by Jason Handelsman

I got into bed on a recent Thursday afternoon while listening to the new release from local rock outfit, Meat. The title of their 11 minute debut is Smoking Weed with Jesus, and you can listen to the whole thing here. As the music played, I drifted off towards a blissful mid-afternoon power-nap, while a number of pleasant thoughts, relevant images, and soothing memories flashed through my brain:

When I was about 9 years old (1982), I found three big boxes of old vinyl records in my step mom’s garage: Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Grand Funk Railroad, Steely Dan, Bee Gees, Grateful Dead, Neil Diamond, Elvis, Waylon Jennings, among a load of others. As a sparkling young lad, this was the first time that I had ever felt connected to something so marvelous. Rock and roll became my first love. I spent hours in that humid garage listening to those gorgeous albums with a big pair of headphones on my head. I couldn’t wait for the school bus to drop me off so I could dig through those boxes of dusty records, put that needle on the black vinyl, and boom!

I suddenly realized that this new Meat album would have fit perfectly into one of those boxes of vinyl classic rock records. Meat’s fuzzy sound is derivative of those great bands mentioned above; however, there is something modern… something truly Miami about it. Smoking Weed with Jesus is an instant non-vinyl-classic!

There truly is no justifying my outfit today, but Amanda and I came up with a few accessories that might explain this look.

1. a yoga mat
2. a hospital bracelet
3. a sleeping bag
4. a bike helmet (with light still blinking from back pocket)
5. a SARS face mask
6. a boogie board
7. tissues
8. a dog leash

Dave Landsberger recently contributed poetry to complement photos for the hard to explain, subscription postcard magazine Abe’s Penny. Landsberger lived in Miami for three years before moving home to Chicago last year. According to him, “I miss my Miami friends, the ocean, and el Rey de las fritas.” He currently teaches English and literature at Harper College. Read more of his poems here after you read the ones below. He enjoys writing poems about sports. We like to read his poems about sports. We sent him several photos and he added one and so we have his poetic reaction to some tense Chicago-Miami sports games and a clip art of a flamingo.

ROBBINS & ENGLEWOOD
A Michael Jordan jersey is a white boy’s passport to the ghetto in Chicago.
Last week I got called a “face nigger”. Was it my beard? Who cares.
Chicken & fries & white bread & Flamin’ Hot Cheeto bags in the streets.

These blizzards combust you, cover you like white wicker baskets,
letting just enough sunlight slip in, so,
who cares, game’s on,

Bulls vs. Heat, who cares; always something to be proud about.
All famous black people come from Chicago,
The Harlem Renaissance 2: The Big Score.

ACROSTIC
Be it a billy goat or an expansion team in teal,
Another reason will manifest from the prairie grass to contra.
Real Marlins fans exist; I’ve seen them Casino-style and cartwheel
To the scent of nacatamales, down and up three Kia Sephias,
Marrying the scent of Miami fall (live here two years, you’ll smell it too) outside the bastille
And bonkers of Whatever’s Paying Us Stadium. Cubbies, change your jerseys to aqua.
Name another blame: a farm animal, or yourselves?

Check out the other two after the jump.

Yaddyra Peralta will be reading at O, Miami’s finale reading on April 30 at 7:00 p.m. at the New World Center. The Mexican poet Carla Faesler is opening for W.S. Merwin’s, and Yaddyra will be reading English translations of her Spanish poems onstage.

TWO POSTCARDS FROM MIAMI

one:

A centipede in the shower this morning! Oh, the translucent antennae leading this writhing intrusivness into my air. You would have marveled at the distance it traveled from the yard and through the kitchen “Such tenacity,” you would have said: four-inch body over twenty-five feet, a pilgrimage no matter how many legs.

two:

On our wall-too-wall carpets and ceramic tile, we forget the palimpsest we stand on, the ancient seabeds and broken arrowheads. The centipede is back, like a pulsing messenger from the dead. If you ever find one, forgo your first instinct to crush it. Gather it gently onto a newspaper or dustpan. Walk it back outside, feel yourself grow lighter with each subsequent step.

This bro love from P. Scott was inspired by a THL Twitter conversation. Scott read them at Come On Bro.

Truth

The sun is hot.
The jager is cold.
I can see your girl’s junk
through her pantyhose.

Miami Problems

Your baby sister
in a jacuzzi, with
a Jacuzzi Boy.

How awkward it looks
throwing up—
the girl from Aventura

The sun is the bottom
of a beer can resting
on the glass table of the world.
Coors Light? Nah bro,
Coors Heavy.

Free jager
can’t see my hands
interesting!

Because my second cousin is cute
I wore short shorts
to Nana’s funeral.

I can’t speak Spanish.
Me either.
Let’s go to Boca Raton.

I started a band
to get laid, bro;
why’d you book us a gig?

For Tony

Looking at my girl again bro?
Seriously, that’s not cool.
Touch my hair again bro?
I’ll drown you in the swimming pool.

La Moon

Alone in La Moon
I ate sancocho de res,
—yuca, starchy green plantain, potato, and
a strap of brisket in a broth of cilantro
pulsed to a dark murk.

And on the side, between the shredded
salad and the turret of rice, a crescent
of fried cornmeal,
a moon-shaped arepa.

Outside, the smudge of a tropical depression
hangs over downtown Miami,
the illuminated roofs and penthouses
poking up into the low clouds
like immense tent-poles.

I want to tell the waitress
that the soup compliments the weather
but I cannot remember the word for weather,
so I say,
“con la lluvia, es perfecto,”
gesturing to the huge bowl in front of me.
“OK” she nods,
and walks away.

From the sky right now,
Miami must look like this soup—
gray-green,
the glowing dome of a potato
poking up through the greasy fog,
the moon, half eaten on a distant platter.

I trawl with my spoon,
whittle slivers of yuca and beef.

They have deep-fried the moon for me tonight,
draped rooftops in fog,
and set them on my tiny wooden table.

They must know how we love
to build things that reach into the clouds,
and how we love even more
to reach down into them.

having lunch with you

you may speak
your language
but the dancers
come with me
as we enter
the restaurant
hands apart
impossible to touch you
across the table
nobody would notice
except
the two of us
nobody would care
except
that we
don’t know
the borders
are too spicy
the Mexican food
on the table
our skin color
the shapes of our eyes
so deep
the formal lines
of your words
keeping me out
although
inside
I am speaking
my language
and the tongue
burns
with the red sauce
in which we dip
our smiles.

I met my new friend Jerry Gutierrez at the Todd Terry party last month. Since then, he has electronically and endlessly entertained me with shithead texts, tweets, and Facebook messages. He recently moved here from NY, and wrote this list after his friend with a car didn’t want to drive him to Jimbo’s birthday party (uncool). He and a mystery person made some decisions on what Miami friends must have. Here it is, with a note on the bottom to me, Liz.

1. Friend with car that’s always down to go out and never asks you for gas money.

2. One of the ladies in Basketball Wives or Real House Wives of Miami.

3. Blogger

4. Porn star

5. Lesbian that isn’t emo or a bitch

So u can totally be number three unless you also have a car cuz that’s cool, too.

In honor of O, Miami, this big, long poetry month, we’re presenting a few local poets’ poems. Starting here are four by my wonderful and beautiful friend Jessica Machado.

SONETO OCULTO No. 4

Calladamente vas en mí viviendo
también vivo yo en ti calladamente.
Y mutuamente, siempre mutuamente,
por amor nos estamos rehuyendo.

Y, por amor, estamos recurriendo
a un pretexto casual, frecuentemente,
para encontrarnos, no tan casualmente
sino en complicidades reincidiendo.

Qué respetado amor, qué amor no siendo
más que una pública amistad presente,
en su ilegal presencia persistiendo.
Y así seguimos cotidianamente,
como en delito puro y fiel, viviendo
tú en mí, yo en ti, pero calladamente.

HIDDEN SONNET No. 4

Silently, in me you live.
I too live in you, silently.
Because of love, we flee,
mutually, always mutually.

And, for love, we resort frequently
to casual pretexts to meet, not so much casually
but in ever-lapsing complicity.

What esteemed love, what love,
no more than–in public–a platonic friendship,
persists despite its illicit presence.

And so we continue every day,
in sin pure and true, living
you in me, I in you, but silently.

by Farrah Farley

The Onion published How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be? 30 Million People Wonder over a year ago. Yeah, it’s funny, but the message is one people should have been listening to. It sort of seems no one really cares about the pollution they create except for a handful of hippies and nonprofits (in Austin) and a few “green celebrities” out there concerned in between filming moneymakers.

If you fancy yourself an environmentalist, or, at the very least, want to do something to help others reduce their carbon footprint, consider submitting a short 30 second to 3 minute film for the Second Annual Films for the Forest Fest. FREE to enter, it’s run by the nonprofit Rainforest Partnership and it will be screened in Austin on June 16 in front of a huge audience and 3 well-respected judges: Elizabeth Avellán, Ed Begley Jr., Richard Linklater, and Paul Stekler.