So I heard from Arkansas this week that they've nominated one of my poems for the AWP (Associated Writing Programs) "Intro Journals Project" which is a deal where the AWP chooses 25 poems from people in writing programs, pays the poets $50 a piece, and then well-known reputable journals publish those poems. Since hundreds of people have been nominated as well as me, the odds are the glory will end with the nomination. So here's the poem. ENJOY!


Sunday Afternoon at the Coin Laundry

The battle of the sexes is ongoing, somewhere,
But here, triumphant traitors hold the world
By its bra straps. These men have embraced
Sunday's laundry afternoon. Earnestly, they
Are measuring soaps and separating colors.
They discuss NASCAR, fishing, and fabric

Softener in a single breath. The fabric,
In shades they choose to wear, they wear;
There are no laundry-oops half-colors
Staining briefs pinkish gray. The world
Is their heavy-duty front-loader, and they
Know it. Their mothers, who had embraced

The boys these men once were, had not embraced
The idea of testosterone and fragile fabric
Tumbling together, as if they believed the y
Chromosome doomed their sons to wear
Only what future wives would care for. A world
As bleak as theirs was, devoid of all colors,

Excepting those militarily "male" colors
(Of colorfast preshrunk ready-to-wear, embraced
As good-enough-for-him by the fashion world),
Is a world clothed in itching, binding, sexist fabric.
The single man simply had nothing to wear
But the ill-fitting smocks of slaves. So they

Emancipated themselves, they persevered, they
Rose up together and hoisted a flag of many colors.
So many men followed, they are now everywhere,
Washing, folding, ironing, waiting to be embraced
By the women who weave this world of fabric,
Who have made it a low-cut tight-assed world,

Who have made it a cold and mismatched world
That does not fit and does not breathe. They
Continue to care, diligently, for the very fabric
Women drop off to be dry-cleaned. A world of colors
Is open to them, and they have readily embraced
Its brightness and variety. The women now wear

Black and gray. The pendulum swings, is embraced,
Sunday afternoon at the Laundromat,
By men who wear the varicolored fabric of the world.

all i want for the holidays is my country back.jpg  ¶ 9:31 PM

 
LARGE TREBUCHET

Thanks to my genius cousin Matt for telling me about this brilliant medieval device: The Trebuchet.

It is similar to a catapult, but more powerful, and more mobile. A very powerful trebuchet will fit in the back of a small pickup truck, and is capable of hurling, say, a flaming barrel of gasoline, at Fascist Neo-Con forces, who thought they could get away with rigging another election, but learned too late the American people have really had enough this time, and that the revolutionary spirit did not float off with the tea, and that tarring and feathering is still a mighty viable solution to chickenhawk planet destroying starve-the-beast-ers.

The Revolution will NOT be Televised!  ¶ 5:16 AM

 

addressed to the Citizens of America by
Gov. Howard Dean, M.D.
December 2003
www.DeanForAmerica.com


"We have it in our power to begin the world over again."
Thomas Paine

Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet that would light the fire that forged our nation. He called it "Common Sense." Passed from hand to hand, patriot to patriot, it was a call to action for those Americans who believed their government had to change. It spelled out the values of a new republic. And King George III—who had forgotten his own people in favor of special interests -- was replaced by a government of, by and for the people. America was born.

Like those early patriots, we face a growing threat to our liberty and justice in America today. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison spoke of the fear that economic power would one day seize political power.

That fear is now being realized -- under the Bush administration, pharmaceutical companies draft our Medicare laws. Oil executives sit in the Vice President’s office and write energy bills. A majority of the reconstruction contracts in Iraq goes to corporations headed by campaign contributors to the president.

In the last six years, despite massive corporate scandals and the crash of the NASDAQ, the financial services industry managed to find almost $168 million to influence the political process. A pharmaceutical and health products industry that can't afford to sell our seniors cheaper prescription drugs did manage to find $60 million to influence our elections. And the national debt has exploded to the point where it will cost the median American family $26,000 -- because the president ran up the largest deficit in the history of our country in order to pass $3 trillion worth of tax cuts tilted toward his campaign contributors.

In the matter of war and peace, there was virtually no debate by either party before the invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration uses fear to rally people to its causes. Our nation, once looked to as a beacon of hope from around the globe, now is looked at with suspicion and distrust.

Most alarming, our political process is in crisis, as the majority of Americans turns away from the most fundamental duty of citizenship -- voting.

America is better than this. The time has come once again to take our country back. This pamphlet, like Thomas Paine's, is a declaration of values and a call to action for a new generation of American patriots -- Common Sense for a New Century.

READ THE REST AT DEANFORAMERICA.COM (click me!)  ¶ 8:03 PM

  While listening to the woman on the radio warn that Donner Summit was impassable, it occurred to me that had AM Radio Weather advisories been available in the 1840s, we might be grousing about our inability to traverse Happy-Ski-Time-Fun Summit, and not Donner Summit, of "go-ahead-and-bake-your-neighbor-go-ahead-reheat-a-friend" fame.



But that is the strange experience of traveling 21st Century America, where after driving through Death Valley and past Devil's View and between Funeral Mountain and the Last Chance (presumably to turn back) Range, not to mention the threateningly named "Pinto Peak" (7,450 ft), one finds oneself sighing dismissively, as one passes the sign for "Dead Man's Peak": "oh come ON now, is that really necessary?"


Death Valley

After all, our endless miles of smooth-paved interstate allow us Homo Mentis Absentia Americanus to make trips that were previously feats of will and tests of endurance in a mere matter of hours, without forcing so much as a single thought to penetrate our calloused brains, without allowing so much as a single hardship to interrupt our stream-of-convenience consciousness.


Cruising Along, La La La La

In the course of traveling the American West, you pass by so many historical markers citing this or that roadside field as the site of the massacre and/or triumph of Missionaries, Mormons, Cavalry, Pioneers, Miners, or Native Americans, that you tend to just ignore them all, and continue always forward, wondering when you'll get to a valley where something green grows, or to a town with a half-decent radio station.

Such was the lull that Brian and I fell into this last trip home, when we decided in all our thrill-seeking glory that we ought to find a more interesting way back to San Francisco.


Shoe Tree, Highway 50 Nevada

Our trip out to New Mexico was amazing. We drove down Highway 50, "The loneliest road in America," through all of Nevada and most of Utah. It was a great drive, the closest to what, before I'd ever come out west, I'd imagined the west was like: endless valleys, enormous mountains, some cows, no people.


My Contribution To The Shoe Tree

For the length of Nevada we saw roughly a dozen other cars, and two places identifiable as "towns." One, Austin, Nevada, was a positively old-west town right out of the cowboy movies (although updated with a small gas station and a snow plow). At virtually any point along this drive, we could stop the car, get out, and see miles ahead of us, and miles behind, and there was almost never anyone else there, for miles. We did not see a "chain" store, restaurant, or gas station from Reno to the Utah border. The best part is, for all its beauty, the drive was never scary, always snow-free and level, with no switchbacks or cliffs.


Highway 50 Nevada Looking East

Once in Utah, the scenery was higher and snowier, through several snow-peaked ranges of mountains, but with lots of guardrails and a well-plowed road surface, there was no anxiety on this flatlander's part.


Utah Snowy


Utah Salt Flats (can you tell how cold it was?)

Finally, we hopped onto I-70 up the Colorado River (stopped for lunch in Eagle... no, we did not see Kobe), and then turned south onto State Road 24, on the theory that north-south roads through the Rockies are more likely to be level. (It does make sense, I really think so, really!) However, we hadn't counted on State Road 24's alter ego: "The Top Of The Rockies Scenic Byway."

This road is high, and we did nearly turn back, but we kept thinking (as the road switchbacked up higher and higher): this has got to level out eventually! I mean, north-south roads through the Rockies... those ones go BETWEEN the ridges, right?

Well, part right. After the Top Of The Rockies Scenic Byway is finished making you crap your pants (this includes a narrow ice-dripping bridge dangling between two mountaintops), it settles you into the high valley of the town of Leadville, the single coolest town EVER, where the Arkansas River headwaters are located, and where your heart is likely (if you're lucky) to re-start. It was really cool for me, having just emerged from my Arkansan commitment, to drive south through that valley and watch the water accumulate into a larger and larger stream, and eventually turn into a quick running river as ignorant of the mire it's headed towards as I was four years ago. The valley (once you're past that crap-yer-pants part... seriously, it was SCARY) is about the most idyllic gorgeous place you could imagine: green and fertile, running with horses and clear water, snow-topped mountains in every direction. If Leadville, Colorado is not currently on your must-do travel plans, put it there.

So, having had a beautiful trip TO New Mexico, we were of course eager to have a beautiful trip FROM New Mexico, but the weather intervened, and dropped enough snow on our Eastward path to make its use going Westward too dangerous to dare. Which is how we found ourselves on (that loathsome!) Interstate 40 driving west through Arizona's endless brown brown brown.


Brown

It is under such brown pressure that whims take corporeal form, and beat you into submission: it was such a whim that convinced us to take a "shortcut" through Las Vegas. After all, I reasoned (quite reasonably), a direct line between where we are right now (west of Flagstaff) and San Francisco takes you right through there! We'll get home quicker, by gum, reasoned I. And we'll get to see Hoover Dam, Las Vegas, and Death Valley just for fun!


Hoover Dam

Well, Hoover Dam was neat (anti-terrorism checkpoint aside), and Deco (which I hadn't expected), Las Vegas was garish (but amusing: we giggled the whole way through town... do they pump pheromones into the air there or what?), and Death Valley was gorgeous (and a goodly easy drive from the east, too), but then everything when horribly, horribly wrong.


Death Valley: the sun went down just as we got here

I'll bet you didn't know that from Sacramento in the north to Bakersfield in the south, the state of California cannot be crossed from east to west (or west to east) in the wintertime. And if you did know that, I wish you'd told me. The culprits seem to be the Sierra Nevadas: a big bunch of bullies lined up as effectively against automobile traffic as an endless brick wall. They are not as high as the Rockies but I'd be willing to guess they're less gradual in getting to the height they have, because they sure as heck LOOK bigger than the Rockies... or maybe it just seems that way when they're keeping you at bay. The fact that we had to follow them all the way north to Sacramento (and to add another four hours or so to our trip) to get home, only sucked at first because it was too dark to really see the scenery. But then it began to suck because the farther north we went, the deeper we drove into the snowstorms our southerly route (you know, the one we abandoned to go to Vegas) was designed to avoid. The icy roads creeping us northward were high and curvy, over "dead man's" plummets, and after I'd lost control of the car once (yes, over a cliff, yes, I nearly crapped myself), we pretty much limited our progress to 25 miles an hour. Eventually, after hours and hours of creeping through the black of night, we reached the area just below the Donner Summit (our only way out of this mess), where the weather promptly turned to freezing rain, a thick fog set in, and little mini-avalanches of accumulated snow began shifting off the mountains into our path. Several flashing lights indicated signs warning of an impassable peak. The AM Radio Weather Advisory made it more clear: Donner Summit is no-go without 4-wheel-drive and snowchains. Snowchains? If ever a word in the English Language were designed to get Native Floridians to move back down the tip of their balmy peninsula, that word would be "snowchains."

All the westbound traffic came to a slow, slow halt in Truckee, California, where the motels were either full or in gouge-mode, and where virtually every road and parking lot in town had been turned into an in-cab campsite for truckers. Brian and I pitched our pickup in a shopping center, between one big rig, one tailorless tractor, and one other pickup truck. As the rain struck our windshield it immediately turned to ice, and once a coat of ice formed, it began to crack in the cold. To the soothing sound of this, stretched out longways under a blanket, we slept. When we woke in the morning, the radio was broadcasting the good news: Donner Summit was clear, and no one had been ingested by anyone else. (And that's a success by any measure!) That, my friends, is the difference one hundred and fifty years makes, and that is why progress ain't all bad, ain't all bad at all.

Four more hours got us through the mountains, pea-soup fog, and bay-area morning rush-hour traffic. It feels good to be home. Did I call this place home? Well, I don't know about all that, but... it's good to be home.

Thanksgiving report: I give thanks for having such cute kids for my niece and nephews!


"Shane!"


"Briannah!"


"Kade!"

...and of course, HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEATHER!

  ¶ 8:03 PM