burnside review 3.2

Got my contributor copy of the new issue of Burnside Review, which is really beautiful and full of awesome work by Paul Guest, Ben Lerner, Leslie Jamison, and many others. My piece is another list, #17, this one titled BIRTHDAY. Here are the first few lines as a teaser:

1. I can feel my teeth rotting in my head.
2. Showered so long under such hot water this morning my skin wanted to rip.
3. Unable to see myself in the mirror, after, for the steam; then, suddenly: my eyes.
4. Somehow it seems a long time since I looked.
5. Today my body is one year older.
6. Only actually one day older, literally, but a year in symbolic terms, which is bad enough.
7. Some days the morning is too much but today I kind of greet it.
8. If 2 PM can be considered morning still, which I'm sure, of course, it cannot.
9. I hardly remember my last few birthdays, and not because of drinking.
10. Even when one remembers something one did not remember one remembered, one may have still no more than scratched the surface in regard to things one does not remember one remembers. - David Markson
11. I feel I don't remember many people.
12. Even the people I do remember often feel so far gone they're hardly there.

If'n you'd like to read the rest you should buy a copy. It is $8 for a copy and you can get it here. I really like the cover:

To receive this publication, I massaged mayonnaise onto the serrated back of a cambodian male prostitute who'd once seen his father trampled underfoot by enormous geese.