I'M NOT PARANOID! (I just don't like having my mail opened)

I just got the new issue of Abraham Lincoln from K. Silem Mohammad (thanks, Kasey!). Only weird thing was, the envelope had been opened. And stapled back together - through the pages of the magazine. On the outside of the envelope was the stamp "RECEIVED/2600//MAR 10 2008// INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE/KANSAS CITY, MO." So my mail was opened and delayed. I opened it, and there was another staple just through the mag. Oh (I thought) maybe there's a nice little note inside, like when they search your luggage. No note. The return address, on an address label with the Southern Oregon University logo, reads: "Mohammad/Lang. Lit. & Phil."

Now, I know I have a reputation for being paranoid about American paranoia, and I know I say things like No one ever went broke overestimating the racism and xenophobia of the American peckerwoods, and I recognize the threat posed to the fatherland by the individuals known as "Lang," "Lit," and "Phil." So I promise I'm not going to read too much into this. I promise. I really do. Honest. No, for real.

But it did inspire me to pen the following petrarchan sonnet (ahem):

They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
They’re not watching me
Nothing in that file
Nothing in that file
Nothing in that file
Nothing in that file
Nothing in that file
Nothing in that file

Surrealism in Topeka

Sort of. Saturday night went to a reading, in a coffeehouse in a Topeka, Kansas shopping mall, by Anne Boyer (The Romance of Happy Workers, Coffee House) and Hadara Bar-Nadav (A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight, MARGIE/IntuiT House). I guess I would call Hadara's poems neosurrealistica (with some emphasis on the realistica), and Anne's poems, while carrying more of an identifiable (representational?) social edge, is still pretty edgy in terms of representationality. In any event, it was a truly surreal experience hearing these poems next door to the nice Republicans buying meat at the Hy-Vee. Didn't a famous microcephalic social critic once say that life is just a blur of Republicans and meat? Well, it is around here. Except perhaps the poetry, which is well worth checking out (see, e.g., the LOCUSPOINT issue, at right).