So either I'm getting the advice that I need to slow down or this is a reflection that as soon as I start progressing at a pretty good clip, I'm stopped in my tracks. I think it's the latter.

Evidence:

Two nights ago I dreamed that I was an assistant manager at Express. I kept getting teleported to other parts of the mall. Each time I'd find a new path to return to Express and soon after that I'd be teleported again.

Last night I dreamed that Mr. McFeely (Speedy Delivery!) got hit by a delivery truck. It was the third delivery/mail truck accident on that very street.


What's a girl to do?

New issue of 32 Poems is out.

I have a poem in there along with Dan Pinkerton, Kate Northrop, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, Matthew Ladd, LS. Askeoff, Alison Stine, Ralph Black, A.E. Stallings, Kevin McFadden, Thomas Stemmer, Andrea Defoe, Kelle Groom, William Logan, Mary Quade, Elizabeth McFarland, Lauren Shapiro, Claudia Burbank, T. Zachary Cotler, Alexandra Teague, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Randall Stiffler, Moira Egan, Jeffrey Thomson, Kathi Morrison-Taylor, Richard Neman, Frederick Smock, Maggie Glover, Temple Cone, G.C. Waldrep, Rosemary Winslow and Jeannine Hall Gailey.

Today we met another Gideon! First time. He was the valet at the fabulous top-secret poet blogger's hotel.

See honey, the world isn't so lonely now, is it?

Gideon and I are having lunch with a fabulous poetry blogger in an hour and a half. But I don't think I can divulge who this person is at this time.

I know, how mysterious!

This Condensery: Poets On Mentorship

curated by Jennifer Bartlett

Featuring interviews with:

Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker
Joanna Fuhrman and Susanna Fry
Shin Yu Pai and Renee Rossi
Jennifer Firestone and Eileen Myles

Essays and poems by:

Jen Benka
Susanna Fry & Joanna Fuhrman
Renée Rossi
Shin Yu Pai

And excerpts from Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts & Affections by Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg (University of Iowa Press, 2008)

Elizabeth Treadwell
Katy Lederer
Kristin Prevallet

Honorable Matron Hair

but wait . . .

remove the glasses and the nerdy girl magically becomes hot, albeit in a sort of demented way.



Oh, I'm just having so much fun with my new hairdo



What? Me teach? Heavens no, I'm much too good looking for that!

The Matron's Checklist

2nd dress fitting (color: moss) - tomorrow check (alternations complete)
Hair color and cut - tomorrow check
Ring bearer's haircut - tomorrow check
Manicure/pedicure - next week, still need to make appointment

Shoes (in muted gold, on sale) - check
Earrings - check
Bracelet - check
strapless bra - check

Oh and just a few more days left in No Tell Motel's reading period. Send now or forever hold your submissions until October.

Brought Gideon along to TB's bridal dress fitting (I had to learn how to bustle her dress, me being the matron of honor and all). Anyhow, that didn't work out so great. Gideon has this habit of walking one direction while looking the other and here was lots of distracting, sparkly stuff in this boutique. So he smashed his face real good on a steel chair knob. I haven't heard him scream like that for a long time. For a minute I thought I was going to have to take him to the hospital, he wouldn't even let me look at his face. He's OK, I cured him with ice cream, but I'm concerned he'll be sporting a shiner for the wedding. A mother's dream of cute tuxedo pictures might be dashed.

Question: Why do adults on children's TV programs all have to dress like idiots? Is this the bar for visual interest?

This Week at No Tell

Adam Fieled is varicose, vein-soft, fake-bloody, cut, can’t move this week at No Tell Motel.

RUNNICLE

This has happened twice in the past few months for me:

1. A snake swimming through water.

Keep your Freudian interpretations to yourself. Snakes have a multitude of symbolic meanings, thank you very much Ms. Essbaum!

2. A glowing Gideon with a blanket wrapped around his head (like the Virgin Mary).

I had the feeling this was the "key" and I interpret Gideon to symbolize the "divine child" archetype.


* * *

I read that as a rule of thumb, if someone offers you food in a dream, you should always eat it (no matter how weird or funky looking) because it's part of your unconscious trying to pass on some wisdom/information.

Last night I dreamed that I was at a fancy mansion buffet. The people there pushed around their food, drinks and books on wheeled carts. I thought, "ah, this is how the rich do it" but didn't use a cart myself. I started at the buffet and one of the staff brought out a bowl of white corn that the chef made especially for me because he/she knew I liked it. I filled two small bowls and ate a spoonful. Then I considered getting a cart.

So for now on, consider me enlightened cause I think this means I'm rich, bitch.

draft

[snip]

BookLocker.com has filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon.com in response to Amazon's recent attempts to force all publishers using Print on Demand (POD) technology to pay Amazon to print their books.

Bedside Guide in Paris, Oooh La La

Timothy Bradford


Evie Shockley


Lea Graham


Evie, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Lea



Photos by Jill

post-NaPoWriMo draft

[poof]

Speed Racer: Way too much plot. I had to take Gideon on a walk during the talking parts in between the racing parts. As a busy mom, I'd like to suggest all movies take their cues from Alvin and the Chipmunks. Gideon didn't need a single walk or talking to during that showing -- nonstop, adorable chipmunk action.

I'm gonna start a petition.

Let's see, what else is going on with me. Oh yeah, last night, found an entire roll of toilet paper emptied into the toilet.

The plus side was Chris was home to take care of that.

Sadly, I have no picture of Gideon's clay creation from the Reston Art Festival this weekend. Because it was promptly ground into the carpet.

Chris was home to clean that up as well.

I took care of the toothpaste in the carpet.

Not that I'm keeping score or anything.

This Week at No Tell

Steve Fellner is in a childless relationship with a man who has infinite patience for his temper tantrums and overall bratty ways this week at No Tell Motel.

Fun Reading This Weekend

Disputation of Jilly Dybka on the Power and Efficacy of Contemporary Poetry Publishing

SMALL PRESS SPOTLIGHT: STEVE FELLNER

Gideon's First Photography Exhibit

To pass the time he took a photograph of me.



Then I took the camera away and went upstairs to neglect him for a while.

But there is no shelf Gideon can't find a way to reach. Usually the results of him getting to something I try to keep away are disastrous. I still find vaseline in strange places.

But not today. Today's result was art. Behold:

Dear Substitute Pilates Instructor,

Tell me what to do with my legs, arms, hands, feet, back and butt. Tell me to lift my toes, wrap my thigh muscles, bend my elbows. Tell me to look forward. Tell me to stop shrugging my shoulders. You're the boss. I submit.

But don't tell me to smile. That's the one muscle I get to fully to decide what to do with. I'm concentrating on all my various parts. As a busy mom, I have not a second to spare on a smile. I have something called a "powerhouse" that I'm supposed to be engaging. Times like these, I must not be distracted with frivolities.

And for that matter, where does anyone get off telling anyone else to smile? Nothing makes me want to stick a shank in some guy's gut faster than when a random stranger approaches and tells me to smile. Fuck you. What's next, telling me what to do with my uterus?

Exactly.

My smile is my domain. My smile is sincere and true. Or I'm trying to trick you into being at ease and liking me. But that's my call. I decide when I'm false. You decide when I half-assed my elephant and whether or not I need to do it again.

Sincerely,
Little Ms. Frowny Pants with the Tight Hamstrings

Bedside Guide Reading in Paris

19 May at 8:00 pm. AT: The Highlander, 8 rue de Nevers, just southwest of the Pont Neuf, 75006, M° St-Michel. (Happy hour from 5-8. Come early & have a glass with us.)

A double-bill poetry reading to celebrate spring, agape, & eros featuring poets Evie Shockley, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Lea Graham, & Timothy Bradford from The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor (No Tell Books, 2007) followed by an open mike with David Barnes & the Spoken Word reading series.


* Evie Shockley is the author of two poetry collections: The Gorgon Goddess (2001) & a half-red sea (2006), with Carolina Wren Press. Cave Canem fellow, Hedgebrook fellowship for women writers, Shockley teaches African American Lit & creative writing at Rutgers.

* Jill Alexander Essbaum's first book, Heaven, won the 1999 Bakeless Prize followed by Oh Forbidden, a collection of erotic sonnets (Pecan Grove Press), & Harlot, with No Tell Books. Necropolis, (neoNuma Arts), is forthcoming in spring 2008. She splits her time between Zürich & the States.

* Lea Graham's work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Notre Dame Review, American Letters & Commentary, Mudlark, Shadow Train, & The Worcester Review. Her chapbook, Calendar Girls, was published in the spring of 2006 by above/ground Press in Ottawa. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie.

* Timothy Bradford's poetry has appeared in Bombay Gin, CrossConnect, DIAGRAM, H_NGM_N, Mudlark, No Tell Motel, & Runes, among other journals. Currently, he is an associate foreign researcher with the Institut d'Histoire du Temps Présent as he finishes researching & writing a novel based on the history of the Vélodrome d'Hiver.

This Week at No Tell

Craig Morgan Teicher shall proceed such that a stream comes careening through the sky across this week at No Tell Motel.

Gideon's Week at Spa Grammy

Wow, what a Mother's Day Dream

Dr. Temperance Brennan (aka Bones) is pregnant. As the pregnancy progresses, it becomes obvious to everyone that it's not a human fetus. She is being guarded by a centipede/alien-like creature that prevents anyone from "saving" her although it's likely too late even if someone could. Her body is contorting and the birth will no doubt be deadly and it's likely her body will be the offspring's first meal. Angela arrives and gives her a cigarette. Bones puts the lit cigarette backwards (lit end) into her mouth. It's the best way to die at this point.

So all week Chris was telling me about how he bought tickets at his conference for an event at a castle. Oooh, a castle! I thought and happily went along believing my last night here would be in a castle. Well, last night I asked him the name of the castle so I could learn a little bit about it before we went. Turns out it's not a castle or anything like a castle, it's a nightclub. Talk about lost in translation.

Stasi

New at Delirious Hem

Disarming, Destabilizing & Creeping Out the Patriarchy: A conversation on the Gurlesque with Arielle Greenberg

This Week at No Tell

Anna Maria Hong shall drool empathically supine this week at No Tell Motel.

I'm a Jelly Poet

I looked through one of the Berlin guide books to figure out where I'll be staying in the city -- right by the zoo and a big ass shopping district. Normally I'd be thrilled to be right by a shopping district, but I decided I wasn't going to do much shopping on this trip since the US dollar is worth just a little more than monopoly money. 1.00 EUR = 1.54 USD

Oh well, guess I'm coming home with some really expensive shoes. That's what Chris gets for registering us at the economy hotel right next to the fancy conference hotel. He was all, it's a 1/3 the price. I was all exasperated and like, your company is paying for it--that's when you stay in the nice hotel!

I don't know what's the matter with Chris. But there's something the matter with him.

Blogging will be light (hopefully) while I'm on travel.

Auf Wiedersehen, bitches!

Nick Cave Reads Harlot

No Tell Books' first celebrity endorsement!


Nick Cave reading Jill Alexander Essbaum's Harlot.

I'm making breakfast. Phil Collins is singing on the television. There are several annoying flies flying around. I'm handling a couple of dead ones. Also, there's a large bee flying around that's a bit more menacing than the flies. I open the back door and shoo it out. Gideon says: "When you have an unwanted triangle: use your own algorithm."

Jill Alexander Essbaum is blogging at The Best American Poetry blog this week.

I answer Nic Sebastian's 10 Questions at Very Like a Whale.

Poetry Mag Updates

New issue of Moria at www.moriapoetry.com

Poetry by: Jesse Ferguson, Mary Kasimor, Davide Baptiste Chirot, Andy Nicholson, Geof Huth, Laurel Ransom, William Garvin, Diana Magallon and Jeff Crouch, Steve Roggenbuck, Mark Young, Andy Gricevich, Eric Weiskott, Laura Harper, Thomas Fink, Raymond Farr, Michael Crake, John Lowther, Kyle Schlesinger, and Adam Strauss.

Reviews: Mark Wallace on Maryrose Larkin, Aileen Ibardaloza on Eileen Tabios, Jake Kennedy on Andrea Baker.

* * *

The May issue of The Scrambler is out featuring an interview and artwork by Didi Menendez, poems by Davide Trame, John Findura, Aaron Dailey, Greg Luce, a story by Shyner Nybok, a movie review of Lars and the Real Girl by Heather Craig, photographs of wire sculpture by Ruth Asawa and our monthly Playlist.

http://www.thescrambler.com/may08.html

* * *

No Tell Motel's reading period is open during the month of May. Please read the submission guidelines and some of the work already published before submitting. And if we do publish your poems, for goodness sake, don't e-mail on Monday in a panic because only *one* of your poems is appearing. Do you know how many times that happens? Do you know how exasperating that is?

Bye Bye Cruel April

NaPoWriMo poems will stay up until early afternoon today. Read them while you can! Now back to your regularly scheduled mommy blogging.