New York vs. Chicago

OK - the law is on the side of New York-based Federated Department Stores, the new owners of Marshall Field's store. They have every right to issue cease-and-desist orders to a local deli for selling a sandwich called "The Marshall Field." Fine.

If it's copyrighted/trademarked, it's your property. You don't have to share.

That's why I think the deli owner should stop selling that sandwich as "The Marshall Field". Instead, the name should be abbreviated. With initials.

Call it "The M. F. "

Let New York interpret that any way they want.

Chicago Poetry Fest 2006

This Sunday, August 27th, I will have the pleasure of reading at this year's Chicago Poetry Fest. There will be great mix of known and unknown (like me!) poets reading their work outdoors at Giddings Plaza in Lincoln Square on Chicago's Northwest side.
We each have seven minutes to read our best stuff and impress the crowd with our fabulous-ness. I'm just hoping for a microphone that doesn't squeal with feedback.

Here is the poem I submitted to the editor C. J. Laity of www.chicagopoetry.com which earned me a slot at the fest.

TWO-WAY STOP

i love to kiss her

my lesbian friend
when saying hello
or goodbye

i never go for the lips
or even the cheek
i dive

for the base of the neck
where that collarbone
scoops out
a lovely depression

where the heart lung and nerve
trade pulses
like the smoothest freeway
exchange you ever saw
and my mouth
searches

for that cellular dividing line
that changes traffic forever

turning her one way and me another

and i wonder where it is
where that answer is buried

in science
in childhood
or under my kiss
beneath her lovely depression

but that doesn't matter

doesn't matter at all
and neither do I.

Thank God/Buddha/Joni Mitchell For Fire-Retardant Carpeting

20 minutes ago I walked into my apartment and panicked.

No air-conditioning. In this weather. No sound of an air-conditioner. In this heat. Hot enough inside to tell me that the freon had probably run out again. There goes 75 bucks, I thought. Nothin that bad except the money. And then I stepped into the room where the AC was and turned on the light. What I saw scared the spit out of me.

A six-inch section of the extension cord was coal-black. And so was approximately 12-18 inches of my bedroom carpeting. Scorched (but not smoking). But here's the best part- MY CAT DID NOT DIE IN A FIRE. So I've got that to be grateful for.

And the flame-retardant carpeting was key. 50 years ago, my cat would have been dead and this apartment - with its guitars and poems and songs and letters - might have made the sad "Weather Round-Up" fatalities report on Channel 9.

(gettin up early to buy new extension cord and carpet de-odorizer).

Thank God/Buddha/Joni Mitchell - The Holy Trinity