i am going to write a blog now

"i read about frank stanford on i think blake’s blog.
some girl i liked gave me in watermelon sugar to read.
i learned about bukowski from reading about tom waits
i learned about tom waits because my dad hates the ramones and came into my room one day and took the cd out and put in mule variations and told me to “grow the fuck up” "

i learned about amy hempel from a chuck palahniuck book the nonfiction one and after that i never read chuck palahniuck again because i thought his sentences were great and then i realized every sentence he ever wrote he got from the story in reasons to live about the girl that keeps moving.

i learned about online literature through bear parade. i learned about bear parade by googling michael earl craig because i'd just read can you relax in my house four times in a row and was pissed off there weren't more poems in it.

i read michael earl craig because this girl gave it to me. she also gave me actual air.

i read james tate because he blurbed both of those books.

i read catch 22 because my dad made me

i read the tin drum because my dad made me

i read kavalier and clay because my dad made me

i read infinite jest because my ex girlfriend made me. we'd broken up. i thought he used too many words. she told me it was probably the best thing she'd ever read. it was ten bucks at a borders, so i got it. i called her during the first chapter and told her there were too many fucking words and if the whole fucking book had this many fucking words in it than i was fucking done. she told me to quit being a pussy and read the fucking book. i did. i still do. all the time. it is incredible.

i learned about donald barthelme because my friend joe murphy told me i should read 40 stories and i did because he said 60 stories but 40 seemed like a more reasonable number.
i forget how i learned about grace paley but it wasNO it was in the introduction to Amy Hempel's collected. Rick Moody's introduction.

i read shane jones on pineapple war.

i learned about pineapple war because gene told me he couldn't publish any of the chapbooks i'd sent him but i think at that point i'd sent him like 3 in 6 months or something and he said that they were a good site and new and i should give it a shot and i did. pineapple war is great and everyone should read it.

i learned about ondaatje i don't know. i watched the english patient with the ex girlfriend who made me read infinite jest. i worked at the pennsylvania governor's school for the arts as the sculpture assistant and the fiction teacher gave me a reading list that had the collected works of billy the kid on it. that book is amazing.

i learned about pindeldyboz because the 2003 nonrequired reading had this awesome story called the lost boys in it and that was from i think pindeldyboz.

i started talking to blake because i sent him some stories for lamination colony.

i started talking to shane jones because he face book friended me, out of the blue, and it made my fucking day. let me tell you. it was great.

this is getting less about books and things and more about people. also i got up at 5 to gut fish. so i'm stopping this now. maybe i'll go back and do another i think.

you were in a dream i had last night

“Last night I dreamed that I dug a big hole in the backyard and I sat down inside it. I think it was gonna be a well. Or something. Or an underground cabin. With a periscope. I could have built one of those too. I lay down.
I looked up and there were all these deer upside down and moving. The hole had turned into a well, or something. I was looking down a tunnel. Or not. I don’t know. Sometimes you start to remember something and there were fireflies except they had light bulbs for asses and it wasn’t like they were light bulbs it was that they were.”
“Where was I,” she said.
“You are right here. You were right here. You were I don’t know. I made bricks using my spit. I had to pee very badly but I didn’t. It was cold. I was worried my penis would freeze. Or the pee would freeze and the ice would make its way back up into my body and I would freeze to death from the inside out and the deer would make popsicles out of my insides.”
“You are very strange,” she said.

i am making donations today

we were sailing through the flood on a ship. i don't remember what it looked like. blankets were dropping. they looked heavy. everything seemed very heavy. i could not see you. i could not see anything at some point after the blankets fell. i closed my eyes tightly and rimmed the thick heavy things with lights. something opened up from the inside. i felt swallowed whole. i was swallowed whole. i existed inside something very small and became very small in order to do this. i expanded. everything changed. i woke up covered in sweat. i woke up again and i wasn't. i came down to the kitchen. you bit my head off and gently put it back. it was one of the nicest things you'd ever done. thanks i said. you smiled at me and it was nice.

ooph

sandbag the levies she said i said yes the levies. no i got the levy bit. ok i said. sandbag them. are there even any levies in philadelphia she said. i said there is the delaware. oh she said. yeah i said. i see she said. i know i said. the waffles popped from the toaster. i punched her right in the mouth. in my head. i thought about it. i seriously thought about it. i've never done it before. she looked at me funny. i could tell she knew i was repeating myself. i winced a little. oh come on she said. i said my tooth hurts. i thought about the last time i swept the kitchen, and decided against it.

one bourbon in a glass please thanks

i came home from work and i broke every bone in her body and set it on fire. i used the bones that didn’t burn, there were a bunch of them, and i made a chair that i used to sit in and rock back and forth while reading a very good book. at first i was not convinced i would miss her, and later i gave it serious consideration. a bird flew into the window. although i was sure that things around me were imbued with meaning in ways i could not understand, i set the bird on fire. it helped me to ignore it. i have decided to build a ship out of her bones and use it to sail away when the floods come.