CONFESSIONS OF THE UNLAUREATED

I'm off to the South Dakota Festival of the Book in Sioux Falls, SD, where I'll be giving a poetry reading with Frank Pommersheim at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday (today) at the Multicultural Center, and another reading/discussion with South Dakota Poet Laureate David Alan Evans and Nebraska Poet Laureate William Kloefkorn (sadly, I, myself, am completely unlaureated) at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday (tomorrow), also at the Multicultural Center.

At any rate, I'll be back Sunday afternoon, and then, on Monday, donning my academic robes to celebrate the official start of the new academic year. (Literally, too, with the robes. There's a convocation thingy that involves full regalia.)

I have also, by the way, decided on two new Blog House Rules. (You know, like John Irving, but without the literary or cinematic panache.) They are as follows:

1. No drunk blogging wherein one self-flagellates over one's chronic state of dorkhood.

2. No drunk dialing in tandem with drunk blogging, in which one simultaneously bemoans one's chronic state of dorkhood, thereby dorking out even further.

That is all.

WHAT IS IT WITH THE WOMEN WHO WORK AT THE HY-VEE?

Because . . . unless my gaydar's off, which is rare, I could swear they're all gay.

Okay . . . maybe not all of them. Just the ones who are obviously dykes.

The thing is, though, they all wear engagement and wedding rings, and I see them with their "husbands" around town sometimes. Are they simply in denial? Is it all an elaborate ruse to make sure nobody attempts to rattle the closet door?

Sometimes I think that maybe it's like Minnesota . . . where sometimes you swear the women are gay but they're really not, and maybe I'm just confused . . . but then one day I was shopping in the Hy-Vee and noticed kd lang was playing over the loudspeakers. And then Melissa Ethridge. And next it was the Indigo Girls.

I wish they would just go ahead and be gay. It would make me feel so much better.

TONIGHT . . .

There's a low, steady roll of thunder, the popcorn sputter of raindrops striking the air conditioner, and the breathy swish of trees brushing their wet sleeves against the night.

There's wind, and it makes the wind chimes play their obsessive, four-note melody over and over, the hollow wood chimes softly rattling like bones.

I like it . . . this roll, strike, swish, chime, and rattle. Roll, strike, swish, chime, and rattle.

It makes me sad in the way I like to be sad.