I don’t drive. I can drive and have driven in an emergency situation or two but I don’t drive. Originally, it was a rebellion thing because I didn’t feel like being my mom’s gopher but it stuck. I’ve lived a life without a car for a very long time and while it has its challenges (like my impending moving day), I don’t regret living without one. It makes you think on your feet, sharper, especially in a city like Orlando where public transportation is ok at best.
What I am damn good at driving though is shopping carts. I know how to pick a good shopping cart. The IKEA shopping carts are my favorites because of their four-wheel drive (you can ghost ride the cart…sideways son). And so in 2004, I wrote a poem about my mad cart driving skills and it in my slam poem rotation and I eventually retired it. And then I cleaned it up a little and it found a home in the latest issue of Stymie Magazine and it is a gorgeous home. You can check out the issue here and you can hear me read the poem here.
NAP Magazine will be publishing Once, I Was An Angry Penguin, the final part in what I call the Leigh trilogy. This trilogy consists of A Patchwork of Rooms Furnished by Mistakes and Our Hearts Are Power Ballads. I am trying really hard to get out of the business of writing poems to women based on patterns and so far, I’m doing a good job. It just allows me to focus on fiction more.
I’m gathering blurbs for my first novella, Bodies Made of Smoke, coming out next month through HOUSEFIRE. If you want to blurb me, shoot me an e-mail.
The fourteenth installment of my sex/dating advice column is up over at Specter Magazine. You can read it here.
