After much thought, I’ve decided to put the kaibosh on this blog. Since I started Vouched and began doing the brunt of my literary posting over there, this blog has just become something of an unfocused dumping ground, and that’s been bothering me. I’ve been needing a focus for myself.

So I’m doing this now.

I think it’ll be fun. I feel like there needs to be more assholes in the food blog sphere, so I figured I’d enter the fray. Plus, I’m getting fat, and a food blog is as good a way as any to really pay attention to what I’m putting in my body. It’s a food blog, but it’ll likely end up being an exercise in how many ways I can relate something I want to talk about to food (e.g. the Hobbit trailer at PIIYF could have been accompanied by a recipe for Elvish bread or something).

I’m keeping this here for posterity’s sake, and to maintain a reference list of my publications, but for all intents and purposes, I’m going to talk about literature at Vouched, and food/life/etc. at Put It In Your Face. Hope you follow along.

My neighborhood sits mostly quiet. In this heat, nothing moves unless it has to. The air hangs like a damp towel. There is a soft shimmering sound of cicadas, but even they’re quieter than normal this year. Citronella tints the breeze, some evenings charcoal and the smell of meats and vegetables searing on grill grates. I have a porch swing, and it swings, and a small splinter nibbles at the under of my thigh when I rock forward. Across the street, a large trampoline in the front yard under which the two neighbor boys lay in its shade while their sister bounds and bounds. There is a gravity she will never escape. I don’t understand her energy in this heat. I barely move except to sip my bourbon.

A neighbor, a different neighbor, drives by in a faded blue pick up, the back piled high with scrap: an old window A/C unit, the frame of a broken futon, its mattress doubled, a TV without a screen, a roll of rusted chainlink fencing. The truck waddles to a stop in his drive way. The man lolls out of the cab, his belly swinging beneath his grimed shirt. He stands there a minute, staring at the haul of his day, scratches himself. Takes out his phone and calls someone, scratches himself, at the salty itch of his sweat skin, scratches himself. He leaves the task of unloading until the morning, shuffles into his house.

The air goes an orange glow as the sun begins to dip, the shadows stretch their arms long, as though trying to touch something just beyond reach. A couple mosquitos sting at my skin, and I slap at them. Against the orange of the air, the trees take on an unnatural greenness. Their leaves bend tired to the ground, sighing as the breeze moves through them. I sigh myself, the sweat gathering at my neck, prickling at my forehead, sheening at my arms. This is the summer we wish for when winter gets tired, I say outloud to myself or to no one in particular, the summer we wish away when it finally comes, and how we wait for winter now. I sip, I sip.

Feeling like not much more than a mad man mumbling, the city streets steam and everyone passing, paying no mind.

Most of my real ambling I do over at Vouched Books and The Lit Pub, so I’ve decided I’m basically just going to use this site the way I would use a Tumblr blog–small bytes and images and such–mental apertifs. Like, for example:

Oh hey, I just built a compost bin in my back yard the other day. Pr’ cool, huh?

Or something like:

Yo! I have this little number, “The Last Time,” over at PANK Magazine this month! It’s about addiction and love and how these things burn up and burn out and what’s left after.

Things like that.

As you can see, I’ve just done a quick redesign/theme switch to go along with how I feel I’ll actually use this blog, so here goes nothing.

Sorry I’ve been so absent lately. Things have been crazy. But, I hope this new sort of format keeps things fresh around here for those of you who still follow along.

Love you; don’t change.