Cat Gone Two Weeks
This poem was originally published in the 2016 Mendocino Poets in the Schools Anthology, alongside dozens of poems by my students. Recently, I was teaching rhyme to a class of fourth graders when one student raised her hand and said, “Why don’t we read your cat poem?” I was delighted. To be famous to your students is like Naomi Shihab Nye’s river being famous to the fish. Cat Gone Two Weeks by Jasper Henderson Cat be nimble Cat be quick Cat sleep on window And then get sick Cat be happy … Read More »Cat Gone Two Weeks
The Blood-Sex Iconostasis
. I’m thrilled to announce that my story “The Blood-Sex Iconostasis” was published today in Joyland San Francisco. Here are its opening lines: . . Night falls over town. The fog doesn’t recede. Sodium lights flicker to life. Some hold steady; others strobe on and off in lugubrious, neurotic cycles. The sky takes on the sickly orange glare of their light. The parking lot at Safeway empties. Cats are fed and dogs put inside for the night. Benjamin lowers the blinds and wanders from room to room with a candle on a drip pan. Beneath a bag of tealights in… Read More »The Blood-Sex Iconostasis
Vote For Jill Stein? Six Arguments For, Deflated
. Dear Friends and Family — . I know that many of us are looking towards the coming election with dread. Any semblances of reason and hope seem to be missing. Our political system seems broken. And so, naturally, we look for a third option. And there is someone on the left who would happily take your vote: Green Party candidate Jill Stein. But to vote for Stein is in fact to use faulty reasoning. In essence, it means voting against your best interests. In the following essay I address — and deflate — six arguments in favor of… Read More »Vote For Jill Stein? Six Arguments For, Deflated
Translation of “Lift” by Sergei Tretyakov
. Here’s a translation of an obscure Russian poem that I completed five years ago. Although the translation takes a few liberties, I hope these help capture something of the playfulness of the original. I found this poem in the great anthology Poetry of the Silver Age (Поэзия Серебряного века) published in Moscow by EKSMO in 2002. . Lift . by Sergei Tretyakov . You in darkness read, like a cat, Small print on snowdrifts. Vertical is our common path, The singsong lift. Just us two in this mobile pantry. We’ll flirt! Don’t flinch, with a gaze that’s stingy, From the wreath of myrtle. After all, you know, at… Read More »Translation of “Lift” by Sergei Tretyakov
Travelogue 8: Three Ecstatic Moments
What follows is an excerpt from my email travelogue, which I send every week or two while I’m on the road. To subscribe to the mailing list, follow this link. This installment was originally sent out on January 11, 2015. .. Dear Travelogue Readers — . For the last month I have been living in a hotel called Viraporn’s Place, here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Late at night I squirt my arms and ankles with pungent bug spray and sit in the courtyard to think, or write, or smoke a cigarette. Many nights Viraporn, who I know from the days when she ran… Read More »Travelogue 8: Three Ecstatic Moments
A Brume of One’s Own
. “At this moment, I expel a minor traveler’s flatulence (sorry), and with it, I experience the same chivalry he’d offered when putting Kate to bed, as he pretends not to notice. We escape its subtle brume, and I join my colleagues inside the bungalow.” — Sean Penn, Rolling Stone, January 9th, 2016. . . Joaquín Archivaldo ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán Loera, Altiplano Prison: “Subtle? That is the very last word that I would use to describe what happened in that room. When I was a boy I sold special birds at the market every day, because we were very poor.… Read More »A Brume of One’s Own