You know what I bought today??

RED shiny shoes, little faux loafers from Steve Madden (thank you DSW for having good prices and sending me a $5 birthday certificate)

in The Melic review

(I Wanted To) dance on your grave

wearing red shiny shoes
spit on your headstone
hair unbound
Great God Almighty
free at your last breath
the letters I never sent
calls I almost made
presents I nearly purchased
lost their gilt-edged sharpness
when you died on Good Friday
2000 miles away I had finished
tenebrae and crucifixion
three hours in a trance
hands shaking on the keyboard
Saturday night vigil
yet to Sunday services
one after the other
alleluias unsung for forty days
and more than forty years
peeling like bells from my tongue
but not for Christ, not for you
too busy to remember
(I wanted to)dance on your grave
but they burned you to ashes
stacked your box with the others
father upon father
no stones, no graves
no dancing daughters

Virginia poet makes the paper!

If you haven;t heard about the guide to the Poet Laureate CD- go here

Carolyn Foronda

It's still here!!!

You Can't Spit

over at SpokenWar

cool beans, as Jim Gove used to say

"Obviously you have mistaken me for a much taller woman"

• Wed 6-8 Carytown Sit-Down at Carytown Books, now convieniently located in the Bellevue are on MacArthur St (no park, no cake, no rain) Bring work to share or come to listen and discuss.

• Thursday 6-9 Art After Hours at the Virginia Museum - poet Susan Settlymyre Williams 6:30 & 7:00 tickets required ($10 at the door or get the series through Feb 22)

Come on out!!

Expedient exaggerations

birthday poem 2007

Ila Faye really did have seven husbands,
all her own, or maybe it was six or five.
Two of them in the hospital at once,
names always the same, so it must be
true. I was never a really cheerleader-
only consistently louder than everybody
except when I bombed scales on the tuba
for the seventh graders, I don’t know
if any of them signed up for band
unless they thought- I can do better,
while I whispered to the floor (me, too)
shamed in front of the cute new director.

Why I let a certain kind of person (man)
intimidate me remains a roadblock
to this day. Charlie’s influence drives
every relationship right off the berm
stalled mid-sentence, lost in the stars.
Some daddies need to be stood up to.
I still build walls when things change,
grateful for the few who skitter over,
wait for me to calm down, quit fretting,
get past myself. That’s my mantra,
or should be, instead of "Sher-ring"
the one picked "especially for me."

It figures that age brings contentment,
some relaxation, a certainty of what works,
what won’t, in the face of sagging skin,
bad vision, lousy memory and more,
as the weight of futility becomes beacon,
the unbearable chances for wonderful
catch the last train (for the coast).
I rock on, wedded to dated metaphors
sure it’s been going downhill a long time
before I looked around to find opportunity
came and went while I was drifting
and not even dawn can bring it all back.

It's official!

"Expedient Exaggeration"

Shann Palmer's One-woman Show # 2
More mostly true tales, poetry, and musical interludes

Friday, February 23rd 8pm, free

art6 Gallery

6 East Broad

Richmond, Virginia

Happy New Year to you all!!!!!

I promise to get back to this, first thing tomorrow (whenever I get up, that is! I have to be at the bar at art 6 gallery tonight for the big do- Rattlemouth, the band, dancing and all that, their new CD release party, and a memorial for the Harvey family- murdered last year on New Year's day by a couple of crackheads)

For all of you, friends and drop-bys-

May the new year bring you peace, enough of what you need, enough to share, and all the blessings of this life!

Lock your doors, hug your children and tell the people you need to how much you love them- we never know what tomorrow brings!

shann

The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - 2nd Floor Contributors

Coming in 2007 (February?) from No Tell Books

Eric Abbott * Deborah Ager * Malaika King Albrecht * William Allegrezza * Molly Arden * Cynthia Arrieu-King * Robyn Art * Sandra Beasley * Aaron Belz * Erin M. Bertram * Mary Biddinger * Ana Bozicevic-Bowling * Timothy Bradford * Joseph Bradshaw * Jason Bredle * Jenny Browne * Jenna Cardinale * Bruce Covey * Phil Crippen * Susan Denning * Michelle Detorie * Laurel K. Dodge * Mark DuCharme * Peg Duthie * kari edwards * AnnMarie Eldon * Jill Alexander Essbaum * Julie R. Enszer * Noah Falck * Michael Farrell * Katie Fesuk * Adam Fieled * Alice Fogel * Elisa Gabbert * Eric Gelsinger * Scott Glassman * David B. Goldstein * Dean Gorman * Anne Gorrick * Lea Graham * Kate Greenstreet * Piotr Gwiazda * Shafer Hall * Josh Hanson * Nathan Hoks * Donald Illich * Salwa C. Jabado * Charles Jensen * Jim Kober * Ron Klassnik * Jennifer L. Knox * Dorothee Lang * Sueyeun Juliette Lee * David Lehman * Reb Livingston * Rebecca Loudon * Justin Marks * Clay Matthews * Kristi Maxwell * Gary L. McDowell * Erika Meitner * Didi Menendez * Michael Meyerhofer * Steve Mueske * Gina Myers * Cheryl Pallant * Shann Palmer * Alison Pelegrin * Simon Perchik * Derek Pollard * Andrea Potos * Cati Porter * Laurie Price * Jessy Randall * Kim Roberts * Anthony Robinson * Carly Sachs * John Sakkis * Allyson Salazar * Christine Scanlon * Margot Schilpp * Morgan Lucas Schuldt * Patty Seyburn * Peter Jay Shippy * Evie Shockley * Alex Smith * Hugh Steinberg * Nicole Steinberg * Alison Stine * Mathias Svalina * Erik Sweet * Eileen R. Tabios * Bronwen Tate * Molly Tenenbaum * Chris Tonelli * Letitia Trent * Jen Tynes * Michael Quattrone * Ashley VanDoorn * Fritz Ward * J. Marcus Weekley * Betsy Wheeler * Theodore Worozbyt * Kim Young

It;s been awhile.

I've been distracted- work, family, all that. The son graduated from college- English and Philosophy- on Saturday. Both kids are in exams right now (yes, he graduated before exams were done)

I have been getting Mary Engelbreit goodies off of eBAy. And crossstitch patterns.

been working, spending money- the usual.

No poetry right now- give me a few days.

I have to work at it- I'm planning a One-Woman Show at art6 Gallery for February 23rd.

Y'all come!

Busy, busy, getting winning list out to "Show Us Your Mask" folks !

Tomorrow is First friday artwalk here in Richmond, masks and mask poems will be on display for the month of december.

I've been making snack bags for us to sell on Saturday dusing the Holiday Parade- it passes right by the gallery, so we're going to be there with hot cider and snack bags-

must sleep!

I am too tired to think-

though I was reading between breaks at the rehearsals "Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest: Poems"
by B. H. Fairchild.

It's exquisite, as was his first book.

Highly recommended.

Writing off the cuff-

I am so busy my eyes hurt, but it's only temporary. After next Friday, my life smoothes out again (at least as much as it ever does).

Playing piano at the high school really slams my hands, then I go off to clean houses, drive the kids, go to what poetry events I can manage, then come home and fall into bed.

I got the Adventures of Brisco County Jr DVD (it's my Christmas present- we don't worry about 'under the tree' much, I mean what if I died on Christmas Eve and never got to watch it?) Anyway- I've slept through about half of the 24 episodes- I love what I've seen, I'm a HUGE Bruce Campbell fan-

and Sunday I'm going to Charlottesville to see Christine Lavin, one of my favorite folkies. My friend Dave sent me a tape years ago with a wonderful song called "The Kind of Love You'll Never Recover From" that just kills me everytime I hear it-

so, poetry, man- is it still out there. God, I hope so.

Not much point in holding this one back- the November 2006 issue of POETRY says so-

The 2007 Carole Weinstein $10,000 prize for a poet in Central Virginia goes to

BRIAN HENRY

who edits Verse
who teaches at University of Richmond
who is a James River Writer festival participant
who has four books (poems here,and here, and here for more links.

I have four poems over at Wicked Alice

The whole issue is jampacked with great poetry, check it out!

I've been very busy and a little down- hence the missing days.

It's getting better.

Show Us Your Mask! Poetry Contest-

1. Submit up to three poems for $5.00 (checks payable to Shann Palmer)
2. Subject: must be about or concerning masks. (those we wear or share- what we conceal) 44 line limit, please (per poem)
3. Author retains copyright, winners may be included in a booklet, reading, and gallery display.
4. Entries must be postmarked between October 27 and November 27.
5. First Prize- $50.00, other prizes will be determined by the number of entries and will include art donated by gallery members.

Mail entries to:

art 6 Gallery/Shann Palmer
Show us your Mask!
6 East Broad Street .
Richmond, VA 23219

Contest sponsored by the Poetry Society of Virginia and art6.Questions? Contact shannpalmer@hotmail.com or visit http://groups.msn.com/FlashPaperPoetry online

For gallery information go to: http://www.art6.org /

Forgetting

Birthdays become annual objects of ridicule
eventually, snapshots of what is hardly recalled.

Photos of a childhood, crazy hair-dos,
vacations, ex-spouses; fashion bungles,
breakdowns, sad unfinished stories,
sappy smiles, harmless goofs that make us
laugh till we choke on the sentimentality-
a humanness only devout misanthropes spurn.

Distracted by the cinematic calendar pages
flipping in my face, I missed yours, didn’t I?

Un-lilylike, to count and spin each day,
worry threads into a tapestry
for which there is no pattern visible
to the naked eye, I become jaundiced and forlorn.

My last birthday was yesterday,
and the day before and the day before that.

Yours was this day, was that day,
and will be until one of us is gone,
run out of pages, numbers, candles,
in the great cleft of memory, passed by.

for DA and AW (oct 24 and 25th)

not such a bad list.....

Emery’s short list for becoming a published poet includes:
1. Read poetry. Lots of it. He makes the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that there should be a law requiring poets to read 80 books of poetry for every one that they submit.

2. Be involved in the world of poetry - in coffee houses, book shops, open reading venues, on the internet. The more involved you are in that world, the more connections you’ll have within it. As a side note, you’ll also hear an awful lot of poetry - both excellent and horrible. It will affect you as a writer. It’ can’t not.

3. Concentrate time on building a ‘pedigree’ for your work - i.e., getting your poems published in magazines and on literary web sites.

4. Write reviews of other people’s poetry. He says, “Engaging with other work and actively revieing it is a great way to build your own experience of poetry… A side effect of such endeavors is that the poetry you believe matters will eventually be given air space.”

The chapter is even more worth reading for the practical ending to the chapter, Fifty dos and don’ts for submitting poetry. A couple of samples from the list:

5. # Make yourself a player. A mover and shaker. If you are out there participating in literature, publishers will notice you.

10. Find out the name of the person you are submitting to. Find out what they like. Find out where they live. Follow them to work. Alright, just kidding, but find out their name.

21. Beware of sending poems which contain wild metaphor, clever descriptions of everyday phenomena, and make novel use of dialect and idioms, all ending with a stunning epiphany. It’s a tired old template now. Descriptive writing can be very dull.

46. Don’t include your photograph – especially the moody one with the Fedora.

glommed from here

I have a lamp from my mother’s house

The house that is no longer hers, nor mine,
the trailer, the apartment, the hospice bed.

Teresa sent a box of photos with the lamp.
Stern, hard people who look a lot like me,
sharp nosed, straight spined, stand frozen,
the way perseverance stands, unblinking.

We spoke the morning my mother died, vanity
says she knew who I was, but she didn’t.

I barely knew her. It had been fifteen years
of short phone calls and occasional envelopes
containing daddy’s doctor’s statements, his spells,
heart attacks, scraped across the page
in her perfect penmanship, "This is all your fault!"

It wasn’t, I never thought it had been, not then,
not now. I keep all these things to remind me
to be kind, to be careful, to pay attention.

Last Valentine’s Day my sister sent a card.
It was expensive, embossed, heavy.
Inside the gold envelope she included
my parent’s death certificates, not copies.

The card read: “Love, Teresa, Mike, Sean,
and Jess. I thought you should have these.”

Apples fall, even if no one is there to hear.

I know, I was going to post on the James River Writers Festival and the visit by the Poetry Bus- I will, I will-

in the meantime:

The National Book Foundation announced the finalists today for the 2006 National Book Awards.

The poetry nominees are:

* Louise Gluck, Averno. (wow- Italy and myths, there's a couple of untouched subjects. Sure, she's acraftsmann, but this is navel gazing at best, scholarly at worst. She and Hix are in a dead heat IMO- DEAD heat.)

* H.L. Hix, Chromatic. (it took so e searching to find this- these poems are better than any of the rest IMO- this guy can have the prize)

* Ben Lerner, Angle of Yaw (whatever- last year every poet choked on their own vomit, but nobody noticed- the nonsensical, mannered prose poem is way overdone)

* Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem (yoohoo- I'm black and like jazz did you catch the cool words?- the only frayed ribbon he fails to grab is something about New Orleans, but I guess the book was pre-Katrina)

* James McMichael, Capacity (sweet jesus, can I possibly read this entire poem without drowning in it- and not in a good way??? Omigod, this is tedium personified)

I've linked to some net poetry by some of these people and other than Gluck (semi-yawn), I think these poets are just writing weird for the sake of weird (see note on Hix). I mean, who do they write this crap for?? Their peers?? Which I guess are academy oafs who don't want to be accessible or understood.

Check it out for yourself-

It makes me want to cry. Seriously- why do I bother when THIS STUFF is what's uplifted? (It's okay, no one reads my blog anyway)

James River Writers Festival

go next year!

I will post more, with links to great books found there, and the gossipy-chitchat heard at the after party, the one with valet parking and lots of very tall people- I saw a lotta crotch tonight, enough to make Mel Brooks turn ideas inside-out.

and white people- serious white people.

and shrimp and grits.