this is what comes with your salt water lung decision

There's news to discuss and lots of reminiscing to be done, but right now I need to crash. So to tide y'all over, here's some vintage Cindy poetry. Enjoy!

I Wanted to Go Out Dancing But The Music Was Lame

Sakes Alive, I've come back down to the ground
because I'm empty
but watch me while I do the helium bloat
and float back up like a resurrection
like a bubble from a plastic dog's mouth
I'll take someone else's air for now to make me ripe and round
and I will hang from the vine not wanting to be picked only waiting to
fall
and there I go, there I go, there I go

back down to the ground that is soft and black and bugs crawl over
and if I just stay still the ants will never get the fear message to
bite
the ants will never know how I welt and panic from lack of breathing
never know the locked joints their tiny venom causes
and how is it that I might reach for a hand to reach down
and how is it that fruit often gets underfoot
and how is it that others instinctively step over and then pause to
look
behind knowing that what's on the ground might just be good eating
with juice that runs down their faces staining their clothes
leaving them sticky with what's called nectar

stick a sharp hollow object into a tree that is not unlike any other
place a bottle underneath it and catch what's called syrup
it flows slowly sticky tears
and if tears were allowed the privilege of thickness
would they lose their salt
and if questions lost their answer would we bottle up our asking
cork it, leave it aging in some cellar fermenting
making glass pressure that is waiting to go pop
not like a weasel
but champagne

the volatile stuff that comes from something small

Why create a blog for the Caulfield Sisters?

Because they’re the first great band of the 21^st century.

Because they deserve one, yet have not created one for themselves.

Because their official web site, while lovely and amazing and containing all those wonderful clips and photos, has not been updated for months, and the online record store that carries their ep is stuck in a time warp circa June 15, 2004, and therefore much news about them has gone uncollected.

Like this and this and this. And even some of their old songs are collecting blue gorilla dust in online attics.

Because Cindy Wheeler’s life and art have embodied entire cycles of grief, survival, rebirth and creation; because she may be the inventor of accordion feedback; because Robert Altman has heard her music and she has endured Mercury poisoning; because she has long been a poet and proprietress of note, from Three Birds to Beacon’s Closet

… and Mary Catherine Guidera is a fan of Sir Ernest Shackleton, that Antarctic symbol of endurance, the virtue that has carried her and Cindy from the demise of Pee Shy, Inc., through their freewheeling Three Wheeler days, to the present era

… and Kristin Mueller is also a member of bands with cool names like Hidden Driveways.

Not to belabor these points:

This blog is totally unaffiliated with the Sisters (who, for all I know, may not even approve of this sort of thing). It’s by Caulfield fans, for Caulfield fans. It will be a place to pass on news and gossip, discuss past and upcoming gigs, reminisce about the old days and, above all, celebrate the Sisters’ music and other magical parcels of Mueller/Guidera/Wheeleriana.

And, occasionally, we’ll link to cool photos like this (taken by the inestimable Jasper E. Coolidge, who has settled nicely into his role as the Caulfields’ Chris Coxwell).

News or feedback? Let me know.

"My poetry is a continuing act of transforming the effects of evangelical Christianity, cheerleading camp, and moon pies into humorously disturbing ... shall we say vignettes?"
-- Cindy Wheeler