list - you connect the dots

1. Running on the cross country course outside of town. It was hilly, 60 degrees or so, the sun warm and the wind cold. The grass was dry and brittle; the mud tamped down easily underfoot. The fields were scattered with arrows in different colors which were less easily followed than the much more convoluted, mazy public path through the Cotswolds. I hid my car key in my bra like a mol. The golf course was nearby. But it felt like nowhere.
2. My round-offs need some work but my handstand is as good as ever.
3. Cate, reading a poem aloud over delightful cake with sugar sea turtles on it. She said, "the volta, the volta!" I want you all to admire it too, but I can't find it right now. I don't want to give anything away.
   
4. This morning, for the first time in a year, the espresso maker foamed the soy milk.
5. My favorite thing someone has said about my writing lately (context soon): "[the actions of the central characters in the story are] a reflection of their desire...to communicate beyond the limited vocabulary they've been endowed with in Milford, a place that seems diabolically American [emphasis added]." I think that accurately describes the suburbs of Boston, indeed.
6. Sunlight in a public library.
7. The Putney Co-op stainless steel coffe mug.
8. E-mail from Tucker Capps. Yes, Tucker, you sound dangerous.
   
9. The end of a great Bob Hicok poem, "Did I ever tell you about my love/hate relationship with confessional poetry?" Please don't sue me for copyright violations for posting it:

"The other thing/

I get wrong most of the time is caring
about people. For instance: recently blood
collected in my grandmother where blood

shouldn't, everythihng she said came out
like Jiffy Pop on the stove just before
the foil rips, people cried and the hospital

was a factory of indifference and I scurried
home to write a poem about death. This
is an indication that my head's not

in the other room but up my ass and that
my soul's in there with it. I don't mean
to care less about people than what

people do, and could lie and say
I've taken steps to increase my devotion
to the actual limbs that come off and hearts

that stop, so I will. The art
of confession's to focus attention on what's
confessed while leaving the secret

mutations untouched. I once put the hose
of a vaccum on my penis and turned it
on. Honesty makes me feel so clean."