homework.

I think that when they start singing "Tiny Dancer" in Almost Famous is one of the greatest things ever recorded on film. I like the part in Natural Born Killers when the Cowboy Junkies song "If You Were the Woman and I Was The Man" is playing in the background. I think they were on a bridge. That's right up there as well. I also really like when "For What It's Worth" plays during a shot of a helicopter flying low over rice paddy fields in any movie about the Vietnam War. It doesn't qualify as a Vietnam movie if it lacks that scene.

I thought I was having a brain aneurysm or a stroke the other day. Perhaps it was neither.

My e-chap, Useful Shrapnel (Scantily Clad Press), will be available on June 21, 2009. More info to come.

I have a new review of Andrew Michael Robert's Something Has To Happen Next and Zach Savich's Full Catastrophe Living up now at CutBank. Read and enjoy.

The Little Boy With A Pen For His Eye

The little boy with a pen for his eye
Would write fantastic stories whenever he cried

He would pinch himself to call up a tear
That he would use as ink and store in his ear

He would put his face on the paper and move all about
And sooner or later a story would drip out

My award winning poem "I Have Forgotten All My Spanish" (with a nice little blurb by judge Ravi Shankar) is out now in the new issue of Redivider, available at your favorite bookstore now. You should go and buy a copy of it. Bob Hicok is in there too. Not physically - poetically.

So here's a wee bit o' good news: my poem "Driving The Lincoln Tunnel" which was up over at Juked was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Thanks to J.W. Wang and everyone over at Juked. It's definitely a good read, so go check it out. Now.