Wings of Desire

From Dana Levin's poem "Working Methods"

LISTENING

I was falling asleep, wondering how to describe a poet’s studio, when a voice said, “You have to be your own absence, with fifty percent deity.”

woke up with: I false—into arrangement; am out of it—deranged—

woke up with: hurry up is flamboyant and resolutional—

woke up with: as the ask progresses to a tiny new yes—

My friend Dan says: Listen—Record—Orchestrate.

Wednesday Top Ten

1. Little dog stretching his middle for easy grasping.
2. Gazebo and brown leaves.
3. Preternatural toddlers.
4. Diagonal geese.
5. Some kids running and yelling in a field, forming different patterns as they moved about.
6. Red chard, sweet potatoes, and etc.
7. Duende.
8. Discussions: Small prose and the realistic surreal; Walpole and canes.
9. How branches organize the mind.
10. Anticipatory breathing.

Ingrid

Andy Goldsworthy

Bon Iver weather

Postcard to a Better Place

(for Christian)

Even though my grandfather said, Don't talk about doing something, just do the thing, I will tell you that I was excited to come home and put on socks. I came home and put on socks after I spoke at length to an honors student. I talked and talked. I talked about "the Other." I talked about the difference between the word affect and the word effect. I told her, Affect can also be a noun. She had a very flat affect, and I tried to make my face look blank. The student looked at me. Then I talked some more. Before I came home and put on socks, I stopped for wine. I stopped for yogurt. I got to my apartment and washed my hands, then checked Facebook. I followed a link that led me to a slideshow of 15 ugly celebrity men who date out of their league. Jack White I understand. Kid Rock I do not. Several others I wasn't familiar with. Once, years ago, I had a dream in which I stood in front of a screen onto which images were being projected, and I performed a monologue that brought all the pieces together but that also let them keep sliding around like ice floes. I am thinking now that it may actually be possible to pray without ceasing. All of life is a meditation, the man said. What are you meditating on? I am meditating on my iPhone and the messages it might bring me. I'd like some good news. In the meantime, there is this photo of the mother of one of my brother's high school friends. The woman is pictured on her birthday. I have never met her. Whatever has brought her to this point, in this photo, at least, she looks happy.

Strasbourg

I only know its outsized bow was treacherous upon the mind.

Little boots of leather. Bootie things with bitten toes.

All that gathered taffeta and ribbon.

Who would buy a twelve year-old such a thing knowing

she desires it. Clay faced pallor and deadpan eyes

the power of such a bow, such a girl and little boots.

Another Side of Bob Dylan

(Thanks, Annmarie.)

Trinh Minh-Ha

It is probably difficult for a "normal," probing mind to recognize that to seek is to lose, for seeking presupposes a separation between the seeker and the sought, the continuing me and the changes it undergoes. --Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman, Native, Other