Kenneth Tanemura

what happens

what happens when a day is gray and you want all the thin envelopes to come back with acceptance letters and you would go out and do something like visit your girlfriend or read at the stanford bookstore cafe except that your right eye is half closed and you can only half open it what is at risk there nothing in the light of your desk lamp yet edward hirsch is always writing blurbs saying this poet or that is "risky" or has a kind of "riskiness" as if it takes courage or guts to sit in front of a keyboard like any data entry clerk c'mon edward it's just words and it's not like you're entering the ring with a wwf champion or something like that how risky can you get and molly giles once told me writers were timid thus we make up wild stories and barbara jane reyes said she's quiet so her poems are waterfalls listen don't stop don't stop writing that's my ars poetica or was it lyn heijinian's ? i forget i wrote this on the back of a napkin while lunching in san diego do you believe that one i wrote this after making love to the most beautiful woman on the planet at her writing table downstairs the rosewood one that's horizontally long and vertically short i wrote this at any rate and it has not been "written" yet at any rate do you believe that one i found a found poem by the side of a curb and published it under an alias andrew felsinger so a.f. if you find your name in an east coast lit zine you know who submitted that poem

 

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