This is my second Halloween as a homeowner. A will be at work until later, so it'll be my job to fire up the jack-o-lanterns and the porch light and the hot cider and have awkward exchanges with adolescent strangers in either inappropriate or underdeveloped/underconceptualized costumes. You should come by. I'll give you a small box of grape nerds.

Despite Aaron McCollough not being able to make the trip to Lincoln because of anti-poetry forces (weather/planes), the reading was sooo good. I mean that. The crowd was healthy. Matt Hart and Karla Kelsey know their poems very well, and know exactly how to read them. I was hypnotized with joy. I only regret not spending enough time with these two, and Brett (Matt's friend who came along) --again: anti-poetry forces. I have a feeling there'd never be enough time for this bunch, but I didn't even come close. I did snap some pictures though.


This was my view for a half-hour or so. Karla is studying her Forklift manuals and Matt is crushing a bird into invisibility.


Karla Kelsey reading from this.


Mathias is warming up the people.


This is the lobby of the Sheldon where the Clean Part readings happen. There's Matt and Brett and Anthony Hawley, I think, and Karla.

Carving pumpkins is something that I do.


This Clean Part pumpkin will be raffled off Saturday night. If you come to the reading, you might be the lucky sumbeeyah that wins it and has to find a place to throw it away so you won't have to haul it around all night.


I like to carve pumpkins that are sickly zombie-like pumpkins, or appear upset about some sort of injustice.

I know you are for bicameralism, but it has been over 2 months. Can we move on? Can we? I mean really.

Tonight: grocery store, reading Barbara Guest's Fair Realism and Forces of Imagination, carving a pumpkin or two, watching some Tigers/Cards, making one or two important phone calls, writing a paper.

I'm currently a little taken with this.

If you love yourself, or even if you don't, the Clean Part reading is where your self should be at 7pm on Saturday. The Sheldon Art Gallery. Some of the best poems written in this world today will be read by their poets. Aaron McCollough. Karla Kelsey. Matt Hart. They are coming by plane and 10 hour car trip from Cincinnati to read for you. And for free. And you might might win a poetry jack-o-lantern via raffle.

I am trying to recover from the best football game I've ever been to in Lincoln, but ultimately, the most heartbreaking.

I have a very old-school old-timey construction-workerish metallic lunch pail that I bring my lunch to school in everyday. Today, as I was crossing a busy intersection, diagonally, my thigh knocked the pail's buckle and my lunch spilled out onto the street. There will quite a few people walking around me. It was very cold out and I remember looking at my hands as they collected the food--they seemed especially white--and my sandwich, apple and soda seemed so vulnerable spread out there on the concrete, and so soft, and the street seemed especially dangerous and hard. It has been a while since I've felt that small, for those few seconds.

Fall break has given me two extra days to myself and I have apples, this big lasagne, graded papers, extra sleep, some quality time with A, some extra reading, two new poem drafts, a slightly cleaner house, and clean/ironed clothes to show for it. Thank you fall break.

And thank you Cubs for giving us Lou Pinella. Lou has the know-how to take the team from apathy/empty-seated disgrace to A-Rod stocked (possibly) bitter disappointment (I'm picturing the 2001 Mariners).

A, M, A & I went apple picking in Nebraska City. It was fun and all, despite there being almost no apples left on the trees, and the fact that we were apple hunting underneath icy sheets of rain.


Ashley threw up a whole apple.


My new favorite picture of M.


Empty bagged A, hunting for the elusive golden Jonathan.


Me. And the last apple on Earth.

If you are a sinner, or if you have chemicals in your eyes, the perfect book has arrived. Adam Clay's The Wash. If you buy anything this month with the extra money you have left over, buy this. No, buy this instead of paying your gas bill if thats what it comes to. This is more important than heat. This makes me happy about poetry, etc.

In order to help promote the new issue of UNL's undergraduate literary mag, Laurus, I'll be reading some Man Suit b-sides for a few minutes by the fountain in front of the union as part of a perpetual 2.5 hour reading this afternoon. I'll also fill some space by reading a few of my very short poems, including such classics as:

Untitled

Inside, we made children
sandwiches.

How Do You Tell Someone Their Shirt is Too Tight

How do you
tell someone
their shirt
is too
tight?

Untitled

Who's your favorite president?
Mine's Polk.

Untitled

Remember me?
We met in little beague.

Reading the Collected Books of Jack Spicer and Copper Nickle 6 (The Anne Boyer issue (her images are stunning)).

My IPod is rocking Heartless Bastards' All This Time and Strike Anywhere's Dead FM.

Grading my students inquiries into stories by K-Vonn, Johnny-Up, Flann-O, and A-Bend.

My hips are sore from doing so much rumba. I ate cresent roll hot dogs tonight. Neither of these two statements are innuendo.

I've been indulging in one of my very favorite home-ownership chores: raking leaves. We have a flat roof, so I've raked the roof and cleaned out the gutters. Made big piles of leaves in the yard while listening to such autumnal classics as Sun Kil Moon and Palace. My hands smell like dry leaves. I have a packed week of homework approaching, so tonight I'm going to settle in and watch the Padres even the series. Fally fall fall.

When learning a new language, it is important that you learn "Speak more slowly" before learning "I love you."

This weekend, A is going to travel back in time. She is going to her HS reunion and I wish her the best of luck. I, on the other hand, am staying in the present. It will be an all-poetry weekend. Here is how it will shake down:

Friday night. 7 pm. Van Brunt Visitors Center. 13th & Q. As part of the Nebraska Books Festival, I am reading my best poems along with Mathias, Anthony Hawley, and Michael Dumanis.

Saturday morning. 10 am. Smith/Curtiss Room 220. Nebraska Wesleyan campus. Mathias and I will represent Octopus & Octopus Books on a panel of small presses/journals from Nebraska along with Prairie Schooner, Backwaters Press, and University of Nebraska Press.

Saturday night. 8 pm. Teresa Franta's House. 1840 B St. To commerate the 6 Poets at Six Gallery which took place on October 7 in 1955, I will read some poems (and maybe a Beat poem I'm fond of) along with 5 other Lincoln poets.

And: tommorow night, I'm part of a group of students that will be performing some Mac Low pieces in Avant Garde class. Very vrry vry excited about to be in the middle of all these words which will be floating around the classroom. I like words.

T inspired me to make my own playoff predictions.

Padres over Cardinals in 5
Mets over Dodgers in 3

Yankees over Tigers in 4
Twins over A's in 4

League Championship:

Mets over Padres in 7
Yankees over Twins in 5

World Series

Yankees over Mets in 6

I want to make clear I am not personally in favor of this scenario. I will be rooting against it throughout the entire playoffs, but this is what will happen. My heart is on the Mets &/or Padres. If I have to watch a World Series in a dome I'll be ill.

I will shave my face approximately 8 times before I stop shaving my face for the winter. October 31 is my last shave. March 17 is when shaving, for me, begins again. I will grow a healthy reddish beard, as pictured above from M's back seat in San Francisco last winter. Apparently, I also grow a strange mustache.

I am knee-deep in Jackson Mac Low and student essays. The things that each of these are doing well are very different from one another.

Also, tonight, A and I are going to our first latin dancing class. That's right. I said it. Latin dancing. The heart is in the hips. Aye yay yay!