Kate Golcheski: In Memoriam (of her birth)

Some of you may be wondering: on what day was Kate Golcheski--famed used-book autocrat, drowsy poet, and 47-lb. rooster--born? Why, today, in fact! Not today, exactly, but on this day twenty-two years ago. Wowee-zowee!

As I write this, the Writing Center is burbling around me, and a blue piece of construction paper with a cooked scissored edge has fallen (miraculously) next to my hand. Can Kate "Crazy Legs" Golcheski expect a birthday message to be written on it? YES. She can.


But in addition, let's enumerate some of the things that we like about the birthday girl.

My Inner Psychic Congress, after much shield-thumping and consenting murmurs, has voted that the following is what we like about Kate Golcheski:

1.) KG writes things that make me go "EEP!" or "Snort!"

2.) KG was the abbreviation for the word "kindergarten" at Roger Sherman Elementary school and it's one of my favorite German words (Cultivate those kids!)

3.) KG has/wears cool shirts regularly

4.) KG is from Ol' Virginny, a lush and verdant state

5.) KG doesn't eschew my mystical beliefs

6.) KG is funny, and boy does she know how to talk!

7.) KG enjoys unicorns (see above picture)


Happy Birthday Kate!! You're born again today!

Wax Birthday

Born a couch, I'll take a finger for every
time you lit a candle. Quit. Beery,
I grip the circus sides, feed bears
fear. Badness, badness. The world board turns
for us: we don't, we dip. Really nice. Alone in his room
with Mr. Fox. I have never seen it. Grinning white,
flapping orange. Your greeting
graffitied on missiles. And hit my button.
Mountains furl, a frozen limn, too marred
for me. Hand gap is a multiply, where you can't weep.
So I see you. You're awake.

what has disappeared from my paintings

eyes
dirty fishbowls
the chair I don't sit on
your prim cup

My sixth burn-sense
dressed for night sobriety

in my lawn chair what do I feel?
they are the ways of my country
under livid pines
and a son's daft weave
my new physique:
my two birthdays