University of Chicago

I visited the University of Chicago over the weekend. What can I say? The neighborhood is awesome, the school is beautiful, and the program is extremely impressive. Hyde Park is much less intimidating than downtown, and there is so much diversity. There are awesome bookstores, and the whole feel of the place is very intellectual.

The bottom line is financing. If I can figure out the money situation, I'll probably be living in Chicago next year; if I can't, I won't. Despite that, I cannot say enough about my experiences with the University to this point. It's definitely on a whole other level. I would be extremely honored to study there.

There Was a Little Magpie

after Joan Miro

nothing is important

your tiny heart

stitching itself to the sky,

planets like a girl's fingerprints

children singing about

the sorrow of winglessness,

a heavy secret never to be told

nothing was more important

you became the first

small thing with blood

to love your own face in the mirror

flight

the way you named yourself

Will the Real False Prophet Please Stand Up?

Image from a Borders bookstore's CHILDREN'S SECTION.

On the "Stimulus"

“There is plenty to complain about for everyone, and perhaps that’s the sign of a good compromise. Regardless of party, we all cast our votes with one hand and crossed our fingers with the other.”
~ U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D)

"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell, Animal Farm, Ch. 5

"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
- George Orwell, Animal Farm, Ch. 10

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
~Thomas Jefferson

Wordplay

The reading by Michael Dumanis tonight reminded me of this (he talked about the importance of wordplay...cue Bahamadia).

Dear God It Is Me Calling

after Carla D’Aguanno

Drawn to false sheen, you were

captured by wrongness, couldn’t

look up from the lie.

No little girl wears a dress

into a hayloft, not unless she wants

it torn. What could she want there,

anyway?

Unless it is forbidden,

a pitchfork is boring, those walls

too shiny to be real.

Why pray here, except to beg

for grace?

The Fugue

after Wassily Kandinsky

As excited as you are

by burgundy, it cannot make up

for the lack of noise

nothing makes you so angry

the world brushing against

your sensitive parts

as if your bedroom needed

another genocide

to order things

water ruined by rust,

a sip of delirium,

and you wake up coming

It’s midnight Friday

The Seroquel is gone

Nude Woman on her Back with Legs Apart

after Auguste Rodin

I am a woman's mouth, painted shut.

There is movement in the corner,

your muttered words full

of the weight of night.

This has nothing to do with me.

A person, oddly, remembers

hay motes in sunlight , her little sister’s

eyes like a chemical burn,

drab non sequiturs of purity.

I won’t say I, but a woman,

any woman, can feel you looking,

instinctively knows the stroke

of the brush that halves her.

Charmi Keranen, beloved den mother, is in the Winter issue of Blossombones!