Natalie Kane

Because having a lot of time off doesn’t mean you’ll write more.

I am a disciplined person, not enough perhaps, but I can usually grasp a hold of something and work at it until it’s done. Unless I have a mass surplus of time on my hands, which I do for the next three weeks. I guess I am unprepared for this exodus of activity, and the time that I am ungrateful for, which is why I’m going to share with you some things I have been paying attention to that describe where I have been sitting, trying to write, for the last few evenings.

Jimmy and Mama Yancey - How Long Blues

Nina Simone - Just in Time

I have also been reading the Poems of James Schuyler.

This Dark Apartment

 I asked
you on the phone, “Can’t
you be content with
your wife and me?” “I’m
not built that way,”
you said. No surprise.

Buried at Springs

a day like a gull passing 
with a slow flapping of wings 
in a kind of lope, without 
breeze enough to shake loose 
the last of the fireweed flowers, 
a faintly clammy day, like wet silk 
stained by one dead branch 
the harsh russet of dried blood.