No word yet on the sex of the Kanyashian baby, or if Kim plans to dress it in outfits as ugly as this one.
Photo credit: Denise Truscello/WireImage.com

Powered by the momentum of two recent, critically acclaimed albums, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch the Throne, his collaborative album with Jay-Z, the notorious Kanye West has not rested, and is set to release his latest compilation any day now. If you follow those in the know (read: me) on Twitter, you’ll already have been introduced to some of the leaked lyrics, many of which focus on his impending fatherhood. (In case you’ve been living under a rock, ’Ye and Kim Kardashian are expecting a baby in July.)

Rumors that the new album is titled Her Beautiful Dark Twisted Fetus are unconfirmed, and insiders say it’s more likely that West will go with the title No Work for a Child, a take-off of his infectious hit single (with Jay-Z) “No Church in the Wild.” Indeed, the first lyrics we received were from the new title track, which opens the album with these ambiguous lines: “Lil’ babies with their moms / What’s a mom to a kid? / What’s a kid to applaud? / What’s applause to a non-performer, who don’t perform for anyone? / Will he make it out alive? Alright, alright, no work for a child.”

The structure of these lyrics will sound familiar to any fan of “No Church in the Wild,” and the new song certainly relies heavily on its predecessor, with a few notable exceptions. Soft bongos have replaced the throbbing drums that were the signature of the original, and the opening lines, performed by Frank Ocean on the original track, are, curiously, performed by famed children’s singer Raffi.  What West is actually getting at in these opening lines is up for grabs, though it may suggest a certain pressure on his newborn child to perform, only to remind himself (alright, alright) that children can’t be put under the same expectations as megastar rap-gods like himself.

The maturity of these opening lines is almost as impressive as what comes next. Read more »

Trying to keep my head above water. Writing poems about trains, Amelia Earhart, and all the old loves. Trying not to think about the future. Thinking obsessively about the future. Drinking too much coffee, sleeping in too late, not running. Staring out windows (most often, at trains). Writing notes on my hand. Buying another bookshelf for the books I don’t have time to read. Eating too much chocolate. Wondering how it is, still, that I don’t know what I’d be happiest doing. Wondering if I’ve wasted my time. If I’ve improved, if I know what I’m doing. Pouring expired milk down the drain. As if I have some kind of plan. Making lists: clean the bathroom, pay the bills, organize my papers, submit to magazines.  The same list for weeks. Not writing letters I’d promised I would write. Not calling people I’d promised I would call. Not writing poems I’ve been meaning to write: letters to Amelia, poem about throwing bottles into the river, poem about the robin’s eggs I broke open when I was young.

Trying my hand at nonfiction, trying to get out of my own way. Trying to forget that I have a body. Letting the words come easy. Taking my camera with me when I drive, thinking about the mountains. Their shape, their distance. The clouds as seen from an airplane. Trying to map the land however I can. Wondering where my feet rest most firmly. Sitting in my car on Cliff Drive, above the lights of this place, on and on in front of me, wishing for once I was a smoker. That easy motion, that distraction, that taste in the mouth. Missing cities, New York and Paris, knowing I couldn’t have lived there. Planning how I could do it. Dreaming of wading through pools, of people I hardly know and their detailed faces. Reading enough words to fill me. Pulling on my warmest coat to walk in the desperate days of winter. Heat on high, water on for tea, candle for atmosphere.

Today? Not enough. Or yesterday. Or any day, lately. Waking up as an ostrich, head hidden from sun. Telling everyone, “It’s going fine.” Puppeting the days. Organizing the pages of poems in my head. Re-arranging, disordering, erasing. Wishing to be granted a day of disappearance. To a porch surrounded by mountains, a cold day. Or the rippling skirt of a lake. The black sand of a foreign beach in Majorca or any land with a name just as musical. Dancing my fingers along the table as though it is a violin again. Listening to those sounds with twitching muscles.

Reading the old favorites, trying not to feel inadequate. The best lines kept as glowing talismans in my hand.  —You is from hunger, Mr. Bones.  Asking, what else comes from hunger? As if the earth under our feet / were / an excrement of some sky. And how the imagination can save us.  If we know how to let it. If we can bring ourselves to the right place. Read more »

The Kardashians: a modern day Brady Bunch?

I understand the gross side of reality TV. I watched a lot of Jersey Shore when it came out, and I made everyone on my dorm floor watch it as well. I’ve also watched a hefty amount of Laguna Beach, and because I am loyal to its faux-real characters, I also watched its spinoff The Hills and its spinoff The City. I would largely categorize these shows as guilty pleasures. But I can’t say the same about Keeping Up With the Kardashians, because I don’t feel guilty about it. Not one little bit. The fact that Kim Kardashian is dating Kanye West—is, in fact, pregnant with their baby—only makes me more excited that some form of a Kardashian show is still airing, since Kanye West could firmly be classified as one of my musical non-guilty pleasures and since the two of them together thrills me to no end. (Though can we please call it the Kanyashian baby instead of the Kimye baby? It’s so much catchier and doesn’t sound like a Japanese superhero.)

There’s been a lot of talk about the culture of reality TV that has sprung up in America. We’re all voyeurs. We want to feel better by mocking those stupider or fatter or more gullible than us. We want to watch those prettier or richer or smarter than us falter under pressure. We want to memorialize everything and then feel nostalgic about it instantly, even other people’s weddings and other people’s proposals and other people’s dreams coming true. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem like the reality TV trend is going to fade any time soon. And although I mocked my college roommate for her Sunday night Kardashian-watching tradition, and though I joined in fully expecting to mock my way through the viewing, I actually whole-heartedly love the show. Yes, it’s ridiculous. Yes, the clothes and heels and make-up they wear cost more than I will ever make in my lifetime. But at the end of the day, the Kardashians represent, for me, a kind of ideal family.

That may seem strange to say since the current Kardashian clan is a so-called “blended family,” with half-siblings from both Bruce Jenner’s and Kris Kardashian Jenner’s previous marriage(s), but the family is so tight-knit and has so much outrageous fun together that the episodes can almost give off the vibe of the Brady Bunch (if the Bradys had had dark hair and a lot more Botox). And I know the situations on the episodes are probably constructed to seem spontaneous and carefree, but I don’t care. Television is about a suspension of disbelief—especially reality television, where we are supposed to believe the people and situations and dialogue are the realest of real—and I believe the Kardashians completely. Read more »

Not a phantom kangaroo.

[Note: This post, which originally appeared on Tuesday, January 15, has been edited per the request of my employer. Names have been omitted and information has been clarified, in case anyone reading this blog was under the impression that Bark is an accredited news source on the subjects of ice cream and ice cream stores.]

Oh, were you waiting for me to finish the joke? Sorry, there isn’t actually a joke. (Though I did find this bizarre mention of kangaroos and German shepherds in a Wikipedia article titled “Phantom kangaroo.”) No, instead what I have for you is the story of a magical encounter, one that’s weird even by Spokane standards.

First, a little background. I work at a chain ice cream store, which shall remain vague and unnamed for the sake of protecting the feelings of the ice cream and other frigid entities. I started working at [the ice cream store that shall not be named] in high school, worked there on breaks through most of college until both of the stores near me closed, and then found myself back there this past summer when I was in need of a job. As far as jobs go, it’s really not so bad. (In fact, I quit a two week stint at the Safeway deli in favor of this job because I was convinced I was going to chop my finger off in the meat slicer.) It’s not especially labor-intensive, though at least five customers a night will lean over the glass partition and deliver some version of the line, “Wow, you must get really strong arms working here.” It’s not any more unsanitary than other jobs in the food service industry, it’s not intellectually demanding, and it seems to be a curious trend across this particular unnamed ice cream store franchise that the bosses visit as little as possible, leaving us kids to run the store on our own—a fact, lest I be misunderstood, which I really appreciate. You rarely find that kind of trust at other corporate establishments, where you can get the feeling they’re looking over your shoulder in a creepy, Big Brother–esque manner. And wouldn’t that be a drag? Plus—free ice cream!

Still, I know people my age who work salaried jobs at places where they aren’t required to wear an apron. Who wants to be in graduate school clear across the country and still working their high school job on weekends? (This is definitely the part I left out at my five-year reunion this past fall.) But to be honest, I enjoy my job too much to be embarrassed by it, even though I kind of feel like I should be. Sure, there were the three days this summer the air conditioning broke, the ice creams were melting in their pans, and our bosses saw no reason to close the store—and why should they when summer is the time the store makes bank, and really what’s 91° inside a store in July anyway?—and sure, sometimes college students think it’s funny to tip us, then cross their arms and stare—as though we’re going to burst into song or start twisting balloon animals or something ridiculous like that (can you imagine??), but it’s the strange and unexpectedly human moments that really make up for it. (And I know how many calories are in that shake you just ordered, you fratty doucher waiting to drop a dollar in the tip jar.)

So, because New Year’s Eve happened recently enough to not be totally unrelated, I’m going to count down my Top 5 [Ice Cream Store That Shall Not Be Named] Moments of All Time. Eat your heart out. Read more »

It’s a week into the new year. So far, I have read one book. I found it in a used bookstore while I was home in Pennsylvania for the holidays. I only found the used bookstore because I’d just met a friend for coffee and was walking up the street to a camera store when the sign caught my eye. I bought three other books in the same store, one of which I mailed to a friend as a spur-of-the-moment Christmas gift. It cost five times as much to ship the book as it did to buy it.

Probably the greatest used bookstore in the history of ever. (Shakespeare & Company, Paris)
Oh, and is that a Fitzgerald poster I spy in the background? Hm!

I found a book by Jess Walter (Over Tumbled Graves, set in Spokane) and wondered what people there, in Pennsylvania, imagined when they read a novel set in Spokane. And I realized that if it had been two years earlier, I wouldn’t have picked up the novel at all, having no connection to Jess Walter, and even if I had, I’d have no idea how to imagine Spokane either.

I also found a book called The Fall of a Sparrow, written by Robert Hellenga, a professor from my undergrad. When I marveled about how strange this was to my friend, he said, “Yeah, weird quality of his books—they’re all over used bookstores.”

I bought a copy of E.B. White’s collected letters, because I had recently checked out a book of his essays from the library, because I had read an excerpt of a particular essay (“Here is New York”) that my friend, who I knew through a study-abroad program in Paris, had posted on her blog, and when I read the essay in its entirety, I could not get over how strange it was to find the lines “New York is nothing like Paris; it is nothing like London; and it is not Spokane multiplied by sixty, or Detroit multiplied by four” because there I was, reading the essay on my couch in Spokane, having just tried to write in my own way about New York, which is how I had come to the book in the first place.

After I had picked out a few books to buy, I realized the shop continued on the other side of the old house it occupied. Over there, I found the poetry room, where I browsed each shelf and left with e.e. cummings’s 95 poems. I bought it partly because we had just read him in class this fall and I was interested in reading more of his work, but even before that, I’d been searching bookstores for months for a collection of his that included the poem “[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” which this collection had, and which I love for no particular reason other than that it makes me want to cry every time I read it, and for no particular reason, though not unrelated, it reminds me of Illinois, though I can’t remember where I first came across it.

The book I was most excited about finding there, the first book I’ve read this year, is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last (and unfinished) novel The Last Tycoon. Read more »

I’m on a break from school, which means I finally have a little time to read for fun. For my 10-ish hour travel day on Sunday, I packed a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for about a year, hoping it would be somewhat fast-paced and engaging enough to keep me awake. I fell asleep anyway, but not because the book was boring, although its detailed talk of nautical currents and its penchant for long descriptions using compass directions was too much for my brain on only three hours of sleep. (Admittedly, I am still struggling with this part after eleven hours of sleep, because I have never successfully used a compass and decided a long time ago that whatever way I was facing would be North.)

I call fowl.

The book I’m speaking of, ladies and gentlemen, is Moby-Duck. Oh yes, you read that right. The cover has a picture of a large rubber ducky and the title is printed in rounded, child-friendly font. But this is not a children’s book. It is, as the cover also states, “The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them.” Right?! How could you not want to read a book like that? The bath toys “lost at sea” included plastic blue turtles, red beavers, green frogs, and the infamous yellow ducks. They tumbled from a cargo ship in 1992 and floated away on the sea, later washing up on beaches and shores all over the world. The first I’d heard of the whole event was in this book. I’m still only about 1/3 of the way through, but I have some burning questions, and they have nothing to do with rubber duckies.

My questions are about the genre of nonfiction, particularly the kind of nonfiction that this book falls into—a sort of cross between journalism and self-discovery, of reporting on an incident while also reflecting on how it is has changed one’s life/self/outlook. Obviously this is not a scholarly work on the life of Lincoln or Keats. There is room for the author, Donovan Hohn, to include tangents, musings, and emotional revelations. This is most definitely the realm of creative nonfiction. And I’ll admit, I’m not very well-versed in the genre or its rules, since I primarily study and write poetry. But I am taking a nonfiction form & theory class next quarter. So friends, help me to not seem like a complete dunce when I walk into class, and answer some of my burning questions. Pretty please? Read more »

I have never fully understood the idea of grace, in the religious sense. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has three slightly different definitions for the religious term alone. I was raised Episcopalian and I don’t remember the concept of grace ever being talked about much in my church, but then again, it wasn’t really your standard church. For several years, it operated out of a rented room behind the Dunkin Donuts in town and was led by a lesbian priest, years before that was officially accepted.

I know that the idea of grace is somewhat disputed among different branches of the Christian church, and that it seems to be something people can be given, not something they can achieve, though it still seems to be an envied and desirable state. Indeed, one of my professors said in class last year, “Grace is inherently passive.” For some reason, this statement has stuck with me. I have my own ideas and associations that come up when I hear the term, but I still don’t really understand the full scope of its meaning.

I’m no longer a practicing church-goer, and haven’t been for years, so when one of my friends, who often reads early drafts of my poems, told me that he saw most of my poems as seeking a kind of grace, I was taken aback. I didn’t even know what that meant. I still don’t know what that means. Poems that deal directly with religious belief, on the whole, make me uncomfortable. Or I should say, those that praise or otherwise profess their beliefs make me uncomfortable. I can appreciate the poem, but can’t always embrace it completely. (In other words, I love the complex language of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s  “Pied Beauty,” but I can’t feel a connection with it on a deeper, more emotional level.)

But this is, perhaps, a failing on my part; I reject the kind of belief they ask of me. Read more »

Recap this!

I was hoping I’d have more to report to you. It would have been more fitting if I could have titled this The Five-Year High School Reunion Drinking Game, Part 2: The Hangover. But, the night wasn’t really that exciting. Yes, I sort of played the drinking game. Yes, I printed out copies of the rules and tried to drop them on tables when no one was looking so others could join in. But then I got kind of bored, and I felt a little mean drinking every time I saw someone who’d gotten fat (even if it was still the tiniest bit satisfying).

The five-year high school reunion I attended last Friday was, in a word, fine. It wasn’t terrible, as I suspected it might be. It wasn’t great, as my mother kept telling me it would be. It was fine. I don’t think I would have missed out on anything by not going, but I suppose I’m glad I went. I didn’t make any new friends, but I did chat with a few people that I’m 90% positive I never spoke to in high school. Essentially every conversation consisted of the same thing. We took turns asking what the other person was up to, where he/she worked, where he/she lived. Some people said, “It doesn’t really feel like it’s been five years, does it?” People inevitably said “Wow, that’s crazy!” when I told them I was living in Washington state, since for most of my classmates, the whole world exists between Boston and D.C.

It turns out most people are living in New York City now. It turns out a lot more people were beginning to bald than I thought possible in only five years. It turns out some douchebags are still douchebags, but that one guy who I would have easily crowned King of the Douches actually wants to be a teacher, educating young minds. We also had a very nice, if brief, conversation. It turns out some people can surprise you. Read more »

On Friday, I’ll be attending my five-year high school reunion. I know what you’re thinking—five years? Isn’t that a little soon? Yes. In fact, I believe the word you’re looking for is stupid. It’s stupid because no one has really accomplished anything yet and it’s been just long enough for us to forget our classmates existed but not long enough to forget how much we don’t really want to see them once we’ve been reminded.

I don’t understand memes, but this came up on Google and pretty much sums up my feelings.

To put it plainly, I’m not excited about going. I’m not even really sure why I’m going, although the breakdown goes something like: 1/3 due to the open bar, 1/3 due to my friends’ pestering, and 1/3 curiosity. Even knowing things will likely be no different or less awkward than in high school, I can’t help but want to see if they will be. And because in high school I wanted desperately to be noticed, I adopted a sarcastic and dismissive attitude to pretty much everyone I didn’t hang out with. Whatever, drinking is stupid. Whatever, athletes aren’t even smart. Whatever, Ivy Leagues suck. Whatever, who wants to be having sex anyway. I know that I’ve changed a great deal since graduating, but that doesn’t mean I’m any more willing to talk to the kids who always ignored me. There’s a weird desire, not to prove I’m different, but to see if anyone else will notice or care.

When I’ve told people about the impending reunion, a few have said something along the lines of, “Oh, it’ll be fine. You’re in graduate school! You’re so accomplished! You can go back and see how many people have babies and never finished college!” I should explain something about my high school. Read more »

Ke$ha believes in America; what about you?
(Photo credit: Vanity Fair)

You might have heard it’s Election Day here in the United States. We encourage you to vote. In fact, my plan was to come up with lyrics, record a video for “Get Ur Vote On” (a parody of Missy Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On”) and get YouTube famous, but my creative resources have run dry. So I thought I would kick off your day with some extra-American poems through the ages—some perhaps more inspiring than others. Read them. Feel that American pride or American rage or American greed coursing through your red (white, and blue) American veins and go out and exercise your goddamn American right. (Note: these poems are not meant to express my personal–or really any–political views, they are just here because they happen to reference politicians or elections or they just drip American glory and needed to be shared.) And, in case the words don’t do enough for you, I will add a section of cheerleading after each piece. GIMME AN A! GIMME AN M! You get the idea…

Getcha getcha getcha getcha getcha vote on.

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
(1923)

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

(RED, WHITE, AND BLUE [the rain water]! A BARN YARD SCENE! F*CK YEAH AMERICA!)

The Undermining of the Defense Economy
James Wright
(1963)

Stairway, face, window
Mottled animals
Running over the public buildings.
Maple and elm.
In the autumn
Of early evening,
A pumpkin
Lies on its side,
Turning yellow as the face
Of a discharged general.
It’s no use complaining, the economy
Is going to hell with all these radical
Changes,
Girls the color of butterflies
That can’t be sold.
Only after nightfall,
Little boys lie still, awake,
Wondering, wondering
Delicate little boxes of dust.

(THE ECONOMY GOING TO HELL, YOU SAY? SOUNDS LIKE AMERICA TO ME!)

The Road
Muriel Rukeyser
(1938) Read more »