Jennifer L. Knox's new book of poems, Drunk By Noon, will be published in fall 2007 by Bloof Books. Her first book, A Gringo Like Me, is available from Softskull Press. She is a three-time contributor to the Best American Poetry series, and appears in Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present and Free Radicals: American Poets Before Their First Books. In her own words: Some of My Best Friends are Styrofoam, Ship to Shore and "Can You Draw Petey?" are about fractured relationships and culpability—how it's often easier to ignore an actual person and the actual words coming out of their mouths, and imagine instead a person who mirrors your own mask. It's easier, that is, until it's impossible to keep it up any longer. Then it can turn brutal, because taking off a mask is a kind of betrayal. With Andy & Barney, I just wanted to write the most beautiful poem I was capable of writing about two characters I truly love. I couldn't find a way to keep the violence out of the end-but that's my fault. Not theirs. Notes from the Future is a totally hopeless poem about getting older, because I felt totally hopeless when I wrote it. If I wrote it now, there'd be a lot more long walks under trees in it, and maybe some gardening because many of the people who get a Happy 100th+ Birthday from Willard Scott are gardeners. A rewrite would not include my theory about dirt on produce being good for you and curing diabetes-so I don't overwash my vegetables unless I'm cooking for company.