This Week at No Tell

Steve Kistulentz is new leather jacket and stiletto boots and four girls from high school this week at No Tell Motel

Letter to Sam

Hey, Bruce Covey wrote about me at the Best American Poetry blog. You should check it out and learn all about my wonderfulness.

While driving back to my dad's tonight I heard a radio station promo that suggested for all Pittsburghers to warn out-of-town guests that the Strip District is not clothing optional. I never warned you. I'm sorry. I'm starting to see how I could have been a better friend.

Letter to Sam

Today my father bought Gideon a Mister Roger's Neighborhood train set. The train man said the reason Mister Rogers always wore long sleeves was because his arms were covered in tattoos. He said Mister Rogers was a marine in the special forces and killed a bunch of people. The train man said Mister Rogers became a born again Christian after that. The train man also made a big deal about the trains being made in the USA (it's not like we asked) but when we got home we noticed the boxes all said "Made in China." Sometimes people lie for no good reason at all. As a busy mom in these tough times, it's difficult to trust.

Letter to Sam

This morning we went to a train and toy show at the Monroeville ExpoMart. I never took you to the ExpoMart either. Did you know the ExpoMart is closing? They're building a new one where the Wicks Furniture used to be.

Once I wrote a poem that ended with the lines:

I followed the sound,
the trail of steam.
“Choo choo, you useless slut” cracked the train.
I ate bread crumbs from the ground.
“Choo choo, you’ll never survive on your own.”
I found home,
never realizing the tracks were so close.
“Choo choo, go back to your husband.”
I hope you derail and all your passengers die! I cried.

I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote that poem. If I had been, it would have been a very different poem. I'm thinking of you now, but am not writing poems. Do you understand?

Letter to Sam

Today we took Gideon to the Carnegie Science Center. It occurred to me that we never took you to the Carnegie Science Center when we went in college. I should have taken you on that submarine and read poems about 100 men sharing one bathroom. It all could have been so different.

Letter to Sam

Have you eaten your pets yet? We haven't hit bottom until we've eaten our pets -- oops I mistyped "pets" and typed "poets" by mistake. I fixed it cause I don't want to give you corporate types any ideas. Please don't eat your poets. Even though this is mostly the poets' fault for not writing perfect poems. I'd try writing that perfect poem to transcend your dread, but fear if I did you would eat me. Remember when we were in college and we'd take turns buying one another dinner and you always paid with a credit card? Even though you had thousands of dollars of debt and no way to pay it off? I think it all began there. Instead of going out to dinner I should have bought a bag of Funyuns to share and invited you to my place so I could read poems to you. I'm sorry I didn't write you poems when I had the chance. I wrote a poem for Randy, but not for you. How fucking elitist of me. Now you work for Amazon and it's too late. How did this come to be? Weren't you supposed to grow up and become a physicist?

Trouble and Honey reviewed at Bookslut

Jilly Dybka is a generous poet. I know this because she gives her work away on Lulu.com, as do Bill Knott and others. Poet-editor-blogger Timothy Green claims that Lulu is losing some of its stigma. I don’t know why it should carry any stigma at all. There’s more poetry being written now -- more good poetry -- than foundations can support, presses and webzines can publish, or readers can read. If a writer wants to join the game under such circumstances, self-publishing seems like a fine way to do it. It’s true there is no editor or prize judge acting as a gatekeeper, but this just means that poets and readers must become more attentive

I changed my mind, I am suing. In this economy, I could really use my cut of the $150,000. Preschool ain't cheap.

This Week at No Tell

Martha Silano is thankful quite thankful for the suctioned legs of an octopus that color like a bruise this week at No Tell Motel.

I am a very powerful poet. I know people. I am connected. My sister, brother-in-law and sister-in-law are lawyers and my husband works for Google which basically means I can file lawsuits all day long and make anyone "virtually" disappear. Snap. Just like that. While it is well within my realm to obliterate certain editors who intentionally attributed a poem that I did not write to my sacred name, I have decided to show mercy to those punks who didn't know who the fuck they were dealing with, Reb Fucking Livingston, that's who!

I show mercy, cause I'm spiritual and shit.

This is the poem (sans the pretentious computer-generated indents) attributed to me:

Possessing air

Simpler than a callous
Smarter than an administration
More intelligent than a tin
An immense heart, indistinct heart,
unexplored heart of a stupid
voice
There is no air more intimate
than water
Distant memory in typical bale, where
tins will go
Like a symbol
Like a power
There will be time
for the lank muddle
We will unearth
her muddle in armfuls of self-defence
We will have one agent, she will
have two
We will say her in
late autumn
Writing drollery from
love
It will be like hiding a
symbol


Here is the true, soul and flesh Reb Livingston poem:


Owning the Nightprayer

Garblier than a cowlick, heartier than governance, more vacant than tipwoe. An entombed hark, a pinked hark, and unprobed hark of a muted voyage. Snare is no more bootied than therapy. Vacant meltfrown in a tingling horsewail, where tipthroe will ghost. Ghostlike a double. Deathlike a gift. There will be a frame, for splayed bangle. We will birth her bangles as armlets of wonderdamsels. We wondered pregnant, she wondered seastunt. We partwayed astray. Ripewise from oppowit. It will be like chiding your double.

Bruce Covey presents Jill Alexander Essbaum