* * *
__(Poet 1)__ tells me about the bombings. There's something I don't about what's going on, but people think I should know. I keep asking __(Poet 1)__ to tell me and I'm getting frustrated. Finally __(Poet 1)__ explains that a group of women poets (and maybe a few men) are behind the bombings and it's been going on for a while. The male poets are the ones who report the news, poets like __(Poet 2)__, Anderson Cooper and others. They want to report what's really going on in the Middle East, but the news station management won't let them unless it happens live during the day. So this is a way to get the news out. Maybe the men don't even know that the women poets are behind it. While I agree with the politics of getting news out, I'm very troubled by these tactics. I think of a little boy who died in a recent bombing and I get upset.
* * *
I'm reading an article about new and upcoming writers. I recognize some of the names, __(Poet 1)__ and __(Poet 2)__. I comment to __(Poet 3)__ that my father's mustache is back in style. I show the article to another person and comment on __(Poet 3)__'s mustache. I'm not sure why I brought up her mustache, it doesn't seem necessary to the discussion. I explain how few people our age have a mustache (although __Poet 3___does). I tell __Poet 3__ that must be because she's older than me and perhaps she's closer in age to my father than me. This doesn't make her happy.
* * *
I'm at my childhood home. It's wintertime and there's snow on the ground. There are postal carriers who receive sexual favors when they deliver mail--right at the mailbox. I have pictures of this. I'm concerned this involves children. It also appears that the same things is happening with cashiers at a local grocery store. I want to report all of them, but I don't know how. I walk across the street to a neighbor's home. Maybe I'm going to tell them. Chris stops me. He takes pictures of the landscape. The snow is amazing and across the street where the church and school normally would be, there's an ocean. The trees, the snow, the ocean. It's beautiful. I post the pictures to Facebook. _______ sees the pictures.
* * *
An old man poet, balding with a ponytail, is dying. The old man wants _______ to take over his work. A nearby woman says that it would be fantastic for _______ to take over his work. I think this is a terrible position to put _______ in. He/she already has his/her own projects to take care of. I feel like nobody is thinking of _______. I give _______ a hug and tell him/her that he/she doesn't have to do this.
* * *
A man shows me an old videotape. After we met, he thought he remembered seeing something about me from a long time ago. The recording starts halfway through some kind of newscast. There's a quote from _______ and then a report about something that happened to a young girl. The pictures from the newscast are me in 1st and 2nd grade. I have no idea what event or circumstances this old newscast is referencing. I have no memory of any of it. I decide to ask _______ about it. _______ has never mentioned anything about this before.
* * *
I'm sharing a dorm room with three other people. One of them is _______. I find _______ obnoxious. _______ is always complaining, passive aggressively, often about something that has to do with me. I'm making ________'s bed and find my book about Tarot. Earlier _______ complained that he/she didn't want that stuff near him/her, yet he/she's taken mine. I'm totally fed up with _______. I complain about _______, say that when roommates were being selected, I knew _______ would try to latch on to me because he/she has no friends.
I have a chance to get a new roommate. A really short man, like a dwarf, is selected. I talk to him, trying to figure out who he is. I'm told he's been in the 6th grade a very long time. I'm wondering then why is he going to college. Is he brilliant and being held back because of his size or does he have some kind of mental disability? Maybe there's some kind of issue with him. Maybe he rapes me or maybe he doesn't. Maybe it's somebody else. Maybe I'm in a relationship with this person. I'm not sure of any of it.
* * *
I'm in a poetry workshop. The teacher tells us to each take one of the assignments. I pick up one that asks me to draw stars on a Christmas tree and write different characteristics something should have. I'm supposed to come up with thousands. There's already a couple hundred on there. I draw a star and write "adventure" and "daring" I write a few more. Then I realize that I'm supposed to pass it around. We're all supposed to pass around these assignments to each other. I take another assignment. It's a typed prose poem. _______ ate a poem and shit it out. Apparently it took a while for the paper to pass, so he/she only had time to shit out the poem and rewrite it. Now we all need to work on it.
* * *
I'm running up a stairwell trying to escape from __Poet 1__. I see __Poet 2__. I tell __Poet 2__ not to tell __Poet 1__ that he/she has seen me. I'm in a college dormitory and run into my sister's freshman dorm room. My sister is with her roommate and two male friends. I tell them how __Poet 1__ threatened my life. Then I say that maybe __Poet 1__ is really not going to kill me but instead has written some really insane things about me. Then I notice one of the guys sitting on the bed is __Poet 1__. He's smiling and being friendly. It's like he doesn't realize that I'm talking about him. I keep talking like I'm not.
* * *
It's night, snow has fallen. _______ is standing outside of my house. I assume he/she's trying to sell me something, so I leave him/her out there.
* * *
I'm tweeting with _______. _______ comments about how poets are getting angry because he doesn't respect their privacy of what they're posting on FB. I unfriend _______ on FB, just to make a point. I intend on refriending him when he understands. At this point we only have 2 mutual friends.
Now _______ is my husband and in the room with me. He's pissed about the unfriending. I look out the window and see thick, dark clouds. I say "there's a storm coming" and see a tiny tornado starting to form in our back yard. _______ wants to run and hide. I suggest the basement. It's my childhood basement and it's mostly empty. We then go down into the garage. It's falling apart, holes and missing bricks. The door is broken. I tell _______ that the door will have to be replaced
The storm ends and we go back upstairs. I notice the kitchen faucet is broken and gushing water. I tell _______ to fix it.
* * *
_______ is offering to give manuscript critiques for just $19. _______ requests for the font be "lithy" and not to approach him/her if your previous work was published by "Poetry Pile."
* * *
_______ emails, calling me on something I've done. I concede that he/she has a point, but point out that he/she does the same thing and worse. As usual, _______ is being hyper-critical for his/her strange, unbalanced, emotional reasons.
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