Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

Capitan Gap You look through the broken skyline of burnt trees still hugging the ridge some 3 years after the fire. The clouds build up over the Sacramentos like some sort of meringue- ominous, multi-hued, whites and grays. Your cooler is full-- the food you ate replaced with freezer bags full of raspberries harvested from the ridges in bundles of 4 or 5 to a bush and 4 or 5 bushes every square yard. The raspberries are every where, and after eating handfuls you settle into collecting, gathering, relishing in the harvest that only a natural cycle can bring. The memories return of you on a hillside, younger, talking and playing, gathering raspberries in a neighbor's wild yard. There is nothing mundane about this memory: the red stain on your cuticles, scrapes from pulling bushes up and moving further into the patch unaware of time-- the slow monumental decay of daylight. Rain will come, you think, and you'll return to your life of electronic gadgets and trying to look busy by ki...

with apologies to Pablo Neruda Pablo, I'll be the first to admit that I do not have your way with words, but the first tomato from my first garden exploded in my mouth in a rush over the sides of my tongue so that my teeth felt bathed in red, and the seeds wallowed in their own juice like a pig in a mudbath, or a dog in a dead carcass. If you've seen either one of those acts you know that both are in ecstasy and the seeds were in ecstasy too and were rewarding me, my taste buds, the warm welcome of my throat. Pablo, this tomato was fine, was my grandfather's hopes for me revealed in popping, bursting, explosion of flavor that even moments later I still can't describe. What kind of writer am I Pablo? That something as simple as a tomato, freshly picked and rinsed could leave me speechless, wordless, a writer that is trying to steer clear of words like enchanting, heavenly, or divine. Language says so little about tomatoes, Pablo about what it means to grow one, to watch ...

Don McIver 1801 Gold Ave. SE Albuquerque, NM 87106 Thank You aka Necessary You are:             unemployed,             underemployed,             working your way out of debt,             just not spending as much as you once did. We live:           in "interesting" times. We live and go on living,                         go on putting food on our tables,                         paying rent or mortgage on a shelter. Just trying to be... trying to understand a little bit more. In these "in...

Putting my thoughts here so I that I have access to them from any internet connection. Nice show! Eric and I hosted 2 preliminary bouts in the front room, while the other 2 bouts happened in the Theatre space. All in all a good space, though getting to the restrooms (especially the Women's) meant there was wave of noise from the other bout (they experienced a similar experience as well). First bout was Denver (Mercury Cafe), Dallas, and Austin and it was a good bout. Team's trying some new things (really rough group pieces) and some nice work. Second bout was Parts Unknown (a pick-up team), the Ozarks, and Art Amok-Atlanta and it was an even closer bout. The first poet went way over time (even without the time penalty Parts Unknown would've finished 3rd but only by 3/10ths of a point!). Was way too tired to give into my impulses to really party. Eric B. was in fine form and at about 5:30 AM he shows up, promptly wakes my ass up with his infectious laugh. So my mind sta...

Chama River Wilderness One assumes, from close inspection, the CDT, Continental Divide Trail, travels unbroken from Canada to Mexico, yet upon running into it haphazardly in the Chama River Wilderness, it's no different than the myriad of cow trails that dot wild grass and sagebrush that sneaks up on the river like an advancing army. Does this trail, marked by sign and woodburned post really mark the spot where water spills into the polluted gulf and vast Pacific? Or perhaps this is some spur to the trail itself? The wind is cool as I write this under the wide canopy of a lone fir tree. From this vantage point, you'd never suspect that there is water nearby, but upon bumping my shin I'm reminded that the river dumped Mindy and I. Until now, I didn't even notice the Navajo Sandstone and red granite bluffs that protect the castle above. Only-there isn't a castle above- only more trees, wind, and rock. May 30, 2010

The Biggest Loser Videos stream the oil dumping from a pipe 5000 feet below the ocean surface, and the brown, goopy, molasses like substance is scooped up in a reporters hand from the side of a boat. Interviews are granted, soundbites, political observations, independent investigations, destroyed fisheries and marshlands, birds coated in oil, fat. A black cast iron skillet warms on an electric stove: water beads then steams off as I drop a chunk of butter on the surface. The butter melts and becomes what it is: fat, oil. Tabloids announce this diet caused this: Glossy prints, before and after, inches gone, belt sizes shrunk, photographic evidence of the trimming of fat, oil. I look at my oversized gut and see the molecules and globules of fat just below the surface of my skin. Oversized cells storing fat for some explosion of energy that my body doesn't use anymore so it sits there, jiggles, obstructs my view. A bear pokes at a raspberry bush, digs grubs from a downed tr...

Memory They don't teach you how to watch the slow decline, the slow unwinding, the slow decay of a clock that's been turned on, wound, and run for sixty, seventy, or even eighty years. It's as if you wake up, and your body just can't do what it once did. At the time, you tell yourself, it doesn't really matter. You never really wanted to climb that mountain, run that far, or reach for the edge like you once thought you did. Life is more than just exploring possibilities, its about learning the limits of your own desires. So you settle into a life that seems ..... settle into a life because it feels... and now wake up at night wondering why is my brain doing this? What if the process wasn't just watching your body, adjusting to the slow decay? What if the watcher couldn't step back and watch anymore? At my grandmother's last Thanksgiving, I could barely talk to her. She'd always been a hard woman, demanding so much and making me feel as if every mista...