FYI

Please check out my new website:

http://eduardocorral.com

Bits

Still in Arizona.
*
Had a nice Xmas with my family.
*
I'm blogging using a blogger app. I hope it works!
*
My favorite gift? The moon.
*
I will be returning to NYC later than I planned.
*

RIP Jake Adam York

Vigil

The bike, the handlebars, the fork,
spoked wheels still spinning off sun,

still letting go his weight as he
lay in the grass along Docena Road

just hours after the bomb went off
under the church steps downtown,

four girls dead, though they hadn't heard,
Virgil with a bullet in his heart, Virgil Ware

who wanted a bike for a paper-route
who perched on his brother's handlebars

and caught the white boys' bullet
but never got a bike or a headstone

or a 14th birthday, Virgil and his brother
and the bike in the grass off Docena Road.

The handlebars, fork, and iron diamond
frame that held them both, warming

in the Alabama sun. Stars of paint and chrome
that rained all over north Birmingham,

up and down the Docena-Sandusky road,
nesting like crickets in the weeds.

And the seat, wearing at the edges,
the cushion opening like a cattail

to the wind. But the frame, still holding
handed down and down and down

till bright as a canna. Then laid
with its brothers in a tangle in the sun.

Then gathering heat and darkening.
Then weeds insinuating the fork,

the sprocket, the pedal, each iron artery,
working back toward the light.

Let their flowers open from the mouths
of the handlebars and the seat-post.

Let them be gathered from the frame
and the frame raised up. Let it be

hot to the touch. Let its rust burn
into the finest creases of the hand

and the warp of the shirtsleeve and the pants
and worked into the temples' sweat.

Then let it descend into the furnace like a hand
that opens all its rivers, each tribute,

each channel, each buried town.
Let it gather this heat, this fire, hold it all.

Let the crucible door open like a mouth
and speak its bloom of light, molten and new.

Let me stand in its halo. Let me stand
as it pours out its stream of suns.

Let me gather and hold it like a brother.
And let it burn.

Jake Adam York

bits

Carmen Calatayud: "...writing is a communion and communication with my ancestors, and the ancestors of the land where I live and have lived. This communion comes through at times when I’m alone writing. I use meditation, yoga, poetry and brainstorming with words that appeal to me to help me connect with my own spirit and ancestral spirits as I write."
*
Tomorrow I leave for Arizona. I can't wait. I miss the desert. I miss my family.
*
Ron Slate: Eighteen Poets Recommend New & Recent Collections
*
Two words that terrify me: Xmas shopping.
*
The new installment of Boxcar Poetry Review is up! Please check it out.
*
Writing, revising: I know one song. One song. I know. One.
*
Shara Lessley on Paula Bohince: "Bohince's poems are so familiar in their emotional register that as I pour over her lines, I almost feel as though I'd written them myself. It's quite eerie—in the most wonderful way. The first time I sat with "Everywhere I Went That Spring, I Was Alone," "Owl in Retrograde," and "Silverfish," I audibly gasped. Time and again, I am humbled by Bohince's powerful subtly, her gift for mining the natural world in such quiet, yet transformative ways."
*
I miss saguaros.

Catching up bits

*
I've been a bad blogger. A terrible blogger. But I'm glad other poets are still blogging. Luke, Mary, Kelli, January...
*
This fall has been a busy one for me. I gave over twenty readings across the country. Many thanks to all the people who invited me and to the wonderful students who read my work, who asked amazing questions.
*
I still live in NYC. I'm still loving it.
*
I miss blogging. I hope I still have some readers.
*
Butler University, thank you.
American University, thank you.
Western Kentucky University, thank you.
University of Wisconsin–Platteville, thank you.
Trinity College, thank you.
Rutgers-Newark University, thank you.
*
I will be teaching at Columbia University this upcoming spring. I will be teaching a graduate-level poetry workshop.
*
I'm blessed and lucky.
*

Joy

I've been awarded an NEA Fellowship in Poetry. Many congrats to the other NEA fellows. It's an honor to share this moment with them.

The NEA fellowship will allow me to travel this summer and to continue work on my second collection of poems.

Thank you, NEA.
Thank you, NEA.
Thank you, NEA.
Thank you, NEA.
Thank you, NEA.