I gave my talk, despite a concussion and headache. There's a youtube video of the launch party here (my talk on "The Dream Lives of Objects" and ekphrastic writing and revision and the unconscious  starts at 9:51).

The issue is out, with a great cover. Here's "The Dream Lives of Objects."

I'm recovering from a bad fall last Sunday night. I was running on the concrete behind our house and tripped on an uneven part and fell flat on my face, damaging my teeth (not as much as I could have). hurting my arms and hands, giving myself a concussion, but miraculously not breaking any bones. I've developed blurred vision and poor concentration, which may last only two weeks, but could last much longer. Worried about that.

I got my booster shot yesterday (though it's left me pretty achy and sore), I've got a draft of the SUPERSTITION REVIEW talk (still longer than I'd like), and a poetry blog/zine called FEVERS OF THE MIND solicited a reprint of "Move on Up" from me, originally published in RHYTHM N BONES LIT (which is on hiatus or defunct). It's up, they're calling it a poem, which tickles me. It's based on music, and they posted a pop art version of the Curtis Mayfield album cover that I refer to.

Hands down, this one today. A tweet from my long ago former student Serene Vannoy about THE MISSING GIRL: "I saw your book in a bookstore in my new town (New Mexico) & just had to buy it even though I already have a copy. It was just so cool."

Also some nice soft rejects, one from THE RUMPUS today that's strong enough to make me consider sending that microflash out to more places. At the moment I've run out of steam for submissions, and I'm much more involved in THE LUNATICS' BALL.

And larger progress on THE LUNATICS' BALL. Two more essays ready for my writing group to look at. And out of the blue, a great beta reader: Claire Polders, whose work I love, has proposed swapping full-length manuscripts. Because she's so well organized, I assembled a definitive table of contents with actual lengths for each piece and came up with around 50K. Two flash framing six sections of varying sizes (6K-12K). Whether these very disparate pieces will hang together is another question, but I'm glad to have someone looking at the work as a whole.

Seems to be rejection season, since I'm getting a lot of them, mostly essays from THE LUNATICS' BALL, which are a hard sell, because they're not exactly personal essays with a first person narrator, at least a lot of them aren't. I'm not taking the rejections personally. I still think they're a good fit for the collection. 

A flash acceptance that I have to keep under wraps for now, but I'm excited about it.

​And a Pushcart nomination from the tiny magazine NUNUM for my tiny micro "Super Stanley." He's a character I'm fond of.

I'll be reading "Half Fish Tale, Half Ars Poetica" in the HARPY HYBRID REVIEW virtual reading next Saturday. Looking forward to it! Now for the important stuff: a long overdue haircut (my long time hair stylist is an anti-vaxxer and I need to find another), figuring out a background for Zoom (I usually Zoom in my study, which is overflowing with books and papers and pretty claustrophobic).