The thaw

Yesterday, five days after the storm, there was still ice in the trees. It looked like tinsel in the sun.

Today the temperature soared to 47 and there's slush everywhere. Runoff from the melt is dripping into my basement and setting off the sump pump. Oh, the joys of homeownership.

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There is a decided absence of poetry in my life these days. I need to muster up some determination and stop farting around. If nothing else I could at least send out some stuff -- I only have poems out two places now, and chapbook manuscripts out to three contests. Submitting stuff isn't the same as mucking around with poetry, but at least it's a little closer to the right ballpark. If writing poetry is the ballpark, sending stuff out is the concession stand at the ballpark.

No hot dog jokes please. (Yes, I'm talking to you.)

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Fresh: Blood Orange Review.

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IU's MFA program finally posted the spring semester reading schedule on their website. Still to come this semester: Quincy Troupe, David Lehman, and Sherman Alexie. I am beyond excited to hear Sherman Alexie. I like his work a whole heck of a lot.

Lehman is reading one night, then doing some sort of a "Tour of American Poetry" a couple nights later. Unfortunately I will have to miss that, as I'm on the roster to read at the Runcible Spoon for their monthly reading series that same night. That's the end of March, so hopefully it will kick me into gear a bit to tackle NaPoWriMo again in April. Yep, I'm going to do that again this year: a poem a day. It was good for me last year, for sure.

Hard to envision, from this bleak and slushy landscape, enough creative fertility to come up with a poem (even a sucky poem) every day. But I will make it happen. Dammit.

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Drip, drip, drip. Drip.