Today is publication day for Shadows And Tall Trees 7 from Undertow Publications! You can support small press publishing and read some weird stuff by shopping here, and you can also find it on (that gargantuan online book seller). Gorgeous cover art and weird words inside, whichever edition you choose.
(My story in the anthology, called “Curb Day,” was inspired in great part by Junk Week in Yellow Springs, which is coming up next week…so it’s timely if you live in my little town.)
Today’s reward for grading student work: Get up and go to the mailbox and see thatShadows And Tall Trees7 has arrived. Turn to page 205 and see the story you wrote!
(I’m so grateful to have my story “Curb Day” among these pages. Thank you, Michael Kelly. You can buy a copy of this great anthology at Undertow Publications inhardcover or paperback.)
Friends, you are in luck, but you better act soon: There are only a few more days to see and purchase Jon Langford’s art at Emporium. Get your hides over there to bask in the light where art, music, and the human spirit collide.
The show runs through April 30, and there are still some pieces for sale. Tell your friends! Don’t miss it!
She is up there on the hill,
clearing a path through the wild summer grass,
making a nest for the little bird.
She would like to meet herself
one morning.
She has sent an invitation.
In winter, she removes her own skin,
makes broth from her bones,
dances naked by the fire.
She will be the death
and the birth
of me.
* * *
Today’s poem was inspired by a wonderful prompt from Sasha Zeen as part of the Season of Contrast over at Get Messy. I used a background I had already prepared for NaPoWriMo from the inspirational Messy Pages class with Tanyalee Kahler.
Today, I feel like I gave birth to a 13- or 16-year-old (depending on when you consider the moment of literary conception) because I finished my novel. Finished as in finished; it’s packed and ready to go out into the world for the first time…evicted from living merely in my mind, where it had loving and helpful visitors, including a marvelous muse, editor, and doula (my husband, Robert Wexler) but where the novel has lived too long.
(fragment from the original idea, 2001)
My original note for the concept (a tornado girl loses her memory and can see the memories of others) is dated 2001. The first page of the handwritten draft is dated 2004.
So however you count, it’s been a long time.
I’m grateful to the novel’s loving and helpful visitors. I’m exhausted and pleased and a little shocked to be vacated by its presence.
I don’t recall writing this, but apparently I did:
If a person could climb up a ladder to the sky, and look down at the Eight Mile Suspended Carnival, the person would see a sort of living beast, its spine the Tower of Misfortune, its arms the tents, its legs the rides, wheels, gears, its blood the wine and food and excrement that flowed through the bodies of carnies and guests, the air in the beast’s lungs breathed by the humans who worked and wandered inside the cave of the beast’s body. Its head the hotel, its mouth and ass the doorway into and out of its corrugated skin of wonder.
Here’s a sweet video of Jon Langford and Jean Cook doing the song “Are You An Entertainer?” If you have 4 minutes and 54 seconds to watch it, please do (you’ll thank me!).
And if you’re near Yellow Springs, take note: Tickets for the Antioch School Gala are still available. YOU CAN SEE THESE TWO AMAZING HUMANS PERFORM LIVE, ON MARCH 4, IN YELLOW SPRINGS, OHIO!
Life may seem nasty, brutish, and short, but we need to find the bright spots where we can.
This event is a vital fundraiser for the country’s oldest democratic school. The ticket price includes food, an open wine bar, and performance by Jon Langford and Jean Cook. Where are you going to get a deal like that anywhere else? For more information, check out the School’s website here.
Joe Strummer print by Jon Langford, who will be in Yellow Springs this weekend!
Here’s a piece the Yellow Springs News posted about this weekend’s Langford-palooza. It’s going to be fun! If you’re able to do so, listen to WYSO at 12:15pm today when Niki Dakota will interview Jon Langford.
Read the Dayton City Paper piece about Jon Langford and the Antioch School Gala here! (However: Please note that the Gala is happening ONE NIGHT ONLY! Saturday, March 4, at 6pm. For more information, or to buy tickets, you can call the school at 937.767.7642 or go here
Sometimes things that are beautiful and true endure in the world…coalesce in the midst of what seems like unrelenting darkness to one crystalline time and place.
This convergence makes me giddy. The Antioch School is important to me: I attended the school when I was a kid, and now my daughter is in fourth grade there. It’s the oldest democratic school in the country. (I’ve blogged about the school here.) The annual auction gala is how the school raises the majority of funds to provide scholarships. It’s a really fun evening, with wine, goodies, a silent auction and live auction with the most entertaining auctioneer I’ve ever seen.
