Re: Ca-Ca | 3.1.2004 5:04 PM

From: Leonard Nalencz

Mon 3/1/2004 5:04 PM

To:Greg Nalencz

Hey Greg,

Mom has been telling me about your conversations; we

plan to be out of Greece before the Olympics start in

mid August, but we haven't bought our tickets yet, so

who knows

which reminds me that I saw your comedian Mitch on

comedy central, and he was pretty funny. "cause later,

who knows?"

Here's a self-indulgent poem I wrote last year when I

didn't get a job. You get alluded to in there. Nigel

liked it, so I'm feeling good about myself and sending

to other friends.

Psalm of Rejection

They didn't like my sonnet

about how the holes in my socks make me feel like a

centaur

or my epic poem about a buttoned down Hercules

who battles the Lernean hydra of the Tax Code

and the idea for a memoir about my disappointing

friendships with successful people

did not lead to lunches with the folks in marketing or

R and D.

Unlike Joyce I was willing to work with an editor

I even professed myself grateful for any suggestions

for improvement

(I offered to teach a course on Renaissance lyric

poetry;

perhaps I was too enthusiastic about the fragmentation

of the self.)

In movies people read their mail carelessly

they drop the polite entreaties on a table

then refocus on their spouse?s voice in another room

Outside my front door is another Bocca della Verit?:

I extract my mother?s floral postcards by one edge

and I read the address twice on a letter from my

brother in the Peace Corps.

Affirmation breezes over the telephone and scoots

along the wires

Letters are printed on bonded paper

and sent in personally moistened ivory envelopes

made of high thread-count linen.

?Leonard Nalencz

Hope all's well, and look forward to seeing you this

summer--

Love,

Len