the secret

when should i tell him that i’m only slightly human?
i tried sending him a photograph but he mistook me for a shed.

i walk around, feeling human.

maybe more miserable than most--cars are always trying to hit me.
is there a human under that pile? certainly not!

but look, i have arms. i am like a human that has arms.
i am like a human that has arms but with a face torn off by a dog

and buried under a pile of dirty laundry and litter.
but look, my heart beats outside my chest, it beats like a heart.

i have tried taking out my eyes to examine them and failed.
i have been a quiet ball of hair and teeth since before birth, i was born.

has there been a human born with no bones, or with a shovel for a face?

i am this human.

like a human i have memory and blankness.

when there is enough light in my eye i sleep and in my sleep
i am only slightly human and i give up.

postcards from new life

bestie megan martin has writings and speakings up at word riot. look at it, she's cool.

here's my favorite postcard:

After Many Seasons at the Asylum, She Climbed Into the Arms of The Universe

This is the last you will hear of my adventures in this new world, dear. As I write I am climbing into the blossomy tree in the courtyard, against the Good Doctor’s instructions. The Good Doctor is calling:come down this instant but I am climbing higher, leaping branch to branch, breaking more teeth than I have. I dangle! I perch! I feed myself bloated on the plumpest leaves, blackest berries, most delicate petals, paperskin stained with fruitblood. I scrape back bark from limb, branch, twig, with barehanded grace. Sunbleached words dry and curl, flake underpen like snow as seasons change around me (did I mention it is the tallest tree known to woman?), but I shall continue until I’ve whittled myself back to earth. Once my nails have unbloodied and resurrected themselves, once these sentences have turned to soil, I will finally understand: I am here.

what are people being for halloween?

please don't say balloon boy. i'm going to go as blogger. i would really like it if you would tell me what you are going to be in the comments section of this post. omg, also, send me pictures at kcregina@gmail.com and i'll do a halloween post on monday!

if you're not dressing up, just make things up and send me stolen images that you find in the street.

it would be cool if people went as their moms. maybe i'll go as my mom.

okay. happy halloween!

guess who's a bad azz

my friend, eliot reed

micro-sculptures by willard wegan

i'm going to see this show sometime this week. willard weegan makes sculptures so tiny they can only be viewed under a microscope. his sculptures fit inside the eye of a needle or on the head of a pin. in order to make them he has to slow down his heartbeat in a meditative state and sculpt in-between pulses.

what in the world.

my grandpa

my grandpa, edward estes, was born on sept 6, 1923 in kentucky. he died this morning. he was married to my grandma for 62 years. he was my favorite storyteller and photographer. here are some of his pictures. he will be very missed.

strange things have been happening to me because of B complex vitamins. i feel uncharacteristically positive. i feel so positive that i twitch at night, smiling instead of sleeping. i am looking for apartments and i feel certain that i will find the perfect place for the perfect price and my future will be wonderful. what is happening.

stacey levine

has a blog now! the internet is so happy about it...

the arrival

i went to the printer's row book fair today with megan and got the arrival by shaun tan. art spiegelman blurbed it, saying that it's a "wordless story that uses the language of silent cinema and the picture-story traditions that predate comic books," and that this "masterfully rendered tale about the immigrant experience is a documentary magically told by way of Surrealism." i really love this book. i like that tan created "anonymous" cultures and that a lot of the images in the story don't necessarily "stand" for something, but instead give the emotion of something. tan says this:

"I am rarely interested in symbolic meanings, where one thing ‘stands for’ something else, because this dissolves the power of fiction to be reinterpreted. I’m more attracted to a kind of intuitive resonance or poetry we can enjoy when looking at pictures, and ‘understanding’ what we see without necessarily being able to articulate it. One key character in my story is a creature that looks something like a walking tadpole, as big as a cat and intent on forming an uninvited friendship with the main protagonist. I have my own impressions as to what this is about, again something to do with learning about acceptance and belonging, but I would have a lot of trouble trying to express this fully in words. It seems to make much more sense as a series of silent pencil drawings."

  you can see more pictures here.

i really like cate marvin.

claire donato

i just read someone else's body, a chapbook from cannibal by claire donato. aside from being weird and smart and funny, claire donato is great at line breaks. each line is a beautiful unit. you can see this best in the first poem, "The Night, What It Allows":

The walls are tearing

  out of their paint.     My legs

  are crossed.     I am not

listening to the TV

in the other room.     I am not

  listening to the television.     The window next

to the television is

  turning away.     The window is

open.     There is a person

outside of it, screaming.  I am lying

  on a television, my eyes are closed,

someone is breaking into my

house: I have always been afraid

of the night, what it allows.     I have

never been afraid of the depth

of your fall: in, on, arms, quarrel,

voice...I am never afraid

to layer my breath over yours--

and when I ask you to plot your anger

on a line, I am referring to fear, how

it is linear: see how mine moves

upward in a diagonal line?

See how it moves up to choose?

Why are you lying in a heap on the floor?

i just typed the whole poem. i didn't plan to do that, i just didn't want to stop. am i in trouble? who cares, do you see what i mean about the line breaks? beautiful.

here is another poem from the chapbook that i love, it is so great:

There are apologies I am too

You can read more poems and buy the book here.

a beautiful manhole

this is cool

katherine regina

feeling depressed for no reason and also a little scared of this. can anyone tell me what they're saying?

trailer for "i am in the air right now"

the talented greg lytle did a hand drawn animation video for one of the poems in i am in the air right now, available for pre-order from greying ghost press. i think he said he drew around 400 frames (*update* 750 frames!). what in the world. he is so good. this is maybe the best thing that has ever happened to me. if you have a short piece that you would like animated, contact greg.


I Am In the Air Right Now from Greg Lytle on Vimeo.

sometimes sylvia plath comes up on my ipod shuffle. her voice is terrifying.

"unless you're doing a character voice, ball, there's gonna be a beatdown"

have you been following the play over at venom literati featuring wayne koestenbaum, jesse ball, elizabeth taylor and dr. manhattan? i like it when jesse ball taunts elizabeth taylor.

what?

i just light boxed but it only got into one eye. my right eye feels much different than the left. what will happen.

they should call it a derek whiteout

i wish you were sitting in my office and looking out the window. it is a derek whiteout. it is never going to stop snowing. my head is permanently encrusted in snowflakes.

longtime boyfriend peter dinklage

was on 30 rock tonight and it reminded me of how much i love the station agent. he is so great.