When I started writing these letters they were updates from the front lines of writing and publishing. Now my hair is longer and the word “dispatch” no longer seems to fit the jambalaya of poetry and general weirdness they’ve become. So on this night of the supermoon, we’re dropping it. It’s As such, it feels appropriate to update you on the new novel. I’m on the last chapter of the rewrite. Even with this final rib in place the ship’s nowhere near seaworthy. There are still holes to plug and water to bucket out and the usual termites of time and changing tastes, but maybe we’ll see a trial voyage in a shallow creek, soon.
I moved into my August sublet and saw Ai Weiwei at the Brooklyn Museum, of which now I am a member. I’ve been going on walks, writing poems, getting parking tickets for blocking poorly demarcated sidewalk pedestrian ramps. I sometimes wake up thinking it’s the afternoon but it’s only 9am. The long days are uncomfortable but not all that unpleasant. I’ve been thinking a lot about childhood. The soup is thick, and I’m trying not to misplace the solitude I’d found last week in the woods.
Today I make a moratorium
On things I’d planned to say
And having to meet a stranger on
A train or elevator after staring
At rebar in a white room
What’s the shame in taking two naps
Or binge watching Adventure Time I ask you
For there is an island on a bench
Next to a fountain in Grand Army Plaza
There is a spider spinning its web
On the Rodins in the Brooklyn Museum
There are mountains on the steps of BAM
That take twelve years and two and a half
Hours to climb and at the top
Laughter
I retreat into the essential place
On tree-lined Eastern Parkway
Where I will live
Inside
Out