Maybe some of you commute from your bed to your desk and from your desk to your bed. I do not. My commute is not bad, or long. I can make it home for lunch, which gives the dog a chance to air out. Four times a day + five days a week, for roughly forty-eight weeks of the year = 960 commutes a year. Such driving requires I find new and inventive ways of breaking the monotony of the same shops, gas stations and restaurants that I pass, again and again, day after day. One week I’ll notice the same newspaper in the same bag in the same median. Another week I’ll track a blue paint bucket as it drifts across the street and is pushed under the chassis by the occasional tire. Once at work, I’m hungry for news. I tune in. Recently, I was rewarded with a story about the Seine’s struggling bouquinistes. Sometimes I’ll thumb through the morning paper, learning of the youth’s love affair with Jane Austen. Eventually, I sign on to the machine. Some days I click through Saul Bellow’s letters. Other days I scroll down David Foster Wallace’s archives, including his undergraduate thesis. If I’m lucky, a momentary spectacle of media will pique my attention: Surely Umberto Eco’s opinion on the Wikileaks story deserves more than a glancing look. Finally, before I leave for my lunch commute, I’ll sit down with a full classic at my fingertips. Not too bad, but every once in a while I like my reading on paper.

If you’re in the Bay area and also keen to literary persuasion, be sure to check out Ethel Rohan’s reading at Green Apple Books tomorrow night. The shenanigans start at 7 pm. For more information, visit the Green Apple Books Web site. Good luck, Ethel!

Small black cat carries
the dead mouse to the door, ice
circles the witness moon.

Under the barn floor
the dog and I hear squeaking.
Swallows guard their eggs.

August heat glimmers,
white sequins litter the lake.
I wish for fireflies.

Leaves cling to the boy’s
boots. Darkness enters early.
Windows close their eyes.

___________________________

Lisa Zimmerman received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.  Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in the Colorado Review, Redbook, Paper Street, Poet Lore, Eclipse, Atlanta Review and many other journals. Her most recent poetry collection is The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press, 2008). She is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado.

Here’s a deal: Order one copy of Ethel Rohan’s CUT THROUGH THE BONE and get a second copy for free.

Keep one for yourself and give the other as a holiday gift! This offer ends today at 8 pm EST, so move fast little reindeer . . .

To purchase now, go HERE.

Barry Graham talks to us today about his new novella and what it’s like to die everyday.

Tell us about the first story you remember writing.

I was reading and studying lit and comp theory and writing some pretty bad poems and personal essays for ten years or so before I ever even thought about writing a story, so I think I came to short story writing with a certain level of craft and precision that some people don’t have who begin very early on with story writing. The first story I ever wrote is called All His Chips, which is one of the stories in The National Virginity Pledge. I don’t really know how it happened. I can’t describe the process or the inspiration. I sat down one day and wrote a story and let some friends read it and they thought it was pretty good so I wrote more.

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