At lunch at Michael’s Genuine today, the fried egg on top of crumbled duck terrine and toasted bread spread liberally with homemade Dijon was a good order (it’s next to impossible to order badly here);

Dennis ordered what reminded me of a warm Andalusian gazpacho,

and we were both happy to be at this restaurant run by Michael Schwartz,

who stopped by the table and is up for the James Beard award for Best Southern Chef (the nominee list) next week (as Michael mentions, this is an example Dennis’ work with Plum TV as a culture correspondent).

Before we left, Michael confirmed when Dennis asked if he was celebrating Grilled Cheese Month (as we have here on kthread) that every month at Michael’s Genuine is Grilled Cheese Month. Fellow Miamians, rejoice! (And everyone else, come visit. More grilled cheese in just a bit…)

And while we were in the Design District, we stopped by the Wynwood gallery Dennis owns with his wife Debra, World Class Boxing, where the current Mitzi Pederson exhibit, “I Think I Was Looking at That Before” has thin, shaped wood sculptures like bows of painted silver leaf that are strung not for arrows, but hang high on walls and around blocks on the gallery floor reminding me of simplified Aeolian harps.

And in the untitled piece Pederson refers to as a “ground drawing,” cinder blocks glitter playfully as you move about them, winking back as you accept a clever invitation to circle the piece, subtly engaged in this gallery in a city of unironic sequins…

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My office seemed to think so too, and I arrived in costume at the airport (a strange place on Halloween) to find the gate attendants also sporting wigs.

Two flights later in Nashville, I met my wonderful friends Michael (seen here bronzed and brandishing his sword),

and Stewart, who revealed his secret Clark Kent identity:

Very much in need of brunch the next morning, we went to Marché for cheeses and my favorite sandwich, a BLT with a fried egg on top, along with blood orange mimosas.

Then, off we went to the Parthenon; Michael took this shot of us on the steps, marveling at this replica of the ancient structure (which, apparently, was originally colored).

And Athena, who looks like she had a geisha makeover, commands the inside.

More striking was my Facebook husband Stewart on the Nashville walking bridge later that night,

and the spider webs that glinted as the riverboat passed under the bridge.

Stewart played some of his repertoire (this is an excerpt of “Backseat”) before we went out, and kthread highly recommends Mad Donna’s as a neighborhood bar.

Sunday morning, I met my beautiful sister Kat and her boyfriend Reid (they flew in from Portland for Rachell and Lee’s weekend—congrats, R and L) and we drove back over to East Nashville.

Walking around, we discovered the East Nashville weenery (I Dream of Weenie),

and had long conversations about our new projects. I’ve missed them and their wonderful energy very much.

Wandering down side streets, we discovered that Nashville is so into tomatoes that they paint them on fences and have an annual festival (and there are bumper stickers in this area that say: “Tomatoes: A Uniter, Not a Divider: Bringing Fruits and Vegetables Together”).

Stewart and Michael met us at Marché’s sister restaurant Margot’s,

and Reid’s expansive hand gesture illustrates the excellence of the brunch menu here—

my pork belly was crunchy and then melted, the right accent for the grits and scrambled eggs.

And East Nashville is a vintage mecca, with Wonders on Woodland’s vintage jewelry and furniture and the Hip Zipper’s rack after rack of jumpers, dresses, hats (I couldn’t resist), and shoes.

Reluctantly, Kat, Reid, and I took off for the airport, Reid swigging Loveless Cafe’s famous sweet tea all the way.

People I love, local food, a healthy respect for tomatoes, and an intense outpouring of music from every venue—oh, how soon can I return?

The full set of Flickr images is here.

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A Kristen Taylor is included, and her poem on page 104 is titled “Coats made without courage”.

I find the project amusing and imagine the editors rounded out the collection by scraping the interwebs for those of us who occasionally put up poems or are linked to poets with an online presence.

As for consuming this voluminous mass of words, editor Stephen McLaughlin recommends; “If you’re up to it, I’d suggest gulping the magazine whole, for 83 straight hours of transcendent poetic revelry reflecting the whole panoply of human achievement, emotion, wistfulness, and athletic achievement.”

If you’d like to read poems I have written, I post them here (scroll down).

For example, I did attempt a triolet (ABaAabAB) a few years back:

a pretty hewn town

and someone laughed, and someone paid
and some one cleaned the mess we made
we knew the chef and so we stayed
and someone laughed, and someone paid
and someone struck, and someone played
and someone slept and someone strayed
and someone laughed, and someone paid
and some one cleaned the mess we made

And, anyway, a poem I wrote about coats would do more to allude to Yeats’s “A Coat”–I am happy for the editors to have caught my name, but as for the poem, they wrought it. And let them take it, for there’s more enterprise in browsing the real work of the included poets.

If I were you, I’d start with one of my favorite poets, Alan Michael Parker and his “Love Song with Motor Vehicles” (this is the title piece of a wonderful collection)…

p.s. His purported poem is on page 2635 of the anthology.

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What do you think about goji berries?

Do you share my unlocal superfood guilt? My love for the Gummi Bears? (Guess what color gummi berries have to be in the juice.)

Please vote below. And with your dollars, of course, at your local community grocer.

p.s. Ben, great Twitter last night—we are definitely on for a kthread cooks superfood smoothie episode when you visit Miami—

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