This feeling is called hi.

Another day of National Poetry Month and it's sun-shining good. Mike Young says "clever" times lots over at HTMLGiant in his (clever?) essay about the perils and innerworkings of some aspects of cleverness. I'm not sure I get all of the essay, but it thumps again me in the way I check my face more carefully ever since I gave that speech with mac-and-cheese in my beard. PURPOSE. Here is a poem by Mike that sometimes booyeahs with cleverness, but I see PURPOSEFULNESS written all of its face.

YOU CAN KNOW THAT WAIT MEANS STAY
by Mike Young

for Carolyn

Right away there’s thinking. Right away.
No matter how much I want my face to moon
with no contortion, leave all talk to voiceovers.
Hands take after purrs. Nicknames remind us
mostly of the fun inventing them. Every beach
fire is a kind of desperate flag. Cops pull over a
riding lawnmower, and the man won’t turn it off.
We walk the dike that crosses I-91. Headlights
pan like reasons. We’re keeping warm. Cars aren’t
fireflies, which is not even how I feel. “Funny isn’t
the same as being happy,” I tell you. Duh. Neither is
that. A family of tiny arsonists live in burned out
delivery trucks behind your neck. They are your
bad pillow. Hands wobble. It’s never been infinity
with me. Infinity is something I can fist bump.
It’s more like when I chew the top off a lightbulb,
and there’s no blob of light to hold. Carry. Get
close. Let me eat your eyelash like a mission.
If we plant it in a divot on my cheek, maybe I’ll
grow your love of coats. The lay of your wrist
when you’re tired. What plays in your head after
you gnaw my finger, look at me, teething the skin like
wrapping paper you want to save for next Christmas.
Sometimes I know that I don’t know what’s going to happen
next, but I know exactly who I’m going to be with when it
does. This feeling is called kiss me. This feeling is called hi.
But maybe you’re not thinking of anything. I’ve thought
about that. We’re on a hillside. Night grass. Grass face.
And the sky is clear enough to see exactly how you feel.

Some Online Things I Like

First, some stuff from the new JMWW.

Best opening line I've read in a long time award goes to Ryan Ridge: "When she opens her legs I listen." This dude is in all my favorite mags (Elimae, The Collagist, Diagram, etc.).

Honest thing: Kim Chinquee has always been a difficult read for me. I enjoy her pieces, but they take me sooooo long to read. They are so slick. Good example. This might be my favorite piece of hers.

An interesting discussion over at HTMLGIANT about a writing prof who made her students submit. My response: I think there is a difference between encouraging and assigning. If one, as an advocate and teacher of the creative writing world, think students should value the lit journal process, then by all means encourage it. But forcing them to submit for a grade, as several commenters pointed out, takes away the authenticity and integrity, it would seem, of the journal(s)/process/lit world. I've had several professors say that I should submit, explain publishing to me, and even suggest places that my work would be potentially suitable. However, never has a grade rested on this. I'm reminded of the way my parents treated sports. They let me be around it, gave me the gear to play the sports I tried out, and encouraged me to enjoy myself, but never did my dinner rest on whether or not I played. I want encouragement, but at twenty-one years old and a competent student, I don't want something as enjoyable as the literary process (especially publishing) to be brought down to an assignment level.

Ball State professor and Muncie disc golfer Sean Lovelace doing his nice things again. DIVE BARS TOO!

What's not to love about this story by Anthony Luebbert in the new issue of Quick Fiction? The flow (that first long sentence!), Robert Kennedy swimming with the sea lion, the story ending in RK cannonballing into the pool! I didn't "get" the family goose part: purpose?

NEW SUMMER FICTION ISSUE AT DIAGRAM! I CAN'T WAIT TO DEVOUR YOU!

Oh my goodness! David Peak rules in this poem at Dark Sky. The softness of this piece (laying in bed, the no caps, "we know" as its own line), the honest last line) just killed me. I'm dead now.

HEY LOOK! A NEW JOURNAL DEDICATED TO THE PROSE POEM! (Side note: The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poems and David Shumate's books are on my to-buy list for my Von's trip tomorrow.)