this morning

Still in my pajamas. Researched several journals for submission; haven’t come to any conclusions. Wrote a long-lined long-narrative poem about candied chickpeas. Drafty draft. Messed about with art. It’s sunny out but I haven’t looked out the window much. The wind, which I hear constantly doing its inhaling/exhaling/whining thing, makes it sound like gray, cold.

oh damn

I was just writing the submission tracking details on my new hard copy of revised MS when I discovered revisions that had fallen through the cracks —meaning they were made after 12/22 and before the old laptop was stolen… and I thought I’d caught all of those! Mostly because I’ve been revising poems from The Sheaf (all the crap I’ve been writing since January) and not the MS. 

You know, the MS I just sent to Ahsahta. 

I mean, those revisions weren’t… I guess they weren’t crucial to one’s appreciation of the poem. Well they sort of were. It was more than tweaking of verbs or line breaks. But it was only two poems in a whole MS. 

FUCK.

REALLY????!!!!!!

Every time this happens I have a moment (more than a moment) where I am back standing in front of my desk and it’s like ghosts have miraculously whipped my laptop into another dimension. I’d actually thought I was hallucinating. Like: psychotic break time. Nope, it was really gone. I feel that disorienting, spinning… every time I find something I’ve lost. 

I can’t believe I didn’t check the electronic copy against the hard copy. Ugh. There are just so many pages. But poems, unlike prose, are modular. They go out in small batches to journals. They go out in a huge chunk as the MS. They squirm and worm around and their state is changeable. I thought I had everything up-to-date and good. 

This is going to obsess me now. 

Perhaps there needs to be cake.

exhale and pull the trigger

So I just submitted to Ahsahta. This was the first time I’ve used an electronic submissions manager for a full-length MS. They want you to remove all personal info, acknowledgments, bio, everything from the MS so it remains anonymous. It’s kind of nice, really. I feel less pressure like: omg, what if my pubs are LESS AWESOME than someone else’s. It makes the work stand alone. 

That said, it’s hard to have anything but idealistic hope about MS contests. But the poetry market has nooooo money, so how else do you get published? They need the money from reading fees. It’s hard to feel like you are anything but a drop in the sea though. Like the research job I applied for, after which I got an email saying they’d gotten a “groundswell of applicants.” I’m sure for every contest, there is a groundswell. Also, when I first picked this press, I thought it was an intro (first book) prize, but it’s not. That would have narrowed the pool somewhat. At least, to carry on the analogy, I get to show my work. 

can’t sleep; do work

So this morning I got up at 5:55 and starting working because my brain turned on even though my body was still tired. It was bothering me that I hadn’t placed the poems from the chapbook into the new manuscript yet. It had been on my list from yesterday. Instead I did a whole mess of house chores to avoid it. I say “new” manuscript but it feels like this thing is so old, like it’s dogging me, it’s that houseguest who happily occupies the couch for a year. 

Somehow when I replaced less strong poems with some from the chapbook, the MS got longer by a page. I double and triple checked. Ugh. And adjusted the spacing between the title and start of the poems so they were absolutely all the same. Now it’s ready to go for the next round of submissions. Deadlines: March 1, March 15, March 15, and March 31.

Since we’ll be in Vegas for a chunk of March I’d like to get this all out of the way ASAP.

The good thing about reformatting, rearranging and tweaking was that it made me fall in love with my houseguest all over again.

Tuesday’s Journal Submission

… is to Prime Number. This is a nifty online mag wherein they feature several linked poems by 5-ish poets, followed by a Q&A —a brief interview with the poet. It would SO rock to get my work in here.

Amidst this, they are finally installing the home security system. There is a lot of beeping and banging. The kitten is far too interested. The gentleman doing the installation is personable though. It’s cold and blowy out; thus cold in here. I wish I could go to bed now. Just for a little while. I squoze a submission out. Yay me.

Well, I lied.

Early last week I was all like, “Whee, I’m so under control even though someone just robbed our house! I’m back onto my project after eight days as if nothing happened…” Yeah… no. I was back on it for one day and then the rest of the week was spent wondering what the hell I was doing in this world. 

This is a typical response from me whenever anything bad happens. I allow myself [what I perceive that the outer world agrees is] the appropriate amount of feelings, and then I cram the rest back into my brain. 

Understand, I used to have a big problem with being self-destructive and letting my emotions rule me, often to harmful ends. This is the new (actually 13 years old) “recovery me” talking now.

I’m not fine and I’m not under control, and though I love my new, upgraded, expensive-and-paid-for-not-by-me laptop, it’s not the same as the old laptop. It’s faster, but the interface is ever so slightly different and it’s bugging the shit out of me. And I will never get back all my stuff.

So I haven’t been doing much submitting or art. Today I sent out to failbetter. Yay me. AND two people asked me to do readings. One is in April, the other in July. Rock on. Cos I can’t get my sorry ass together to ask someone else if I can read in their series. I write this because my husband told me I should try to enjoy my accomplishments more.

Annnnnd I might go after this one part-time research job even though I’m not supposed to even think about getting a job until the end of the semester. Maybe.

That is all.

Oh those pesky journal subs, mounting the gibbet, etc.

Well, I’m back at it. New laptop, reconstructed most of Lost January. I know I will encounter unrecoverable losses and then I will have meltdowns and stay in bed. But my January work is 90-95% recovered and shit, I am dumb with gratitude.

I forgot to mention a journal or two right around the time we were robbed. I submitted to Blood Lotus —no wait, I told you about that one. I must have. It’s a freaking gorgeous online magazine. Maybe I will post a link. Or just go google Blood Lotus. Go, do it. I have a headache. 

And then decomP on the 31st. I can’t believe I’m back on it in a week. I’m still massively dissociated though, or at least I lapse into it whenever I have to tell people what happened. Fucking fuck. I guess that coping mechanism has served me well in the past and my brain just does it, no choice. Still.

Finally, today’s sub was Mid-American Review. 

I have to say, I love this. I love getting to read as much poetry as I want, every day. I love reading all these journals, so that I feel like I’m right there at the edge of poetry, if that makes sense. I might not be making sense. I really want to go back to bed but I have to go to PT. Ugh, it’s snowing sideways. Maybe I can call off. That makes me feel guilty. But… /whine/ Snow. Bed. etc.

radio silence

So last Tuesday our house got broken into. They rifled through our shit and took my laptop. January has been the most productive month for me since grad school (i.e. aWHILE ago). I’ve managed to reconstruct almost everything from printouts (I used to never print out my work; wastes trees etc) but still. It’s brought the whole 5-subs-a-week project to a halt. Sigh. I keep telling myself it’s just a setback.

… and the last journal sub for this week

is to Cream City Review. Whew; I did it. One day off and I have to start another week. It really freaked me out that a process which is starting to get much easier for me, on the whole, became suddenly so challenging from Tues - Thurs. I kept running into stupid barriers. Like I would research the journal and find stuff of mine that seemed to fit their vibe, and then I’d click on the subs page and the reading period would be from Sept - Dec. Or I would research the journal etc. etc. and they would have a no sim subs policy + an 8 month response time. Come on people! It got so painful to sit in front of computer b/c of back. I start PT for back on Monday. I am nonplussed. 

Is that word one of those like cleave that mean the opposite thing at the same time? I should really look that up. Lazy writer. Lazy.

Why isn’t there a journal called Cleave? I googled cleave magazine and came up with nothing except a youtube video about some chick with huge those-can’t-be-real tits. Boring. Bad pun. No cookie.