Beware the city's dazzling lights where dykes are waiting to steal your wife

Noir at the Bar in Providence was a blast. I read three poems derived from film noir—"Anybody That Looked Like That," "One Way or Another," and "The Ghost Marriage"—and then my review of The Reckless Moment (1949) as the movie that made me start studying as opposed to just watching film noir. Other people read fiction on a wide spectrum of crime, grief, weirdness, and memory. I especially enjoyed the readings by Doungjai Gam, Matt Bechtel, William Carl, and Daphne Gem. A selection of us peeled off for dinner at the Trinity Brewhouse afterward; I had a bison burger and paid for it with money I had made that night, heigh-ho the glamorous life. I sold two books and traded two more for equivalently priced other authors' books. Merlin Cunniff bought me a cocktail made with pomegranate liqueur and lavender bitters and now I owe six months to Providence, in bits and pieces. There was good conversation.

The train was late both ways, but I read Dorothy B. Hughes' The So Blue Marble (1940) on the way down and Chester Himes' Yesterday Will Make You Cry (1998) on the way back, so I can't really complain. spatch met me at the station.

I believe Barry Dejasu took this picture:

Drop a mercury dime down a Roman drain and summon Mars

rushthatspeaks sent me the video for Neko Case's "Last Lion of Albion" and I have been playing it repeatedly since last night. I don't think I have liked any song of hers so much since "Deep Red Bells."

The following sequence of cat pictures was generated with the expressive assistance of Autolycus, who was looking especially photogenic. When I sent them to spatch, they were captioned "Sincere," "Sincere," "WHATCHA DOIN," and "Sincere."

( Every tendon and intended machine is going to buckle, knuckle, kneel on a carpet of lion's tongues. )

He is a good cat.