Tampa

Arrived here this morning, blinding waves of heat roar off the pavement, clear-cut swaths of strip mall avenue grids.

Glad we'll be seeing Devendra Banhart play at the Somerville Theater in October.

A writing project, as of yet unformed, which I'll try to begin while I'm here. I've decided on a possible subject (or starting point, at least) but the form is proving to be extremely difficult. Still relying on the notebook for preliminary boundaries but completely unsure as to how I might shape its lines. I do know it'll be a sequence and that I hope to bring it to a reading I've been invited to give in November.

Feel the weight of time passing, as though losing the poems. But as Juan said to me recently, forget ambition and timelines. Parts of this sequence are intended for the collaborations we're developing for his first solo album. I might post fragments of my drafts here over the next few weeks.

I'm reading Sandra Cisneros Caramelo (Knopf, 2002), Ignacio Padilla Amphitryon (Espasa, 2000) and José Lezama Lima Paradiso (Colección Archivos, 1988).