Tuesday, July 21, 2009

in the third generation the daughters are free

i have a cd out.  since March in fact, and i'm not sure why i haven't posted about it until now.  maybe a strange desire to still separate out parts of my life- which is this anti-thesis of this blog, right?  so here are the facts:

you can buy my cd, in the third generation the daughters are free on itunes.

the album is, essentially, about family history.  and you can read my published artist statement in the literary magazine Shaking Like a Mountain.

there is a press release/ review on all about jazz's website.

there is a lovely review in chronogram magazine.

and below is a video of part of the cd release concert- the whole thing, in fact, is on youtube.

this is what has happened.  now- how to keep moving?


prompt: masturbation

there is a game

i play with myself

look with eyes not implanted in this body

darkened window, mirror, lid of the piano-

any reflective surface. then move away


strap in and sit in 

the cold with no covers

i am hot in the core, just taken

from the boiling pot


summon the image- not a rippling

view from above the neck, but straight ahead-

just as before.  then unbuckle, inspect

i do not know for how long

get-give no relief, shifting my weight

adjusting my very atoms


imagine the little old lady 

sleeping beside the kitchen wall

i would carry on that way but for her

she must be a light sleeper

tossing, out of time with Sidney Bechet

who's strangely, fittingly begun to play 

muskrat blues.  please, don't pull out, keep me


tangled in elastic netting, fingers dangling

limp in the gaps of flexible cloth-

almost a holding on.  in the last moments

there was no old lady, no 1930s

you were a thermal wave in the sky

a firm gelatinous tendril curled in on itself


she came in and out of being, but

i was always there.