I hate faculty meetings.

I fear I offended a colleague tonight--or, at least hir response LOOKED a lot like offense: rolled eyes, sharp snort of breath, pen thrown down on the table. I made a comment that I think could have been construed as dismissive, though it wasn't intended that way....I was merely trying to draw a distinction using hir own words, spoken years ago, to define one of the terms. I'd rather not think about this all night. My kids are visiting their grandparents on the opposite side of the country, Neruda is in his own faraway place, and the ass-end of the semester is crashing down. I have a slight cold and couldn't go see my prematurely newborn first nephew this week while the boys are gone, and haven't slept well for weeks. Too much traveling, too many commitments, no time to act on the intellectual momentum that came out of that scholarship workshop of a couple of weeks ago. (More on that later.) As writers, maybe we should remember that language is too unstable for us to let it give us much offense.


"Our Despised and Unhistoric West"

Taxidermy could make an animal less desirable than right before the bullet, but wanting is like that, reflective fruit. For instance, if you arrive at the Occidental Hotel without baggage, you must pay first. Where else is lack worth ponying up for, and does that place have such heaviness to its curtains? Above the sticky radio, in the dust the ceiling fan threshes, a calligraphic constellation: Oh Oh Oh. Miss Petticoats, her lace as fine as lead in a decanter, pines on the fainting couch that velvetly begets the posture and sound of pining, each carnivorous syllable as small as a chapel in a town near a town named Buffalo. So much ardor in this interior, and though the hotel hallways may be narrow and dark, they are nothing if not long.

--Cecily Parks