It's prose. No, it's a poem. WTF is it?

I have a minor obsession with writing processes and forms. So if you’re like me, you may be interested in watching the illogical and mildly alarming way my mind works. Ahem. I mean to say the progression of my last blog post. If not, apologies.

Blondie

She pedals her bike
downtown in ocean licked air,
iPod cranked to a mad bass,
pores singing in sun,
forgets to watch
the car studded road,
gumdrop traffic lights,
signs flashing stay or go.
Down the crosswalk, a gentle roll,
slam into bug-decked chrome,
a cross-country Pepsi truck.

Blondie’s dead on impact,
garbled ten-speed thrown,
sneaker shucked,
overgrown blacktop snowflake
leaking onto pavement.
No ID, she’s packed away
on a stretcher bound
for the bottom drawer
at a seaside morgue.

What’s horrible is this girl is dead
and no one even knows it yet,
someone says to the county rag.
Days later, her roommates claim her,
out-of-state college grad,
summering at the beach
where she worked clicking
pictures at a bar, on the sand.

Her life was endless future,
open as the night sky over ocean.
That last month was freedom drunk,
loaded with suntan lotion,
bare feet, Mexican rice,
all those bronze boys
she kissed in the dark.

Blonde Girl

There was a blonde girl riding a bike downtown. She had headphones in her ears, iPod cranked. Possibly, she was chewing gum, pores drinking in early summer sun. Pedaling to the rhythm of life is good.

She forgot to watch where she was going, which turned out to be straight into the bug-splattered grill of a Pepsi truck. Instant death.

She left behind a sneaker on the road, a mangled ten-speed. Because she didn’t have any identification, her name became Jane Doe and she went straight to the morgue. Someone said to the local paper, “What’s horrible is this girl is dead and no one even knows it yet.”

A few days later, her roommates claimed her. She was from out of state, summering at the beach where she got paid to take pictures at a bar, on the sand.

The blonde girl had just graduated from college. Her life was endless future, open as the night sky. In the fall, she was going to do something with her life. Make her own name.

I think it's called evolution. Either that or survival of the fittest.

I read this post over at Luna Park about the troubling and possible demise of some well-known literary journals.

As a writer and a reader, I always try to subscribe to at least 3 literary journals at one time, in addition to reading the new issues of my favorite online journals. My goal is to subscribe to up and coming journals and also established ones—a fair balance, you could say.

For me, the problem with subscribing to some (but by no means all) lit journals is not the money they cost me but the disappointment. I can think of 2 very well-known journals in particular that continually appeared in my mailbox containing pages of unmemorable work that was never as exciting as the work I saw coming from newer (and often non-subscription based) outlets.

So as I see it, one of the biggest challenges for some journals is going to be learning how to adapt to the changing worlds of funding and media. Competing with smaller journals that have fewer resources but have the freedom to take greater chances is going to get increasingly difficult. There are some exceptional journals out there and more coming.

I’m not reflecting on the circumstances of the 3 journals in question on the Luna Park post. I clearly can’t infer that they are being outmaneuvered by newer journals, having no idea about their subscription holders and public funding, etc.

But the greater issue of some lit journals being faced with possible extinction leaves a lot of room for thought. I wonder if, as a whole, the old order of journals isn’t going to face more and more creative competition from fresher journals—subscription based or no.

I’m going to tread dangerously and say that just because someone is a literary star doesn’t necessarily mean I want to read his poems in every journal that hits my mailbox. If you’re having champagne for breakfast every day, even if it’s the finest champagne, you’re going to get sick of the damn champagne. In literature as in life, uniformity is not a good thing.

Not much

I’m still working on two short stories at the same time. Shouldn’t they be over by now?

Of all the things I could have picked, why writer? I could have been the best beach bum.

My garden is infested with weeds and I don’t feel like picking them.

I’m giving twitter a try. Not because everyone else is, but because I like media. Yes, that is what I’m telling myself.

Nothing important! At all!

I changed my hair color. Again. And I love it. Also, pepperoni pizza is orgasmic. Have a lovely day.

It's not raining here. My shoes have leopard print on them. My car's bumper is cracked from backing into a dumpster and I don't care.

Echo

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Under-appreciated and sometimes hated but, generally speaking, loved

Something you don’t know about me is that I’ve tried to start my own literary journal twice. Both tries were aborted—one before liftoff, and one after—but the experiences left me with a healthy appreciation for the under-appreciated work of the literary journal editor.

Editors take time out of their own busy writing lives, mostly without getting paid for their efforts, to read our work. They have to worry about a ton of different things whether they’re online or print—readership, response to submissions, culling work, finding decent writers, aesthetic, spammers, deadlines, and the list goes on…

So thank you editors everywhere, including editors who have politely and not-so-politely rejected me, for doing what you do. Because without you, the literary world be floundering. But with you, it floats.

Wait a sec. Isn’t the old saying that shit floats? Well, you know what I mean. Cheers to editors! Cheers to floating, especially in the cool waves of the Atlantic Ocean, where I plan to be at exactly 10 a.m. on Saturday morning! And since this is the Toord, cheers to shit also!