text:
Back to Part 2 Local Plan
Following a request from Brinsley Parish Council the Borough Council consulted upon a potential alternative development site off Cordy Lane in Brinsley (Option 2).
Option 2 is an alternative to the site recommended to the Jobs and Economy Committee on the 26 January 2017 (.pdf) (14.1MB) (Opens in a New Window) (Opens in a New Window) land off Church Lane (Option 1).
Brinsley will need to accommodate 110 dwellings and Broxtowe Borough Council invited views on which site should be allocated for this development. Further information can be found;
Consultation Document (.pdf) (703KB) (Opens in a New Window) (Opens in a New Window)
Letter from Brinsley Parish Council (.pdf) (619KB) (Opens in a New Window) (Opens in a New Window)
Extract from 2010 Tribal Greater Nottingham Sustainable Locations for Growth Report (.pdf) (70.8KB) (Opens in a New Window) (Opens in a New Window)
Sustainability Appraisal (.pdf) (2.20MB) (Opens in a New Window) (Opens in a New Window)
Green Belt Review (.pdf) (14.7MB) (Opens in a New Window) (Opens in a New Window)
The consultation ran from Monday 13 February to 5.00pm Friday 24 March 2017.
The consultation is now closed.
policy@broxtowe.gov.uk


Many veterans use their VA home loan benefits to purchase a home, but VA loan options also include the ability to apply for a VA construction loan, to have a house built from the ground up. The VA construction loan option is an important one for those who would rather not purchase an existing construction home. One of the acceptable uses of VA loans is that they can be used to build a home on a piece of land. Qualified military borrowers can use VA entitlement toward a new construction mortgage.
What Is The VA Construction Loan?
VA construction loans allow the borrower to borrow money for both the mortgage phase of the loan and the construction phase where the house is built from the foundation up.
There are "two close" construction loans, which feature a loan application for both phases, two closing dates, etc. These loans can be more complex because of the two closing dates, but this type of construction loan has been typical in decades past.
Another type of VA construction loan, the VA One-Time Close mortgage, has a single application and closing date, which avoids requiring the borrower to credit-qualify twice.
One time close mortgages feature a single closing date and the borrower will be required to get builder permits and other required paperwork approved for the construction phase as a condition of final loan approval.
What Can I Build With A VA Construction Loan?
Lender standards are extremely important for this type of VA home loan. Not all lenders will issue loans for all property types, and construction loans are no exception. Some lenders won't approve VA construction loans for mobile homes, modular homes, or manufactured housing.
These lenders may ONLY approve "stick-built" homes, which is the definition of a typical house built from the ground up.
Some VA lenders may not approve VA construction loans for multi-unit properties, but others might. You will need to discuss your plans for the home with the loan officer to see what may be possible.
Who Can Build My Home With A VA Construction Loan?
VA loan rules state that the source of the construction work must be a VA-approved builder registered in the VA system. Borrowers should ask their loan officers about any additional restrictions or requirements that may apply in that housing market or that financial institution. Borrowers may or may not be permitted to participate in the construction process, but you will need to see whether lender standards permit it.
Is Escrow Required With A VA Construction Loan?
VA loan rules require "formal escrows" when dealing with a construction loan. State law and lender standards may also apply.
The Department of Veterans Affairs does not set or regulate interest rates on VA home loans. The borrower and lender will negotiate the rates and it's common to see "ceiling-floor" options where the lender will "float" the interest rate for the duration of the construction phase (or a different length of time depending on the lender and other factors).
Such agreements are generally required to have a maximum limit to the interest rate, plus a "floor" that allows a downward adjustment to the interest rate. Interest rate issues depend greatly on the borrower's credit qualifications.
Borrowers are required to credit qualify for all VA home loans, and those credit qualifications will determine your ability to access the most competitive interest rates.
Are Credit Qualifications Higher With VA Construction Loans?
The simplest answer is, "It depends on the lender." In the past, VA home loan rules in the VA Lenders' Handbook have not specified a minimum FICO score for loan approval, making lender standards in this area quite important.
You will need to know what the lender's FICO score requirements are in general and how the more complex nature of the VA construction loan might affect those requirements.
Do VA Construction Loans Require Payment Of The VA Loan Funding Fee?
Unless a borrower is exempt from paying the VA loan funding fee, payment of the funding fee is required for VA Construction Loans the same as with any other type of home loan.
Borrowers who may be eligible for an exemption from paying the VA loan funding fee (because they receive or are eligible to receive VA compensation for service-connected conditions) should discuss this with a loan officer.
If you have not yet been officially declared exempt from the VA loan funding fee at closing time, you may be required to pay the funding fee and later apply for a refund of the fee once your exempt status is made official.
When Do My Mortgage Payments Begin On A VA Construction Mortgage?
VA loan rules state that payments are not due on VA construction loans until the work is completed. The initial payment could be delayed as long as one year, but the loan must be paid back within the "remaining term". If there are 29 years left on the mortgage when payments begin, the loan must be adjusted to be fully paid off within that time frame.
Depending on the lender, that may require a balloon payment or the lender may be interested in adjusting the monthly mortgage payment amount to avoid a balloon payment at the end of the loan term. You will need to discuss this with your lender as VA loan rules, state law, and lender requirements will all be a factor in this area.
Are Land Acquisition Costs Able To Be Included In The Loan Amount?
Documentation is required for any/all of the above.
The VA requires a licensed, insured builder that is willing to submit documentation to become an approved builder. Owner/builders are not allowed.
The borrower and builder must submit a complete set of plans and specs at application.
The builder is responsible for construction closing costs but these costs can be incorporated into the builder/borrower agreement.
The process takes about 45 – 60 days.
VA construction loans require that the loan is closed before construction begins.
Who Can Issue A VA Construction Loan?
Any VA-approved participating home loan lender can issue a VA construction loan. As with all VA mortgages, VA loan rules are not the only regulations which must be followed. State law, lender standards, building codes, and other requirements all may apply. Not all VA lenders offer all VA loan products.


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text:
**P ITT POETRY SERIES**

**E D OCHESTER, EDITOR**

# THE SWITCHING/YARD

**JAN BEATTY**

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PRESS
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260

Copyright © 2013, Jan Beatty

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6241-0

ISBN 10: 0-8229-6241-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-7870-1 (ebook)
/ for Don

## CONTENTS

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Visitation at Gogama
  7. / California Corridor
  8. California Corridor
  9. My Mother Was a Dress
  10. |Revenant|
  11. We Cover Our Heads Like Deer
  12. Sister as Moving Object
  13. Outside the Carnegie Library, Oakland
  14. Three Faces and All These Fallen Gods
  15. =
  16. Delicious
  17. White Girl in a Record Store
  18. American Revolver
  19. Top-10 List
  20. Youngest Known Savior
  21. || adventures of birthmother || [mary tyler moore]
  22. Reading Wanda Coleman on the California Zephyr
  23. / / THE SWITCHING/YARD
  24. The Switching/Yard
  25. The Hit Man
  26. jimi dream
  27. Driving While Wet
  28. Her Steerage
  29. Memoir w/warriors
  30. In the Staging Area
  31. = =
  32. Ghostdaddys
  33. Switching
  34. Dear American Poetry
  35. Stein: Letter to a Young Rilke
  36. The Dealer in the Natural World
  37. Body Snatchers
  38. / / / APPROACHING DENVER / UNION STATION
  39. Approaching Denver/Union Station
  40. || adventures of birthmother || [texas chainsaw massacre]
  41. Sticking it to the Man
  42. Shrink
  43. Company Car
  44. Monument to the War Dead
  45. Blind
  46. = = =
  47. Drinking the Lizard King
  48. Crosschecking
  49. Why I Don't Fuck Intellectuals
  50. Lovely
  51. On Leaving the 5th Funeral in 15 Weeks
  52. In Waking: Summer
  53. dear fresno
  54. Notes on a Nevada Flood
  55. Notes
  56. Acknowledgments

Visitation at Gogama

**/ CALIFORNIA CORRIDOR**

California Corridor

My Mother Was a Dress

|Revenant|

We Cover Our Heads Like Deer

Sister as Moving Object

Outside the Carnegie Library, Oakland

Three Faces and All These Fallen Gods

**=**

Delicious

White Girl in a Record Store

American Revolver

Top-10 List

Youngest Known Savior

|| adventures of birthmother || [ _mary tyler moore_ ]

Reading Wanda Coleman on the California Zephyr

**/ / THE SWITCHING/YARD**

The Switching/Yard

The Hit Man

jimi dream

Driving While Wet

Her Steerage

Memoir w/warriors

In the Staging Area

**= =**

Ghostdaddys

Switching

Dear American Poetry

Stein: Letter to a Young Rilke

The Dealer in the Natural World

Body Snatchers

**/ / / APPROACHING DENVER / UNION STATION**

Approaching Denver/Union Station

|| adventures of birthmother || [ _texas chainsaw massacre_ ]

Sticking It to the Man

Shrink

Company Car

Monument to the War Dead

Blind

**= = =**

Drinking the Lizard King

Crosschecking

Why I Don't Fuck Intellectuals

Lovely

On Leaving the 5th Funeral in 15 Weeks

In Waking: Summer

dear fresno

Notes on a Nevada Flood

_Notes_

_Acknowledgments_

  1. i
  2. ii
  3. iii
  4. iv
  5. v
  6. vi
  7. vii
  8. viii
  9. ix
  10. x
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  1. Cover Page
  2. Begin Reading
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Contents
  5. Notes
  6. Acknowledgments

## VISITATION AT GOGAMA

No shirt, was drying his long hair

with a towel and staring at the train,

he looked about 30.

I saw my birth father young and alive,

he stepped out of a brown house with a white

sign on the side: WILD BILL (his nickname)

in big block letters. I saw him the way he was

before he made me—

beautiful and astonishing in his maleness.

I tell you this is my family tree—no

noble phrases, no graveyards on the hill,

just visitations. Now pieces of discarded track,

explosion of purple wildflowers along the side,

solid wall of rock 5 ft from the train,

then a river/bridge/floating leaves

that look like giant lily pads—is that possible?

We're approaching the town of Gogama,

Ontario—small railroad town erased

by the diesel engine. There's a bar called

"Restaurant/Tavern" and a meat market

called "Meat Market" and a motel called

"Motel"—no other names.

In this place of no-naming or maybe

first-naming, I decide I'll call myself "bastard"—

it's plain and accurate, you can count on it.

We approach a signal, a woman in a

black tank top with killer arms slouches

in a grey Buick Century at the crossing

in a modified gangster lean. I decide

I love her, call her free.

## CALIFORNIA CORRIDOR /

_...I am all of them, they are all of me;_

_they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee_.

—ETHERIDGE KNIGHT

## CALIFORNIA CORRIDOR

On the San Joaquin Line

between Modesto & Merced,

past the arroyos, past the fruit trees

in rows, rows—hands of the farm workers/

beauty always with blood behind it,

nothing free. The holding tank

& the drainage ditch, the cast-off trucks

of the workers, woman & child wait

for the angels of bread to swoop down

& bring the night with them, covering

her & her baby, feeding them, saying

_sleep, sleep_. This day, California is a wide,

wide lover—sweet & slightly off-key

in its song. Wacky & loose, the train rumbles

through Richmond, Martinez, ocean

on the left, gang tags on the right beside

the paper mills, refineries,

the brown, brown hills—

then explosion of jacaranda (red flower!)

more mounds of brown, beautiful

red, a young couple playing cards

across the aisle: does she know the way

he looks at her is what people spend lives

looking for?

They're laughing/curling into

each other—he in his little skid hat/she's in a

striped tee—this kind of desire the most

radiant—from the body outward—

No way to be in CA & not feel _frontier_ —

so many suffering drought/poverty/

only the hills outlast us—

How to have body/space/land of the mind/

knowing the ravaged?

Be awake in it,

one rail tie at a time.

I want to be in the open—

Out here, the land grows wild hair on the side

of the tracks the way a dead man grows his—

dry, stickly—so stray—going to a place no one

knows. Mountains are the only salvation—

windmills on the left, "Golden West" train

on the right, truck junkyard:

_You left your soul in LA_ , the guy across

the aisle says to his friend.

Then why does he look so alive?

_I was here, I was loved. Were you?_

We go through Pittsburg, CA—factories shut

down here, too—where I met Wild Bill.

Blue blue cerulean next to brown dead hills—

otherworldly with the windmills—

standing water, huge pallets for transport &

we are riding through a feeling—suspension—

Nothing, nothing can be done right now/

we are free.

Then all aboard in Antioch:

a skate punk kickflips his board

& sits down, hoodie w/skull & hat backwards,

I love him for his pose, brilliantly

indestructible.

## MY MOTHER WAS A DRESS

For years I was wearing her,

she was cotton, her neck a blue V

for her blue vagina that birthed 6 babies.

She had a vanilla string around

her waist even though she was hooker-red

at heart, like me.

I wore her for two years, along with

a sister dress of deep cherry.

When I went to meet her the first time

at Catholic Social Services, I wore the cherry

and she wore the blue vagina.

We thought that genetics had made us

go to Joseph P. Hornes to buy the V,

but decided we both lived

near the bloodless dept. store.

After that, I took her off,

stopped wearing her,

didn't want her touching

my body anymore.

I prefer to think it's all animal—

the way the V opens my neck to predators,

the way she scissored her legs open

to my father's cock.

The way the dress hugs my hips

then falls,

just like she said she hugged me once—

before falling away, switching

me out for sale.

## |REVENANT|

Now what is holy?

Nothing, same as before.

Now it's:

/body of sturdy days; body of spasms, scrawny, familiar

body of fair play, limitations and reminders; aching

that interferes/shifting fjords and fissures;

body of arousal and the collapsing bridge:

shadow of the architecture that was my life.

I loved you and you served me: this is the prayer of the dying:

_Dear days: wash over me in a breeze—be around me—I'm walking through_

_you instead of grabbing_ —

None of this is remotely believable.

You know—the house floats away,

but the light's still on.

I'm looking for that false sense of security, but all I see:

there is a shape there is a long road

_the mouth is saying: bluebird_

_quick look gone_

## WE COVER OUR HEADS LIKE DEER

_Platte River Whooping Crane Trust_ ,

_James L. Grahl Research Center, Nebraska_

One poet of mixed Wendat/Huron/Metis/

Tsalagi/Creek/French Canadian/Portuguese/

Irish/Scot/English ancestry, born in Texas,

came of age in North Carolina,

Canada, and on the Great Plains.

Another born and raised on the

Fort Mohave Indian Reservation in Needles,

California, lives in Surprise, Arizona.

Me—American/Canadian/Polish/German/

Irish and unknown, born in Pittsburgh.

We're covering our heads with blankets,

walking to the cranes.

Allison says: _You need to be quiet_ ,

_put this blanket over your head and_

_walk like a deer_.

I look at her sideways, not knowing what

that means. I look at Natalie, who smiles

and covers her head.

They start walking toward the blind,

and I fall in behind, bending over a bit,

making myself smaller and walking

a straight line as they seem to be.

Natalie says, _Jan, look at the muskrat_

_by the side pool_.

I look, but see only grasses by the water.

Allison says: _See the guard birds_ —

_they're coming back to alert and gather_.

I see thousands of sandhill cranes on the Platte,

feel the air full of their arriving, can't find

the guard birds. I hear nothing, see nothing

but what seems to be right in front of me.

I have to cough, wonder if that

will disturb the birds?

Allison says: _Just cough from deep_

_in your diaphragm, imagine you are a large bird_.

## SISTER AS MOVING OBJECT

my sister is moving in me again

with her long arms and legs

moving to tell me she's still here

inside my body along with fireballs

free-roaming breath some days she's a tanker truck

magnetic gleaming down my highways

some days an ocean liner splitting

the dark waters today my sister's particular beauty

rocks the house to 1965 wearing pink-pink-

caked-on lipstick tight pants teased-up-

Ann-Margaret hair could've been anyone's

sister and was adopted from another place

she raised me up taught me the necessary things:

how to mix water with bourbon in the picture-frame bar

how to mix the real and the unreal and make it glisten

sea of submerged heartache great blanket of sea:

_seamount sweptback from the guyot to the springboard_

_sluice railbed heart of copper field_

_nightshade_ when she hid her arsonist boyfriend

in the basement closet (when the cops came looking for him)

she taught me the power of a lie: _no, I haven't seen him_

_no, not since yesterday_ she taught me to be visible then follow

the circle down: _ball bearings axehandles_

_fields of snakes_ hot spur of escape when she ran downstairs

to tip him off: _now! through the backyards_

_they won't look there_ she gave and gave early lessons in desire

her and her dark-haired muscle boy on the rock

behind the shopping center me the lookout air thick

with everything coming his thin teeshirt i watched their mouths:

|torrential| everything i wanted moving through them

today I name the lasting roads: _artery toll road road of disguise_

she taught me imprisonment not being a rat:

I took to the heat like a dog to an electric fence don't go past

the edge of the yard 2 girls blank from no beginnings in combat

so tall the only way to beat her was to scissor her

between my thick legs and squeeze

tonight the house humming her particular beauty:

lack of compromise she grabbed the nail scissors stabbed me:

_sea of the head thrown back_ she, later dancing to loud music

said: _do it like this, don't listen to what they tell you_

sea we never shared blood sea

## OUTSIDE THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY, OAKLAND

She said he wanted her to

bark like a dog, she needed

20 bucks for the shelter, 8

months pregnant—she wouldn't

do it. _White guy over there_ ,

she said. _Far as I know, I'm_

_a free woman_ , she said, _people_

_don't have to do things like that_

_no more_. I gave her the money,

said I was sorry about people

like him. When my friends & I

met her next week, different

spot/same dog story/different

white guy, they gave money.

Mad at me afterwards:

_Why didn't you tell us?_

_People shouldn't have to_

_do things like that_ , I said—

_besides, at least she's_

_out there working it_.

## THREE FACES AND ALL THESE FALLEN GODS

I'm surrounded by fallen gods in mosaic,

one with his shield battling a tiger and losing,

another with three heads: man/woman/girl rising

from a green vase in a bong-like cloud—just like my childhood—

The third with the god in exile, just him and his blunted sword

watching for the coming redemption (not pictured).

I'm in _Tre Visi_ , 3 blocks from the Manitoba Hall of Fame

and my father's picture. It's all too much, the Canadians

are aesthetes, and I'm sure my birth father will walk in—

I'm reading James Allen Hall's poetry so as not to appear lonely,

but looking pitiful instead. I like the way he transgresses

the ugly with the tender. The brutality reminds me

of an article I read in _Vanity Fair_ where this bank robber

visits his ex and sticks a .44 up her twat and how

I got turned on by that, but could never tell anyone—

who could I tell? How he would move the gun around inside her,

say things like, _Is this too cold? Do you want me, instead?_

I thought—how unusual to find a man who'll do that—

cross a hard line and whisper at the same time,

and the opera playing is Puccini's _Tosca_ ,

the waiters meeting my every need and I am filled

with magical thinking: my father has certainly eaten here,

his DNA here, I am in his seat in Winnipeg with three faces

and all these fallen gods/sinking into the _tre visi_ :

three faces of longing, loss and desire—

wanting him to walk in, say, _I've been looking for you_.

Younger, I spent too many years wishing men

would say something hotter than I could think of—they never did.

Because really, I just want to be relieved of making it all up—

let _them_ run it hard and right for a change.

If they could sell their body blazing with a gun, I'd buy it—

instead I eat my stracciatella and farfalle pretending

a reason to be here—I eat spicy sausage and the wanting

that keeps me in this seat, watching the door,

thinking, _yes, it's too cold—_

_now, turn it a little_.

##
## DELICIOUS

I'm looking for clothes to put my body in. At the family gathering, my sisters-in-law wear sundresses & strappy sandals, which are lovely, & it's sunny out, but the Kenneth Cole men's shirt I got on sale seems out of place, like the way I need to wear a lot of metal that can double as weapons if needed & ever since I cut off all my hair years ago to avoid being mistaken for a woman who wants a man in Dockers, I search websites for men's shoes & shirts to fit, stores for men with elegant small feet, who I imagine to be my cosmic brothers, then one sister-in-law talks about the new baby, the new baby, so I switch to the men's talk about the new Camaro, the new Camaro, & the NFL's jacked-up penalties on hitting, but always swing back to the women, who have a watery way about them I love, who are talking about the zesty seasoning for the bean salad, which is, in fact, delicious.

## WHITE GIRL IN A RECORD STORE

_Ho-tel, Mo-tel, what ya gonna do today (say what)/_

_Gonna get a fly girl, gonna get some spank_

_n' drive off in a def O.J_.

—Sugarhill Gang

I walk into Stedeford's on the North Side

looking for _Rapper's Delight_ 20 years

late, see the _Black Power_ reissue & want

Curtis Mayfield & the speech by Stokely.

The owner yells: _Hey Art, grab #8604, Black Power_

& everybody looks up:

white girl in a record store wants

_diamond in the back/sunroof top—_

the 10-year-old begging his mother for some

Ne-Yo & the drugged-out guy with an

arm cast who's falling into the stacks—

then heads back down to slapping

CDs in their bins.

The owner puts on James Brown: _I'm Black_

_and I'm Proud_ —yells back at me:

_we just got in that Obama song, what's_

_it called, Art?_

A deep voice from the back: _Yes We Can—_

& I want to hide, like he thinks now

Obama's in, I've had my awakening (maybe

he's making a sale) _Art, why don't you_

_grab that one, too_.

[Art, a.k.a. The Funkster,

knows every R&B album, is president

of the George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic fan club]

& inside

not wanting to be that _white/_

that clueless—whatever cool I had is gone/

I slide toward the door/

Art yelling after me: _We got some Tupac shirts_

_on sale out front_ —I leave with the Isley Brothers,

_Fight the Power_.

## AMERICAN REVOLVER

I knew a guy named Red from Concord

who robbed whorehouses for a living.

You couldn't tell just looking at him:

his time in San Quentin, his love

of the stolen .44—he was good in bed,

biceps hard & waxed from years

of prison workout—a real American

centerfire revolver—

When I asked why he did it, he said:

_to see the look in their eyes_.

We took long walks on Stinson Beach,

talked Social Science & World Geography—

what he studied in prison, but his eyes

most electric blue when he talked

about the robberies:

in Richmond, Martinez, Pittsburg,

down Highway 4, when he'd yell:

_Give me all your money!_

& the hard girls in gauzy nighties

& push-up bras squealed with fear,

wooden doors slammed, & half-naked men

did a jittery dance with their socks.

Those nights he'd fuck me standing & yell:

_Give it to me!_ —the whites of his eyes glazed

& gleaming, immersed in a maelstrom of

peril & hot thrill, then he'd run to the waters

within him, to that solitary jubilant lake

of conquest.

## TOP-10 LIST

_Yes, that's the world—full of spears_ ,

_faceplates, iron stars_.

—Diane Glancy, _The West Pole_

When I taught in maximum,

the inmates turned in stories of rape & torture

with hoods, binding, cutting, maiming—

then they would hit on me. I told them

their language didn't hold up on the page.

They were brutal, like Viggo in _Eastern Promises_ ,

like tattooed Sean in _Mystic River_ , like all my

ex-boyfriends. I know the world is full of spears,

faceplates, iron stars. Some days

as bad as Christian Bale in _Terminator Salvation_.

Some days I'm oceanic in my ambivalence/

lost in the big cosmic bath

where grief & ecstasy meet.

My friend Aaron says people are basically bad,

will stick you with a switchblade

at first chance. I say people are good,

because I can't continue any other way.

We argue our list of hot men:

His #1: Daniel Craig/mine: Viggo Mortensen.

Sub-categories: best body/

best underarms/forearms/

best shirtless.

We both love Lenny Kravitz, Sean Penn,

Denzel. Even after all the bad movies,

Aaron still wants to nail Brad Pitt.

My therapist started giving me quotes

from Philip Roth novels, but I couldn't

face those either: too bleak.

Aaron's hot for Anderson Cooper

& Colin Farrell—

while I like Ryan Gosling.

When I look at life straight on,

I'm Pacino in _Scarface_

(the balcony scene with the AK-47)

the bloody header into the pool,

my heart an iron star.

I have my spears: I'm jealous, vain,

I'm Ryan Phillippe in _Cruel Intentions_.

My faceplate:

I'm Joaquin Phoenix (wannabe-rapper/

post-rehab/eccentric & mumbling on Letterman)

I need tinted glasses to even go outside.

## YOUNGEST KNOWN SAVIOR

They talk in that _natural_ way shortcuts like: _got it_

or _second shelf/left side_ and she thinks:

oh my god, they talk alike her cousins

all have long eyelashes [each one the same

black lash, naturally curled] _She feels like she's falling_

_deeper into alone_ She goes into the bedroom

with the pink sleeping thing [baby]

she hates it for how it lies there how it

didn't have to do anything to get those same eyelashes

[white crib, ruffles] _Only a 3 foot drop_ ,

she thinks Later she tells them [trying to approximate

their truncated speech]: _She fell out of the crib_

_and I put her back_ [afterwards, in the bathroom,

she uses her cousin's eyelash curler] How could she

learn their careful walk the way they move their heads

slight/left She is 10 one of the youngest known

saviors it's better now Before today,

it was so tedious: _blood is blood_ and

she was never one of them [that was

before today] before she learned the language

## || ADVENTURES OF BIRTHMOTHER ||

[ _mary tyler moore_ ]

just said _here_

on her way to some jesus, i'm sure

[that always makes it better]

took one look

said _ugly_ said

_not how i imagined_ said—

what

would mary tyler moore do?

& _whoosh_

[threw her hat in the air]

_hello, world!_ & left

[the baby on the porchstep]

## READING WANDA COLEMAN ON THE CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR

Her sweet bebop a backdrop to floating white silos

out the window, hoodoo ghosts on the Osceola stop.

Pass an old car graveyard, then an orchard, dirt road/

black cow/black cow/how do we get around?

So much country, how do we even know where to go?

4:30 AM bathroom break/I peek down the narrow train,

a man's black shoe sticking out of a sleeper, all

the train murders in movies. In the bathroom, the handle

jiggles hard, hard—he's there. I wait/it stops/

look outside, the shoe is gone! I run back to Coleman:

_traveling the backside of the underground/stranded_

_where the cul-de-sac crosses/the dead end_.

Danger/anonymity, each little town's the same

from the train: road/signal/bar/car dealer

and earlier today a man and woman trip out of

the Triangle Bar, she's jerking her elbow from his hand,

they're fighting in Ottumwa on Saturday, 7.18.08

the California Zephyr watching. A woman lost

in the cracks in the big beautiful hole of America.

I'm sending a message to myself and the woman

from the bar—Coleman says _slavery's been dead nigh_

_a century/or more but i carry my chain everywhere_.

We're coming out of nowhere into the next nowhere.

Fog. whistle. banging. trees.

Houses in water up to picture windows,

garages left open, stains show levels 10 feet down,

still nowhere for the water to go after Midwest floods.

The attendant speaks as if from script:

_Ladies and gentlemen:_

_you'll see a lot of standing water_

_on the right side of the train_.

_You'll see that some white pelicans_

_have made this their new home_.

_What used to be farmland is now a lake_...

Sandbags stacked to hold the Mississippi, rail ties litter

tracks like fat sticks—where are the people?

Over the brown gargantuan

Mississippi into Iowa, over the timber trestle,

I think of the dead workers who made this, then look

at the swirling below, so alive.

The woman in the dining car:

_This is America the beautiful_.

_I'm a romantic_ , she says.

Big logs of cars, tankers topped by green and yellow

lights that look like they're sitting on top of them

but really miles off—so many things miles off:

my husband at home with his kindness—

Time is alive and dead: the small red farmhouse,

aluminum silo, the narrow green sign.

Derrick in the distance, poking down

into ground like a crow.

Scaffolds of electrical poles like Darth Vader heads:

outcroppings, outjuttings, as if something couldn't

wait another moment to spring into the above-ground world.

Why is there only 1 tree, then 1 tree?

So much about edges out here—fenceline,

trackline, berm, the footpath by the berm,

fieldlines with road in-between. demarcation.

_It names us_.

Past/present, where we walk, where grass meets dirt/

where we end up.

A man is getting his mail, cornfields cornfields,

islands of trees mid-field, house in the distance.

Retired railcars in the town of Creston with a plaque.

Iowa needs some Wanda Coleman, someone who's

not afraid to say it hard. Soon the hills mound up

as we get closer to the Continental Divide—still

three hundred miles away, but the ground starting to shape differently.

So much under us unsaid.

This train makes me think of my birth father,

the smooth glide through nowhere,

alive in Boston, how I walk around in his nothingness.

How I look like him but don't know him.

I've always loved the foothills and the low brush—

Out the window, the ground sloping and rising,

I don't want to miss anything.

Why has he come to me now

on this train in the middle of my life?

I have a picture of his face, but I claim his body, too—

his 3 Stanley Cups, the fight in him that's in me,

I need to walk the ground he walked, I want to see his home—

The feeling of space but something's coming:

a train right next to us whooshing in the other direction

single house with a light on.

## THE SWITCHING/YARD / /

_I have known the plainness of it, yet I come away transfixed_.

—DIANE GLANCY

## THE SWITCHING/YARD

2 giant sleeping cranes, nothing as lonely as

a crane not working: relic with its head bowed

in the brokenness of a highway dream.

Crossbar signal/arm over the road with

red light eyes: we're coming.

Rolling out of Toronto with a derailment in Capreol—

14 cars off the track, but we're headed into it,

I'm riding the dirt line to Winnipeg,

where my birth father is deeper than the Assiniboine and

wider than the Red River Valley, he's

the whole province of Manitoba.

Lines of indigenous pines otherworldly now

because this is my country, _I'm_ the indigenous one,

ghost explorer returning, looking for blood.

Moving again, just crossed the highway

outside of Wahago. 11:30 PM and the sky's

blue-dark with the trees going back to their night souls—

Is anyone else on this train tonight looking for ghosts?

From this 3 × 4 window I see underpass/

underpass/deserted road/so close to hillsides

we are inside the land.

Industrial construction yard, lines and lines of tracks—

The VIA Rail steward:

_If you look here, you'll find the train_ #====

_here's the name of each car_.

Mine is _111 Bliss_.

Riding north of Thunder Bay to Winnipeg,

past the green green of Saskatchewan

to the prairies of Manitoba, nothing

but fields of dirtgrass for miles.

My father's father was here—and in some piece of dirt,

some line of crossing, the wind will whip up

into the Manitoba field-long clouds where

the Red River meets the union hall,

where miners and machinists said, _here_.

Here, where a switch can be made out of a willow,

where a switch can rise from dirt.

If I can stand in the crosscut of bodies that made my father,

that grew him hard into a crosschecking fighter,

I will have found blood.

There is no peace like the road at night,

until the whistle spills its fat long blare—

must be coming up on a town.

Tree branches hit the side of the train, a band

of light coats the trees in the distance in

the secret life of quonset hut/quonset hut/

all this industry and dreaming, people's lives

on these dark patches of land—are they up late

worrying about losing?

Their job, their minds, their families?

We are all so

separate with the same lives.

The train shaking me home to no father I know:

right wing for the Hornets/Maple Leafs/Rangers—

—his steps, my steps.

I can't see him/hear him/touch him

but I can walk the ground, step hard:

_Was there a white frame house?_

_A woman, your mother, washing clothes_

_by the Red River? Are these the overalls_

_touched by your skin? The ground you walked_

_then two bodies slammed together_

_one night in Pittsburgh and I was made_ ,

_and in the making the blood ran?_

_Who made your green piercing eyes_

_that bore through me with aliveness/_

In this ghost land,

lights show up in trees,

a band of light in the sky, a different look

every 20 yards, the change of it all.

House on the hill with 5 lights on, the kind

of house that always has porch lights burning—

there's a steadiness out here that I love,

a regularity I don't know. Sudden rise of land

and a highway tunnel. Sign: _Megalots—160 ft deep_

and city lampposts sprout like alien antennae.

The train stopping now, 3 cars unhitched—

left in the yard for pickup.

Where is that one sweep of wind where

I'll find the switching/yard: this train and that,

those who made you, and, in that distant

but bloody kingdom way—me,

so I can stand and say, _here_.

Here where Polish immigrants set their stake:

where the prairie met the working stiff

and you were born. Shut up in this

compartment, I am the small ghost—

light shines in the window from a signal,

shooting the whole traincar bloody red.

Tomorrow in the open I will be legion—

you will see me bleeding from every pore,

a woman in the switching/yard.

## THE HIT MAN

I'd see him driving around, tanned

in his red truck with young stud helpers,

sometimes in the yards, teeshirt in his back pocket.

His name was Jelly, he came in every night at 6,

freshly shaved & cologned with Polo

after his landscaping gig, stood at the bar,

one foot on the brass rail, one on the floor.

In his 40s but solid: a short, fireplug of a man,

he'd talk trash for hours in his odd,

high-pitched voice & bellow in strangled,

spitted spurts— _narrgghh_!—repeating bits

of dialogue from his friend & drunk girlfriend:

... _and the guy walked like a poodle!_

or... _she said, keep the fuckin money!_

_Did you hear that?—keep the fuckin money!_

Everyone knew he had hurt people:

he was a closer, did what was needed.

But from the side, he was an Italian god,

his bulbous nose red from drinking

& the sun—his graying hair in waves

almost to his shoulders with a close-cut beard.

I'd bring out his food, he'd slip me a $20,

even though the bartender ran the tab—

he'd grab my cheeks & say, _look at that face—_

_whadyu doin in this dump?_ I'd say, _workin—_

& he'd laugh. One night in late July,

the Pitt Panthers playing Marquette—

he had one eye on the corner TV,

but knew everything going on in the bar.

I walked up to him & asked:

_Can you get me a gun?_

He didn't look at me, didn't flinch,

lifted his Chivas on the rocks, said,

_Whatdyu need a fuckin gun for?_

_To kill my boyfriend_ , I said.

He broke character, turned & looked at me,

bore a hole through me, bullet-like,

for a long 5 seconds.

I stared back.

He turned back to the game & laughed loudly.

_No_ , he said quietly.

_Why not?_ I said.

_I ain't givin you a fuckin gun_.

_Why not?_

_Because you'd use it_.

He tilted his head back, shook his hair,

running his fingers through it,

making a ponytail & then letting it loose.

He drank down the Chivas, his left pinky in the air—

perfectly manicured.

I'd had enough name-calling & arm grabbing &

wall punching & other women—

I reached down to find whatever gods I could—

& came up with him:

standing at the bar with his girlfriend Patty

until she couldn't walk from shots.

_There is no one else_ , I thought,

no one who would help me.

That night, in the crashed-out summer of '85,

waiting for his bookie, his connection,

he wasn't free either.

We were brother & sister:

as noble as yours or yours—

## JIMI DREAM

i met jimi hendrix

at royal albert hall

last night

he was jeweled

& spinning

his right-handed strat,

[upside-down-

olympic-white]

saying

_hey jan_ ,

_liked your poem_

_about the dog smoking a joint_ —

_i really liked that one_.

## DRIVING WHILE WET

should I say:

_when I grabbed your cock, I knew_

_it was beautiful_

or:

_you will never disappoint me..._

I'm driving the parkway thinking of what to say

& this is really not safe—

Maybe I'm too obsessively literal for phone sex,

I'll screw it up,

say something I think is hot

& brilliant & then——nothing.

How about:

_your giant cock in my small mouth..._

but when I left that night it was still in his pants,

haven't seen it yet full-on...

was it 100% hard when I shoved

my hand down (he was too slow)

I need more.

(thick head, smooth & all that)

—the 'you will never disappoint me'

is a lie—

...how integrity figures

into phone sex? I'm not sure any-

more about my own integrity, how much

persona/how much real?

I could go with:

_be my whipping boy/let's play house—_

but that's white-bread/douche-bag/

& even if this falls/flat—I need it

to be throbbing/like me right now:

driving around wet on Bates Street,

wet on Forbes,

wild-animal-wet, having-a-wet-dream-while-awake wet,

but my pussy doesn't know the lies of the heart

& the mind, just the sugar pie of the body, & the body's

no crime so

I dial the phone, say:

_I've been driving while wet all day_

## HER STEERAGE

_Remember the Alamo? That was my mother_.

—James Allen Hall

Strangeness in the forsythia bushes,

2 watches on my right arm.

My mother coming at me flaming

in an Indian print dress, my mother

filling the hallway with her dead

body—but now it's fat, doughy,

growing, like a blob.

When she died, I missed her.

I didn't have one good moment with her

in life—not a rustle—not a crackle

of joy. Now, no one to hold

my arms up against in defense.

She taught me brutal precision—

_Hand me a dish for the cookies_.

10 years old, I'd pass a plate, she'd say in disgust:

_Not THAT one, the yellow one_. I'd hand her

a yellow one: _No, not THAT yellow one_.

After she died, I literally started tripping

on cracks in the sidewalk, breaking her back—

breaking back to her, her voice

clear & human: _What are you doing?_

_You have no idea what you're doing_.

_Pay attention_. A week later, I walked

into a plate glass door, suckered it

with my nose. I was doing her job for her:

swerving my car into the waiting ditch.

I heard her say:

_This life you've built is a house of cards_.

_You never were any good_.

The psychics said she was haunting

me with bad intentions. The cure:

black tourmaline & a plea to the

four directions. But her cruelty had

protected me like a blanket of pain:

Oh, how I missed it! Without my enemy,

I had no compass, so deep was her steerage.

## MEMOIR W/WARRIORS

In this place where people

look at paintings:

One made by the tips of cigarettes

dipped in paint, stabbing the canvas:

I see my father the god fucking

a wolf, who is looking back at him while

a riderless horse approaches with medieval

bridle & saddle.

There are two warrior-gods bare-chested—

a page rides up w/raised hand & parchment:

_See the horses with sea dragon faces in_

_blue mosaic, with tails in the shape_

_of a cross_.

_See the Roman heads in stone with_

_long curls and beautiful faces_.

The gods go back to fucking—with stories

to tell the new ones—

not knowing what they made.

## IN THE STAGING AREA

Gender is ½ cat, ½ human laughing at me in a dream,

then a priest in India throws himself to starving tigers.

I always hated the idea of collage,

no fixed reference points, it always seems a thin

film of pretense. [We know what's underneath:

6 stages of bardo—the bardo of this life, the bardo of

meditation, the bardo of dream, etc etc etc]

The mixture of all styles in one painting, why is it better?

Imagine 2 sisters in acrylic & paper cutouts

with the body as switching/yard, everyone

needs a landscape for security & vulnerability.

I'm making my own shrine for all the females beheaded

just for keeping secrets: flowers dripped in plastic

w/lavender. The story is everything. The Buddha says

there are 49 days of trial when you die,

maximum. [On the left wall, childhood & innocence,

in the middle, the adult tumultuous human life,

on the right, the 49 days]

I'm not a fan of all of this structure—call it what it is:

7,000 IEDs with a microprocessor. Give me

the otherworldly, the tomb as egg.

Why do we need the 108 agonies? I do like

the 3 desires: bodily pleasure, to exist, not to exist. They all

have their pluses & minuses, pulses & managers,

but all this numerology can drive you crazy. 6 × 6 = 36, which

is 9, which is...What does hair signify?

In the drawings of the human body, everything is seen:

the body comes out in sickness, death, fear, sorrow—

I tell myself: _don't try to unify the images_ ,

_stay in texture & feeling_. Consider my 6 realms:

hell, animal, hungry ghost, I forget the others. Let's add

half-queer & queer & nearly queer. I'm all collage:

a rip track in a small yard [ **r** epair/ **i** nspect/ **p** aint]

There's no point in trying to pin down the slippage:

we humans are the new chimpanzees,

our DNA one dream removed—

Now the preacher raises the cat above her head,

says: _Do this in memory of me_

[don't let your teeth touch the host]

Last night on Highway 95, I saw a sign:

_Neanderthals R Us_ in red LEDs/

right before the ridge of mountainous breasts.

It was the truest thing I'd seen all day,

I knew what it meant:

_there's a double slipswitch in the overlap_

_& the firebox is ready to blow_.

##
## GHOSTDADDYS

When I was a girl I was a boy

with black boots and holster and

a basketball hoop in the backyard.

My reach was endless, I was

birthed in a meteor shower and

all the stars knew my name.

Ever since, I've been on street corners

with gimcrack men you wouldn't want to know,

making myself a luminary.

I had this piece of paper—took years to get it:

the story before the story changed,

before the government got their hands on it.

I've been told ___________________.

My first father was a millionaire, his

name on my birth certificate/voice

on the phone/his lame-ass answer:

_I didn't come inside her_.

I was the small voice asking/

he was the hammer coming down,

shattering me into shooting stars.

I covered my bedroom ceiling

with planets, prayed for a meteor hit

to bury the house. My second father

was a hockey player who fucked

my mother when she was 20—

I drove to Boston to meet him, armed

with her picture, he didn't

remember her: _I was a professional_

_athlete_ , he said, _there were a lot of women_.

His green eyes burned familiar,

and I thought he was a good man—then

two weeks later, he said no, he didn't

think he could be my father. I decided

I've come from a long line of cowards,

men who can only stand up if they're

fucking/flaccid after that.

Sometimes the earth moves in my dreams

with lies about my past. I was

bent on ruination: drugs for lunch

and dinner—with some dope in between.

My face the face of no/

father, unrecognizable/so why not?

I was the immaculate cum-shot,

I was the wildly surviving thing,

racing after ghostdaddys in dreams:

_Dear father, whoever you are_ ,

_I hope the sex was ravenous_ ,

_with cross/checking, slashing/_

_I hope there were slats of light everywhere_

_to see my star on the other side_.

## SWITCHING

She's the designated hitter,

switched at birth:

she put christ's nails in her hands,

she dropped the baby.

When there was no

birth father, she bought shoes

with steel toes and a big belt buckle.

She saved the baby and became

christ our savior,

she bought the gun.

She wore it like a man/

wore it like a woman,

she said _suck my dick_

and she sucked dick.

She held herself close/tangled

in her own wires and switches:

father of sky, dreams, and night,

she was a slave to it

until she called herself free,

became her own man.

In the steel wheels of her leaving,

she became her own father.

## DEAR AMERICAN POETRY,

I see you're publishing:

straightman/straightman/white white white how

nice.

Are you kidding me?

_Best American Poetry_ , I'm bored to death—is anyone

alive out there?

Your sonnet is impotent,

and I

have a hard-on.

Here's your bloody sonnet:

_cŭnt cúnt/cŭnt cúnt/cŭnt cúnt/cŭnt cúnt/cŭnt cúnt/_

_thĕ née/dlĕ dićk/thĕ née/dlĕ dićk/thĕ née-/_

American poetry, tell your mother

you'll be home late—

if anyone's out there waiting for you to lick them good,

it'll be a long night.

I was once fucked by an intellectual in iambic pentameter:

my hand was better, and more responsive.

your friend,

Jan Beatty

## STEIN: LETTER TO A YOUNG RILKE

My Dear Mr. Rilke: forgive me that I have been so long in writing to you. I am reading

your extended letters, as I sit for days with my back to the view of Paris. My dear Mr.

Rilke, really what I want to say is for god's sake, stop all this laborious earnestness,

really, please, just be your own god but not in the top-hat, white-man way (I know it's a

stretch) but try getting dirty sometime:

or, put it another way:

buttonhole it, terror the industry. the twat of it is missing, godspeed handiwork, the dress needs

to open. Try drag, maybe, or scissors, the long cloth blue heart looks directly into the well.

Lengthen the frammis until sunlight covers the niche, the hole, maybe cut those sideburns of

mourning. Anterior to it all, scrap the goddamn precious. slat, harrier, cunt/then punt.

Less noun noun and more less.

## THE DEALER IN THE NATURAL WORLD

First date we walk Larimer Avenue,

grass blades sticking through crumbling sidewalks,

ground ivy & used needles in the alleyway.

We pass his '76 Trans-Am, firethorn red

with slashed tires, into a nice apt. with black spray-

paint on the walls:

_Jag-off Motherfucker_

_I hope you die a horrible death_

_Oh_ , he says, _that was my ex_.

I'm stupid, no other way to say it—

John's a bartender, very smooth & still

looks good after all the drugs. A few

coked-up nights & I say, _Let's go to a movie_ ,

& he says, _Why? We got all we need here_ ,

_darlin_. His is a paper-thin charm, but

it works on me, & soon it's coke

every night until my nose bleeds, & the 5AM

sun hitting the porch trash is my idea of

the natural world, the grind of the garbage

truck gears the song of it.

So many bodies the next day,

_strewn_ like branches:

we were herd animals snorting together,

territorial so as not to upset the balance of nature

& dry up our source. I come to love

the amber bottle with the mini-spoon attached,

then piles of coke on the table. Garbage cans of

quaaludes bloom on the porch, ripe

for picking. Chocolate mescaline on weekends,

weed all the time. This is our sustenance,

our daily bread. Walking outside into

city-fresh air while people are driving to work

makes me feel cool, & then one New Year's Eve,

he never shows, never calls, & that's

it. After, I waitress my way back

to school & almost clean, hear Frank OD'd

on crank. I see Jimmy on my way to class,

9am, barefoot with no shirt, looking like

he was just dropped here/no context/digging

in his pockets for a map. A year later,

I run into John, he says:

_Yeah, I ran into Miss New York that New Years_

_& went out with her instead, a real_

_beauty queen. What could I do?_

## BODY SNATCHERS

Midway Airport to downtown Chicago—

one rat terrier jumps at me:

a banner of lights strobes the screen

in the back of the cab:

ADOPT ME ADOPT ME

flashing on & off (now dancing with its

spindly little legs) paws slapping

the dark bars of its cage.

I was thinking of my hotel, maybe

a steak dinner, & then the pit bull:

restrained with rawhide,

stares from its pen. Sickly pink pigment

rims the mouth like baby butt skin,

a remarkable Cro-Magnon head, the long

tongue dripping rivers of saliva.

The once-lumbering beagle with oversized

brown eyes plops on its cage-pillow:

ADOPT ME!

Same scam as baby adoptions,

commercials that say:

_Make the right choice_

with pitiful pictures of waiting

orphans (child models)

Cut to body part/

picture of a dog's neck with owner tags hanging:

Yes! You can own something breathing!

Yes, you! Boring, co-dependent you!

Be in charge of a body, your very own

devil child who will jump & play.

Pretend the child is yours & watch it

turn into a bastard, bastard,

cutting your family sheets into strips—

then watch the mongrel attack the dogs

in the lovely cul-de-sac where you live:

_what will you do with all the blood?_

Now cutting your skin into strips,

& all you wanted to do was save

the little lost thing, give her a real

home, & now look at her:

she's fucking everyone in the neighborhood

just to feel alive—

she's hip to your tricks:

you wanted her

grateful—

never wanted her

real.

## APPROACHING DENVER / UNION STATION / / /

_Now I need to take a piece of wood and make it sound like the railroad track_.

—LES PAUL

## APPROACHING DENVER/UNION STATION

mccook, nebraska, white truck on a dirt road,

probably work. light behind the clouds and the train

shifts back/forth, 7 AM in the dining car.

jeanine, the attendant, cracks jokes:

_it ain't easy balancin these plates_ ,

_wanna try?_

one horse eating, pile of dead cars.

read the brochure:

_the staff is well-compensated/_

_i don't believe it_ , i say—to the bird

perched on a stick in the sawgrass.

there's a lot of dying out here:

split tree, possum starved or half-eaten

next to a mother and her calf/

nothing as beautiful as a split rail fence.

the perfect hay bales make me nervous,

but i love the mounds/sexual in their rise,

the train hard on the curve.

3 decades ago i claimed the west as bloodline:

we're both twice-named: the camouflaged

birthright, the father on my certificate a fraud.

falling down barn with that gray weather color—

dead wood. the old green tractor, what could be

unmarked native burial grounds. corporate oil vats/

playground, then cornfield again.

nebraska. nothing happening but flatness/

everything happens behind the door.

i'm at home on the train, its blankness and

anonymity/I'm at home when I'm not at home/

in all the buried stories—

my birthmother who wouldn't meet me/then wouldn't

speak the truth. house, barn, silo, propane.

lone deer in the cornfield. trestle.

nearing the city, SUVs. cattle-

stopping bridges only humans can cross—

the train slows to a glide—no more rocking and

we're moving on a blanket of air—double suspension of

_on the way to_ and smooth—like heaven—

stop for a signal, then lurch on.

now concrete overpasses, now highway lights—

_development_. everything back to the narrowing/

_single-family homes from the 200s_ smash together w/

a brick school in the middle, passing for neighborhood.

everything thickening:

fed ex truck—orange barrels and earth movers—

stubby truckcabs on the way to pick up their load.

i count 265 top-open cars of coal,

El Jardin Restaurant Pawnbank & Liquor Store,

J&B Auto Crusher, approaching Denver/

Union Station. 2nd fed ex, dead/tree, trailer park.

National Western Club and Beef Palace Arena,

Da Hook-Up Bar/down to the underground

caverns of the railyard. church spires of denver city

in the distance, the chain-link fence.

the narrowing of poverty and no meal tonight

goes on and on. kid on a bike, discarded

light signals with the laid-down x,

brand new port-o-johns. condos to the left/

elevated highway to the right, train wheels strain

with the forward and back-up into the station.

noise of metal grating/uneasy fulcrum about to

give, i don't want to switch/

back to the city/don't want to return/

pass the old rio grande ski train with

its red lounge seats. like it's sat there for years,

paint scraped off the side. threading through

the civilized world, my heart back with the split/

rail fence, deer in the cornfield.

## || ADVENTURES OF BIRTHMOTHER ||

[ _texas chainsaw massacre_ ]

just like leatherface in the basement

[mask and chain-saw]

she's two inches from 'baby'

her breath hot and sour mouth

pryed open

[bobbypins in her teeth]

baby prisoner wants to run

but can't even walk yet

cannibal mother: a flea

flies out through the pins

of her mask

[bastard-

chain-saw-massacre]

## STICKING IT TO THE MAN

Lateeka's working, my favorite teller—

she's got wild nail art & fire red/

feather extensions.

In line: young guy in hi-tops w/ipod,

black blazer girl on her lunch hour.

Lateeka & I always talk hair & makeup,

she's in school for accounting.

A guy with 20-inch arms in a Hines Ward jersey/

cut off at the sleeves,

a white-haired woman with

a cane & her daughter

—no suits.

Restaurant guy walks up to the window

with a bagful of receipts—

the blonde teller working the line

leaves her post & exits side-door,

so it's Lateeka & people

roll their eyes & grumble:

_Oh great, now there's only one teller up there_.

Steeler guy shakes his head:

_Jesus Christ, do you believe this?_

Daughter to mother:

_Why don't you sit down?_

Blazer girl turns:

_I'm late for an appointment_.

Steeler guy waves his massive arms wide

like he's going out for a pass:

_Hey, I got an idea—_

_why don't we shut this shit down & open up a bank?_

We turn to see his arms jabbing the air

like he's trying to grab it down—

his neck red with rage.

He barrels out the door & we bust into

laughing, the air full with mutiny:

1 new spot open, we inch forward like

fat cattle, clutching our checks

a little less tightly.

We have won for the day,

we are sticking it to the man.

## SHRINK

_There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from Midtown and how late is it open?_

—Woody Allen

I tell him the unseen world is dragging

me down, sort of like eating a whole rack

of ribs at one sitting. I hate the heaviness

of getting up in the morning, but I like

biting the bones.

He says: _You want success, but you refuse_

to suck up to the people you hate.

_That's it_ , I say.

He's brilliant, but sometimes it doesn't

matter what he says, just that there's

somebody who can hear

the dark wildness.

_You want to be loved and adored_ ,

he says, _but you feel horrible guilt_

_for wanting it_.

What does he do with what he's seen—

all the hearts splitting, the rantings,

the fright of it?

_Think of antidepressants as supertankers—_

_they can't turn on a dime_ , he says.

I love it when he uses metaphors.

_I see what you're saying_ , I say.

_This is all about social contracts_ , he says.

Sometimes he talks about his life:

_You remind me of my son_ , he says,

_he needs a lot of room_.

_We went looking for colleges for him_

_and I knew he needed to be by the ocean—_

_a city college would just close him in_.

_He needs the air_ ,

_the open sky_.

I want to cry at his tenderness.

I leave the office in love with the raw

body, loving the moving sea, the sweet sadness

of the wrecking ball in all of us.

## COMPANY CAR

To make sure, they took out the back seat,

left a dirty hole for hauling supplies.

My father worked for American Tobacco, when

smoking was glamorous & profits fatter.

We set up little red & white folding chairs

in the back hole of the Ford Fairlane sedan,

1960 black with red vinyl interior, me & my

sister, 7 years before Woodstock, we

rock/n rolled crazy down the street.

I was 10 & didn't know the history

of the company store. Laughing & falling over

/my father's eyes in the rear-view/my

mother scowling, I didn't know the shame of it.

Our screams of stupid joy reminded them

of what we were: working-class, afraid of

being seen riding around, afraid my father

would lose his job. He couldn't take us

to school or church, but he did.

He was the builder of our lives, carving

a way through the lies around us.

Is that why he yelled so much at our silliness?

Where did he put his rage, as he pulled the black

car into the garage & turned the key?

I saw him late one night under the side-house light:

he took it & put it stone by stone in the

driveway wall, heaving & radiant. I saw him

give rage a body, breathe it alive.

## MONUMENT TO THE WAR DEAD

In the middle of brown land, an obelisk:

5,822 names of California's dead

& missing, engraved on 22 black granite panels,

arranged by hometown.

From the wars of both worlds,

the Mexican-American, Korean,

granite tablets in a ring around granite panels,

Vietnam & the Persian Gulf.

On 15th & Capitol, Sacramento,

stone benches face the names:

_What do we pray to now?_

Slabs of granite, scenes of daily

life of the grunts, nurses, the POWs,

grassy area, the rose garden?

Why always an obelisk?

Do we pray to the founding fathers, the

men & women who carved the names?

Where do you go when you leave them,

when you walk away from the bench?

I pray to the fathers, yours & mine—

Seabees in WWII, first men on the beach/

first to reach the dirt. The construction battalion:

they set up the dirt line for the marines,

made the fight possible—& the ones who

came home kept building: tool bench as

altar, the tender place of the implement

& the plan, & maybe their sorrows.

We came to know their late nights there,

the lone bulb in the garage/the hammering/

the _goddammit_ /the silence—

Now here in this Sacramento day,

everything is moving: a '93 battered Honda

with the brakes whining, the body

shimmying at each curve/no fixing

the beatdown/no money for a new car

after each new war/the reconditioned

'73 Impala rounding the corner low

around the circle of the dead, free

of salt from the Eastern snows/jacked-up

with the hydraulics of brilliant release:

all the old spirits/now lowriders/now

the lone arm out the passenger side/

flying free in monument to lovely

bodies gone, & I'm praying it out:

to the benches & names, the roses &

gods spilling out before me, spotless gleam

of the Cutlass Supreme/worn chamois in back

& back to the remembering:

Ford Fairlane & the blood of the manifold,

our fathers who drove them to heavy

days of work, too many nights without

the smell of roses, to the mad god of the caterpillar;

the workhorse & the highloader,

all the old machinery ghosts:

to the 12th truck that owns the road—

now this horizontal energy: brilliant & magical

on its plane of happiness:

go to the next thing—pain there too,

& joy there too & the amazing spirit

of the singular voice—one thing

you can count on—around the corner

another show, with heartbreak

& stunning desire & the absent lover—

your place in the spectacle:

the gathering company.

## BLIND

_Whooping Crane Trust, Grand Isle, Nebraska_

Shut off the car and walk down the mud path.

Tape the camera—no chrome, they'll think it's a gun.

No bright colors, read the rules.

6:45 AM March 29, 2011, we walk like deer to the blind—

3 women in blankets, head down and big boots,

folding in on ourselves like swans—no, like deer/

The quiet is the food of it all—great relief _to not say_ ,

_not say_.

In the blind: door made of planks with knotholes, dirt floor.

Close the rope latch. Frost inside the blind, the 2 × 3 inch windows

viewfinder to the Platte. A rawhide strip pulls up

the cut plexiglass on a hinge: hinge to air, hinge to light.

500,000 sandhill cranes fill the river for spring staging—in packs,

in lines of family, the return. Here to eat, replenish, move on.

_They've been in the river all night to avoid predators/now ready_

_to liftoff for a day of eating/sleeping/mating/playing_.

_The guard birds/frost on their wings/like they've stood there for_

_years/not overnight in the cold ice_.

_Now the location calls: head tilted up in one loud blast_.

_The gathering of wings, jumping and hopping, back and forth/_

_back and forth—assume the intend-to-fly position:_

_point in the direction of flight/head and neck nearly horizontal—_

Building air fullness _what is seen_

the feathers _what is seen_ the fluttering

the air pulling the honking now and wide:

split/open/air liftoff

having _felt this_ _felt this_

Spindle-leg crane, I am nothing.

Red-beaked walker in the mud of the Platte,

you fill the sky and I,

great human, am hiding in the shed in the brown brush.

Watching you, I

return to my feathers, my tattoo of name, the place call that won't stop—

_go go go go go go gone_

##
## DRINKING THE LIZARD KING

God of the soft parade, mojo king and

poet of Venice, and second song

he started: _Wishful, sinful, our love is beau-_

_ti-ful_...stripped his shirt down to muscled

shoulders, threw it in the audience to bloody

screaming, slid into his sideways lizard-king

walk, unbuckled his belt, whiplashing

his leg with it/we all wanted to die

inside that slap/down to the neon/

and we knew there were two kinds of people

in the world: people who loved Jim Morrison

for pissing on the audience—and Republicans:

he copped a stance, waving his cock

like it was _the way, the truth, and the life_ ,

and it was—just to be covered in him—

we opened our mouths, and when the cops

rushed the Miami stage, he dropped to his knees,

his neon-green jockstrap glowing,

he grabbed his cock out and

swung it like a firehose as they dragged

him off—and we were baptized

in the water of the lizard king,

we were _stoned, immaculate_.

To be pissed on by the god Morrison

was like being fucked in a muscle car—

all cylinders firing full out

and nothing in the way.

## CROSSCHECKING

My Canadian father fought the rich man's

hockey wars, was known for crosschecking,

delivering a bloody body block.

He had an insurance policy that paid:

five bucks for every suture needed to close a cut,

and he collected.

My inheritance?

I'm the designated hitter, the base runner,

the racquetball king with the killer serve.

When my league coach asked me

to demonstrate good base running,

I hit and ran,

steamrolled him at 2nd trying to tag me.

We ended up both in the dirt,

me over him on all fours, his glasses broken.

He got up, piecing them together,

brushing dust out of his hair.

Stared at me and walked off the field.

My father still inside me now,

I'm free of the quiet asking.

All the years of not knowing who I was

has made me blood-hungry.

He can collect his money,

but he can never close the cut of me.

## WHY I DON'T FUCK INTELLECTUALS

driving the curves

of the river in my old Chevy—

banging

my hands on the steering wheel singing

_Back in Black_

(still hot after Bon Scott)

air heavy with the Allegheny/

open with love for my baby—

all I want

## LOVELY

Tonight I kissed my enemy on the cheek—

I said, _You're beautiful_ , and meant it.

All I could see was her loveliness—

other nights, it was blocked by the sun.

My first mother taught me to love

the wide open by giving me away.

My second mother showed me how

to prop the body up/stay alive without help.

The boyfriend who hit me—he

forged the crossbeam of my new life.

My sister taught me illusion, not to trust

the window of what we want most—

and me, arsonist, burning down

the house of them/with me inside.

The hated louts, the swine of my life/

my first demolition team—

now my beloved architects.

What do I do with these enemies, these

inventors? Bury them whole?

I'll deal in parts instead.

What do I say to them now:

_You're lovely_?

_I've come to revere the way_

_you tendered the gallows tree:_

_on each branch a body with no inside sun?_

Outside now: my night bird, my

mockingbird calling another's song

and in my stumblings I am alive,

nothing more—

my night is a segmented heart/

my sun, the birdsong of day,

I know nothing about.

## ON LEAVING THE 5TH FUNERAL IN 15 WEEKS

I watch the alarm system at night from my bed.

I keep the rows of yellow/green lights in order: 5 down/4 across.

I count them again, and then I check them.

This way I will keep my heart beating and the hearts of everyone I love.

Now everything's a way to flee from death.

My shrink said no need to free your enemies:

_Carrying around anger won't hurt you, that's propaganda_.

_Hate is a natural emotion_ , he said.

But 5 people dead this year and the ground no longer ground.

Now I'm loving so hard until love's a wooden statue of love,

running from its own fires. Some people say,

_Live like you'll never die_ , a prayer for idiots.

Instead, I will chant: _Love is only fear of death. Love is only fear of death_.

I don't believe that either.

The house is waterproofed and the foundation's secure.

I arrange the cardboard people,

perched on the edge of a scene looking forward, not down.

Forward, not down.

The red light's on: 5 dead in a row.

The system of manholes was checked last week, but there's fire

under the sleeping city.

## IN WAKING: SUMMER

next to you without knowing I was happy—

without knowing wreckage and plunder

from the night before, yet more

than a breeze (summer) coming at me, more

like a firestorm of goodness from you—

(not the cheap 5&10¢ goodness)

The kind that glitters like pyrite/then

runs deep through yesterday and into

mud/through the blood of ancestors not

met, all the lies told for no good reason

then running through to the other

side of time—that kind of good

that comes through you—straight

at me, in summer: waking.

## DEAR FRESNO,

i'm overcome & there's magic here—

there's love in the irrigation ditch,

the lines of fruit trees answer the heart's question:

_what order is there?_

i love your beat-down beauty/your

_try your luck here_ dust fields/

how they hold you like skin until you're

inside night, the abandoned truck opens

—the man on his way to late shift—

nods his head: _in this life together_.

they say west fresno

is _where dreams go to die_.

the no-job streets/the gangs

stand in for family:

i'm seeing it slant/

from the rodeos to the tree rows,

in the green rolling hill of your arms

men from sonora wait for jobs

in the fields. I'm seeing the mirage

of cowfields, the lines

of fruit trees with the white truck abandoned—

_be someone near_

watch the manifold crack in field upon field,

where blood & light meet,

everything you knew before, flawed.

fresno,

i've got drugs that got me this far

& i'm in love with your ghost—

iconic/beautiful/california—

the romantic dream is over,

the narrowing of slavery still here

with the migrant workers & no food nights.

i've driven across country, no

plan but salvation—

the old voice said it again: _go there_.

_the west is the medicine_

_for every broken life_.

/now borders everywhere:

the sidewalk hiring hall between town & field/

4:30 AM last truck leaves the corner

of e & tulare—

## NOTES ON A NEVADA FLOOD

_for Don_

There's a mountain outside my window & a lake full

with glacial water & it's

flooding in my heart—chamber by chamber—

I'm a woman in the middle

of my life running backwards towards the center,

the master flood.

Piles of sandbags, holding back

the washing of the gone dreams.

So many things miles off—my husband at home

with his brilliant sweetness—

A mountain outside my window &

a dark blue lake full—

& close to here, on an old forest road,

a woman is walking to get her mail—

she will hear today that

__________________________,

& I'm thinking of her flowered dress & mountain

boots, her wondrous life on the edges—

Who will write her story, where does her life go—

all the lives above—the swirling below.

There's a mountain outside my window

but all I want:

the flood of heart in a closed room with you—

your arm flung sloppily across me,

hitting my face, your other hand playing guitar

in deep sleep.

Oh, wild dreaming one—if you were here,

what would you say?

That I'm swirling towards death in my own

eddying ideas?

No, you would say, _go to sleep, are you okay?_

(the only blessing I need tonight)

Goodnight to everyone alive—

Wherever I am, I'm filled with sediment:

with tough, dirty Pittsburgh

where the mountains of black rock &

half mills are carapaces.

Night coming now,

& the hills mounding up as we get closer

to the continental divide of you & I—of death—

No stopping the water:

almost pristine in the quiet.
**////**

## NOTES

"Visitation at Gogama" was written on the VIA Rail Canadian from Toronto to Jasper.

"California Corridor" makes use of a phrase from _Imagine the Angels of Bread_ by Martín Espada. It was written while riding the San Joaquin in Northern California.

"We Cover Our Heads Like Deer" is for Allison Adelle Hedge Coke and Natalie Diaz.

"Sister as Moving Object" was written after reading the work of James Allen Hall and D. A. Powell.

"White Girl in a Record Store" makes reference to the Sugarhill Gang, who inaugurated the history of recorded hip-hop with their 1979 single "Rapper's Delight," the first hip-hop single to become a top 40 hit. The song is ranked #248 on _Rolling Stone_ magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

"Top-10 List" is for Aaron Smith.

"Reading Wanda Coleman on the California Zephyr" was written on the California Zephyr from Pittsburgh to Denver while reading Coleman's _Ostinato Vamps_ and _The Riot Inside Me: More Trials & Tremors_.

"The Switching/Yard" was written on the VIA Rail Canadian from Toronto to Jasper.

"jimi dream" includes a "right-handed strat, \\\ [upside-down-\olympic-white]." This refers to the way Jimi Hendrix started to play the guitar. He was left-handed and picked up a right-handed guitar, flipped it upside down, and restrung it. He stayed with this way of playing throughout his life. His trademark guitar was a 1968 Olympic White Stratocaster.

"In the Staging Area" was written on the Southwest Chief from Chicago to Needles, California.

"Ghostdaddys" makes use of a phrase from _Chronic_ by D. A. Powell.

"Monument to the War Dead" is for Judith Vollmer. It makes use of first-hand knowledge and information regarding the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Sacramento, California, from vietvet.org.

"Blind" refers to the sandhill crane migration, specifically where the cranes stop on the Platte River in Nebraska in March of every year for primary refueling. Thanks to the 2010 and 2011 Artist Fellowships at the Platte River Whooping Crane Trust, directed by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, and to the James L. Grahl Research Center.

"Drinking the Lizard King" is for Kayla Sargeson.

"Drinking the Lizard King" loosely refers to the performance of Jim Morrison and the Doors on March 1, 1969, at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove, Florida, commonly known as "The Miami Incident." On March 5th, the city of Miami issued a warrant for Morrison's arrest, after a complaint was signed by an office boy who had gone to the show and happened to work for the state attorney. The Dade County State Attorney's Office issued a felony charge of lewd and lascivious behavior and five misdemeanors: two counts of indecent exposure, two for public profanity, and one for public drunkenness. This was followed by _Rolling Stone_ publishing the "Wanted in Dade County" cover photo of Morrison, with the article: "Morrison's Penis Is Indecent" (www.doors.com).

"Approaching Denver/Union Station" was written on the California Zephyr from Pittsburgh to Denver.

"In Waking: Summer" is for Don.

## ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the following journals in which some of these poems first appeared, sometimes in earlier versions: _BigCityLit_ ("The Dealer in the Natural World," "The Switching/Yard"); _Catch Up_ ("Stein: Letter to a Young Rilke," "Switching"); _Chautauqua Literary Journal_ ("Revenant"); _Columbia Poetry Review_ ("Driving While Wet," "My Sister as Moving Object"); _Connotation Press: An Online Artifact_ ("Sticking It to the Man," "The Body Snatchers"); _Court Green_ ("Dear American Poetry," "Delicious," "Ghostdaddys," "My Mother Was a Dress," "Three Faces and All These Fallen Gods," "Visitation at Gogama"); _Cream City Review_ ("adventures of birthmother [ _mary tyler moore_ ]," "Top-10 List"); _5AM_ ("Drinking the Lizard King," "The Hit Man"); _Fourth River_ ("White Girl in a Record Store"); _Girls with Glasses_ ("jimi dream"); _Gulf Stream Magazine_ ("Outside the Carnegie Library, Oakland," "Why I Don't Fuck Intellectuals"); _Kestrel_ ("Monument to the War Dead"); _Parthenon West_ ("California Corridor"); _Platte Valley Review_ ("Approaching Denver/Union Station," "dear fresno," "Notes on a Nevada Flood," "On Leaving the 5th Funeral in 15 Weeks"); _PMS_ ("adventures of birthmother [ _texas chainsaw massacre_ ]"); _Poet Lore_ ("Her Steerage"); _Provincetown Arts Magazine_ ("In Waking: Summer"); _Redivider_ ("Youngest Known Savior"); _Sierra Nevada Review_ ("Blind"); _South Dakota Review_ ("Lovely"); _Third Coast_ ("Shrink"); _Triquarterly_ ("Reading Wanda Coleman on the California Zephyr"); _Willow Springs_ ("American Revolver").

"Ghostdaddys" first appeared in _Future Earth_ in a much earlier version.

"Company Car" first appeared in _Natural Language: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Sunday Poetry and Reading Series Anthology_.

Many of these poems also appeared in _Ravage_ , a chapbook published by Lefty Blondie Press, edited by Amy Lee Heinlen and Marguerite Sargent.

I would like to express my appreciation to the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Howard Heinz Endowment and Laurel Foundation; the Creative Capital Foundation; the MacDowell Colony; Allison Adelle Hedge Coke and the Platte River Whooping Crane Trust; the Santa Fe Arts Institute; and Leighton Studios, Banff, Alberta, Canada, for fellowships and support that helped me to write these poems. Special thanks to the terrific staff at the University of Pittsburgh Press, especially Lowell  Britson, Maria Sticco, and David Baumann, for expertise, support, and good humor.

Heartfelt thanks to the following people who have helped me with these poems: Ed Ochester for X-ray poem vision, the best editing, and believing in me; Judith Vollmer, poetry comrade, for otherworldly insight, wolf energy that shaped this book, and in-town Italian writing residencies; Aaron Smith for NYC/West VA workshops, for killer poems, sound and line, for staying dirty; Stacey Waite for hoagies and Wednesday poem talk; RJ Gibson for his romantic poems; Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, cosmic sister, for her world-changing ways; James Allen Hall for his brutally tender poems; Peter Oresick for courage and seeing beyond the lines; Joan Bauer for Laguna/Pittsburgh workshops and wonderful poems; Michelle Laflamme for kindness and poetry in Santa Fe; Cynthia Hogue for wild dinner talk and French translation; Perish for his rap, for help with Grandmaster Flash; Greg Edmondson for teaching me the ins-and-outs of jockstraps; Kayla Sargeson for her unstoppable conquistador ways; Tess, Sagittarius sister and kick-ass poet, and Thom for their over-the-top generosity and love; Rhoda Mills Sommer for cool glasses and saying it honestly; Dr. G. for the way he sees it; Celeste Gainey for lighting the world with her poems and LA cool; Elise for pumping iron and the shoes; Nancy Kirkwood, bloodsister, for being wildly forthcoming. Thanks to Sonia Cotton and Marika Lhoumeau for French lessons and six o'clock pizza in Banff; Jeffrey McDaniel for wildass stories; Amata Boccella for sheepwalking and conjuring; Ellen Wadey for Chicago tours and Jo Mama talks; Pat Bernarding for staying; Camille Norton for adventures in Stockton on election night; Lisa Alexander for keeping the weird true. Thanks to Elsie, the ship/studio at Banff; Michael Thomas for Gramercy Park workshops; Natalie Diaz for being a sweet Virgo and the river trip; Monique for surprise food and kindness; Susan for the Tucson retreat; to Sweet Pie for the naked song; Suzanne Roberts for the ride to Tahoe; Liane Ellison Norman for treasured friendship and mad adventures; Kay Comini for wild bravery; Lucienne Wald for end rhyme; Gerry Boccella for deep poems and seeing beneath it all; Anahita Firouz for the eye/and brilliant work; Tom and Barb for hanging in; Bounce, honorary Don-brother; Michael Wurster, poetry hero still; Jimmy Cvetic, golden glove poet, for gargantuan ideas and chicken fornicating; Nancy Foley for all kinds of rotation; All the Madwomen—for your unending curiosities and madness; the Carlow gang—especially Lou, Sigrid, Ellie, Anne, Katie, Roberta, Irene, Sue, Sarah, Michelle; Sarah Williams-Devereux for spontaneous poem-songs and making a way; Deborah for laughing stories; Michelle Stoner and Lisa Alexander for  relentless sound engineering; thanks to Amy Lee Heinlen and Marguerite Sargent for great spirit and dirt; Tam-o for her wild Taurus ways; Vee for courage, big fun, and telling it straight; Jay Flory, traveler, for speaking the heart of it; Colleen K. for generous open doors; Gerry LaFemina for the pancakes; Sarah Browning for splitting rocks; M. L. Liebler for wild Detroit; Britt Horner for years of books and garden talk; Jim Daniels for down-and-dirty work poems; Granite Amit for her fierce art; Denise Duhamel for poems and hair on fire; Maureen McLane for pretzels and bravery at MacDowell; Maggie Anderson, amazing teacher and friend, for leisurely poetry walks; Anne Marie Macari for going deep; Alicia Ostriker for saying it true; Diane Glancy for open space and writing it all out; Jerry Stern for mad dancing and big heart; Afaa Michael Weaver for deep cool and for loving his truck; Ed Hirsch for sweetness; Brenda Hillman for the car ride. In memory of Bob Patak, rock man, visionary, who helped us all; Dorothy Holley, who showed us how it was done; Anita Gevaudan Byerly for late night dancing and _Steam Rising_ ; Buddy Nordan, one of a kind; Wendy Davies, poet/cat lover; Christina Murdock, who left us too soon with her beautiful poems; Tess Raynovich, poet of the world and forever lovely spirit; Big Jim Hollowood and the 40 ft. guitar; R. T. Beatty and Charlotte Thoma, who are with me always; the spirit of Patricia Dobler that continues strong. Special thanks to David Trinidad for _Dear Prudence_ and staying true to poetry; Wanda Coleman for laying it out there with guts; Campbell McGrath for loving 7-11s; Patricia Smith for saying it loud and tough; Doug Powell for putting the wild body in; to Don, partner in crime, my one and only love.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook


text:
Alessandro Minelli may refer to:
Alessandro Minelli (biologist), Italian biologist and professor emeritus of zoology at the University of Padova
Alessandro Minelli (footballer, born 1970), Swiss football defender
Alessandro Minelli (footballer, born 1999), Italian football player

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Q: VS2013 Test agent and controller not communicating I have a Windows Azure VM running VS2013 Load Test Controller and a second Azure VM running 2013 Load Test Agent.
I have not been able to get the two communicating successfully. I added the hostname and IP of each VM to the other's HOSTS file. I also created a local admin account with the same username and password on both machines. Neither machine is joined to a domain. I have also created endpoints for each VM to port 6901/TCP. I am able to telnet from the agent VM to port 6901 on the controller VM.
When I apply the test agent configuration settings, it fails on "Test agent could not connect to the test controller." In the agent configuration log, I see:
Could not get the status from the test agent. Exception: Failed to connect to an IPC Port: The system cannot find the file specified.
In the event viewer, I see:
Unable to connect to the controller on 'controllerVM:6901'. The agent can connect to the controller but the controller cannot connect to the agent because of following reason: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 168.62.XX.XX:6910. Make sure that the firewall on the test agent machine is not blocking the connection.
I have been completely unable to work around this issue so far. I need help please.

A: You should disable both UAC and Firewall. I faced with this issue and solution was to disable UAC in registry. It is applicable for Window 8+ hosts, if you are running Test Controller or Test Agent on it.
Refer to this article: link
You can do it by the following command:
reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Chek your antivirus if you have it. May be you should add exclusion rule for it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
3UP: Garcia, Colon, Mitre
By Joel Sherman
March 15, 2011 | 1:28pm
1. In today's Post I wrote this column about broken-toy starters such as Bartolo Colon and Freddy Garcia. There is a seduction to believe in such pitchers. They have pedigree. They generally have know-how. Usually a veteran team has a tendency to believe more in pitchers they have seen succeed than those they have not.
But the miss rate with these kinds of starters is incredibly high either because previous injuries make them more susceptible to re-injury and/or the previous injury has robbed skill.
At the midway point of this Yankees camp – even with a poor outing by Garcia on Sunday – these two veterans have done well. But that offers a scary possibility, as well. These are shrewd professionals. They have minor-league contracts. In other words, nothing is guaranteed. They have to earn their way onto the team this spring. In fact, Yankees officials explicitly told Garcia's agent that the veteran righty could not go through spring in his standard fashion, which in Garcia's case included annual struggles in the exhibition games.
So Garcia and Colon came to camp ready to win jobs. In Colon's case, he pitched in Winter Ball, which pushed up his preparation. It is possible Colon and Garcia are in, say, June form while the hitters are in March. It is just in the past few days that you could see batters consistently starting to hit breaking balls, which takes a while and is mainly absent early in spring training. That is why numbers at this time of year can be so misleading. Players are at such various preparation stages and/or are working on specific elements at the disinterest of numbers.
But Garcia and Colon needed numbers this spring. They needed to pitch well. They needed to feast on unprepared hitters. So it is possible that the best of Garcia and Colon is right now.
2. When I ran that theory by Yankees officials they agreed it was possible. But they said they were making judgments based on stuff and not specifically results; that they were trying to imagine what the results would be against, say, the Red Sox in May if the veteran righties were throwing similar stuff.
Garcia is tricky when it comes to his stuff anyway. He no longer is the mid-90-mph ace-level starter he was in his younger Mariners days. But what remains is a fierce competitiveness from his youth teamed with an improved cunning, a combination that enabled him to go 12-6 for the White Sox last year with a pedestrian fastball. Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild has actually been encouraged about Garcia's improved fastball this spring. It was as high as 91 mph in a start, and he has consistently pitched at 88-89 mph.
Rothschild feels that is enough that Garcia does not need to run from his fastball and become overly reliant on his off-speed stuff, specifically his slider. It has been so long, though, since Garcia has had life on his fastball that he might simply have lost faith in the pitch for good.
Colon's fastball is even more of a revelation to the Yankees. He also is not like his youth, when he could touch 98 mph and pitch consistently from 93-95 mph. But Colon touched 94 in a start and goes into his intrasquad game today having worked consistently at 91-92. But it has not just been the speed. It has been the movement on the sinker that so intrigues the Yankees, right now.
The questions again include if Garcia and Colon have endurance to keep this kind of stuff going into the season and also whether this stuff is beating hitters now because the hitters simply are merely working into form.
3. There are several ways the Yankees can go in the Nos. 4-5 battle. There are scouts saying they are convinced the Yankees are going to release Sergio Mitre. If so, Garcia, Colon and Ivan Nova will make up the Nos. 4-5 starters and the long reliever on the staff.
Mitre was supposed to start yesterday. But he said he came down with an injury to his side. OK, then we will just take it as coincidence that a righty with ordinary stuff came down with a side injury rather than take a three-hour bus ride to face the Red Sox's lefty-leaning main lineup (minus J.D. Drew) on national TV. It is just miraculous, I suppose, that Mitre was reporting no pain 24 hours later and might pitch as early as Thursday.
The way the Yankees can keep all of their assets in this derby is to have Colon and Garcia form the Nos. 4-5 in the rotation, make Mitre the long man and send Nova to Triple-A to await a call when the inevitable breakdowns occur.
But there are certainly Yankees officials who want to give a homegrown product such as Nova an opportunity rather than go with the pipedream that Colon and Garcia are both going to stay healthy and pitch well.
Garcia and Colon have outs in their contracts that allow them to become free agents late this month if they are not put on the 25-man roster to begin the season. It is possible the Yankees could ask Colon, for example, to extend that to say May 1. Colon did not pitch in the majors last year. The Yankees may try to reason with Colon to pitch at Triple-A for a month, make four or so starts, prove his health and ability stretched out in games, then the Yankees will be able to make a more informed decision on him.
Of course, with pitching thin around the game, if any club was impressed by Colon in spring, it probably would contact Colon's agent and tell him to avoid the minor leagues and move right into a major-league rotation.
Mets to name Hernandez starting second baseman

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
Subversion:
www.wnd.com
School clams up on Ramadan promotions - WND
A U.S. school district that was caught allowing Muslim students to interrupt classes to "convert" others to Islam now has refused to release information about its promotion of Ramadan.
The Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, which informs educators about the "threat of Islamic indoctrination and religiously preferential 'anti-Islamophobia' bullying programs," said the West New York school board in Newark, New Jersey, has denied an Open Public Records Act request.
FCDF filed the request "to obtain the district records about two Muslim students at Memorial High School who were allowed to proselytize in multiple classrooms during the school day."
The organization also sought records about a banner that Memorial High's principal hung during Ramadan that called upon Allah to "shower" blessings on students.
FCDF said the proselytizing "was part of the North Hudson Islamic Educational Center's 'Dawah Committee,' whose goal is to convert non-Muslim public school students to Islam. In multiple online posts, the Dawah Committee praised the students' efforts to Islamize their classmates and prayed that Allah would 'bless them manifold' for their 'dawah educational exercise.'"
Dawah is an Islamic term meaning to convert non-Muslims through nonviolent means.
Jihad would be another way to convert non-Muslims.
The district refused to provide emails and documents pertinent to the issue.
"These records relate to a strategic campaign by Islamic clerics to infiltrate the district and convert hundreds of students and staff to Islam," said Daniel Piedra, FCDF's executive director. "The District's Board of Education is legally responsible to uphold the First Amendment's mandate against religious indoctrination in public schools. It is simply shocking that the district would withhold vital information that concerns the safety and wellbeing of impressionable schoolchildren."
FCDF said it will file a complaint with the state to force the district to release the records but already is considering other options if that tactic is unsuccessful.
"We are determined to hold the West New York School District accountable to the students, parents, and communities they are legally obligated to serve," Piedra said. "Once we obtain this information, we will work closely with students, parents and advocates to ensure the Constitution, not Shariah law, is the final authority in the district."
WND reported last month FCDF sent a "cease and desist" letter to the district regarding a huge banner that promoted Islam during Ramadan.
"FCDF will not tolerate this intentional effort to propagandize to schoolchildren. We will continue to warn all school districts to reconsider any policy or action that tramples on our children's constitutional rights," the organization said at the time.
WND recently reported two school districts in Washington state instructed teachers to greet students in Arabic and work with Muslim students to give "a lesson" on Ramadan and provide special accommodations for them.
At least one district already has backed away from its plans at the urging of FCDF, which is reminding public schools they are not Islamic madrassas.
The Northshore School District in Bothell, Washington, withdrew an Islam promotion.
It had directed teachers to create "safe spaces" for Muslims, plan with Muslim students to let them "quietly slip away" from class for prayer, "privately offer information" about nutrition during their Ramadan fast, give "a lesson" on Ramadan and privately ask Muslim students what accommodations they want.
WND reported last month FCDF sent a similar letter to the Dieringer School District in Lake Tapps, Washington, about the issue.


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SUFB 500: 500th Episode and 10 Years Of SciComm with Dr. Andrew Thaler
500 EPISODES!!! I can't believe the time has finally come where the Speak Up For Blue Podcast has reached 500 episodes!!! What do I do to celebrate? I announce that I will be posting from 3 times a week to 7 times a week. More frequency will result in...
500 EPISODES!!! I can't believe the time has finally come where the Speak Up For Blue Podcast has reached 500 episodes!!! What do I do to celebrate? I announce that I will be posting from 3 times a week to 7 times a week. More frequency will result in shorter episodes, but that doesn't mean I won't be diving deep into the topics of each episode. Some episodes, like today's, will be a 2-parter.
Today's episode, Andrew Thaler joins me to help celebrate the 500th episode as we record together from the Singapore Crowne Plaza Hotel at the airport on a 22 hour layover.
We reflect on our efforts to communicate Marine Science and Conservation over the past 10 years. We look at how it started and how it has evolved over time. We also look at how it has changed both of our lives.
Check out Part 1 of this 2-Part episode on Marine Science and Conservation Communication.
Donate to the Jairo Mora Sandoval Bravery Award to Fund 5 more brave Marine Conservationists
Become par to the Speak Up For Blue Nation by joining our Patreon Campaign.
I would love to hear your opinion on this episode. Join the Facebook Group to chime in.
Do you know we launched more Ocean Related Podcasts?
Subscribe to Marine Conservation Happy Hour and ConCiencia Azul


For us to provide a high quality After School Program, we maintain a ratio of 1 teacher to 10-12 children, a nourishing snack, and a variety of cooperative play and learning opportunities for your child. Our program is child centered. It allows time for quiet play and reading, active and outdoor play, field trips, small and large group and individual activities. Activities are also offered in the areas of arts and crafts, construction, small manipulatives, games, dramatic play, science, computer, and cooking.
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Visit our website for rates and fees.
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Red Caboose has a strong tradition of serving all children, including those with special educational, emotional, and physical needs and handicaps.
Enrollment and School Age Program Director speak English and Spanish.


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Mansor is BACK! Doing what he does best! MEGA WALLS/Abomination. Mansor used to code for Hypixel's Mega Walls. Due to popular demand he brought the game back onto the server!!
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