Hey, wow! Check me out: I’m only trailing Phil Collins by four spots on Google’s suggestion list, and I’m the only Phill with two l’s too! Go me, go me, go me, go me! Bonafide hustler making my fame and all that.

:-)

Also, Cy Gist Press publisher Mark Lamoureux and I were discussing his publishing my first chapbook. It’s not set in stone yet, but Mark sounded really positive about it when we talked, so I’m really getting excited. It would put me with the likes of Angela Wong, whom I saw read last year and who is not only a stellar poet, but also a major babe. (shawing!)

The only thing I’m not sure about is how he’ll take to some of the earlier stuff. He really likes the poems of mine he’s read, but I’m not sure he’s going to love some of the earlier ones. I’m guessing he’s going to cut about five of them, three schmaltzy, romanticistic ones from college (“Los Dos Joaquines,” “Clodhopper” and “White Dress” ) and probably two from my Bukowski period (I’m guessing probably “Between You and Me” and “High School Nostalgia” - maybe “Seconds” too).

The reason he’d cut the first three is they’re all a little overdone, all a little blah and sound like what they are: College work. I included them in the manuscript because I personally like them.

I figure I’m allowed one or two fillers, and if I get one or two, I’d like at least one of them to be something I believed deeply in as a kid. Yes, it will be a little “off.” But then, I’m not expecting to win a Pulitzer with this, just get some new readers and maybe make a few high school girls wet. Overall, then, if Mark gives me the benefit of the doubt for one of them, I’ll take “Los Dos” because it fits better in the overall arrangement of the manuscript. Plus, “White Dress” is a little too Poe in a big way.

As for the Buk-period ones, I’m thinking Mark will definitely not let me keep “High School Nostalgia” because it’s simply too vulgar. The other two are a little flat, but I can basically argue for them because they all appeared in print somewhere else, and are therefore already editor-approved.

Also, they do fit well with the whole day-in-the-life structure I’m going for—fit well, in fact, in the part of the chap that’s about morning, day and work. After all, not everything is interesting. Not everything is grand and inspiring. Most things are absurdly pointless, and since I have a little bit of an absurdist streak (with a little a to save me because I’m not schooled enough to really call myself an anything), I figure absurd boredom is also in order.

Anyhow, that’s my take. Don’t anyone get too excited yet. Mark might take one look at everything else I included besides “St. Petersburg Has Many Churches,” “What I Said to Her Was Not a Lie” and “Hard to Say” and tell me to screw off till I have some better poems to go with them. But, hey, most of the collections and chaps I’ve read in the past year had filler, and since I write to be read (not agonized over) I think even the worst of them will connect with someone.

As a final note, Mark Brunetti is putting out a best-of collection for The Idiom. I still have to get back to him with galley corrections, but some of the pieces that will be in “The Day the Sun Rolled Out of the Sky” (tentative title) will be in there with others Mark L. doesn’t have the stomach to put his name on—Mark B. and Mark L. being totally different people taste-wise. I’m thinking I’ll wait till I have passed the poems through some other editors and Mark L. before replying to Mark B. That way I can kill two birds as the saying goes.

*Note to self: Stick with Marks and Mikes. For some reason people with M names will publish me. (Mike Searle, Michal Kadera, Mark Brunetti, Mark Lamoureux). Incidentally, I’ve dated three women named Melissa, have a brother named Mike a coworker named Mike and a mother named Mary. Weirdnessssss!