I had lunch in Brooklyn (at Linger, on Atlantic Avenue) yesterday with my life-long friend Deborah Pintonelli:
... extraordinary poet and fiction writer, all-around beautiful person. Debbie and I went to Columbia College, in Chicago, and studied with poet Paul Hoover and fiction writer Randy Albers -- two of the world's best writing teachers (and all-around beautiful people). Here is a poem from Debbie's premier poetry collection, Meat and Memory (Erie Street Press):
The Themes of Passion
Channel-wet.
The only blue eye
For miles.
Neoromantic. Stripsearch.
Surrender, trellis.
Forsaken Heathcliff,
Bandaged tale.
The "U" in uterus.
The angst in Ingenue.
Running a cold coal poker
Through something sorry.
Or a tongue into a warm ear.
This is called
"To gain ingress," and
Can be compared to
An insufficient lunch hour
Or a bubble bath.
The hands of fate
So warts, so Wagner.
Cooking plenty, the warm rum
Of mother, syllabus, acupuncture.
To be keen, to
Juggle windows, sit
In parks all day,
Vacation without guilt.
To sprawl plump down
Into a diary of clean bones.
Andalusia. Thick cart.
The crate with your
Surprise in it.
Slate, saliva,
The stucco husk.
The numbheadedness
Of device, egress,
The Nice Word that
Ends this.
* * *
Debbie's forthcoming fiction collection, Some Heart, from Autonomedia, will be an absolute delight if you're a poet (and if you're not, too): imagine a chance meeting between Emily Dickinson and Kathy Acker on a sidewalk filled with hopscotch, the chalk running into a rainbow after a sudden tornado.
