Bread and Bread

Over Thanksgiving weekend, AK and I saw an Australian horror movie called The Babadook , about a woman whose husband died in a car crash as he drove her to the hospital while she was in labor. Six years later, she’s a single mom struggling to raise a son who sees invisible monsters. She’s frazzled. She wishes he would just go the fuck to sleep . The movie has a great Tim Burton-ish aesthetic, but with more restraint. One day a spooky children’s book about a monster called the Babadook shows up in their house. The book promises a terrible fate for any who ignore it and, the text cautions, the monster never goes away. At first, only her son sees the Babadook in their house, and he seems like one of those classic creepy horror movie kids, crazed and possessed. Nothing like an old-timey rocking horse to make a kid seem creepy. Then the mother begins to see it. Her son promises to protect his mom, even as she swallows the amorphous monster like so much black ink, becoming a...

The early bird--and you will see Terry is one--gets the first Blog As You Are Project post! Here is how my fabulous mentor spent Monday, October 21, 2013 in Los Angeles. Terry and her exuberant hair. 6 am- I email my mom, who lives in Detroit, every day. After checking other email, I do my meditations. 7 am - Green shake for breakfast, make one for Yvonne too. Then drive like hell to get to South Pasadena. 8 am - Water aerobics at the South Pasadena Y. 9 am - Shower, dress, drive to downtown L.A. Check email at red lights. 10 am - Meet with Michael Garces about EMBERS opera . When will the universe provide an opening for this to be produced? 11 am - Drive home--through arts district, little tokyo, past grand park, through chinatown--wishing I actually had time to stop and wander through my city. At the State Park a circus is being taken down; red and white stripe tent tops swirled like peppermint candies collapsing to the dirt. How the tent went up. Maybe. ...

Go toward the fluorescent light. Yesterday I went to Terry Wolverton’s annual Poetry Month workshop (more of a craft talk, actually) and reading at Skylight Books . I feel like I’ve been absent from the literary landscape for a while, and when I think about going to events, I think about seeing a lot of people I know a little bit, and explaining (or not) why I’m bald. Mingling takes energy for me even with hair, even if I have some new publication credit in my pocket. But Skylight and Terry’s crew feel like home, so it was a nice way to get my feet wet. I became a fan of some new poets (Ashaki M. Jackson—and Andrew Wessels, whom I work with three days a week but hadn’t read before), and by the end of the panel, I was jotting notes toward some kind of poem of my own. It’s below, and rough. I had a nice weekend, but it was threaded with thoughts of death, the way even some of my nicest weekends are. I watched an episode of Mad Men , in which a woman diagnosed with terminal c...

Pretty much all literary events that don’t happen during National Poetry Month in April happen in October. And those that don’t happen in October get squeezed into November. It’s shaping up to be a busy (and fun) month for me and my fellow writers. First, Jamie and I will both be participating in the month-long Night and the City: L.A. Noir in Poetry, Fiction and Film festival. You may remember that I was lukewarm on The Big Sleep , but I do love me some dark alleys, dirty secrets and stylish fedoras. Will I dress in costume when I read a bit of Chandler’s work and a bit of my own with the fabulous Pam Ward on Nov. 6? You’ll just have to come and find out. What: Noir Genius: Weldon Kees and Jorge Luis Borges When: Tuesday, Nov. 1, 7 p.m. Who: Jamie FitzGerald, Dana Gioia, Lou Mathews, Robert Mezey, Mariano Zaro Where: Libros Schmibros , 2000 E. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90033 What: Big Noir Open Reading—with Features When: Sunday, Nov. 6, 3-5 p.m. Who: Cheryl Klein, Pam Ward, Mik...