By Douglas Goetsch

You nature poets think you’ve got it, hostaged

somewhere in Vermont or Oregon,

so it blooms and withers only for you,

so all you have to do is name it: primrose

and now you’re writing poetry, and now

you ship it off to us, to smell and envy.

But we are made of newspaper and smoke

and we dunk your roses in vats of blue.

Birds don’t call, our pigeons play it close

to the vest. When the moon is full

we hear it in the sirens. The Pleiades

you could probably buy downtown. Gravity

is the receiver on the hook. Mortality

we smell on certain people as they pass.

(via Writer’s Almanac)

The man crossing the street is a doctor. He’s wearing an open lab coat and white cotton pants, and appears to be holding a urine sample. He drinks from the cup.

Oh, I guess that’ tea.

Scenario: Friends in a hipster coffee shop discuss the creative process.

Girl: Yeah, there’s this guy in our writing group who usually does really good stuff, but just started doing this thing where he strings together a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make sense. It’s like an automatic-writing thing. It doesn’t apply to anything else he’s talking about, but he puts it in there.

Guy: Why?

Girl: He said he thinks it’s funny. Like it’s a kind of joke.

Guy: Like, funny for you guys, or for the reader?

Girl: The reader.

Guy: And is it funny?

Girl: Noooooo.

Guy: Did you tell him?

Girl: None of us know what to say. His other stuff has been so good, it’s like, everyone’s just afraid they’re not getting it, so no one wants to be the first one to say it.

Guy: Yeah, that’s tough.

Girl: Someone needs to tell him.

Guy: Now you know what it’s like to be friends with Tom Cruise.

Excerpt from an old Writer’s Almanac:

Short story writer Katherine Mansfield became one of the wildest bohemians in New Zealand. She had affairs with men and women, lived with Aborigines, and published scandalous stories. She moved back to London and lived in the bohemian scene there. At one point, she married a man she barely knew, and left him before the wedding night was over because she couldn’t stand the pink bedspread.

She said, Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare fiddle?

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Originally uploaded by MaggieMason.

I already miss 2005.