I live with one man and three cats. Wait—we have many plants here too. I am thinking about winter and the annuals that won’t be returning. My parents, in their 80s, live walking distance from us. My family is present. Family: I’m sinking—but some people, plants, and animals prevent drowning.

Some neighbors may not see us as a family. We can’t get married in Pennsylvania, the keystone state—the key into stone. If we could, we might choose not to get married. Despite legal whims, we will be a family. No judge will call any of our cats to testify. Fair trials aren’t in style when it comes to gay people.

Been told this—families are about procreation. You fuck. A child pops out. A school appears. The kid leaves home. Christmas cards and texting. This is a family? It sounds like a launching pad into a schedule, a do-list. Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan had a country music hit in 1971 called “There Must Be More To Life (Than Growing Old). Maybe they are right. Family is more to life. But families grow old too. Stan. Three cats. Coneflowers and a passion flower vine.

I am the enemy. Families “have to” be hetero. Like a title that is handed down from a king to a prince. The have to died in a fire. I am. The enemy. But not I am. We are. My family is the enemy. Stan’s nephew said he hates his English class—English is “so gay.” It is. At its best. He sits on a chair on our porch, talks, and never sees us. We are too gay to be seen.

I live with three cats. One man. Did I forget to mention that my responsibility is to change the litter boxes? Did I mention that Stan’s is to update our computers? Un/traditional families. Us? How untraditional can you be when watching George Burns and Gracie Allen is an ideal evening? There must be. More to life. Than growing. Old. Maybe there isn’t more. But along the way, a sweet pat on the head, a meow to get back in from the porch. The allemandan’s yellow illuminating a window. Family. I should mention that we have over 100 blossoms right now on our toad lilies. They advocate for us better than I can.

Ken's poetry appeared in Issue 1. His poem "While the Roofer" is among the best of the work we've published.

Five prominent Jewish poets and writers will read from their personal collection for our annual poetry reading, established in 1999.

Howard Aaron graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the former Program Director of the Portland Arts & Lectures Series through Literary Arts. He has published two chapbooks and currently teaches creative writing courses at Washington State University in Vancouver.

Dori Appel’s collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening, was published by Cherry Grove Collections in 2008. Her poetry has also been widely published in journals and anthologies. A playwright as well as a poet, she was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998, 1999, and 2001, and a finalist for the OBA in 2008. Three of her full-length plays are published by Samuel French and several monologues are included in anthologies. She lives in Ashland.

Jan Baross, daughter of immigrants from Belarus, has always been drawn to the Latin culture. Her first novel "Jose Builds a Woman" won first place for fiction for the Kay Snow Awards. She has also won awards as a filmmaker, screenwriter, playwright and librettist.

Willa Schneberg, a recipient of the Oregon Book Award in Poetry, is the originator and organizer with Director Judy Margles of O.J.M.'s annual Oregon Jewish Writers' Reading, now in its 10th season. In 2009 a prose poem appeared in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal. Willa is also a ceramic sculptor. Her work recently was on view in ORA's, (an organization of Northwest Jewish artists) Celebration of Art.

Scot Siegel grew up in Oakland, California where his family belonged to Temple Sinai. He graduated from Oregon State University and currently lives in Lake Oswego with his wife and two daughters. Scot's books of poetry include Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008) and a chapbook, Untitled Country (Pudding House, 2009). His poems have recently appeared in Drash, Windfall, High Desert Journal, and The Oregonian.

In October, we're bringing back our Contributor Feature. We've asked our contributors to send us their thoughts on Nontraditional Families and will be posting their essays on the subject throughout the month. To even further increase the dialogue on this subject, we're inviting YOU to send us a poem of 50 lines or fewer on the topic. Send your poem in the body of an email to editor@theexternalist.com, along with the phrase:

I do hereby grant The Externalist permission to post this poem on The Externalist blog. I recognize and agree that there shall be no payment other than my byline.

Be sure to include "Blog Feature: Nontraditional Families" in the subject header and we may choose to publish your poem this month alongside our authors!

We are proud to announce our nominations for Best of the Net 2009!

Congratulations and good luck to all of our nominees!

It has always been my opinion that "Externalism" was very not-new, and that most of the best poets in history have been Externalists according to our definition. It was only in the last, unfortunate century that poets got away from the engagement with the real world we are trying to rescue through Externalism. To prove my point, and also to show that there are Externalists everywhere on all sides, I recommend The Selected Poems of Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Block and Stephen Mitchell. Amichai, 1924-2000, was the most celebrated Israeli poet of the 20th century, and for my money, one of the greatest poets who ever lived. As might be expected of an Israeli poet, he frequently grapples with such solid Externalist topics as war and cultural conflict, while simulaneously showing the effect of the same on human life and love. From the incredible "God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children":

God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children.
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,

From "Seven Laments for the War-Dead":

Mr. Beringer, whose son
fell at the Canal that strangers dug
so ships could cross the desert,
crosses my path at Jaffa Gate.

He has grown very thin, has lost
the weight of his son.

In the hands of these experienced translators and poets Amichai's poems come into English with something like the muscular power and sensual beauty they have in Hebrew. They aren't fancy, but they will nail you to the wall.

The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai
Edited and Translated by Chana Block and Stephen Mitchell
University of California Press, 1996
ISBN-13: 978-0520205383

Issue 13 brings big changes to The Externalist. We're no longer publishing full issues all at once, but instead will be adding content throughout a three month period. At the end of that three month period, we'll produce a .pdf issue of all that terrific literature for download.

Our Contributor Directory is still in development and will be complete by the end of the month. Within the next couple of weeks we'll also be adding a Contributors' Books page. We strongly encourage you to check it out and buy a book or two!

Keep an eye on our blogs for editor commentary, writing prompts, book recommendations, contributor announcements and more. We're on Facebook and Twitter, too.

For starters, enjoy Laura Levesque's adept poem, "August 1992."

Thoughtful reading,
L.

We're past due for a poetry recommendation. Leonard Schwartz's A Message Back and Other Furors will appease both your externalist side and your experimental side; the side of you that admires the structure of language and the side that wants to rebel against it. This is a book of poetry that you will read again and again--not because the text requires it to be understood, but because the text requires you to want to understand.

Thoughtful reading,
L.

Write about the role of the State in parenting. This article can serve as a starting point: http://tinyurl.com/lylecx.

In the Wisconsin town of West Bend, a large group of citizens is attempting to get young adult books with homosexual content moved to the adult section of the library and a second group from Milwaukie has called for one of the books to be publicly burned. The Externalist adamantly opposes book censorship in any form. As such, this week we are recommending one of the top GLBT books out there, Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman. You can purchase this and other GLBT titles, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky and baby be-bop by Francesca Lia Block at Powells.