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.

I “co-created” a yellow cake with Duncan Hines. You can too.  Here’s how:

1. Go to the store and buy the shit.
2. Mix all the shit together.
3. Put the shit in the oven.
4. Take the shit out of the oven.
5. Let the shit cool.
6. Ice the shit.
7. Eat the shit.

2.

3. CRUSTYPUNKS

–Mark Bibbins, author of The Dance of No Hard Feelings

With her hallmark wit and brilliance, Melissa Broder has followed up her heralded When You Say One Thing But Mean Your Mother with Meat Heart, a book of poems that is at once apocalyptic, full of sorrow, and packed with images crystalline in their beauty and truth. In these poems, Broder takes us through a world that is both alien and familiar to the world that we already know, a wild landscape where there is “ash fish / and elemental octopi,” where “cornhusk filaments / Still jacket tongues,” and where in a place with “200 flavors of panic/the worst is seeing with no eyes.” All of these freakish things to help us confront the bald fact that we are all just a series of meat hearts ourselves. It is here that Broder shows her generosity as a poet, because she makes us a new world in these poems where we go beyond meat—a world where Broder tells us, “Somewhere I stopped looking for magic.” I guess she found all she needed; this book is full of magic.

–Dorothea Lasky, author of Thunderbird

The speaker in Meat Heart is either an old-world witch or a contemporary warlock. That is to say, this speaker-being gallops through time making thrilling observations. There is a focus on meat, blood and food. The poems tear through the reader with a reassuring giggle, yet remain ominous. Broder writes, “I find a thighbone in his mattress / and think of friends gone missing.” She also writers “G-d loves my hair,” so we are reminded not to be overly frightened. To read Meat Heart is to consume, perish, murder, glitter, and prophesize. To say that Broder is fearless is not saying enough.

–Natalie Lyalin, author of Pink and Hot Pink Habitat

Somehow I ended up on an email list between five middle-age women who live in Georgia and I am a voyeur to their holiday plans and recipes. At first I was like For the love of god get me off this email list. They tried. They tried again. Still the emails come. They come and come and come and come and come.

I suppose this is what the universe wants for me. This might even be what I want for me. I do feel very part-of. It’s a slice of another side, it’s words, and it’s so very Duggar-recipe (say tater tot casserole child)!

Here is what the girls are bringing to their xmas celebration. How is Brianna only bringing a cheese ball? How does she get away with that? I might ask.

Lori
Dog Food Dip (what is this?)
Cookies
Prosciutto and Feta Pinwheels
Sweet Tea & Lemonade
Puppy Chow (wtf?)
One more hot hors d’hoeuvre

Alyssa
Veggies & Dip
Apache Bread
Relish Tray
Sweet Goodies
Cocktail Weenies
Cheese and Crackers

Brianna
Cheese Ball

Rhonda
Twice Baked Potatoes
Finger Sandwiches
Bacon Roll ups (bacon fucking roll-ups!)
Chocolate Pound Cake
Punch

Here are some of the girls’ recipes. If I was smart I’d pull some Julie and Julia shit and try to cook one a day for a year and almost get divorced and write a memoir about it.

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.