A Cougher's Lament

There's no need for an addition of another circle in Dante's Inferno if one were damned to nightly excruciating coughing fits when one lays down to bed. I don't believe in the Common Cold 'cuz everyone in the house is sleeping tightly, the solitary cougher is me—half lying down, half sitting up on the living room sofa—trying to repress the stuff the cough may bring up. How much longer must I endure this fate before I can see estrellas?

Kinds of Glass

1. Martin
   
   
2. Nathan
   
   
3. Anne Carson’s penchant
   to quote the Big G
   
   __________
   
   Can you figure what/who they are?

C'mon "Punk"!

Your & Our Sentences

Robert Bly is so kind to take this—"my sentence was a thousand years of joy"
—as a book title.

With me, I'd be like:

I pardon you all,

professors and teachers of mine,

past and present,

for sentencing me to this

fate. Thanks a lot, Blood-sucking Elders.

No resentment here.

I, a gadfly, only. Corrupting, more and more.

It's Been Close to 6 Months

Won’t change the title of the blog
because: a) like Moby-Dick, all the
actions take place on the whaling ship
or more closely, the metaphor of a

huge vessel and we, as readers,
are seduced into the motions of
the vastness of the Sea-Words,
or b) like watching MTV’s

The Real World, can we be
certain the participants are in a
particular city they claim to be?;
most of the real actions take

place in rooms in a house—
confessional rooms where the
most private thinking unwinds
and is vocalized to the viewers.

Aurora

Hola ’miga. We were mates in HS together
and you still take pleasure in calling me
“Frijol” (btw, this is a graduated step, I suppose,

from “Binh-ner” of middle school days). Here,
Classy Gal, here is my response with my arms
in the air, Ayyy, Yai Yai!

Oh yes, let me take this space
to send you (and your hubs) many

many KUDOS! I hope you kept your last name
for the open invitation to Tell-ria.

Well, since I initiated
the What’s In a Name?
You know "Binh"

is my “real” name. But at home, I’m known
as “Bo” (pronounced "ball"
but w/o the l’s).

When I was in grades school here in the States,
“Binh” came in. And since Binh and
Nguyen are fairly common names

in parts
of the world, I added my DOB to distinguish

my e-address name from others.
Plus, the Vietnamese
pronunciation and certain

lexicon differ from other regions in VN. My
first name is a cross between “trash bin” and

“Ben Franklin”. But for regional (i.e. Ha Noi)
vocalization it’d be “bing”

while in Sai Gon or Ho Chi Minh City
it’d be, like, “bun”). Whew! All of this:

merely because we scratched the surface.
Now fill us in with your observations—

Ms Swank

Ross Elementary.  Fifth grade.  1993. 

Our sessions lasted about an hour a day. 
We shared the room with Mr. Graham’s
and sat on the side.  I wasn’t used to
writing in pencil but being with you

taught me to accustom myself to that.
Tho I did it many nights following
my first class—I should have known
that boys don’t do what I did.  I still

remember the blubber smell of
your body—but I excuse that fact
now since you were one who first
taught me American English after all.