My poem, Mercy, is poem of the week at The Missouri Review.

Feel legit.

Feel like a boss.

Two new poems in NAP involving god & vomit, as per usual. Rob MacDonald has neat poems in the issue as well.

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I want to surrender to god’s will 4evs.

It doesn’t seem fair that you can’t get hypnotized and that’s it.

It’s so uncool to have to surrender again every minute.

Why would I define god?

What kind of mystery is that?

Even when I don’t feel it there’s the experience of having felt it.

“Proving” god seems stupid.

Keep cleaning keep cleaning keep cleaning.

God feels me.

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read the awesomest three books this year and we’re only three weeks into 2012–

Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter

The Book of Frank by CA Conrad

feel like a lucky girl to be alive and have all this at my fingertips.

they are in my bones now.

the Salter is the perfect book for me at 32, a fantasist, a little afraid of the reaches of my fantasy-life, a lot afraid, fearing aging, thinking of boys and trying to hitch back onto adolescence. this is the book of the buggering in the bum. it is aesthetic bliss. a tiny realist in me was like “doesn’t Ann Marie Costellot ever have a dirty bum?” but the realist was eclipsed by the love and breath and mystery in Salter’s craftsmanship. what a pleasure this book. the most beautiful.

all i can say about Reines is that she is in me now like a hot virus and i am smitten. my friend Kristen Iskandrian says i have the fever and she knows it well. i just ordered The Cow. excited.

the Conrad book is full of exciting language that knocks and kicks — really sad and melty and strange and funny in exactly the way that life is, you know?

the Reines and the Conrad make me excited about what a book-length collection can be.

a poem shaped like a book.

a book shaped like a poem.

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DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLOWERS DEAD FLEURS DEAD FLEURS DEAD FLEURS DEAD FLEURS DEAD FLEURS DEAD FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL LES FLEURS DU MAL

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There is a song by The Who called The Seeker, which in the late 90s phase of my spiritual seeking I used to listen to on ephedrine on the treadmill on repeat, about 30 years too late, and once that phase of my seeking ended I never listened to the song again.

In the December 2011 phase of my spiritual seeking I think about The Seeker and I don’t know if I’ve ever sought anything. It seems like the seeking has always just sought or seeked or sucked me.

Ha ha that’s a lie. I seek like crazy yo.

I have a poem in Noo.

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THE NEW LA PETITE ZINE IS UP & IT IS A REALLY RAD ISH. I LOVE THAT LA PETITE ZINE. LOVE DOIN IT.

Laura van den Berg, who is rad, interviewed me at Ploughshares about satisfaction, vomit as holy, you know.

I keep asking $5 psychics on fiverr.com big questions about my life. Feels like regressing.

I find it annoying that the answers are within.

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The best thing I got for Chanukah was a bling sleep mask. Thanks Rose!

Mother made the SPD poetry bestseller list again for December and Ampersand is going back for a reprint. Holla.

Here’s me coolin’ out on the AM NY xmas list.

I talked with Ryan Call, one of my fave internet friends, about lit blogs over at Electric Literature.

I reviewed Nate Pritts’ Big Bright Sun for The Rumpus and forgot to tell you.

I’m doing lots of readings in 2011 and would luv if you would come to one.

That’s the story, mornin glory.

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I just called god you old stuffed potato in a poem, and it worked great.

Another thing–not in the poem– that I want to say to god is:

Please you to keep giving my heart another chance
One day your hum might just fall from my mouth

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Just got back from seeing Amma. Now I am in bed, coming down, with my face pressed against the white cotton shirt I wore today. It smells of roses.

Some say that Amma is a living saint. For many years I tried to make sense of the mystical experiences I have in her presence. I googled the words: kundalini, shakti, ecstasy. I compared my experience to that of others. But I’ve stopped trying to understand.

I would not say that Amma is my sole teacher, or guru. I have had many great teachers. Yet Amma is a touchstone I return to year after year. She might be my most powerful teacher. This was my sixth year with Amma at the Manhattan Center and every visit is different. I always learn lessons.

My first experience in Amma’s presence brought on such intense feelings of bliss, peace and transcendence that I was frightened I’d been dosed. This encounter taught me that visceral shifts in consciousness are possible without drugs. It crystalized my faith in a higher power.

My third year, I ignored an impulse to volunteer to wash dishes. Instead I sat by Amma like a god-junkie for eight hours straight until I got vertigo and had to go home in a taxi. I think Amma was teaching me that spirituality is not about feeling good all the time, but about service.

On another visit, I brought someone very close to me to meet Amma–a person who claims he has “no spiritual wiring.” I thought I could convince him otherwise and “give him” a peak experience. While this person now respects Amma as a humanitarian (he calls her a spiritual genius), on a sensory level he was unphased. He just sat in the balcony ho-hum, reading Harper’s and eating a doughnut. The lesson here? I am not in control of other people’s perceptions. I forget this lesson a lot.

So much of learning seems to be about remembering. Today I got a  message that I hear in my heart every time I am with her, and then repeatedly forget.

In my heart I said to Amma: It is so easy when I am with you to feel peace. But what about when I am not with you?

And Amma said to my heart: I give you permission. I light the spark. But peace is in you, child.

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