So one of my favorite poets of all time, Talyor Mali, wrote in his blog that he collects quarters from the year he was born, which is 1965 and if anyone finds one, to mail it to him. He also added that if you include a self addressed envelope, he would send a gift back. Well, Brian and I scoured our coin jar and luckily enough, we found one! So I'm going to send it to him in hopes that I get something fun back, which I will in turn frame, no joke. Seriously, this guy is up there with Louise Glück and Wilfred Owen in my book. Whenever I write, I scour the works of these three for inspiration.

Stuff by him:

Undivided Attention

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,
tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's
birthday gift to the insane -
is gently nudged without its legs
out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street.

It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane,
Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares
and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last
note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,
the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and
I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?
All the greatest common factors are delivered by
long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks
or come through everything, even air.
Like snow.

See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year
my students rush to the window
as if snow were more interesting than math,
which, of course, it is.

So please.

Let me teach like a Steinway,
spinning slowly in April air,
so almost-falling, so hinderingly
dangling from the neck of the movers' crane.
So on the edge of losing everything.

Let me teach like the first snow, falling.

More from him:
http://www.youtube.com/user/taylormali

http://taylormali.com/