MondoHomo Dirty South Poetry Reading

Dirty = FUN

Before the reading & taking advantage of my 2 free drinks.

Met Darlene at a Pride volunteer event. Now we're BFF.

When I read my poems I sometimes make scary faces.

ToasterMag ~ The Last Issue

Featuring:

Megan Volpert, Montgomery Maxton, Jessica Hand,

Kate Evans, & Dustin Brookshire

2007 Atlanta Pride Festival Pics

Here are a few pictures from this year's
Atlanta Pride Festival:

Love it!


Congressman John Lewis spoke on Saturday. Lewis gave a passionate speach that moved me to tears. He told festival participants that the GLBT community will always have his support while he's in office. He stressed we can't accept things because "they are." We must demand and fight for change!

Deborah Gibson (formerly known as Debbie Gibson) performed on Saturday. I was on my way to enjoy VIP seating to take better pictures than the one above, but I lost my 2-way radio in route. I never made it to the VIP seating because I started the search for the radio, hoping I wouldn't have to tell the powers that be that I lost it.

I didn't find my radio, but I did find the leather people.

I wanted to buy this for Montgomery, but I gave up when I found out
it was filled with air instead of lube.

dustinbrookshire.com

It is finally up: www.dustinbrookshire.com

2007 Atlanta Pride Festival

I am exhausted!

The Atlanta Pride Festival was held this weekend. I was at the park 10 hours on Friday, 15 hours on Saturday, and 12 hours on Sunday. No, I'm not a super-party-animal.... I'm on the Atlanta Pride Committee, which is a volunteer committee of about 20 people who help make the festival happen.

I will post more on the event at some point during the week and share pictures.

Limp Wrist

Since ToasterMag is ending I'm going to do my own thing. I bought the domain www.limpwristmag.com. Here's to hoping it is a success.


Poetry Submission Guidelines:

(1) Submit a MAX of five poems. We can’t handle anything bigger than five! All submissions should be a final version ready for publication—it is not the responsibility of Limp Wrist staff to correct your errors or revise submissions. Again, we will NOT make any changes to your submissions, not even if you ask nicely with sugar or Brad Pitt on top.


(2) All submissions may be sent in the body of an email, via snail mail, telegraph, or carrier pigeon. At Limp Wrist, we view attachments like unprotected sex; since we prefer not to catch anything,so we won’t open attachments. Email submissions should be sent to dustin@limpwristmag.com. Snail mail submissions should be sent to:

Limp Wrist Magazine
Attn: Poetry Editor
PO Box 47891,
Atlanta, GA 30362.

OK. We were joking about sending submissions via telegraph and carrier pigeon. It seemed funny; indulge us and laugh at our humor.


(3) All submissions must include two forms of contact information.


(4) Please include the following statement (and mean it!) with your submissions: “The poems submitted are my own original work and have not been previously published."


(5) If your work is chosen for publication, you give Limp Wrist the right to republish the work at a later date, whether it be online or in print.


(6) Please note, if your work is selected for publication (and even if it isn’t) you will receive a response from Limp Wrist. We strive to reply to all submissions within one month; please note the max response time is two months. If you send a follow-up message before two months, we’ll reply via our deluxe carrier pigeon!

Key West Literary Seminar ~ Jan. 14 - Jan. 20

Today, while I was mulling over the rejection from KO, it hit me that I never posted the news about the Kew West Literary Seminar. I received a scholarship that will enable me to attend the 26th Annual Seminar: NEW VOICES- Where are We Going? Where Have Been?, participate in a workshop lead by Dara Wier, and stay at Eden House (home of the seminar & pictures to the right). I'm thrilled to be able to attend the seminar and have the chance to experience Key West for the first time.

The Bad & The Good

The Bad News:

Dear Dustin,

Thanks for submitting. Unfortunately, the poems you sent aren't quite right for Knockout. I did like the last five lines of "Gay Poetry" quite a lot. I wish you the best of luck in placing the poems elsewhere. You're more than welcome to send more poems for consideration.

Oh well. Chin up. Pen up. Keep on.


The Good News:
Yesterday, I received a new phone-- thanks mom and dad. I'm the proud owner of a Samsung Blackjack. A few months ago I accidentally destroyed my phone, and I've been using a cheap to-go phone. Now, I have the luxury of unlimited internet access and 1500 text messages. Spiffy.

ToasterMag... Volume 2, Issue 6 to Come

The last issue of ToasterMag will be updated in a few weeks. I'm still disappointed that it is coming to an end, but it's like Jessica Tandy's character in FRIED GREEN TOMATOES says, "God doesn't close a door without opening a window."

If you haven't already, take a few minutes to read the work of Beth Gylys and Theresa Davis; both are featured in the Freehand Department in Volume 2, Issue 5. Reading their poems is time well spent!

I am excited to announce that the last issue will contain work by Kate Evans, Jessica Hand, Montgomery Maxton, Megan Volpert, and of course, yours truly. The last issue is going to be fierce from the poetry stand point.

"Furious Cooking" ~ Seaton

I love "Furious Cooking," which is the title poem of Maureen Seaton's book that won the 1995 Iowa Poetry Prize. After reading "Furious Cooking" I decided to write a poem in the same manner-- after three revisions this morning, I like the status of my poem. Anyway, here is Seaton's poem:

FURIOUS COOKING

It's the kind of cooking where before you begin
you dump the old beef stew down the toilet

and flush it thinking, good, watching
gravy splatter on the shiny white tiles.

Where the chicken spread-eagled on the butcher block
could be anyone and you don't even bother to say

thanks for your life, chicken, or regret the way
the little legs remind you of just that.

Where the bay leaves aren't eased in but thrown
voila into sizzling olive oil which

burns the poulet nicely along with the onions
alerting the fire alarm and still you think,

good, let the landlord worry I'll burn this bitch down.
It's the kind of cooking that gives your family

agita, big Italian-style pain, even if it's only
fricasee the way your Nana used to make it.

She was so pissed she painted her kitchen ceiling red!
Remember the Irish soda-break chicken and all those

green veggies in heavy cream your poor mother
yelled so loud about, oh, the calories! Furious

cooking, the kind where hacking the pollo
to bits with no names, you look up to see the windows

steamed like a hothouse. In fact, it's so hot
you strip to bare skin and now you're cooking mad

and naked in just that bartender's smock with the screw
you'd like to stick into some big cork right now.

Cooking everyone can smell from the street. What
the fuck, they say, and hurry home to safe food, yours

a rank hint of ablution and sacrifice, although
no one recognizes the danger. I used to wonder

about the Portuguese woman on the first floor,
what that odor was that drifted up on Saturdays

into my own savory kitchen. How it permeated
Sunday and Monday as well, all that lethal food left

to boil on her big stove from the old country.
Now I know she was just furious cooking, that aroma was

no recipe you'd find in any country, a cross between
organs and feathers and spinal fluid and two eyes,

not to mention the last song in that chicken's throat
before it kicked the bucket in the snow in the prime

of life when all of it ever wanted you could etch on a dime
and spin blithely into a crack in the kitchen table.

~ Maureen Seaton
from FURIOUS COOKING, University of Iowa Press

TIME & Poetry

Yesterday, CK posted a link to a TIME article titled "Poems for the People." The article is in the June 18, 2007 issue (which is not the issue pictured to the right-- I thought the "what's next" was fitting for the crappy article.)

Let me share my favorite quote from the article: "Chances are, you don't read much poetry, at least not the new stuff. Don't feel bad, hardly anybody does." I beg to differ--I firmly believe there are tons of people hungry for poetry. When I volunteered at the 2007 Decatur Arts Festival I partnered with a lady who told me how her daughter's middle school English class spent a longer period of time on poetry than what was originally planned because of the student interest. I chat with people on Myspace who at a first glance or chatting with, you wouldn't think would have a poetry interest, but they do.

TIME at its best, here's a caption from the article:
Champion students representing all 51 states, stand on stage at the Poetry Out Loud Competition at George Washington University in D.C., May of 2007.

I must have an immature moment-- Grossman can suck it!

Daisy Delivered

Back in May, I mentioned Daisy in a blog entry. Today, I finally share pictures of the newest addition to the Brookshire-Appleman household. Behind the cuteness that is DAISY:


Daisy was purchased from the Atlanta Humane Society on May 14, 2007. She's so precious and extremely sweet in the mornings; however, at times she can be more dangerous than the shark from JAWS.

Picture this..... Paul and I sitting in the adoption room talking with the Atl Humane Society employee. She starts to tell us the scoop on Daisy. She says, "Daisy was born on January 19, 2007." I squeal in a loud and gay fashion--- a nellie moment, if you will. The lady looks at me. I apologize and reply, "I'm soooo gay. She has the same birthday as Dolly Parton!"

Sexual Violence

Everywhere I click there seems to be an article on some for of sexual violence. It's disappointing, heartbreaking, depressing.

Paul and I saw the Hills Have Eyes 2 at the theater (way back in the day). In the movie, like the first one, there is a graphic rape scene. There were a large number of people in the theater laughing. I was blown away and pissed. I can't fathom how rape, even in movie, can be found humorous.

Depressing articles:
"Sex Offenders Younger, More Violent"
"Civil Rights Leader Charged with Incest"

SAVE THE DATE-- 8/14/07

Dustin Brookshire & Aida Rentas
present
POETRY NIGHT @ GRASS ROOTS INSTITUTE

Date: Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Time: 8:00pm
Location: Grass Roots Institute

Updates will follow within the next week!

"Using the word fuck in a poem..."

CK, since you were criticized for reading a poem with the word fuck, I thought I'd post a poem by Kim Addonizio as a tribute.

Fuck

There are people who will tell you
that using the word fuck in a poem
indicates a serious lapse
of taste, or imagination,

or both. It's vulgar,
indecorous, an obscenity
that crashes down like an anvil
falling through a skylight

to land on a restaurant table,
on the white linen, the cut-glass vase of lilacs.
But if you were sitting
over coffee when the metal

hit your saucer like a missile,
wouldn't that be the first thing
you'd say? Wouldn't you leap back
shouting, or at least thinking it,

over and over, bell-note riotously clanging
in the church of your brain
while the solicitous waiter
led you away, wouldn't you prop

your shaking elbows on the bar
and order your first drink in months,
telling yourself you were lucky
to be alive? And if you wouldn't

say anything but Mercy or Oh my
or Land sakes, well then
I don't want to know you anyway
and I don't give a fuck what you think

of my poem. The world is divided
into those whose opinions matter
and those who will never have
a clue, and if you knew

which one you were I could talk
to you, and tell you that sometimes
there's only one word that means
what you need it to mean, the way

there's only one person
when you first fall in love,
or one infant's cry that calls forth
the burning milk, one name

that you pray to when prayer
is what's left to you. I'm saying
in the beginning was the word
and it was good, it meant one human

entering another and it's still
what I love, the word made
flesh. Fuck me, I say to the one
whose lovely body I want close,

and as we fuck I know it's holy,
a psalm, a hymn, a hammer
ringing down on an anvil,
forging a whole new world.

~ Kim Addonizio
from WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Dine for Pride at Doc Chey's Noodle House

When you go to Doc Chey's Noodle House, make sure to take an extra twenty dollar bill because you'll have the chance to buy a "Peace Love Pride T-shirt" for $10 each. Besides having a cute t-shirt, 100% of the shirt proceeds will go to Atlanta Pride.


Doc Chey's Noodle House Locations:
Emory Village- 1556 N. Decatur Rd
Virginia Highland- 1424 N. Highland Ave.

"Public Affair" ~ Jessica Simpson

Until the launch party for the 2007 Atlanta Pride magazine, I had never heard Simpson's "Public Affair" nor seen the video. Once I started watched I was hooked until the end of the video. I felt like I was sinning because the video is a bit cheesy; however, I think the cheese-factor is what makes the video entertaining and slightly endearing--- Christina Applegate helps a hell of a whole lot with that too! All the cameras come out for a public affair. But anyway, here's the video for you.....

"A Birthday Poem for Norma Jean"

OK. This is a first version. I'm going to tinker with it a bit. Feel free to donate suggestions.


BIRTHDAY POEM FOR NORMA JEAN

If alive today, would you have kept
up with the Jones, Cher and Dolly style?
Would you thrive on the days when men
thought about you while fucking their wives,
when boys came in socks while star-
ing at your poster? Would you brag
about banging celebrity brothers
over a few sour apple martinis?

Or

Would you be living life
hoping you are wonderful,
hoping everyone noticed the wonderful,
wanting to leave the memories
of loveless foster homes behind,
the days of spraying glue,
and stick to the hearts
of those who bring you into their homes
with a click of the remote,
proving everyone prefers a blonde.

E-zine? and Baby Jesus Likes Top Speed

Praise be to baby Jesus--- I am off today. Yes, that's the same baby Jesus who made top speed (see The Contender to understand the reference).

Since receiving the news that ToasterMag will be ending after the next issue, I have been tossing around the idea of starting a bimonthly or quarterly e-zine. For the few months I've worked with ToasterMag, I have enjoyed myself even though it's been a decent amount of work reading through submissions. But, to be honest, I don't know the ins and outs of starting and maintaining an e-zine. Advice anyone? Feel free to post it or email me.


and for baby Jesus, one last Gylys poem:

MY SAVIOR IN THE FORM OF A BUS

"Do you believe in Jesus Christ our Lord?"
An old, balding man was in my face.
He wasn't someone who could be ignored.

I thought he'd go away if I looked bored.
I rolled my eyes and yawned. He kept his place."
Do you believe in Jesus Christ our Lord?"

"I'm Jewish, give it up," I moved toward
the street, but then my heel caught on some ice.
I fell. "You see, He mustn't be ignored."

This guy, I thought, is someone for the ward.
But I was at his feet. "It must be grace,"
he said, held out his hand. "You know the Lord

can work in wondrous ways." He'd struck a chord:
my days in Catholic school, a veil of lace,
these words a priest once said, that I'd ignored:

"He'll come to you, carrying a sword.
And Beth, how will you meet him face to face?"
My bus pulled up just then, thank the Lord,
rescuing me from questions I'd ignored.

~ Beth Gylys
from BODIES THAT HUM, Silverfish Review Press