So much news, backed up news. . .

I finally started submitting/publishing/performing again!

Recent poetry pubs include “You’re the Animal” in Cagibi, “Thank You for Coming” in Sixth Finch, “Is it the Unlived Dreams of our Mothers that Haunt Us?” in Inklette, “Reading While Female,” and “Grabbing the Lamp By the Neck” in One Art. There’s also been “Revision”, about my eye accident and healing and “Underbeat” about she-sharks in the Jet Fuel Review. A year or so back I had “Continued” (about women artists finishing projects, lol) in SWWIM. Plus some really terrific tiered rejections (these always make me happy) and an acceptance of two poems coming soon from Salamander Magazine.

Meanwhile, I am crafting a second poetry book (Working Title: Dazzle Camo) now that the first has been a finalist at amazing places like Milkweed and Barrow Street, but when I reread it, I found that the material was edging on narrative but incomplete as a narrative—

So, I’m writing a non-fiction book about International Students, Paris, Poets, Surrealism, Togolese history and the Africanist Scholar Robin DG Kelley’s book “Freedom Dreams” It all connects, don’t worrrry. My stepfather’s favorite comedy “Coming to America” is in it, Don’t Worrry! But it is kind of killing me. If I can achieve some ancestral healing with the book, that’d be good. I don’t know if you can heal people who are already dead, but I figure art is the place to try such a thing. For this book I have been to Paris twice, once with rose colored glasses on, and once with a jaundiced eye. I have a lot of observations about France now, don’t worry.