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Dear World,

I think I've finally found my place on this planet.

More soon & pictures, too.

love:kathryn

kick start your rock & roll heart

Seth & I were kids together at school in Japan; he played the trombone his cheeks were always ruddy pink. And even though it's been almost a decade since I last saw him, I've followed the swell of his musical talent over the years.

Finally! Tonight! he & his band Anathallo are playing at the Rock & Roll hotel -- mere steps away from where most of you live. Anathallo makes dreamy, beautiful music that sounds a little bit how you might expect a childhood in Japan to sound. A good way to spend a Thursday night for sure.

See you there, perhaps?

Daisies

It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead
oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their - if you don't
mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example - I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.

Mary Oliver

le subjonctif

If you come over we will sit on the floor. I will be a little shy until you tell me a story about kissing a girl a foot taller at summer camp and how your glasses fell off on Space Mountain in 8th grade and you spent the rest of the day wandering around the Magic Kingdom blind as a bat. Or something like that. You know how to make me laugh, real laughter. When the kettle whistles we settle on mint tea because half way into the process, after I've found two mugs clean & handles intact, you open the fridge and discover the milk that isn't there. So mint it is. And oatmeal cookies soft & with just enough chocolate chips. We will talk for hours, sitting on the floor, maybe stretching out to lay on our stomachs, maybe reading quietly to ourselves, looking up & over from time to time to smile shyly or share a sentence. For awhile Rachmaninoff will play in the background but when I switch over to Beirut's first album you will whisper how much you love accordion music & gypsies. You will understand when I'm able only to nod in agreement, so overcome by the music & by you; how lovely & surprising you are, the longing trumpets carry in their thin high notes.

If you come over we will sit on the floor.

life, homonymically

WE are paired first by our eyes.

Buy me a pear, say aye.

You say bye and I am pared.

sometimes we learn our lessons

1st period - Geography

Beirut
Paris
Buenos Aires
Reykjavik
Havanna
Denver

2nd period - Mathematics

1/2 divided by 1/2 = 1

(How can broken parts end up whole?)

3rd period - English

"Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still"
- from "Ash Wednesday" by TS Eliot

4th period - Science

Newton's first law of motion:
An object at rest tends to stay at rest
and an object in motion tends to stay in motion
with the same speed and in the same direction
unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

5th period - History

History repeats itself.
We have been here before. We will come here again.

6th period - P.E.

Keep your eye on the ball. And then, if it helps, pretend the ball is his head.

cry cry cry

Sure, she cries easily, but not about real life, her life. Never about things that can be helped, the spilt milk at work or her own puddling relationships. It's the imaginary, the assumed and supposed, that sets Ruby off. And who can blame her? What unwieldy parcels humanity seems to carry! Deep love, bitter loss, no money for bread and cells that multiply when they shouldn't. Ruby watches sparrows flap their wings in clouds of dust and her lip quivers. She sees children with bruised knees and fathers walking in their brown ragged coats and the tears well up in her wide eyes. Like left for right, she mistakes beauty for tragedy, pain for beauty, life for pain, tragedy for passing time. Under the unbearably blue spring sky these great themes package themselves into moments for Ruby to stumble and cry over. Just a tear or two for these strangers and neighbors, though. She sleeps well enough at night and her friends? Well, they make her laugh. They are young. And it's spring, after all.

July, though. With July comes a crime spree -- all manslaughter and fraud and rumbles on every corner. The rain falls in thick curtains every afternoon and when clouds part, it is only to make way for grey rainbows and murderous crows. Ruby is waterlogged. She can not see the rain for all the tears. One night as she walks from the park, Ruby sees a girl fighting with a man on the front steps of a house. The girl has hair like Ruby, dark and short, and when the man yells at the girl I can't even stand to look at you Ruby almost believes he is yelling at her through the black air. He slams the door and the girl picks up a flowerpot and hurls it at his absence. The terracotta hits the wall; the girl's face shatters into a million pieces; Ruby feels her own face beginning to crack. So, it's true. I really am made of glass, she thinks even as the girl, the other girl, looks over at Ruby and says Why the hell are you crying?

Why the hell are you crying? This is a question Ruby can not answer. Not when the spokes of her bicycle ask, not when the hinge on the gate wants to know, not when the robins inquire, or when she poses it to herself in the middle of the night. It was not her flowerpot, her heart, her life, her man shutting the solid door in her face. It is never her skinned knee, her bruised heart, her romatic sunset that she cries over. So why then? Why? Ruby hates waste and she can not stand carelessness. So why shed tears that only spillover into a river, already overflowing with sadness, that goes nowhere? Ruby resolves to toughen up.

And she does. She stops looking through the windows of other peoples lives and starts looking over her own shoulder. When a bird flies over head, Ruby no longer thinks of the beauty of its frail, hollow bones. Instead she curses the mess it makes on the windshield of her car. She puts on headphones to block the noise and walks miles with her head down instead of riding the bus. Why cry, she thinks. Don't you dare cry. And since she doesn't have an answer, she doesn't.

It is many months later and the moon is very full on the night that Ruby meets John for the first time. Fall has arrived with usual languorous reds and oranges and Ruby resists being enamored by the changing leaves. They sit, John and Ruby, at a table under the skeletal arms of trees and drink read wine in their scarves. John is smart but his attention annoys Ruby, his attentiveness to details and the way he points out two squirrels chasing each other, weaving their around the trunk of a tree. She starts to fidget first and then chafe against the tenderness, the sentimentality he seems to seep for everything with cells and atoms. Get a grip Ruby shout in her head Live in the real world, buddy. She tries to smile though, and thinks that she is convincing until John stops his story about a boy with a kite in the middle of sentence. He looks at Ruby and then touches her hand, which is twirling her glass of wine around and around by stem. Hey he says and Ruby stops to look up at him for first time. Hey. Ruby. Don't write me off just yet. And that is all it takes. With that, Ruby starts to cry and cry and cry because she realizes that she is still transparent. The only thing that has changed is that she has become a more brittle kind of glass.

clean

On Saturday I cleaned my room from top to bottom, scoured it. I lined my books up along the shelves, ordering them by genre, theme, color, size, by their place in my heart. I hung up the pink dress I wore on the date with the airline pilot last week and folded the black shirt I've been sleeping in all summer. Bank statements, post cards, love letters, scraps of paper scribbled with phone numbers, directions, ideas - these I read & reread, shredded, filed, pitched. By the end of the day the 3 windows sparkled in their clean sills, the crisp orange sheets on my bed folded into hospital corners.

And now I am wondering if it is possible to do such a thorough cleaning of the rest of my messes -- to rout out these bad habits cluttering my life and stack them in a neat little (big) pile: chewing on my fingers; leaving wet towels on the floor; preferring books to people; my caginess & snobbery; the way I leave good friends & refuse to to let go of the bad ones; losing things; biting people; procrastinating; crying & swearing; my reckless driving.

I will sweep them up and set them on the curb, contained and waiting to be hauled off in a big truck to a place I never have to see. Then I will sit very quiet and still in my clean room with my clean fingernails and my pristine heart, not moving a muscle for fear of making a mess that I can't undo, that won't go away with any amount of scrubbing.

found artifact: early college period, typewriter

We glide easily through the melting light because it's spring and we're young, afterall. The trees are bursting with the miracle of chlorophyll and from time to time I look over at the man walking beside me and he is smiling his crooked cinnamon grin. It's not hard to be alive, I think, and I calculate as best I can on just this day when sun and air intersect at such right angles that even Newton would forget gravitational forces in the sheer joy of each breath of apple blossom from underneath his tree. And I figure that out of the 4 and 1/2 lbs (that's 9.9 kilograms) of sunlight hitting the earth each day, much more than my fair share is landing on the bridge of my nose

(It's not really correct to speak of it in terms of weight, you see. It's more closely related to the force of momentum. But science makes way for poetry graciously enough most of the time.)

And then my phone rings. And it's my mom (mother's donation: one X chromosome and a hatred for entropy)and she's telling me something's wrong even though all she's asking is how my day has been. And I say what's wrong? DID SOMEONE DIE? because her voice is that grave. And she says I can't talk about it right now so I press her on it anyway. At your dad's school she says (father's contribution: a gene for green eyes and an appreciation for George Will&HARPER LEE) and I ask if it's a student or teacher and she says the former and I marvel at her ability to differentiate between former & latter so fast and think how she would've made a good astronaut, floating out there all alone in space and still knowing what's what. DEAD? I ask and she says yes and jumping to conclusions or maybe just being human I wonder how it will affect me. I look over at the man walking next to me and wonder when it's appropriate to cry in front of a stranger, even if he is your friend. MURDER? SUICIDE? I ask. The latter she says. It's going to be bad for your dad for a while she says. And so I tell her I'll do what I can on the home front as though there is a war on and I'm a member of the USO propping up troop morale with my cheery cherry lipstick smile and a patriotic song made popular by Bing Crosby. I can smile in the face of a faceless death.

And then I ask HOW? and she says Freon. And I think FREON: a trademark name for any of the refrigerants belonging to the chlorofluorocarbon family; composed primarily of chlorine and fluorine, group 17 elements, 7 valence electrons. Each atom looking for an 8th electron to lend stability and completion -- a non-polar covalent bond the most romantic attractive force in the universe, I think stupidly...and wish for less poetry and far less science and for a lot more answers floating around the cosmos.

And so I hang up and keep walking because nobody wants to fall over in the middle of a busy street for no apparent reason even though I know that someone has just boiled over with the desperation I always manage to hold at bay. And I don't want to say another thing because there's too much of that going around and no one has patented an antibiotic for HELPLESSNESS. So I'm silent until the wave of emotion splashes over the afternoon's calm shore. And I say something vague about it all being too much and the man walking beside me makes his own sort of sympathetic statement. And then for some inexplicable reason I smile, because I don't know what else to do and it take a damn fine novelist or a very strong microscope to diagnose the undercurrents and overtones of a moment's smile and no one will detect that mine is laced with cyanide, arsenic, and trace elements of hope under the copper sun.

IT PLEASES me that crepe
myrtle blooms in July when
Spring is done and the way
thunderheads gather & break
in the sky beyond our reach.
And at days end, when the
world's gone still you hold my
hand to your chest and the
beat of your heart pulses in
my fingers, like a river I
can't ford--I like that too.

overheard

I'm just not sure why he likes me, what he's got to go on at this point besides physical appearance. She shouts this over her shoulder because I am a few steps behind, trying my best not to intrude on the family portrait setting itself up in front of me. Lately we've taken to wandering the streets, walking it off as she likes to say and today we've ended up in front of the White House, stepping into the frame of who knows how many Christmas cards along the way. SEASON'S GREETINGS from OUR FAMILY ( don't mind the suspicious looking girl in the sunglasses) to YOURS! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What do you mean you don't know why he likes you? Why wouldn't he like you? I stop and she keeps going, my words chasing her down because a Japanese man has handed me a camera. He is wearing white shoes and pressed white cotton shorts. His white polo shirt and a white visor are made from the same white terrycloth. His socks are brown though, and his short wife, also dressed toe to top in white, has a red carnation pinned to the (white) band of her straw hat. She looks plucky so I tell her so and when she hears the words in her own language she smiles, looking up into the frozen face of her posed husband, I snap a couple shots. There, I think, finally, a picture with a smile. They bow and I bow and then we all bow again before I'm able to push the camera back into the man's hands, the hair on his knuckles very black and sparse. I picture these same hands holding chopsticks, reading the newspaper on a crowded train, as I dart ahead through the crowds to where my friend stands, talking into the air beside her. I'm not like "oh woe is me, why would anyone ever like me?" because you know I'm not like that. I think I'm pretty great. I have a lot to offer, right?

Right. Of course. So what's the problem? She didn't notice, so I don't break her stride.

Well, I just don't understand. Why does he like me? What's he basing this on? A bus barrels past and her words get whipped up and swirled around in the hot air gushing by us. He doesn't know me. He barely knows me. Her face is red now, from the sun and the hot air, but also from the exertion, the emotion behind the words. It's real confusion. She wants to understand so the color rises in her cheeks.

Why do you like him? Why does anyone like anyone? We are waiting to cross the street. The Japanese couple sidles up to us. You do like him, don't you? Even though they don't speak English, I lower my voice. You kissed him and you weren't even drunk. That means something, right. Doesn't it? I want desperately, irrationally to appear respectable for these people -- to fix myself in the album of their memories as that upstanding young girl who spoke their language a bit, took that great picture in front of the White House. The white mother pours some tea for her son or passes a tray of pastries to her neighbor and tells the story again. She smiles up at her stern husband and he smiles back, remembering the red carnation in her hat.

I do. I do like him. She is forging ahead, through a group of middle-aged Italian men who whistle and stare and gawk. They make comments and gestures but she ignores them. The Japanese people turn left, toward the Mall, so I exhale and settle back into who I am today: someone who is wrung-out and and a bit lost in her own town. The sort of girl who finds consolation wandering the streets. I like him she says, and then turns around, all the way, to look at me straight on for the first time all morning. I like him, right?

Sure you like him. I'm not sure what to say because all my answers have been wrong lately, but I keep talking, like a shark who will die if it stops moving through the murky water. Let's put it this way -- you like something about him. There is something you like that keeps you going back. And he likes something about you and it keeps him coming back. That makes sense, right?

Is that enough? She isn't moving. She's just standing there, waiting for an answer. We are smudged and dripping and almost shouting, surrounded by a mill and flow of people who came here to relax, to spend some time with the family, to experience history first hand or didn't know where else to go.

Do you remember when I fell for Martin? Do you remember what it was that I liked about him? She nods her head and turns, walking again and I'm glad that motion relieves the pressure of the moment. She doesn't say anything though, so I go on. I liked his teeth. He had the deliciousest, most toothy grin in the world and I loved it. I loved it. I fell for it.

She does not look convinced. So you liked his smile. I see a million people a day with nice smiles. What does that mean?

It's a starting place. You take something and you go with it and then you add on to it. I liked his teeth. And then I liked the way his teeth fit in his mouth when he smiled and then I liked how he smiled at me when I talked about killing every plant I've ever had. I'm about to be lost, about to be broadsided by a busload of memories, but I keep going. And then I liked the way he wrote with his left hand in the library and the way his left hand wrote a note like an 8th grade boy asking me to the movies. And then I liked the way that we laughed all through the movie and the way his left hand grabbed my right hand and the way he kissed me by the back door. I am shouting now and a mother in squeaky clean tennis shoes, purchased for this trip, gives her daughter a look -- a God-forbid you should grow up and wander the streets, shouting like a crazy person look -- and again I am overcome with a desire to appear ok, hinged and functional for these people, guests in my city.

I don't know. It's such a big gamble. I mean, look how wrecked you were by Martin in the end. Whatever. It will sort itself out, right? We are in front of a coffee shop and her hand is on the door. Wanna get something to eat? This walking makes me ravenous.

Right, I want to say. Right. It will sort itself out. I repeat it to myself because she is already inside, in line, and because suddenly, standing in the confluence of men, women, their children, of history, commerce, love, country, summer I am the one who needs convincing, not her. We only have words and images, projected and gathered, to go on-- only eyes and ears to take them in. And what can they hold? I want to shout. What can you build out of light and sound? Out of nothing?

today's poem

e.e. cummings

let it go-the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise-let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go-the
truthful liars
andthe false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers-you must
let them go they
were born
to go

let all go-the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things-let all go
dear
so comes love

horse latitudes (thursday)

gimme gimme:
cinnabar
gibbous moon, waxing
orange bouganvilla
slant rain for the cracked earth
a minor constellation

if you love it, throw it overboard.
that's the only way to make it out alive
so says the seasoned sailor who strayed far from the charted sea

today's rhyme:
chinook wind
river bend
curved spine
strychnine
flying blind
lose my mind

I'm going a little crazy again, but that's okay.
It's what happens when you hit the doldrums.
When I find dry land again I'm going to bury my head in the sand.

background music, played at an extremely loud volume:
and i have no idea what's been going on lately and i just wish you would come over and explain things and i have no idea what's been going on lately and i just wish you would come over and explain things and i have no idea what's been going on

might write = quite trite

I got a letter from a publisher last week. It's a sick trick they play, making you send in a self-addressed stamped envelope so that the rejection arrives cloaked in your own familiar script. Earlier that week I'd re-read A Moveable Feast (Paris! Paris! Paris!) and Hemingway's line about writing one true sentence (blah blah blah) was lurking in my brain, setting up roadbloacks everytime I sat down to write. The poem I'd sent in was the most true and the least sentimental thing I've ever written. Now what?

I'd kicked around the idea of being a nurse for awhile, never letting it settle into real consideration until I opened the letter from Poetry Magazine. Well, there goes that. I was all set to apply to nursing school until I mentioned my plan to Squirrel & my father who both scoffed outright. The other people I told about my plan invariably cocked their heads and said really? in the same tone the woman used with me on the bus this morning: Baby, since when is okay to wear stripes and polka dots together. Stripes and polka dots are a winning combination, I say. But I'll defer to those who know me best and say I'd make a terrible nurse -- or that being a nurse would make me terribly unhappy. Squirrel said Why don't you just shut up and write? You love rejection! C'mon!

I'm not quite ready to apply to graduate programs, though I'm starting to see the appeal of rigorous, structured exercises to wring the self-indulgence and solipsism out of my writing. I find myself strung up between two poles, believing on the one hand that I walk around apart and alien from everyone else and, on the other, knowing that there is nothing new under the sun, paralyzed by the inability to paint my new love with same three primary colors given to us all.

So this is what I'm going to do: I found an old book full of creative writing exercises and I'm going to do make myself follow them and post them, no matter how dumb they seem. You can be the critic - as honest as you please. And we shall see, and we shall see where the muses lead.

confession #10

“When routine bites hard, and ambitions are low…”
-Joy Division

I have been at this desk for a year now and it’s getting hard to sit still. Job, relationships, certain street corners – they’ve all lost the sheen of newness and possibility. I’m bored, yes. But more than that, I do not know what to do with the disappointment, like nut grass, that has taken root, thriving on my own failures -- of nerve, will, kindness – and on the failures of others. Last night I sat on the dark steps watching the lightning bugs drift through the air and scheming of ways to move to Paris. I don’t know anyone in Paris; there is no one to hold up a mirror there.

In the past I might have pointed to my parents and said “You did this to me,” citing both nature (my Bedouin grandmother, my father’s wanderlust) and nurture’s (Home is where you put up your Christmas tree, kids!) role in shorting my attention span and shoring up the impulse to move on to the next adventure. But that’s not really fair, and I know it. For all their quirks and oddities, my parents are not flakey. They might have taught me how to pack and unpack boxes, how to move and navigate through foreign landscapes. But they never taught me to run away.

Sit tight. Watch and see. It’s going to be okay.

drowned rat

Look at that hair!

someone's been sleeping under my desk

I was crawling under my desk, trying to hook up my new keyboard and I found my cell phone, 3 quarters, a shoe that doesn't belong to me, and a photograph of a black baby who looks like it's about to wail it's head off.

smart girl

I fell asleep reading under a tree on Saturday and when I woke up, the grass had left a mess of lines on the side of my face. The book was good - one I'd read a long time ago and then forgotten about until I found it for a $1 at the used book store - but it wasn't holding my interest. The grass was cool and newly cut and the sky was that shade of boundless blue that makes me feel a little reckless and a little intimidated.

The night before, in an uncharacteristic fit of optimism, I'd gone on a second date with man and was trying to sort the evening out in my head. I'd ignored the fact that on the first date he wore a LiveStrong bracelet and admitted (bragged?) that he hasn't read a novel since sophomore year of highschool. He had a good vocabulary, though, and claimed he boarded two appaloosas about an hour outside the city. I've never been a girl who swoons over horses, but something about the way he said it made me think of Shell Tucker on the high chapparal and my imagination took off. It was neither here nor there though, because after dinner and two glasses of wine at some downtown bar he leaned across the table, ran his thumb across the back of my hand, and said "I'm not gonna lie. I haven't followed half of what you said tonight. I don't usually date smart girls." At home, unkissed, we'laughed about the whole sorry episode and made fun of things he couldn't help (his horrible last name; the gorilla hair on his arms) but laying in the grass the next morning, it still smarted a bit. I closed my eyes and tried to let the words float away; imagined them disintegrating as they passed through the exosphere into the vaccuum of space.

A spider was inching its way toward my shoulder when I woke up, and like I said, the entire left side of my face was imprinted with blades of grass. The park was filling up with little kids, their birthday parties, and church groups setting out picnic food so it seemed like time to move on. I realized, happily, that no one knew where I was and that, happier still, for the first time in weeks no one was expecting me to be anywhere or do anything all day. I decided to wander down to the museum. In the early spring my boyfriend from college called, leaving one of his signature messages: Hey. It's been awhile. Read in your local rag that Tillmans is throwing some pictures up on a wall near you. Thought you might want to check it out since you were so in to that show in Montreal. Wait...maybe it wasn't Tillmans I'm thinking of. Did we even go to Montreal? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else. Hope your big important job is all that you want it to be. See ya.

It had been me, with a Tillmans in Montreal and the message rankled, even this far out. Even though I have it on good authority that he hasn't shaved in 2 years, looks like a werewolf and that his new girlfriend smokes a lot of pot and never laughs. I decided that Saturday was the day. Smart girls go to museums.

I counted people and things as I walked along the street. 8 dogs, 4 protestors, 1 dad holding the hands of 2 girls with Downs Syndrome. When I ran out of sidewalk, I stood on the corner and waited for the light to change, even though there was no traffic, simply because I had the time. The man standing next to me was also waiting, but he was reading a book, and it struck me as charming and odd, so I must've stared. Next thing I know, he looked up at me and blinked and then said, "What happened to your face?"
"Pardon me?"
"Your face has lines all over it? What happened?"
"Oh. I fell asleep under a tree." I realize how dumb that sounds as I say it.
"That sounds like a good way to spend a morning."
I couldn't tell if he's making fun of me.
"What are you reading?"
"Anna Karenina. It's pretty good. Have you ever read it?"
"Yes. I liked it a lot. Seems like you're having trouble putting it down."
He smiled then and it was a wide, warm smile.
"I'm pretty hooked. Where are you going?"

I paused and he indicated that we should cross the street. He was a couple steps ahead of me and I tried to scan for the tell-tale signs of sociopath. He was wearing pants so I couldn't see if there were any swastika tattoos on his calves. His hands were empty other than the book (a battered up copy -- not the edition from Oprah's book club). A million people surrounded us in every direction and I figured I could probably outrun him so I told the truth.
"The Hirshhorn."
"Me, too." He smiled a little bit.
"No. Not possible."
"Yes, actually. I am."

And he was. We did. We walked there together, walked up the steps and through entrance and all around the building. He turned out to be normal. And smart. And kind. And pretty funny in all the right ways. I didn't fall half-in-love with him, like I'm prone to do in the produce aisle and airports, but I didn't find some reason to excuse myself and scamper off, either. I think the best way to put it is to say that we spoke the same language. I understood what he said, considered it, allowed myself to be impacted by the words coming out of his mouth and the thoughts behind them in a way I usually don't. It wasn't just smiling and nodding.

The museum was ridiculously cold, as though someone'd cranked the air up in anticipation of throngs of sweaty bodies who never showed. After about an hour my teeth were practically chattering out of my head. He, of course, noticed. So we went outside and sat on the steps, watching the minivans of mid-westerns circle the mall, searching for place to park. He told me about his Masters program for a little while (linguistics) and growing up in Brooklyn and I told him about my lately burgeoning crush on Jonathan Letham (he'd read Motherless Brooklyn and loved it) and how I have a hard time talking about things I love. He said he understood and I believed him.

There was no excuse for lying to him and I don't know why I did. I'm a big girl. I know the difference between not volunteering all the information and actively lying to someone; there were ways enough to say No truthfully without saying other, untrue things along with it. Maybe a more pressing question, now that I'm thinking about it is, why did I say No in the first place, and with the added weight and conviction of a committed (if fictitious) relationship? The only defense I can offer is that looking at him, listening to him talk, I saw something worth hanging on to. And then, a split second later, felt the pang of its loss --winced at the thought of this thing growing and growing until it imploded under the weight of its own worth. Messy. Painful.

I guess in the end, I'll I can say is that it seemed safer to keep walking the streets alone. That's the smart thing to do, right? Right?

mooning

The moon is a perfect arc of longing tonight.

san diego, once upon a time

He rides his bike barefoot and the whole time I think how much I like that and how it would hurt to get a toe caught in the spokes. The day is easy, with buttery light filtering down onto our noses and a lot of people walking up and down the boardwalk. Forward, behind, side to side, just people walking and running and a man on roller blades who obviously wants to join the ice-capades. Sometimes he turns around, looking over his shoulder to tell me a joke or point out a landmark because technically I’m a tourist even though I’m here to see him and maybe a few palm trees as well.

When we stop so I can buy postcards he offers to go get lemonade and I watch his bare feet pad across the cement, small pebbles and sand flying off his heel. Heel-to flick, heel-toe flick, heel-toe flick, until he’s back again with thick styrofoam cups so white that my eyes hurt from their stark sun-light glare. We drink the lemonade gone in a few minutes and chew on the ice and in my head I write out postcards to my friends at home: Having fun! Wish you were here! He’s barefoot and I’m in love! See you in a week!

The sand is hot and soft beneath us when we finally find an empty space in the ocean of people covering the beach. Our towels barely touch and we don’t talk much, just rest up for the ride home and bury our feet so deep that water rushes in to fill the space between our toes. There is no word for the color of the sky and the waves swell and break and swell back up again, then again.

He stands up and I follow him back to our bikes chained to a lamp post. I worry the whole ride home that his toe will get caught between the spokes. But it doesn’t. When we get home, I leave my shoes outside the front door. And when we walk by the dog sleeping on the wide corduroy pillow, we step so softly that she doesn’t even lift her head.

trading

longings(things that remind us that we are going to die):

Well, there's lightning at dusk in the desert to start. And hot feet at night when the breeze won't stir and you can't find a cool side of the pillow. Watching a room go dark? Yeah. And cows standing on Horse Heaven hill in all the sagebrush. Russian Olives down by the river always get me. There is something about their smell, isn't there. Running out of the ocean as it starts to rain and then standing on the front porch, covered in sand and shivering while you wait for everyone else to take their turn in the shower. Ohh. That's a good one. How about laying in the dark, praying that Jesus won't come back til after summer camp. The smell of tomato plants. Train tracks. Falling asleep while my mom vaccuums in the other room. Gramcracker singing cowboy songs. You.

& comforts(things that distract us from the fact that we are going to die):

Tea! Sad songs, strangely enough. A row of apple trees. Finding lipstick in the bottom of my bag. I guess I wouldn't know about that one. No, I guess not. Clean laundry, the way my mother smells. Eating rice out of a bowl with a spoon. Falling asleep on the couch during a movie. Chocolate cake for lunch and wearing your favorite underwear. Blankets made of smooth fabric. The sound of bicycle spokes and orange flowers and words that rhyme. The cinnamon rolls my mom bakes and cold cokes and watermelon and peach pie. Trees with leaves and birds flapping their wings in the dust. Gin and tonic and dancing all night. Green dresses! Cute boys! Cowboy movies, record players and drum sticks. Beautiful girls with yellow hair. You.

essential

Beverly Rollwagen

She just wants to keep her essential
sorrow. Everyone wants her to
be happy all the time, but she doesn't
want that for them. There is value in
the thread of sadness in each person.
The sobbing child on an airplane,
the unhappy woman waiting by the phone,
a man staring out the window past his wife.
A violin plays through all of them,
one long note held at the beginning and
the end.

guess what!

Squirrel, that hard-hearted nut, has a crush on a real live boy!

And boy, is he dreamy!

Let's just hope he doesn't say "I find your beauty and brilliance off-putting."

confessions #4-9

#4. I had to meet a man on the street corner to give him something for my boss. He sort of grunted at me as he took then envelope and then stopped and said You know what? You look like my ex-wife. I think she was wearing that same dress when I picked her up for our first date in 1974 and then we went our separate ways. This interaction, not suprisingly, made me cry.

#5. I'm thinking of moving to Paris. Or maybe Buenos Aires.

#6. When Justice popped the question, AC said that she'd want to date Bono if he were taller and Squirrel said Usher with his shirt off. I said either Sam Beam or Eddie Vedder, depending on the weather.

#7. If I could, I'd erase certain people from my life and memory. And I wouldn't say goodbye.

#8. In 7th grade I pretended to be from Turkmenistan and spoke with a funny accent and only wore the color green. I'm about to pick this up again.

#9. Nostalgia has a strong grip on me already, but summers are particularly bad.

Gee, You're So Beautiful that it's Starting to Rain

Richard Brautigan

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Play with Gentle Glass Things A

Computer Magic A

Writing Letter to Those You Love A

Finding out about Fish A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty A+!

this is what we look like when we brush our hair

hyperbole casts a long shadow

It took forever to get to work this morning.

I didn't sleep a wink at all last night.

I look like I've been run over by a bus.

It's hotter than the boiling point of tungsten.

some things about this weekend

We have not spoken in years

My first brother (tall, rangy) & I discovered that we both listen to Bruce Springsteen more than we ought, that we love traditional French accordian music and daisies wrapped in brown paper. We both like to see a good anchor tattoo on a sailor. When I saw him this weekend, I didn't want to kick his teeth in for the first time in years. In fact, following our parents around a million different junk stores I held onto his sleeve and didn't want to let go.

You won't believe what he does to my heart rate

For the past month, we've gone out one or two times a week, each time staying out a bit longer. He is funny and smart and infinitely kind. He doesn't care what I wear and I don't minds that he spits a lot. He talks and talks and talks, filling the time with stories of old pets and college girlfriends and movie quotes. He doesn't take it personally when I don't look at him, don't say much at all. Friday was the hottest day yet and my body was in rebellion--achy, dehydrated, exhausted--before we even set out. Keep going! Don't stop! he said, all the way out and back. At the end of our run he said You are amazing! and then handed me a glass of lemonade while we waited for the endorphins to do their thing.

Where oh where can my baby be?

The woman got on near the Native American History Museum and since I'd forgotten my book and have lost my ipod, I went ahead and watched. She was wearing a ratty white housecoat, as Gramcracker might call it, the sort of thing that is one step up from a nightgown but not really a robe. The sort of thing that ladies with any sense or breeding wouldn't be caught dead wearing to answer the front door, let alone to take a bus across town. She set up the contraption on the seat beside her and then pulled the brim of her hat, printed with tropical flowers, down low over her mess of hair. Every time someone walked past, the woman would pull the little seat close to her and re-adjust the blanket or re-arrange one of the mangy stuffed animals. There was no baby in the chair, though, and after awhile she turned her attention to the bag beside her and its contents. She pulled out a stack of one dollar bills and studied the face of each one intently, running her fingers over the surfaces. Almost as though she was looking at photographs of people she'd known, maybe still loved.

charm school dropout

I miss the sweet anonymity provided by my old neighborhood. I'm no social butterfly and still, everytime I set foot out the door, I trip over people I know. There's too much pressure to act dignified all the time now and I get nervous, walking down the street, that someone I know might be just around the corner, waiting to pounce and pull me into conversation. My mother did her best to raise me right, but my social skills are remedial at best so if we bump into each other and I say something dumb and a little off, please know that I am keenly aware of my short comings. I apologize for my failure at basic conversation.


Memorial Day to Remember

The day was filled of chopping, cooking, laughing laughing laughing, eating and drinking and then floating along on deep deep pools of contentment. I watched my friends' faces catch the sun, watched their young healthy bodies turn brown under the big sky. We gulped in the air. We slurped up the day.

Earlier that morning an email came from G. who has an eerily prescient way of sending me literary buckets to hold the overflow of my heart. She was talking about Jonathan Franzen and how she hated him for saying what she always thought she might be able to articulate, perfectly, someday: "the great sorrowful world-smell of being alive beneath a sky."

The smell was very strong yesterday, rising off the river, coating our skin. For we were very alive, and the sky was very big.

A fairytale in every rhyme

hi (sly) try (lie) cry (die) bye (my my my my)

look book shook crook mistook / born torn mourn lovelorn forsworn

lad = cad;dad = mad;girl=sad

Ways to end a conversation

goodbye
take care
so long
be seeing you
nice knowing you
good luck all the
best fare thee well
stay awesome
or even just
the end

cagey

Someone: How are you?
Me: I'm walking down the street.

Someone else: How's it going?
Me: The sun is shining.

Another someone: How have you been?
Me: I've been reading a lot.

It's time to start packing heat

green plastic watering can

(love love love my lovely girls!)

confession #2

I'd love for you to prove me wrong.

The So Called Life of Little Rat

Little Rat started driver's ed this week which is a good thing because it's also the week of his HSAs, the dreaded compulsory tests that everyone must take (and pass) to graduate from high school. Yesterday was the English exam and Little Rat took 5.5 hours, longer that anyone else, the only person in the room aside from the teacher, filling in bubbles with a #2 pencil. I imagine that driver's ed must've been a relief yesterday afternoon. What do you do when the light turns red?

If he passes, it will be a miracle -- not the ordinary drop down from Heaven kind of miracle that Hollywood and bad preachers tell us to pray for -- but the kind of miracle that takes hard work and good and patient people coming together faithfully to accomplish the task at hand. Even after they've been handed a bucket with a hole or a dull knife.

I just wish I could have your brain Dad! This comes out of nowhere, a voice from the very backseat joining our conversation full of 10 cent words. We were driving somewhere, probably laughing or eating ice cream, some combination of the 7 of us out for a ride or a new view of the world. Little Rat's brain often works this way: non sequiturs are his valentines, funny little love poems that might get lost in translation if your ear is untrained. We tease him about this still, but yesterday I stopped and asked myself if I'd give up a few IQ points for the cause? All the times my own neurons served me well -- SAT scores, AP exams, the philosophy paper I wrote in a handful of hours while everyone else labored for weeks -- would I settle for a little less of the success that has come so easy to see Little Rat succeed at what he finds so hard?

He wants to be an artist. He talks about it all the time and with such wistfulness that I sometimes don't know what to say; people's dreams can be a minefield over which a tightrope is strung for you to walk. There's American Idol and then there's the American Dream and there is the danger of one overtaking the other. A few weeks ago Little Rat brought home "Boy Sleeping in Clouds." Last weekend he took Squirrel's little sister down to the garage to see it. It's good to have an adorable girl like you around he said to her earlier, down by the pool. She smiled and some of her shyness fell away. This was an answer he understood.

exitus in dubio est

Did you hear the shot ring out? I swear you could, even from where you're sitting.

The smell of death always follows the sound, like a dog follows a boy through the woods, the dead leaves disintegrating beneath their tread.

Are you well? Well, are you?

Damn Sam.

Blue. Moon. River.

Song. Wrong. Longing.

Night is a wish and a weariness, woven together into a pair of wings.

I'll fly away home.

today, today i am okay with being a sentimental hack

The Sea and Sky have traded places today and misty grey-blue air swirls around our heads in waves. Walking down the street feels like swimming only better because the air rushes into your lungs instead of out and you float up instead of sinking to the bottom where there is no light by which to read the map's particular xs and os.

I love paper too much. My palms fall for the smooth flat expanses-- the way the fiber meets the ridges of my fingers, promising me something, all the while knowing that I won't deliver.

Last night he said I don't embrace the things I truly want and something else, something about my beautiful scar and how lovely is the word bruise. I knew what he was saying about the insecurity and the allure of failure in our personal lives, our professional pursuits; how theory seems the safest, easiest route up and out of our paralytic valleys; the appeal of solipsism and staying alone. It is the action & the choosing that will deliver us to high places when the rains start, though. I know this to be true and can't unknow it so I find a stamp this morning and send away for an answer to a question that I've asked everyone but myself.

If you are looking for something to cling to, try this:

Avogadro's Constant (a mole) = 6.002214179 x 10^23

A mole of hydrogen molecules = 6.002214179 x 10^23 Hydrogen molecules
A mole of shiny green apples = 6.002214179 x 10^23 shiny green apples

If you are looking for something to make you feel small, try this:

In the known universe there are about 4 x 10^22 observable stars (which is only about 1/10th of a mole). Still, if there were only 3 bumble bees flying over the sky stretching over the continent of Europe, the sky stretching over the continent of Europe would be more densely packed with bumble bees than the universe is packed with stars.

Outline of "Another Day/Another $"

17 May 2006
5th Period

I. MORNING & COMMUTE

1. Girl wakes to sun painting shadows of leaves on face
A. delighted by chlorophyll filled start despite rampant allergies

B. She digs through boxes to find dress with leaf pattern to simulate experience for remainder of day
a. orange shoe missing
i. hair haywire
ii. bloodshot eyes

C. clothes rack knocks over plant
a. She leaves dirt on floor


2. Girl almost misses D6 bus, but makes it in nick of time after running down street
A. Jam packed with over-serious professional type commuters
a. Filled with longing for H1 bus with kids and old/crazy/sick people and students
i. Her misanthropic side rears head

B. She reads short story "Handful of Ball-Points, A Heartful of Love" by Henry Swados
a. Filled with repentance for earlier hideous thoughts towards fellow humans/commuters coughing on back of neck while trying to get to work

C. 11 minutes late for work
a. Boss MIA
i. No Big Deal for Girl

II. INDUSTRY is a VIRTUE

1. Outlook Inbox filled with 64 messages requiring immediate attention
A. Since Thursday, Girl ignores messages in favor of reading Dear Prudence on SLATE

B. First message: "evrytighgb is all fckfed upp. need yu to cabll soehne /nd fex it. You wll fihgure it out. Bonusu powints"

2. She realizes that boss is unusually hysterical and is faced with determining cause and finding solution
A. Problems = glitches in important events
a. Solutions = ridiculous stunts executed by Girl
i. search for bottle of special brandy at 4 liquor stores
ii. call 16 people to find replacement speaker
iii. convince 9-month pregnant woman to skip doctors appointment to speak to room of over-indulged babies in men's bodies
iv. buy new tie for boss due to spilt coffee
v. plead with hotel staff to work technological miracles

B. Despite her best efforts, boss FLIPS out and screams in front of 5o people
a. Girl wish for tranquilizer gun (for him)

C. Feeling guilty for outbursat, boss sends Girl up to bar at Ritz
a. Girl meets Italian man and
i. Together they eat chocolate mousse and drink champagne
b. piano player plays "You Belong to Me" - same song that has run through girl's head for days
i. She thinks of Grandmother singing same song and
ii. wishes to be with Grandmother instead of Luca from Salerno, though Luca is attractive in obvious foreign-type ways

D. Receives tickets to Party at Zoo

III. Zoo Party

1. Girl walks around zoo with fine fine friend on cool calm evening
A. Food and wine from every restaurant in the city
a. She eats more chocolate mousse. Also mashed potatoes, sausage, and hummus.
a. Lots of people, objects to trip over while trying to talk, eat, see animals
i. Girl spills red wine on dress

B. They look for animals
a. see only elephant, emu and chipmunk
i. She remembers general distaste for zoo, circus etc.

2. Girl learns new word from fine fine friend: anneal
A. "1 a : to heat and then cool (as steel or glass) usually for softening and making less brittle; to STRENGTHEN or TOUGHEN

B. Girl concludes on metro ride home that day has been one of annealizationa.
a.Girl decides to worry about long term effects of annealization on mind, heart, outlook etc. tomorrow.
i. Or next day.

confession #1

I have been listening to Interpol nonstop for a week.

here is a pile of things, file them

get out of bed
eat an apple
brush teeth
iron dress
interpret dream
wear lipstick
buckle seatbelt
smile at strangers
drink coffee
write a check
chew on fingernails
scratch mosquito bite
bite your tongue
buy postage stamps
light a fire
lose your temper
tell a joke
meet a friend
put the kettle on
answer the phone
sweep floor
listen to nonsense
shake martinis
snap your fingers
take out trash
walk the dog
make the bed
read the paper
write a letter
tell the truth


things we do for love
things we do for money
things we do because no one else is around

since feeling is first

e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

pick me!

I am juror #7.

Some Dylan for a Thursday morning

Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of you.
You were trying to break into another world
A world I never knew.
I always kind of wondered
If you ever made it through.
Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of you.

Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me.
If I was still the same
If I ever became what you wanted me to be
Did I miss the mark or
Over-step the line
That only you could see?

Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me.
Listen to the engine, listen to the bell
As the last fire truck from hell
Goes rolling by, all good people are praying,
It's the last temptation
The last account
The last time you might hear the sermon on the mount,
The last radio is playing.
Seen a shooting star tonight
Slip Away.
Tomorrow will be another day.
Guess it's too late to say the things to you
That you needed to hear me say.
Seen a shooting star tonight
Slip away.

clues everywhere

For their first date he took her to see Love is Colder than Death (Liebe ist kälter als der Tod) at the Harvard Film Archive. The opening scene was endless, so bare and brutal that she felt her heart slow its beat in her chest, the air stripped from her lungs. She wondered vaguely if she might die waiting for the cut to the next shot. The creepy man in the next seat leaned over the arm rest to breathe on her neck and press his elbow into her ribs, but her date was enraptured and he did not even blink when she tapped his arm and whispered Help! Afterwards, back on the streets, they found the rain had turned to sleet and the wind whipping around with a vengeance. His car had been towed, just as the sign by the empty space where they stood, freezing, promised it would be.

After Years

Ted Kooser

Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood in the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.

empty the contents of your pocket on to the table

apple: Down the street and around the bend from my house the city has crammed a school over a drug store. On the way to the bus stop each morning we pass a tall, tall woman with fly-away hair perched against the door frame like an egret. She shepherds the children through the puddles of vomit and cigarettes butts, around the chicken bones and newspapers pasted to the sidewalk, up the stairs and to their desks. I wonder if she's ever noticed the shape of an apple with curved stem and leaf, carved perfectly in the pavement a few feet away by who knows what, especially for her.

boy: He saw her first -- how could he miss her in that orange hat? -- and followed her around the gym. She noticed him noticing her, liked his look (blue gym shorts, marathon t-shirt), remembered his face, and grabbed my arm a few days later in the grocery store when he pushed his cart of frozen dinners by us. In line I took my time, counting and re-counting the pennies and nickels, holding up the express lane, so she could formulate a plan that wouldn't be executed beyond our own imagining.

chair: Squirrel & I won a folding camp chair each, stamped with the firm logo, for winning the egg toss during the staff appreciation party last week. These chairs will come in handy this summer after we construct a tether-ball poll in our back yard. People will have a place to sit while they wait their turn to play.

drink: 3 parts red wine, 1 part orange juice, 1 part 7-up. Add ice and then sit on the front steps with a friend. Drink it down slowly under a moon you can't see.

equivokate: I'm wondering about this lately: if it's possible to always mean what you say, or to mean what you say always. It should be simple, it seems. Don't say things you don't mean. But if everyone followed this rule, the world would stop and nothing would get done at all. And what of the things you mean when they fall out of your mouth, but would take back if you could once the situation has shifted 2 years, 10 months, 5 weeks, 3 minutes down the road? Sometimes, I say things to myself and will myself to mean them as I say them over and over again. I'm doing my best to say only things I mean. I'm counting on you to try, too.

farm: The farm hadn't changed much; the fuzzy edges of memory do well to accommodate a new lamp here or painting there while preserving the shape and feel of a place. The coffee is still the best in the world and the cream in the mason jar comes straight from the lopsided milk cow who never wanders far from the gate. There will always be a lamb who thinks he's a puppy and children who grow up and away will keep coming home. In front of the stone fireplace late that night, I realized how much I've missed her and, watching them together, how much has changed about who we all are and where we're headed. Thank goodness for the fuzzy edges of memories, though, and the way they contract and expand to let in all the light and time that goes by while we're not looking.

graveyard: The Garden State Parkway takes us through a graveyard. Stone after stone after stone marking life after life after life, sprawling over hills on both sides of the highway.

house: We are switching houses soon to live with Ms. Georgia Peach. I will miss the sound of the spokes of Banjoel's bike when he rolls in late at night, and the easy clever laughter that rises up when we're sitting around. I will not miss bunkbeds, sirens, and living like a sub-terranean mammal who squints when emerging from the dark into the light of day.

i: got nothing to say for myself.

Jinx & Mitzy: They got married 27 years ago today, a full 19 months before I came on the scene. Mt. St. Helens exploded fairly soon after their wedding, ash piling up like snow on the windshield of the car, and they were very poor. Mitzy claims she was shy and didn't speak for the entire first year. Jinx got hit in the face with a lead pipe in Alaska and almost died and Mitzy decided to start talking somewhere along the way, as anyone who knows her can attest. There were births and deaths and Sunday dinners in different homes and drives on sunny afternoons and warm twilights along roads in different countries. My mom still puts one hand on her chest and the other on my dad's arm when she laughs real hard at his jokes and my dad still marvels at what a piece of work she is. I don't think they've ever been bored.

key: I have not lost my keys once in the past month. This is a new record.

I don't ask for much

Just this. And maybe a new rolling pin.

no doubt

Do you doubt that I love the things you think are funny?
Or that I think the things you love are funny?
Or that I doubt your love for funny things and thinking?
Or that I love your doubt and think you're funny?

No doubt, I love you and think most things are funny.

Love and Doubt...what funny things to think about.

story, poem

Story:

Last night. At the right place, in the perfect dress, a bit early for once. Pop around the corner to see if book shop is open because am feeling slightly adrift in spring breeze and light. Want to stand among stacks of happy endings and epic tragedies to put own life into better perspective. And kill time. Shop is dark, though, with man sitting on stoop in front of locked door. A handsome man, smoking and swirling something around a crystal glass. Turn to walk away and then turn back, dress twirling perfectly, when he calls out looking for a book? Get unreasonably shy and shrug but wait while man pulls keys from pocket, unlocks door and finishes cigarette in seemingly single motion. Very suave. Follow him into to shop. Take as much time as you want, it's just me and my whiskey tonight. Wander around, enchanted by dust, dark, absence, man, paper, whiskey, solitude. Find treasure - copies of Ashberry, Kunitz, Matthews. Man gives me all three for a song.

Poem:

The Calculus
William Matthews

There is a culture which counts like this: "one,
two, many." It is sufficient. They don't use numbers
to measure. There are so many women your wife
gets pushed out of bed. Everyone knows without a
name for it how many dead men a camel can carry.
There is so little light the dark part of each eye
grows knuckle-size.
The invention of zero will end their life. They don't
say "no moon tonight"; they say "the moon is
gone." We add this egg of absence to anything
-- then we are richer.

grace

"--o remember in your narrowing dark hours that more things move than blood in the heart."

Louise Bogan

The week was muddy and fraught with feelings I couldn't put words to, even as I wanted desperately to say something true and then to have the sheer weight of that truth anchor me to the ground. I began to slip through my own fingers, beyond Squirrel's grasp even, to the place where language has no power for redemption. And then unaccountably I thought of the freckles on my mother's arm and her birthmark. I realized without forming words: I love my mother and knew it was true and nourishing as soup. And then, because they go together, I thought of my father and the way he taps his foot under the dinner table and again I thought my father is a good man and this thought was subject to gravity as all real things are.

The screaming started, though, and metal rose up from the ground and the rain and air rusted the landscape and I worried it was too late for any words that I might find. But he set a cup of tea, settled in a saucer, in front of me and when his fingers touched the back of my hand, I nodded my head because I knew it was more true than nerve endings or rain. The sun came up in the morning and Squirrel and I walked for many miles along the river because our legs are strong enough to take us and outloud she said to me we should be thankful for this gift of motion, so we were and our gratitude was as true as the dirt under our feet and my love for her seemed more lasting than the stones.

And then Grace called last night and I could hear her shrugging across the way, seeming to say with her shoulders this is a mystery I can live with, how I came to love him when I didn't think I would love anyone this way. For awhile she spoke of being 18 and the poems we used to say each to other, the way we cut our hair and scampered through the woods at night, of the decisions and the boys and the cliffs we climbed over the sea. What lovely horrible times those were -- how good to look back and then decide to open your arms to whatever comes next she said. I am so happy for you I said because the words were true and I could not hold them back.

Rhetorical Figures

Tom Christopher

When a sentence is composed of two independent
clauses, the second being weaker than the first,
it is called One-Legged Man Standing. If it
purposefully obscures meaning, it is called Ring
Dropped in Muddy Creek, or if elegantly composed,
Wasp Fucking Orchid. There are words behind words,
and half the time our thoughts spraying out like water
from a hose, half the time banging inside our heads
like a wren in a house. When a sentence ends
unexpectedly because someone has punched
the speaker in the face, it's Avalanche Sudden.
When instead the speaker is stopped with sloppy
kisses, it's Dripping Cloud. Not to be confused
with Dripping Cone, when someone overturns
the table, or Bird Pecking Mountain, when
the sentence goes on for an hour and a half and ends
in a shaking death. If the speaker lies in the driveway
so drunk on cheap wine that one listening cannot
get close to the meaning and thus runs away again,
claiming, "For the last time," it's Pregnant Dog
Cooked in Sun. If the speaker sells everything for
an old convertible and drives out into the desert
with unintelligible shout to the pissed-off stars:
Aching Stones Laughing. Forced incongruent words
are Fishes on Fire, and are beautiful but bring us
no closer to the Truth or the Cosmos or the All,
so we either tour Europe looking for the bodies
of saints or drink all night playing Johnny Cash LPs.
Everything we have said, we have said all our lives.
Same for what we haven't said. Learning the terms
doesn't help, we're still filled over the rim with longing.
Already in this poem there is Clamshell Moon, Barn
House Burning, Cow Lowing in the Field, One Hundred
Village Bells, Moth Flurry. Not much further a Cat
in Heat, a Wailing Street, and in the end Tree Frogs
Blazing reeds with Sound.

melange melancholia

I watched a pigeon die on the early morning street.
A very old & falling down man shuffled up and looked on too.
A'int it awful to watch something suffer at the end?

If you take a hammer and you break it into little pieces,
I mean, just smash the living daylights out of the thing,
can you sift through the rubble and find the bits of fact
that held it together in the first place.

I woke up crying last night after dreaming that
dogs were chasing me through the woods
while my friends and the trees stood there, laughing.

Tomorrow is my friend's birthday and
I'm sad that I'm not there to bid her well and say
maybe we should take back all those days
we wished too hard for time to pass.

Please isn't enough. But I'm saying it anyways.
please. please.

These are pleas.

eat your heart out girls

deconstruct

She chooses inconsequential because of the narrow door inviting her to step out of the cold, the lure of belonging in the arms of the preposition. The proposition is followed quickly by the list of reasons not to go, though, once you've sunk your savings on a share of the Brooklyn Bridge; and the looming image of the man behind bars who tattoos his arms and waits to add ex to his title. The sparkling suspense of the order of things -- how they're related and what comes next-- pushes her on to the conclusion: a quick, painless end to a million different beginnings.

acrostic for charles

Cousin,
Hop in the
Airplane so we can
Right this wrong;
Long distances
Estrange us, making
Strangers out of kin.

Ich bin ein Berliner

The sky is grey
the washed out grey of pavement
dead leaves and petals plaster
the sidewalks slick and brown.
The faces of buildings sink back
into themselves, their height shrinking
under the weight and threat
of the clouds. Behind a chain link fence
small children snake around
the asphalt playground in silent lines.
There is no sugar for tea and the bread is stale

Did I wake up in East Berlin this morning?
Is it April 13, 1952? I pop the collar of my
black coat and walk faster, listening
for footsteps behind me. There are spies
everywhere and I have secrets.

minor setbacks

Over the weekend I dropped my phone in a cup of coffee so now it shuts off when someone tries to call. This is fine because I get nervous and say idiotic things to everyone besides Charles & my mother. If there's something you need to tell me -- if you're getting married, if you want your sweater back or would like to know if I'll go throw rocks in the river with you, you'll have to send word by peregrine falcon. I'll be watching the western sky.

---

The optometrist is awfully young & cool. I want desperately to impress her by reading the tiny bottom row correctly, but she doesn't sound impressed when she tells me that I have the beginning of a corneal ulcer. It should be okay if you wear your glasses for awhile she says. Now my vanity is forcing me to choose between how I see and how I look, because I look monumentally dweeby with them and walk into walls without them. Clementine believes that there is no one so hideous that the perfect pair of glasses won't smarten them right up; she has predicated her yes to many a suitor based on this theory. I like brainy-looking boys as much as the next girl and Squirrel looks downright fetching when she wears her glasses. There is a good, thick line between brainy and dweeby, however, and anyone without a corneal ulcer can clearly see that I am on the unfortunate side.

---

When I woke up 3 hours before my alarm this morning, this is what I should've done:

1. Bake bread

2. Run 4 miles

3. Fold laundry or at least iron clothes for today

4. Write good poem about change, loss, contentment, hope, apples, etc.

5. Pray for my enemies

6. Change lightbulb in closet

Instead.............I read a book that I already know by heart. Right up until the very last minute. Which is why I was rooting around in the dark closet for shoes when it was time to catch the bus. Which is why I grabbed one shoe of Squirrel's and one shoe of mine.

Both black, high heels. Same size. One with a 2.5" heel, one with a 3" heel

Which is why I'm barefoot under my desk.

sister

a.

If I could write about you I would
believe me.
I'm troubled not
by lack of images
of you -- you monochrome delight
covered in untold rashes
swaying your hips to the
music of young and beautiful --
that is you.
Oh no. I have thoughts enough to
fill volumes full of senseless rhyme.

And no words.

b.

How do you call a chrysalis
poised to burst forth and send
a butterfly into this unforgiving world?
I have watched you these months,
half-sick
by your innocent dealings and
terrified of the minx
crouching in the shrewd corners
of your narrowed eyes.
You are these things:
my anomaly
my caterpillar
my charge
my unprepared
my crafty.

How can this be?

c.

June is your birthday and
you still revel in the fuss.
Oh my stubborn egg. How soon
the womb will expel you
will render you
ready and toss you
out to a life ripe
and brimming with girls
like me.
Should I fear for them
or for you?

d.

Tonight you said you hate me.
I do not worry for you tonight.
Please learn that life
is not people squaring off around
a table. My negotiator. My snippet.

You will read these sentences
and hit me for calling you a
caterpillar
or an egg.
You will bound head-first
into a specious pool of
offense and anger
from this rickety platform
of my lines.

See that I have only words and love now.
See now that they are the same.