Mercy Housing

This is a random/accidental pic of my desk—I don't know if I took it or if Kevin did—but I enjoy the confusing readability of it. The desktop is glass over a dark wooden drawer with dividers in it for pens, etc. The round mouse pad and mouse are actually beneath the glass, with the tiles sitting on the glass, maybe three inches above. The Pepsi makes me favor Kevin as the artiste, plus the pair of glasses in front of the Pepsi, which I'd most likely be wearing if I took the photo—there's three pairs of glasses because I keep a couple of old scratched up glasses in the desk drawer for quick reach when my current glasses aren't at hand. I bought the Op Art-inspired round mouse pad from the Chicago Art Institute the winter I went to the MLA there. When you look at it in real life it has a 3-D holographic effect, which some people find disturbing. Yes, I've brought people into my office and showed off my mouse pad to them. The turquoise tile is from a set of four rather primitively handmade tiles I got at the Goodwill. One of them had lots of "T"s embossed on it, so I gave it to Taylor Brady and Tanya Hollis. The round tiled coaster is from a vintage store on Valencia Street that has long since closed. The small yellow coaster is Tupperware bought on eBay. The wireless mouse is from the downtown Apple store, our second wireless mouse. One of the advantages of a wired mouse, we discovered, is that the wire makes it hard to knock the mouse on the floor and break it. I guess the question here is why do I have the urge to tell the history of my consumer items. I have one student who turns everything she writes into a rant against U.S. capitalism, and I have to admit she's right, our rampant consumerism feels so ugly, and frighteningly unavoidable.

Been thinking a lot about entitlement and capitalist greed due to recent run-ins with the neighborhood association that formed a couple of years ago for the three little alleys that make up my micro-neighborhood. We didn't have a neighborhood association until condos started taking over the neighborhood. The first thing to go was my view of Potrero Hill, but that was just the beginning. Eventually a condo was built on my block, directly across the street—it's barely a street, too narrow for cars to park on both sides. Thus only a few feet from my bedroom, people hang out on a balcony talking, people walk around half naked with the curtains to their 2-story front window open. No place to rest my eyes except on these lives I'm not really interested in. I can still see fireworks from my kitchen window, but I know some day that too will end.

The new owners of the condo across the street have put up some kind of screen in front of the bed, but when the curtains were open the second floor loft bed used to be visible. The original owner of the condo was this really vile woman whose creepy boyfriend would lean on the balcony railing and stare openly into my bedroom. One night we looked out and saw them having sex. She was on the bottom and her legs stuck straight up in the air, and Kevin and I went on the outdoor landing of our building to get a better look at her V-splayed legs bobbing up and down. That same autumn she turned her stereo full blast late one evening—programmed to alternate between two then current pop hits, "Hung Up" by Madonna, and that song by Kelly Rowland "My Boo." Then she passed out. She had a really good sound system, it was like having a disco across the street, the walls were rattling, she woke up everybody. We called the cops, and she wouldn't answer the buzzer, and when they got in the building and banged on her door, she couldn't answer the door, so the cops called the fire department and the firemen put up a ladder to the side of the condo and crawled up to her balcony and through an open window and surrounded her bed. We invited people from the street up to our landing so they could get a better view, and we took pictures of the firemen on the ladder. It was 4 in the morning, almost worth being up just to see the expression on her face when she awoke and men in uniform were surrounding her.

The neighborhood association is obsessed with property values and thus are waging war on taggers. One of them caught a tagger in the act, and grabbed a can of spraypaint and sprayed the tagger. He was seen as a sort of hero on the neighborhood listserve. Another called the cops on two 17-year-old taggers and four patrol cars came out and arrested them, and there followed many "way to go!" messages on the listserve, and I unsubscribed.

Another thing they complain about on the listserve is the eyesore apartment building being constructed on Mission and 10th. The other day when I was on the Mission bus going downtown, I noticed a sign in front of the eyesore and it said Mercy Housing. I looked up Mercy Housing and here's what I found:

Mercy Housing California is developing a former parking lot into two affordable rental housing developments that together will form an intergenerational community in the mid Market neighborhood of San Francisco. Both developments are high rise buildings with significant amount of secure open space, a 5,400 square foot youth and family center, a 400 square foot primary health clinic, and ground floor neighborhood serving retail space. Residents are within the heart of the Civic Center community, close to services and employment centers, 23 MUNI lines and BART.

10th and Mission Family Housing: 136 apartments for lower income families in a new 12-story building. Units will be affordable to households ranging from 15% AMI to 50% AMI. Forty-four of the units will be targeted for occupancy by chronically homeless families referred by the City.

I looked up AMI = Area Median Income. 2009 Median Income for San Francisco is $67, 750 for a single person and $96,800 for a family of four. No one ever mentioned on the list that it was low-income housing that they were complaining about. The complaints were about how the scale of the building was inappropriate to the neighborhood. I'm saddened my funky, arty neighborhood has been invaded by such right-wing attitudes.

Does gentrification always feel heartless? Last Sunday I went to Cafe Flore with Bruce Boone. Bruce is rather frail these days due to the recent death of Jaime, his partner of 18 years. Bruce brought along Sadie, his teeny Yorkie, as we've taken her to the Flore before. She was a companion dog for Jaime, but in all the chaos surrounding his death, her tags have been lost. The Flore, which in the 80s was ultra-hip, punk, outrageous, is now really popular again, but with a more conservative crowd. Bruce and Sadie sat at a table beside this guy in his 30s with a shaved head, while I went to order our food. I saw the guy talking to Bruce, figuring they were chitchatting. After a while Bruce came up to me in line and said we had to move, as the guy was asking for Sadie's tags and papers, and said he wasn't sitting next to any dog. So we moved our stuff to another table across the room, and I got at the end of the line again, and a few minutes later, Bruce came up and said we had to leave, that the manager came up to him and told him no dogs. The asshole guy had complained. This really disturbed me, it was so unkind, for no reason. Who could be so rude to a frail man in his 70s? I wish I'd taken a picture of the guy, but I didn't. Here's a 2007 picture of Bruce I stole from X Poetics:

So we took Sadie back to Bruce's apartment and then went for brunch at the Cove, a diner on Castro Street. The Cove is oldtime Castro, unpretentious hearty food, and it's as nerdy as the Cafe Flore is trendy, like Revenge of the Nerds part 20 could be filmed there. And, of course, everybody was very friendly at the Cove.

I visited Jaime a few weeks before he died. It was before the pain of his cancer became unbearable, just before. Jaime was half lying, half sitting up in bed, eating oatmeal and cinnamon toast. He said that he was calling up all the people who meant a lot to him and telling them how much they meant, telling him that he loved them. He said he was lucky to be able to do this, that knowing he was dying was a blessing in a way.

So, I'd like to end this post with some sweetness, some Barf photos I've had for ages but forgot to post. Here's two majorly cute pix from Erica Kaufman of her dog Isabel (that looks like Stacy Szymaszek's forehead behind the book in the top pic):



And here's two of sweet, generous, gorgeous Colter Jacobsen, who did the lettering and cover design of Barf Manifesto. (These photos are by Andrew McKinley.)

Colter helped me apply a clear privacy film to my bedroom window in order to block my view of the condo, but still allow light to enter. To burnish the film he used a copy of Deepak Chopra's Seven Spiritual Laws of Success.

Lambda Nominee Reading

I went to a star-studded reading this evening at the San Francisco Public Library of some of the local writers nominated for this year's Lambda Book Award. For the two or three readers of mine who aren't gay, the Lambda Book Award is for the "best" gay and lesbian books of the year. The prizes will be awarded in a New York ceremony on May 28. We on the more experimental side of things, of course, complain about the choices every year—although 2 years ago by some fluke Dennis Cooper won for best gay male novel. This fabulous reading tonight was enough to shut up my complaints for this year.

Before the reading the nominees lined up against the mural in the library basement:

Here's the readers, their books and categories they were nominated in; from left to right we have:

JL Meyer, Hotel Liaison, Lesbian Romance
Elizabeth Bradfield, Interpretive Work, Lesbian Poetry
Judy Grahn, love belongs to those who do the feeling, Lesbian Poetry
Kevin Killian, Collected Poems of Jack Spicer, Gay Poetry
Daphne Gottlieb, Kissing Dead Girls, Lesbian Poetry
Marcus Ewert, 10,000 Dresses, Transgender
Thea Hillman, Intersex (for lack of a better word), Transgender
Annie Sprinkle, Live Through This, LGBT Anthology
Christopher Rice, M.C., president of the Lambda board

Missing is Rex Ray, illustrator for 10,000 Dresses. Handsome and popular Rex showed up after the photo op.

The evening's host, novelist Christopher Rice, son of Anne Rice, is so suave he's uncanny. This photo doesn't do him justice. He was so poised, so comfortable with being in the spotlight and so handsome, it was like meeting Prince William or Harry. He gave a moving speech about how the recent Amazon "glitch" in deleting thousands of gay and lesbian books from their search engine had inspired Lambda to become more of an activist organization, like the GLAAD of the art world, monitoring the machinations of those who would suppress queer voices. We all clapped and cheered.

I went to the reading to support Kevin and Marcus, "my boys," and I hadn't really paid attention to who else was reading, so what a pleasant surprise to sit through an amazing group of writers. Elizabeth Bradfield, from Alaska, whose book was published by Eloise Klein Healy in her Red Hen series, took the stage in a very reserved manner and then shocked us all with her hilarious and biting bawdiness. She and Kevin swapped stories about their respective poetry anthology projects and promised to brainstorm with each other in the future.

Annie Sprinkle then presented a slide show to accompany her reading. Veteran artist and activist and former porn star, Sprinkle has been around a long time, and she told the story of her bout with breast cancer and how it affected her ongoing relationship with the academic Elizabeth Stephens. The couple made a series of art projects centering on the cancer. In one series they dressed in extravagant costumes each time Annie went in for chemo therapy and had the doctor, nurses, or other patients photograph them. The photos were hilarious, almost denying the gravity of the experience, yet hurling it at you at the same time. I loved them.

A photo of Annie Sprinkle Kevin snapped with my iPhone. Master photographer Rink in the background. On the screen, the image is of Beth Stephens.

Next came Marcus and Rex. Rex said he was the hand model for the evening, and he held up 10,000 Dresses as Marcus read the entire text. Oddly, even though the book is a brightly colored children's book, it's not nominated in the children's category, but in the transgendered category. I reminded Marcus that Anna Paquin won the Oscar for best supporting actress for The Piano when she was still in grade school, so he shouldn't discount the power of childness to win awards. 10,000 Dresses is already a classic. I tried to imagine I was a child hearing it for the first time. What would I make out of it? A dress!!!

Daphne Gottlieb, exotic and beautiful in black bangs and knee-length black cotton dress, moved away from a squeaky microphone and just tore up the room with poems from her Kissing Dead Girls book. With her extensive background in the spoken word scene, she knows just what to do to present what is actually very sophisticated and nuanced work and grab you by the gut with it. I will never forget her final piece where she spoke from the voice of a young lesbian girl brutally murdered by other girls in her school (based on a true story), incorporating lines from the girl's real letters to the girl who betrayed her. "Can you give me something to remember you by." Watching Daphne act this all out was riveting, scary.

Next a legend took the stage, also abjuring the microphone. I read Judy Grahn in the 1970s, in Indiana, which to me is a indication of a very influential and powerful voice. I kept wanting to yell out, like a fan at a rock concert, "Read Edward the Dyke!" Grahn's new collection spans decades of her career, and she started with a poem written in 1975. She is still a force to be conjured with, and as she spoke I remembered interviewing her in the early 80s, with the late Steve Abbott, like we were Diane Sawyer and Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes—interviewing her at her house, when she was still living in San Francisco with the late Paula Gunn Allen. I'm going to have to dig out the old gay literary journal it was printed in and take a look at it again. Steve acted like he was good buddies with her, whereas I felt like a babbling groupie.

Like Marcus Ewert, Thea Hillman is also nominated in the transgender category, and she pointed out how perfect it is that her Intersex book is in a category in which it doesn't really belong. Thea, astonishingly and beamingly eight months pregnant, read two essays from her book, brief and impressionistic pieces that capture as no other kind of testimony can, the ways in which "intersex" is dismissed and pathologized. As she read, I kept wishing that my friend Christopher Breu was there—a scholar who put aside his academic rigors last summer to write a guide for high school teachers on how to teach and handle intersex issues in the classroom. Top on Chris' list was Jeffrey Eugenides' novel Middlesex, and it's a shame Thea's book appeared too late to make it into this article.

Kevin read next—perfectly, of course, but how are you going to top a brief reading that begins with the opening of "Thing Language"—the famous poem about "This ocean, humiliating in its disguises"? Then he read the early "Homosexuality" and the late 1950s "Dignity." Halfway through, he confessed that some have asked him what "Dignity" was about, and he said he didn't know. After the reading, Annie Sprinkle told us that she didn't understand anything about experimental poetry, but she enjoyed the Spicer. "You said you didn't know what it was all about," she reminded Kevin. "Well, that's how I feel all the time."

Lastly we heard a lesbian romance novelist, Joanne Meyer, reading from the kind of story I never actually read, about a hotel for women going up in San Francisco and our heroine, Stephanie, annoyed beyond endurance, by her sexy new female hard-hat, "Jock Reynolds" (you got to love the names)... Kevin said they were meeting cute, but in any case the whole audience gasped when defiant Jock swings her sledgehammer into a wall in the decaying hotel, again and again, while Stephanie huffs, and lo and behold, inside the wall someone sees—what is it? I can't make it out—oh my God, it's a coffin! At that dramatic point in her novel, Meyer stopped reading and shut the book knowing many of us would rush out to buy a copy to find out what happened. "Coffin?" I glanced at Christopher Rice, who must have grown up in a home filled with coffins, where coffins were used as coffee tables. But Rice only leapt to his feet and thanked us all for coming.

Temporary Gang

What a week it’s been, but I have to report on some good readings we had here lately, and that my last post prophesied.

First off on Sunday I read for Krupskaya and Right Window at the ATA space in the Mission. A beautiful blustery Sunday afternoon—Easter in fact. We should have had some chocolate eggs instead of the usual chips and beer and wine. But those chips did go down with the crowd.

John Koch and Kota Uetsu, members of the artists’ collective Right Window, continued their puppet show “March” in the front of the space, a very beautiful melodrama with ever-changing backdrops and sets.


I read from an in-process and far from finished piece, which was an incredibly vulnerable and scary thing to do. Don’t know if I’d ever do it again, but afterward people were kind. When Colin got up to read he faced a room full of supportive new fans of every stripe, from students to old masters, and I imagine this gave him some courage. He read from 8 x 8 x 7, and he started off with something I’ve never seen a writer do, he read the acknowledgment page, typical of his courtly sort of behavior.

Then he launched into the main body of the work, a long poem called “Play” which, he told us beforehand, was perhaps the jokiest of the book and so fitting for a city like ours that loves to have fun and loves to laugh. Bruce Boone came to the reading, and Colin was understandably unnerved by meeting the august and quizzical figure of legend. Let’s see, who else was there? The artists Scott Hewicker, Anne McGuire, Emily Wilson and Matt Gordon, the poets Lucas Rivera, Jacob Eichert, Lisa Robertson, Bob Gluck, Lew Ellingham, Ariel Goldberg, Erika Staiti, Kristen Holden, and from England, Tim Atkins and his partner, Jackie. (I think that’s her name, but one never knows with these BBC accents. Kevin thinks her name might be Checkie, but I said I didn’t think so.) And last but not least, Krupskaya publisher, Jocelyn Saidenberg.

Colin Smith and Bruce Boone

Afterward some of us went to a restaurant nearby for dinner, and the oddest thing was that we sat down to dinner, eight of us, with a man none had seen before, who just moved on from the reading with us, with enough assurance so that all of us were convinced he was a really good friend of someone else at the party. Halfway through the meal he told us his name was “Wind Chill,” but maybe I heard him wrong.

On Tuesday night Kevin read with Leslie Scalapino, and the two of them each welcomed Tim Atkins from London to our city. This reading was at the incredible bookstore David Highsmith runs in the Castro. Way back in the 80s David published my first chapbook, The Debbies I Have Known. His store’s called Books and Bookshelves, and has the most unbelievable selection of books in the world at their original prices! Like Tuumba books for 3 dollars. Tim came a day early, scoped it out, and bought he said, thousands of pounds worth of books for 200 dollars. Ever have that feeling? Tim’s great moment as a fan came when the legendary language poet David Melnick came to the event, and Tim happened to have with him the Tuumba edition of Men in Aida that he had just bought the day before. He pumped his fist in the air as he got Melnick to sign it for him—score! I started photographing the audience as they trooped in, and here are some shots of the different aspects of the reading.

Mara Ann on left in red coat and Mac McGinnes in white beard, and others.

Leslie Scalapino and Norma Cole in back, Jackie and Tim Atkins in foreground.

Left to right: Lew Ellingham, Charlie Hibberd, Colin Smith, Drew Cushing, and sorry, I can't remember her name, though she's a lovely person and I've met her many times.

The giant head in the foreground is Anne McGuire. Standing beside Kevin is David Highsmith.

Far left, Steven Trull, center Colter Jacobsen, right David Melnick. You can see Patrick Dunagan on the left, over Colter's right shoulder.

Kevin read from Action Kylie the one poem that Tim had published in his magazine Onedit, Leslie read some exciting new work, but Tim stole the evening with his reading of 8 poems from Horace and 16 from the manuscript of his new Petrarch translations. What he read was funny, ironic, social critique yet at the same time sincere and passionate. He even risked moments of luscious beauty—and got away with it! I loved it and slobbered all over him.

After the reading Kevin took Tim and Colin to Amber, one of the few bars in the city where smoking is encouraged. Out in the open air, very late, we all hugged on Church and Market Street. Tim and Jackie were off to visit Clark Coolidge in Petaluma, and Colin was off to visit Mark Wallace and Lorraine Graham in the Southland, so it felt like our little, temporary gang was breaking up.

Kevin and Colin and two homeless guys who had cases of brightly-colored energy drinks, in subway ("MUNI") station.

Sunday and Tuesday

This Sunday if you’re in San Francisco I hope you can come to a reading in the Mission at 4 pm. I will be reading but the excitement is all about Colin Smith, who will be reading with me and giving his first reading in San Francisco, maybe in California, maybe in the USA.

We’re going to be reading at ATA (Artists Television Access), 992 Valencia Street, at 21st Street, from 4—6 p.m. This event is sponsored by Krupskaya Books and also by Right Window, so what do you have to lose!

I remember going to see James Schuyler when he gave his first reading in San Francisco, and the electricity that filled the auditorium of SFAI when the lights went down and the man himself lumbered onto the stage. A few years later, I remember the first time Jeff Clark read, —still maybe the only time I’ve seen him read?—at Small Press Traffic when it was still housed at the now defunct New College, and Jeff looked so terrified we had to pry him out of the shadows with a hook. All I’m saying is that this is one event you won’t want to miss, for Colin Smith is really something special. There’s a page on the Electronic Poetry Center devoted to Colin, with a sharp photo of the man by Tom Orange that I liked so much I put it at the top of this page.

On his EPC author page you can access poems, sound files, etc, and his biography:

Born and raised out of Oshawa, Ontario, Colin Smith studied creative writing at York University (often with Don Coles), and graduated in 1983 with a BFA in it. Moved to Vancouver in 1987 and immediately became part of Kootenay School of Writing "doings". Was an active collective member c.1989 through 1996, and again from 2005 to 2007. Proofread many issues of Writing and Raddle Moon magazines.

His first book of poems, Multiple Poses, was published in 1997 by Tsunami Editions. A second, 8 x 8 x 7, is recently out from KRUPSKAYA.

He is now living for the second time in the isolation chamber and racial holy war otherwise known as Winnipeg, Manitoba.

When we were at the Positions Colloquium in Vancouver this past summer the organizers had us all write up Poetics Statements, and I thought Colin’s one of the very best. Here’s an excerpt:

I think poetry is the most intense language form we have in our DNA, capable of giving maximum flexibility and complication to binaries like clear/opaque and singularity/multiplicity. Short of feeding children and building housing, I like to think there isn’t anything poetry can’t do, but this is tempered with the knowledge that we live in a very limiting world. Your Facebook is checking you out. Go ahead, I dare you to scale that fence and wander about that vacant lot. I’ll try to make bail. I'll bring cigarettes.

So I hope you can come out and meet the man himself. I can't wait.


Not to be outdone, Kevin wants me to tell you about a reading he’s organizing in honor of another visiting poet, Britain’s Tim Atkins! Tim is reading at Books and Bookshelves in San Francisco (at 99 Sanchez) on Tuesday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. Kevin will be reading in support of him, as will another local writer, in fact a great star, Leslie Scalapino, whose O Books printed Tim’s recent work of translation, Horace. Three for the price of one, though Leslie and Kevin have said that they will be reading only briefly in order to let Tim Atkins shine.

I met Tim Atkins many years back when he lived here in San Francisco in the early 1990s. I remember him among the many young poets who joined up when Intersection offered an extensive poets theater workshop that Carla Harryman was teaching, and in the years since then we have often wondered how to get back that spirited energy, that generosity, that talent. Well here he is at last!

Tim Atkins is the author of To Repel Ghosts (Like Books), Oriental Tapping (Fulcrum), 25 Sonnets (The Figures), Horace (O Books) and Folklore (Salt). His current work in progress, Petrarch, is widely published in poetry journals and online.

Editor of the international poetry journal onedit.net, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at The University Of East London, Buddhist, father, and brown belt in Judo, Tim lives in London with his wife and daughter.

So to sum it up, I will be reading with Colin Smith on Sunday, April 12, at the ATA space on Valencia (from 4 to 6), and Tim Atkins will be reading with Leslie Scalapino and Kevin, at Books & Bookshelves (99 Sanchez), in the Castro, on Tuesday, April 14, at 7:30 p.m. Hope to see you at one or another of these spaces.

More Tunes

On Facebook Jeni Olin posted this 1981 video of Nikka Costa singing "Out Here On My Own" from the movie musical Fame:



Jeni's right, it's an addictive video. "Sometimes I wonder/where I've been/who I am/do I fit in." Watching it I shed a tear for JonBenet. Love the pussy cat award they give her at the end. Of course she's getting it for being the ultimate adult/child.

Here's another find, "Allergic to the 20th Century," by Kim Palmer, which was recorded while she lived in a porcelain trailer in the desert (do to her multiple chemical sensitivities). I spent a lot of time this weekend on The Un-Official Kim Palmer Fan Club site, which chronicles Palmer's desperate attempts to find a home that wasn't toxic to her.





"Then began a wild series of searches for a tolerable place to live, beginning with a friend literally carrying me to a $15,000 glass room he had constructed for me in the cleaner air of CA's Central Coast. I never tolerated the glass room and had to cover the bathroom walls/celing etc. with aluminum foil and live in the bathtub for 2 years. After that another series of foiled rooms until I became allergic to foil, finally losing my safe place (a 9 room house in which I was again holed up in the bathtub). I then tried to rent the safest place I could possibly find, ending up having to sleep outside with a bronchial infection the house had caused and which there was no hope of getting over without a place to live. With much help I somehow flew to Austin where a porcelain trailer made for people w/ MCS was for sale - which saved my life.

"After learning how to ground it I seemed to handle it, halleluja. The idea was to buy it and take it west to escape the very oppressive humidity and mold of Texas, which for me was so flattening I was bed-ridden and in pain there most of the time. But I got stuck there 5 years, every summer driven West by a friend as I lay in the truck on oxygen searching for a safe place to put my RV, sleeping on a cot in the open (as there is no tent I can tolerate) on California porches, in New Mexico backyards, under Texas canopies and Arizona stars, with already frail health. And every summer for 5 years we'd come back, totally exhausted, mission failed. Finally, after living outside for 5 gruelling months straight last year, I found a place in the one small desert area I do best in in the whole country (being very limited by my altitude, mold, vegetation, cold etc. sensitivities)."

Frightening and beautiful, how she could continue to produce work under such duress. Palmer passed away in 2006.