hiatus

I'll be the first to admit: recent posts have been skimpy. I'm sorry.

For a handful of reasons, I've decided to take a short hiatus. Probably one month, maybe two, namely because I need to focus on other things for a while.

I'm taking a creative writing course at Emory and now have real writing assignments to do (not to say that blogging is not real writing), and I've started a novel.

There... I said it.

I'm finally leaving the safe familiar waters of poetry and diving off the deep end, into the shark-infested ocean of prose. Oh but before I do — once more, unto the breach my friends, once more! I leave you with this poem from my cache, circa 2005. In the meantime, Godspeed.

Coconut Grove

We leave at the onset of the rainy season
Before your country turns to mud.

We leave when the air gets too heavy
Thick with humidity, weighing us down,
Pressing our eyes further into our white heads
Shutting our pale eyelids—
One more curtain between our travels
And your reality.

My hands ache, yellow callouses start to form
After pulling for fifteen, twenty minutes,
Barely pulling on that fishing net,
And you sing and pull, five hours longer.
You chant these tones, barefoot on the sand,
Wearing only these denim shorts,
Brown with sweat and age.

Your hands are two big callouses,
Also yellow.