25/30: Conversations With My Classmate-Professor Over Lunch in Cardiff

Of all the places, high street, of all the places on high street, a faux-mexican

chain with bad spellings and valleys accents. Here again for all the unpacking
at the logical end of the course we took together.
find ourselves comparing notes eight years from the day he said

so you’re also an American, and showed me the best seat

in the mini-cafe.

The years they have been kind?

Strange? About the same?

His kids are people now, big

laughs and so many transgressive

authors, Naked Lunch Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch and how the students

need

to be shaken

and twisted

and broken

you just keep writing and throwing it

out and keep writing and throwing it

out to the high street, he gestures,

something for the people, these

people they just go about their little

lives.

At some point in our thirties we just start looking the same

for a long time. We met when he was a year younger

than I am now, he’s lost a little weight, but aging only

shows in family pictures.

So many beat authors  and  pages full

of violence, his students complain, especially

the women, but people need to know

life’s not all gardens and shopping

and roses. he references Thoreau

and Ginsberg and Lydia so and so

and says something about guts

on the page. GUTS.

To break up the bland, pleasant

horror of domesticity.

What are we doing

here on the high street,

if we’re not picking  up tail

or telling rough truths?

He’s married. I’m not. He was married when we met.
I wasn’t. The Cardiff we meet in and the Cardiff

he lives in are different places even so.

The new book is meant to be

destroyed, because art is temporal.

I get a copy for free. He has to give

some of his students credit, they call him

on his shit. He’s got shit, like I’ve got shit

like they’ve got shit, but these

are his classes and

I learn more, here on high street

about Cardiff Uni Politics

than will

hopefully ever be useful.

Always used to joke to me to not get married, fuck around as

long as possible. Struck me as sad, and honest. A third weak

beer in and I remember three years ago, he sent a few links

for professor jobs in Cardiff, then one in Bellingham that

he’d thought about.

But you can’t uproot family. You, you could go anywhere.

He pulls a page out of his book and wraps his tip in it

things are going pretty well, he re-iterates, life is what it

is, just kicking against the long going

and I take another look down high street

contemplating curriculums for those who only

wish

their desperation could be

quiet.

Body Party . . .

can now be found online at the current issue of beat the dust.
Thanks to David Oprava for the nomination.

Other news, Saturday was the Your Hands Your Mouth release party for issues 8 and 9. We had ten people reading in the living room. TEN. And hey, it went well. Readers (from last to first): Robert Lashley, Greg Bem, Jessica Lohafer, Jay Steingold, Chris Gusta (break!) Cate McGehee, Ryan Johnson, Caren Scott, Rainey Warren and Jake Tucker.


Phew.

Welsh hospitality

Last night was the launch of Miscellaneous at GwDiHw (pron. goody-hoo! with the exclamation points.) in Cardiff. Organised by Gemma j. Howell, who was on the course I trucked to Wales for, but in the year before me. Room was packed out; the place reminded me of Swansea's sadly-now-defunct Siro's but all on one level. The night started with an agile-fingered piano player and ran the gamut from songwriters to poetry to instrumental jams to standup comedy.

Including a guy who started by reading from a copy of "mein kampf"-- the lyrics to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Which ruled, as he then "taught" us how to be comdedians in a bad german accent ('zis is vat you call juxshtoposhitional comedy).

I did "zombies and paint thinner" and "tall drink of water" and went over like a brick through a window, in a positive way. That's positive, right? Yeah. Nia did "harbour bell," which I think is becoming a signature. Train ride over we compared notes on poems, what Gets Published by the Magazines That Have Rejected Us.

I think I'll try Poetry Wales again-- apparently that's what handwritten rejection letters mean.

Al, Jo and Margot came and Doprav was in full effect, holding up the poetry end of the first section with his food-as-sex-as-food piece. Met a few 'diff poets who may now be coming down to the Crunch. Excellent.

afters it all I crashed with a young man named Tudor (originally from Aberystwyth via Kuwait) and stayed up late talking national identities, world history and film with his roommate Neil. Tudor made a fish pie (Neil made the required joke) and eventually, as we all sat in the living room smoking spliffs (them enthusiastically, myself polite/clumsily) T decided it was time he Played Some Songs on the Cello.

I passed out around 4, woke up around 8 and after a bit of getting lost, found the train station and rolled back to Swansea. Before requisite showers and day-offness, I'll probably do some letter-writing, or at least think about it.

And. . .
www.nataliedee.com

Feel the Buzz (Cardiff Edition)

“Its a great place to be young,”

He waves his arm; there is construction everywhere,
buildings practically popping out of the ground like
multiple erections or moles granted courage.

The world’s oldest record store in Europe’s youngest
capital. A series of posters for gigs I’d never miss in
my own city.

Whenever I’ve got a Cardiff trip planned, I prepare
an excuse to wield against my Swansea friends’
how-could-you stares—The Other Woman, the Greener Grass, the
place their old best friend never calls from.

“you should really consider moving here. There’s a
scene you could plug into. Gigs every night.”

A Los Campesinos flyer finds itself involuntarily into
my pocket. I shuffle in and out the honeycomb of
arcades, buzzed off coffee.

But the buzz doesn’t last, out the other side is the
monstrous descent of mall-progress, named after
a saint, no-less, glass and metal rippling shower
curtain luminescence,

Looming hideous over the few places I’ve come to know,
a City so desperate to assert itself as such it swallows and
is swallowed by the things that kill it,

You could really plug in here, feel the electricity
like a lightbulb, in a row of lightbulbs, flickering
and waiting for the bin.

_________________________________________
okay, it needs work. but now I've got the Bellingham Edition, Cardiff Edition and Swansea Edition. The skeleton of my chapbook is complete and waiting to be filled in.