I have five poems in the new SPRINGGUN. They're the first (finished) versions of a long poem called TOTEM. View it here. Big thanks to Erin and Mark for working with me on these.

I had a banger of a time in Denver. Saw so many I care for and admire. Heres what some of that saw looked like.

Im reading this Saturday in Denver at the Bad Shadow Affair with Amy Catanzano, Aaron McCollough & Richard Froude. Im excited.

Have I shown you this book? This is to celebrate the Brave Men Press reading with Chris Martin, Michelle Taransky, Ben Kopel and me that we had back in March. 2 poems by each writer. Each fingerprint a signature. 30 were made.

Greg Purcell and Ish Klein do a podcast. Its great. This week that has on Dara Wier. Dara had a poem this week in the the Boston Review

"She told me about someone who was specializing for a while in cute-gay-guy emo-porn‚
which seems to be a fad market for teenage girls in Japan."

Last week, here, we had the Juniper Festival. Had the good graces to see Sommer Browning explode. Here are some pictures from after party at Flying Object.





Also saw Abraham Smith come to. His new book HANK is my favorite this year by far. Just unhinged music. See what its like to be sung.

Last night Brandon Downing read his new long poem last night. I think its called "At Me," but last night it was called "Jar Jar Dump."

I love Brandon. He breaks poetry.

Tonight is the opening of his art show at Flying Object, called BETA Pearls. Some videos will be shown. This is my favorite.

There is Yes

Blake Butler is a crucial dude. One of the nicest dudes I've met. The type of guy that makes you happy to be a part of the writing community because you get to know, by email or face, good humans such as he. And there is no one who can write like him. No one. His new book THERE IS NO YEAR is out today from Harper Perrenial. Im glad "the man" is paying close attention. It feels like victory. For one and all. So glad things are happening for this guy. Couldnt happen to a better human/writer.

Im trying to not think about my computer crashing (which it did) and losing all of my writing (which happened).

For the month of April you can get any three chapbooks from Horseless Press for only $12.

The last of three poems is up this week at REALPOETIK.
Those poems are -

Moon Above The Law

Creeleys Face

It Takes Longer To Gather Light

Thank you so much to Claire and Lily for letting me stick around for so long.

Speaking of Lily, she has two great poems in Transom, a new journal.

I’m on my shoulder.
Hope is a thing with
force between us.

When you come home,
wonder on your face,
I, underwater, will.

And Ben Kopel has 3 sick sutras in Everyday Genius

to get born / with or without a war / I love to you / when you say / waiting is so beautiful / you don’t believe you / but from my brightest eye / to my blackest heart / I do

from the Black Ocean Blog

BRONWEN TATE: I've been thinking, reading your book and just in general recently, about how words name things that exist in the world (bees, the moon, a table), but also are constantly in play with other uses of the same word in other writing. And poetry is sometimes trying to slough off those allusions and make the reader actually see a moon (not a symbol) and at other times relies on allusions to make meaning or create depth. Can you talk a bit about how this works inOrdinary Sun? Do you see your writing moving in one direction or another? Is a knife ever just a knife?

MATTHEW HENRIKSEN: A knife is never a knife as long as I cannot say for certain what a knife is. What does a knife do? I can say that it cuts, but I have not been cut by a knife. Therefore, I have no intimacy with knives. I know what a person is because I know what a person can do. A person loves, and I have been loved by a person. I am a person because I have inflicted my love intimately upon another. In poems, I am not comfortable with "knife" as symbol or as word. If I believe in the holiness of poems, I find holiness in the literal presence of the image, which is neither of the word "knife" itself or what "knife" suggests. The image is the event of a group of words flashing upon the brain and creating a "place" where shapes, colors, and sounds--conceivable sensations--occur. The act of impression, not merely the result, defines the image's presence. If a knife gets into my brain as an image I know what it is. The image is always intimate, inflicted by another and leaving a scar of memory. In "Copse," I do not talk about a knife but my friend's table, "where knife-gnaws never healed." I can't make the reader actually see that table, but I can try to impress the knife-inflicted damage on the brain of another. The image does not come from the actual table or the moment when I saw the table but from the scar of memory that coincided with writing that line. Images are more like ideas than facts, which is lucky for us, because we cannot posses a fact as intimately as we can an idea. The idea of my friend's table made me sad, and the image contains rather than symbolizes that sadness.