thanksgiving feast

yesterday on thanksgiving i woke up with a hangover.

on wednesday night, i went to a friend's house and drank vodka and then went out in towson, md and had a surprisingly pleasant time via being buzzed already. i grew up around towson and went to high school in towson and so every year when i come back to towson for thanksgiving and christmas i see an assortment of folks i knew from ages 5-11, 11-14, 14-18, or some combination of the above. it can be real disheartening, but i just happened to run into pretty much only friendly/attentive folks on wednesday night that ended up getting me real drunk. cut to not quite sure how i got here but i've got a finger down my throat or something and i'm doing a vomit into the grass in front of my friend's jeep outside a mcdonalds.

i took photos of two of my friends occupying the same coat

oh right, i remember. this was after the friend i came with went home with a boy she goes home with after each of these events and i decided i would drive myself home to skype with my boyfriend. things i did to sober up: 1) threw up because i felt 'too nauseous to drive' 2) asked my friend to get me a big container of fries from mcdonalds and then ate them all on the ride to my car to avoid more nausea 3) drank a big glass of water at my friend's house (where my car was) and 4) decided 'it's now or never!' and charged out of her house with all of the things i'd brought with me to spend the night (e.g. pillow, spare clothes, toothbrush) without looking back.

the drive home was a little difficult because of new 'rumble strips' the county has installed on the double yellow lines that divide the roads in half and me feeling determined to ride on them. at home, my mother greeted me at the door (it was at least 3 am) and i asked for a plate of salad and some water and ate them real fast and then told her to wake me before noon (?) and went upstairs to skype. on skype my boyfriend told me i was still drunk, which really surprised me.

on thanksgiving i woke up, gulped down a couple advils, and went about my day successfully making the 'vegetable side' of peas (which were a hit), peeling 7-8 potatoes, helping mom with vege gravy for myself and generally adding to the festive mood of the day. some relatives came over for dinner and then i surprised myself and them by putting most of the food into storage containers and then taking over for my dad after he got tired doing the dishes and finishing them all up before dessert. dessert is the same every year, a pumpkin pie and and apple pie for which i've done the crust (plus the apple filling this year, with help from dad) and my mom's done the filling. i am a pie crust expert and i achieved this level of expertise at age 7. i did experiments with the crust recipes until it did what i wanted and now i do the exact same thing for it every year and it always turns out magnificently. everyone always exclaims how wonderfully the pies turned out but in my opinion they always taste the same, so i wonder if they get bored. my aunt used to make a pecan pie but i think my mom discouraged her from it or something. she can be bossy. i remember it being really tasty. maybe i'll try to do one of those for next year.

after dinner i was supposed to go to my friend's house but the relatives stayed late so i read all of shoplifting from american apparel instead and was disappointed by how unsuccessful sam's shoplifting experiences were. and disappointed by the book in general. did a goodreads review of it that said 'felt cheap' and gave it 2/5 stars. tried to skype my boyfriend but fell asleep (oops). happy thanksgiving everybody.

Here is an interview I conducted with myself regarding DOWN.

How was DOWN conceived?

Ras. Mashramani and I knew we wanted to start a site together.  The original plan, conceived by Ras., was a site for apocalyptic literature—ours, and others.  But after the rapture, and the advent of Mike Kitchell’s powerful chapbook Arrebato, this theme seemed overplayed.  We sat on it for a while, until one day Ras. asked me if I’d want to collaborate on an erotica site.  I said yes.  Sexuality seemed to run through our poetry, the poetry we’d already posted or submitted to sites like Let People Poems, New Wave Vomit and others.  One of the first things I noticed and admired about Ras.’s poetry was her easy handling of sexual themes and tones.  I can only assume she felt the same, or similarly, about my writing.

After the big decision had been made, we got to work on the details.  I was sitting on my friend’s couch one night when I came up with the name for the website—DOWN—which seemed good to me and to Ras. based on the diversity of things the word ‘down’ could refer to, both containing sexual connotations and not.  The capital letters added a little something special.  It wasn’t long before Jackson Nieuwland created the first ‘DOWN macros,’ which we’ve since used as promotion, that helped me really start to visualize the site.

What was your intention for the site?

Our aim is and always has been to create a good space for poetry that fits a certain niche that often gets overlooked or intentionally skipped over by ‘respectable’ poets and writers.  Poets haven’t been known to shy away from sexual or romantic themes, but at the same time, they’re rarely ‘allowed’ to be sexually explicit.  Bukowski did it, a lot of Spanish-speaking writers are doing it (see Chronos (Loves) Kairos or Tenían Veinte Años y Estaban Locos for examples.) Personally, I think sex, in all its forms, can be seen as poetic—whether it’s pretty or loving or just plain dirty.

How do erotic poems fit with your personal brand or lifestyle?

If you had told me six months ago that I would be spending the summer writing 30+ poems sweepingly categorized as ‘erotica,’ I would have laughed.  I mean, you probably could have convinced me, because it would have seemed like something I would be capable of doing.  But erotic poetry wasn’t on my radar then.  Writing poetry in general wasn’t really on my radar then.  ‘In real life’, I’m an MFA candidate and soon-to-be lecturer at the University of Maryland, and my concentration is fiction.  Six months ago, I would have told you I’d be spending my summer writing a novella (which I’ve also been doing).  Six months ago, I didn’t know who Steve Roggenbuck, Ana C, Blake Butler, Frank Hinton or even Ras. Mashramani were.  I would be lying if I said Tao Lin had been more than a blip on my radar.  My AWP experience in late January barely skirted things like the Lit Party.  I was only just hearing about the online lit scene from Shaun Gannon.  Now, I don’t think anything plays a larger part in my daily life.

As has been publicized, I’m not one to favor public displays of emotion.  Some might call this cold.  Some might see that as conducive to writing about love from a purely physical aspect.  Probably not too many DOWN readers would suspect me of being a romantic—when in reality, I’m one of those saps who runs around grinning and saying things like ‘I love love’ when I fall into it.

So why write it?

Plain and simple, erotica is fun to write.  Most—if not every—adult readers today can relate to these topics.  Overwhelmingly, my friends ‘in real life’ tell me how glad they are to have access to this, because I’m saying everything they wish they had the balls to talk about.  So yes, many people I know can relate—but only some have shown their approval for erotica as poetry.  I find that realistic, and fine with me.  I think some people probably see it as tacky, some don’t find it serious enough.  Some have—with both positive and negative intentions—referred to it as ‘poetry’s version of porn’.

As of right now, my name probably seems fairly synonymous with DOWN in the lit community.  Some lovely articles (by Beach Sloth, Lit Gossip) have even surfaced to this effect, and I appreciate and welcome this attention.  But it seems worth mentioning that erotic poetry is hardly the 'only kind' of writing I do.  Not only has poetry been generally less comfortable a medium for me than fiction, I’ve been working on fiction for far longer.  It feels doubtful to me that all of my subsequent projects will center around the same theme as DOWN.  It feels doubtful that all my future internet writing will even be poetry. So um, stay tuned!

What does the future hold for DOWN?

Ras. and I will continue posting until the first day of autumn, September 23.  At this point, we’ll open up a satellite lit mag (name forthcoming) geared toward submissions from any and all other writers.  A fair amount of interest in submitting has already been expressed, and we’re looking forward to this project when the time arrives.  Ras. and I also intend to create a print version of DOWN from our collective work.  But for now, we’ll just stick to making your summer a little bit hotter, as promised ;)