I'm excited to report that the print version of Poems to Love & the Body is sold out. Out of print. Incognito.
So if you want to read Poems to Love, you can go to Smashwords and check out the free ebook. It is revised and hopefully it shows! It is adult content, and Smashwords suggests you gotta be 17 to check it out. Whoa...Cheers!
(with thanks to Nate the Philosopher)
if only she had embraced
her high school love for him.
If only she had not dumped him
in the purple-paint-bubbled hallway
with the giant yellow bobcat mascot.
If only she had agreed to quit school
after her junior year and move
her dresser and dolls and punk rock records
into his grandma’s empty trailer
on Bird Man’s south ten by the abandoned
railroad track, where the Little Piney
boomed enough water they could wash
and filter down drinking agua
to their camo-colored home.
The lumber mill is always hirin’
and Bessie always needs waitresses
would have left his lips often enough,
and all she had to’ve done was hold
his hand at the assembly, Bobcats vs. Eagles,
and the world would have
opened up
a whirlpool of saltwater and seashells
while the Carpenters played
love-conquers-all theme music with strings
in the center of the gym floor,
and life would have lined up into perfect symmetry—
her fingers in his farm-desirous hand,
the rows of bleachers equidistant from one another
and adjacent to paint stripes on the court floor,
the students and teachers broad-smiling in unison,
Kenny’s Walleye and Catfish in their own eyes,
as Karen Carpenter belted out a ballad
from her fattened, one-hundred-and-forty-pound frame.
The story recently published in Elder Mountain Journal Volume 2, a wonderful publication dedicated to the Ozarks. And a special shout-out goes to Darrelyn Saloom, whose editorial feedback proved priceless.
The trailer for this 2009 film, directed by Spike Jonez and based on the Maurice Sendak, is fabulous. You can find it on YouTube here.
I am intrigued by my feeling about it--that the trailer with the Arcade Fire song stands alone as an artwork. That it's interesting visually and musically and emotionally. It is the power of the short film.
I was recently introduced to Struck. And I found How to Disappear Completely just now.
Thanks oh great friends of Michael Brasier for some stellar ideas, which included:
For now, (it is a rough draft!), we are going with a version of inadvertently maim.
Oh the dangers of a float trip. Be careful, our fellow Ozarkers.
Writers have to avoid cliches.
James Cameron's Avatar is an example of what not to do as a writer. (His Aliens (1986) is a great example of what to do.)
The new screenplay short I'm working on features a male protagonist, Jimmy Hay. His grandfather died while working at a lumber mill.
So an uncliched tragedy is needed for the female protagonist, Nova. All I know so far is that car accidents are out. So in the script, I typed in "Insert Tragedy."
The goal is to find one that is not a cliche.
(From Mint Chocolate Chip - screenplay short in progress. Thanks to Met Ensemble and Arthur Kopit where idea first originated. And Michael Brasier for bravely signing on as co-writer.)
EXT. NOVA’S APARTMENT - LATE, LATE NIGHT
The Ozarks.
JIMMY HAY, a slender guy in his 20s with all-American kinda good looks, knocks at the door. And then again.
NOVA, a cute and voluptuous girl in her 20s, answers the door. Nova is groggy and has obviously been asleep.
JIMMY
Nova. I know it’s late. (Beat.) Really late.
NOVA
What do you want?
Jimmy is slow to answer, so she turns around. The door starts to close. Jimmy catches it before it does and walks in.
INT. NOVA’S APARTMENT, HALLWAY - LATE LATE NIGHT
It’s a small, cozy apartment. Nova and Jimmy walk.
NOVA
I thought you was gone.
INT. NOVA’S APARTMENT, KITCHEN - LATE LATE NIGHT
Nova opens up her fridge.
NOVA
It’s Miller, Miller, or Miller.
JIMMY
I’m good.
Nova hands him one. And grabs one for herself. She walks past him...
Write like hell.
