A Fraction of the Conversations the Poet Remembers Having at Sin City Brewing
LAS VEGAS — The Poet arrives to find the bartender has just opened the bar. She is friendly, yet wary. After a short convo, she admits that everything is not alright, that her ex works in the same building and that sometimes she runs into him.
Travel Writing, Poetry & the Uta Makura
In “Musashino in Tuscany: Japanese Overseas Travel Literature 1860-1912,” Susanna Fessler identifies two central features of Japanese travel literature: 1) uta makura (codified poetic references) and 2) meisho (famous travel places).
“He didn't hesitate to publish everything he wrote.”
This back-and-forth between prose and not-prose is a common feature of prosimetrum. Here the effect is magnificent, because the notes are evidence and refutation of Ben Youssef’s claim to have not written a poem.
Reading at Boogaloos Bar & Grill
RICHMOND, Va. — Because most of what I’m writing and reading these days are poems in the form of toasts or anti-toasts, it adds a little something extra when people have a drink in their hand. When I get to the “raise your glass” parts of the toasts, people can actually raise a glass.
Reading at the Bowery Poetry Club
NEW YORK CITY — C. suggested we go to this open mic at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. I came up for a couple days to hang out and watch him do stand-up. I thought it’d be cool to find someplace where I could read from the manuscript I’d just finished. They’re a bunch of prose-verse hybrids in the form of toasts.
Courting the Imagination
MOUNT JOY, Pa. — This respite is an opportunity to hideaway for an hour. To be in each other’s company is our favorite pastime. With so few opportunities lately to enjoy it alone, this is a gift.
The Word for “Made-Up” Time
COLUMBIA, Pa. — I never gave much thought to the word “passage.”
The Cow Without a Smile
COLUMBIA, Pa. — Here is a manufactured innocence that I see quite clearly, but have failed to relinquish completely. Growing up, we would say that our veins and arteries carried iced tea. We joked the convenience stores were blood banks. We transfused ourselves after a three-mile run. We transplanted our broken adolescent hearts with ice cream scoops.
An Early Morning Hike
COLUMBIA, Pa. — Every sentence is always inadequate, so a fear of failure has never paralyzed me. That’s not what makes writing difficult. It’s the possibility of success that strikes me as terrifying. What if I succeed? What if, during one of these early-morning moments, the seamless expression of an adjacent world materializes? How do I live with myself?
A Tour of James Buchanan’s Wheatland
LANCASTER, Pa. — Cross the threshold. Say where you’re from. Follow your guide, dressed in period costume, to the left. This was James Buchanan’s dining room. Here’s a list of foods that people in his time would have eaten for dinner: turkey, cranberry sauce, green beans.
Tranquility, War, Winter, Guilt, Tranquility
LANCASTER, Pa. — It seems unfair, if not unjust, to find tranquility among deserted buildings and desolate paths.
Baja Brewing and the Intervention of San Lucas
SAN JOSE DEL CABO, MEXICO — Tell people you’re going to Los Cabos, and they assume you’ll be sitting poolside at a resort, with a frozen cocktail in one hand and a magazine in the other.
A Poem for Sam’s Man Cave, Lancaster, Pennsylvania
LANCASTER, Pa. — A poem for the owner of this Lancaster County institution.
A Yearning for Wild Yeast at the Arrowood Farms Brewery
ACCORD, N.Y. — Collecting yeast isn’t like tracking a wild animal. If anything, the process is less about capturing the yeast than receiving it.
Portland, Maine: A Local Recommends
PORTLAND, Maine — Got one day in Portland, Maine? Not sure what to do? Neither did we. To be honest, I kind of assumed I’d never actually go to Maine.
The First Week of Self Employment
BLUEMONT, Va. — My mien is affected. I smuggle a smile inside an unworthy worry wrapped in a burning desire. I’m happy and nervous. Wherever I abode, ordinary living has no hold on me. Uniform expectation and obligation cause me to doze. These hills are high enough to make the air feel fresh. I’m with friends and a lover. I’m free.
On Our Way to the Pocono Mountains
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — We three unwise ones stop in Bethlehem. / Hurrah! Hurrah! We’re going to a wedding. / We stop at Fegley’s Brew Works. We drink a round of beers.
Attending the AHA’s 35th Annual National Homebrewers Conference
PHILADELPHIA — I left work and went straight to Union Station. By the time I got to my hotel room in Philadelphia, it was like I’d landed on the moon, that’s how far away I felt from D.C. I went immediately to bed and woke the next morning, startled. I slept so soundly I hadn’t heard my alarm go off. Then it came to me …
The Delicate Matter of Traveling with Other Couples
SHEPHERDSTOWN, W. Va. — I enjoy a good gimmick. The Bavarian Inn, which is designed to evoke a small village in southern Germany, is as good as a gimmick gets. It works because we’re in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. If this were Las Vegas, the gimmick would be too much, go too far. It’d be a hotel-casino called “Munich, Munich.”
When The Dead Don’t Speak and the Living Won’t
ARLINGTON, Va. — I am told I may discern the fragmentation of the universe by observing how boulders become rocks, how rocks crumble to pebbles, pebbles to dust. They mean for me to remove myself from society and live alone among nature (a la Tu Fu or Wittgenstein) where I will surely understand how time expands and the horizon grows in a way that approximates the infinite.