What I wrote at Acentos yesterday!

The Acentos Writers' Workshops is an intergenerational, multicultural workshop series that happens every Sunday at Hostos Community College in the Bronx, with different facilitators each week.

For more information on how to participate, or to inquire about facilitating a workshop, please contact Fish Vargas at fish@louderarts.com.

This draft is about as rough as it gets, but it comes to you courtesy of a series of generative prompts from today's workshop leader, poet Erica Miriam Fabri, whose first book DIALECT OF A SKIRT is due out on Hanging Loose Press in November of 2009.

More to come quite soon from the good folks at Acentos, including news about our soon-to-be-returning reading series. Keep an eye out. Meantime, you can drop me a line at r.villar@gmail.com, note me here, join the Facebook group. Or, leave me a comment or a snide remark. Whatever floats your boat.

And definitely, check the poem....

Rich.



MUCHACHO SELECTS A LOVER

the bottom of the stairs speaks in Spanish
about the kind of woman you must bring
home to mother: softspoken, delicate,
grinding pasteles without question,
yuca prickling beneath fingernails, scraped
knuckles, blood thickening the masa.

jesus is bleeding
above the dinner table on noche buena.
your brother sneaks vodka
into a tumbler full of orange crush.

at the amusement park,
when you crash the blond man's head
off the metal steering wheel in the go cart
in front of you, his testicles shrink
before your apology, because two uncles
have driven him back into the fence. "I'm
sorry, I didn't know the boy was only 16.
I'm sorry, Christ, I'm sorry," he whimpers.

every woman is named maria,
is a salmon escaping the grizzly,
has breasts the size of empty rice pots,
needs a ride home.

you will love her, finally,
when you can picture the spines
of her enemies
in your teeth.

Where's the readership? Ask your agents.

Let it be said right now: The next assneck that proclaims the death of poetry is getting kicked directly in the spleen.

If you'd like to drown your eyes in that particular battery acid, please feel free: http://www.newsweek.com/id/191012

Newsweek says that fiction readership is up, while poetry readership is down 16%. Without trying to sound too Harold Bloom-curmudgeonschmuck about the whole thing, I don't consider the meteoric rise of the Twilight series, Harry Potter, or The Da Vinci Code, as a spike in fiction readership. It IS a spike in a certain form of entertainment...one with possibilities for franchise rights, TV series, movies, and sequels.

When someone wants to talk "readership" in the literary world, what they really mean are BOOK SALES. And what drives book sales in the United States? The same shit that drives sales of Tickle Me Elmo. What's cooler than Harry Potter? (The shit was pretty enjoyable pablum, I must admit.) What's cooler than a book that turns your ideas on Jesus upside down, one that spawns all kinds of Discovery Channel documentaries?

Well. Of course it probably helps if the book can be turned into a movie, or make money elsewhere, or if it can be branded, or if it can be cross-promoted. Why is Miley Cyrus writing an autobiography at 16? Because she can sell it, that's why.

If we're going to get on our soap boxes and bemoan the loss of poetry to the dreaded Academy, then we need to save room in the grave for all literature in the age of The Notebook and A Night Without Armor. And I'm certainly not going to sound the victory bell just because Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize. Not when you still have college kids shying away from reading Oscar Wao or Drown because the shit lacks a linear structure.

Where are the conversations in the American intellectual life (outside NPR) for literature of any sort? Oprah cannot save the book industry. At some point, people need to start reading literature for more reasons than getting his/her jollies on the nights when American Idol is off the air. I don't have answers, but I do have a lot of questions, and more than a little anger every time my friends call me with horror stories about their undergrads' reading and writing habits.

I think poets have deeper problems than their work not getting read. They have to worry about where the hell they're going to work, and what kinds of students and readers they're going to find when they get there.

Apnea Wars: The Adventures of Darth Malo, Latin Lord of the Sith

Last night was the much-dreaded sleep study, a procedure in which a patient with suspected sleep apnea (this case me) has his or her brain strapped to an angel hair rainbow of wires, and two punchy technicians on third shift watch you sleep and make sure you don't kick the bucket while you dream of fried pork chops. At least that's how they explained it to me.

As a bonus, however, Punchy Tech Tracy came into my room at 2am and put me on something called a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, which basically keeps your throat from collapsing at night and maintains your breathing. Wires, and breathing masks, creepy technicians. What's a good name for the Latino Darth Vader? Why, Darth Malo, of course.

Anyway. For the uninitiated: Sleep apnea happens when the airway closes during sleep and keeps a person from entering a restorative sleep phase. You know you have it when your snoring wakes you from sleep; or you wake up with dry mouth, or heartburn; or when you feel like a walking zombie during the day from lack of sleep. Of these symptoms, I possessed...ah, yes, all of them. Ask my longsuffering fiancee and her pointy, pointy, sleep-deprived elbows. Ow.

They tell you it takes at least a few weeks on the CPAP machine before you notice a difference in your wakefulness during the day. But you can ask the tenants at my day job how sharp I was today. I multitasked. I wrote letters furiously. I even smiled happily when one of them told me where I could shove the price of a 2 bedroom with hardwood floors. Short story long: I need me one of those wonderous newfangled breathing contraptions. Sleep is such a great idea.

Sign me up to the Dark Side.


Some random bits:

--I am writing an online series of articles about the intersections in poetry. Different genres, different approaches. Will be up soon at louderarts.com.

--My poem submissions are down. Need to rectify this.

--Acentos? Ah, that's a longer post, but the workshops are ON, y'all. Every Sunday at Hostos Community College in the Bronx.

--I'm back. If you're wondering where I went...don't worry about it. Just check for me periodically at this blog.

AND FINALLY:

--Chickpea Broccoli Casserole? Awesome! My baby got the recipe from VEGAN WITH A VENGEANCE, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

Nah, son. You can't have any.