Tuesday, January 25, 2011

published in amphibi.us

I went to the NYC Department of Housing and Community Renewal today to ask them a question about my apartment building. I walked in and I was convinced it was the bleakest office in New York. It was fluorescent, not just the lights but everything, and there were no books or magazines. You had to talk to the government through a large Plexiglas sheet, and there was a sign on it that said NO EATING, like a zoo. The office is on Beaver Street, so animals were a theme.


After waiting for about 15 minutes a woman waved me in and talked to me for another 20 in fragmented sentences. She curtly asked me to quit clicking my pen. She asked me for a different phone number than the cell I offered her because, she said, the city of New York cannot make long-distance phone calls. I could see the sky through a window, it was very gray outside but the snow had stopped. She went to make a photocopy and I absent-mindedly checked my e-mail and I had an acceptance from Amphibi.us, an online poetry journal. I walked in me and walked out me, but a different me, a published poet me. The fluorescent cooked me like plaster, in the most brilliant, beautiful, living art I have yet experienced.

6 comments:

  1. Congrats! (I am so very in love with the way you write; its no wonder you're published!)

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  2. This is why we follow your blog ...
    love your writing ... :)

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  3. :O I live in New York!

    And I agree with Christy (whoever she is) with the way you write. It's rather stunning.

    Yeah. So. I think I'm going to follow you (As in blog-follow. Not stalkerish-follow).

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  4. Thanks guys! And yes, please follow. :)

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  5. Congrats on amphibi.us... this is the first time I've read anything by you, but if your poetry is anything like this, I'll probably like it. You did a great job of capturing the power of poetic thinking in ordinary situations.
    That's the thing a lot of people don't realize about poetry, or imagination itself, for that matter... it's not about pretending that flourescent lights are spaceships, it's about seeing them differently but still as flourescent lights.

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