I Have to Pay People to Read Me

I woke this morning feeling as if elves had beaten my body with tiny ball peen hammers all night; I attribute this to lying on my stomach to sample my new internet connection with a short phone cord, a dastardly position for all my busted disks. On the bright side I had a good movement this morning!

Meanwhile I’ve submitted “The Deprivathon” to eight editors whose magazines have published me before, full well knowing, due to its length, that the chances of publication are slim.

Here’s a plug for some of the magazines I sent it to, with links to my poems in all except small spiral notebook, which published my poem "Odd Dream" in March of 2002 but let the page disappear from the archives--this happens all the time, how you can get "de-published" on the net:


Tryst
Rose and Thorn
Plum Ruby Review
The Pedestal Magazine
Agnieska’s Dowry
Niederngasse

Also, I couldn’t resist a magazine new to me because of its title: Monkey Bicycle

I have been peeing from our deck onto the ceramic gnome I purchased, who stands with a mushroom cup above his head on a redwood stump below. Kathleen yesterday mistakenly thought it had rained for that reason. It’s a good ten feet down and out, by the way, so for a 51-year-old man I haven’t lost my fire hose just yet, though prostatic hypertrophy is inevitable for any man who has the audacity to pee for longer than his God-appointed days.

Kathleen claims the salamander she found was more spotted like a leopard, but I claim poetic license. It did look as if its spots had been dripped on its sides, not any kind of symmetric adornment, nevertheless in a general way they qualified as stripes.

Kathleen was late to read my blog yesterday so I’m punishing her by revealing the origin of her back problems: wild sex with her husband. There, I’ve said it. The pop we heard in Mexico two years ago when that first disk went was so impressive we had coitus interruptus from diskus explosis.

I can always delete this if it gets me in trouble.

Kathleen asked me yesterday if there were anything I wouldn’t do for attention. I couldn’t think of anything.

I need to acknowledge some folks who’ve been writing me and deserve praise for that reason, one of whom actually responded to my plea for new e-mail addresses for my mailing list, Jake, who led me to Miriam, who said she was happy to be added.

A Ms. Rea was quite complimentary about “The Deprivathon,” and asked me to contribute a letter to her site addressing tobacco. Many have praised the “Tobaccohontas” section of my poem (no doubt because it’s sexy and sexy poetry is hard to write).

Christopher T. George, Norman Ball, Vicki Broach, Sharon Kourous and Kathleen Burke, possibly David Ayers, have all promised to read my essay on Four Quartets. (For any interested, there is now a revised copy I’d rather you printed out, so please e-mail me for the new version before assaying the essay--love that ass-saying word, veritably oracular, even orificial.)

There will be a PRIZE, a gift certificate of $25 for Amazon.com, to the first reader who actually completes the essay. This prize will be known as the “The Chaffin Has to Pay People to Read Him Prize.” It will be awarded on the honor system. (Any skimming of the essay does not qualify; you must read it entire at least once, and that with a copy of Four Quartets in your hand for when I delve into the poems in detail.)

I know it’s not easy fare, though I strove to make it so. 33,000 words of criticism is asking a lot, even of your friends. My sister has read quite a bit of it, but family members don't qualify for the prize. Naturally, my wife and editor, Kathleen, was forced to read it by her job description. Although she hates my writing she enjoys criticizing it.


CE