Giving Thanks

(for Stella)

When I woke up, my thoughts were oracular.
There's so much I've yet to be grateful for, things
like circumstance and dogged joy and birth and--
I'll say it-- death. (Is approaching grateful
the same as grateful?) This is the holiday of, "Oh,
I forgot to notice you and your labored breathing
there in the corner." But really, I did notice you--
how your eyes seemed to point in two different
directions sometimes; your hound
tendency to just want to keep moving in
a straight line, nose toward the ground, away
from the house; how you hunkered in
joy and smiled a little and were your own fur-
covered secret of small pleasures and
longing and some smelling, flop-eared version
of love. What if on your last day, you got
a bath and were talked to sweetly and chewed
two of three bones you were offered?
What of being with ones who saw you young
and saw you old, who bailed you out of jail,
who lay on the floor with your animal body,
breathing?

Rivers and Tides

A clip from the documentary Rivers and Tides, about the artist Andy Goldsworthy.

Clif's trio's EP is out!

There's a poem by me inside.

Insomnia Poem

(for Todd Colby)

I’m like some freak who smells like moon tea, if only spirit
had not abandoned me, if only I could harness the power
of a single day’s frittering, I’d come back from the fourth dimension
and tell myself deep truths from there, flickering in the doorway,
saying, “Chill” and “Recognize.” I am high up in my home, bereft
of as many comforting textiles as I’d like to own, but rich in dark
haunted tree limbs moving of their own volition. Cradled
by more encroaching fog and nefarious 2 a.m. subway track
singing than I even begin to deserve. I am mourning the twentieth
century. Kids these days know nothing of Magic Fingers,
of luminous clock faces slowly going dark next to twin beds
as a dogwood tree comes on outside, shining the yard
bright in one spot, on the loneliest night in the twentieth century.

Weekends

First Aid Kit

[Found here: http://coldfrontmag.com/poets-off-poetry/four-fantasias-on-fleet-foxes]

Joan Baez

Found poem

If you Google "Joanna Penn Cooper poem" and then click on "images," you'll see a bunch of images that are mostly not me.

[The Jeanne Moreau image is from http://giuliageranium.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html.]

Because you know you like the cover

You can order a copy here.

Upcoming readings

If you are in New York, you could come out come out and see me read poems at one of these two events:

Ping Pong Launch Party
Saturday, October 16 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm
Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street

Tygerburning Literary Journal Launch And Reading
Dec. 4, 2010, 7:30 PM
Upstairs at Erika's
Williamsburg, NYC
For further information please contact Erika at viofem@gmail.com

Poems and bees

Poems of mine appear in the most recent issues of the journals SUPERMACHINE and Ping Pong.

Also: I'm covered in bees!

John Cassavetes

“You have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. And you never have anyone else to blame when you do. What happens to artists is that it’s not that somebody’s standing in their way, it’s that their own selves are standing in their way."

[Read more here.]

More significant records of my youth

1. Bad Girls, Donna Summer
I think I got this for Easter in 1979, along with Mickey Mouse Disco. I loved Donna Summer. She was edgy and emotive.

2. Magical Mystery Tour, The Beatles
I listened to the Beatles a lot when I was a kid. And whenever I saw those creepy vans with dark windows, I would think the Magical Mystery Tour was indeed coming to take me away.

3. "Call Me," Blondie
I had a bunch of cool 45s. "Roll me in designer sheets, I'll never get enough."

4. Business As Usual, Men at Work
A kid named Scott Ferguson made a tape of this album for me in middle school. He drew cool cartoons and had to have all these surgeries on his back. I think he was from Canada. I think Cargo was on the other side.

5. Rio, Duran Duran
Seventh grade was all about Rio.

6. Zenyatta Mondata, The Police
The older sister of my best friend in 8th grade loved the Police, so I started loving them, too. I was way too into the song "Don't Stand So Close to Me." Good thing none of my teachers were at all Sting-like.

7. Golden Age of Wireless, Thomas Dolby
Strangely strong connection with the song "Europa and the Pirate Twins."

8. Sweet Baby James, James Taylor
JT understands.

9. 12 Greatest Hits, Patsy Cline
Patsy understands. She understands more than we understand.

10. The Best of Leonard Cohen
Oh, Leonard.

11. Deja Vu, CSNY
Strong, slightly eerie double-layered nostalgia for both high school and childhood associated with this album.

12. Purple Rain, Prince
What??

13. Are You Experienced, The Jimi Hendrix Experience
What?????

14. Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Dead Kennedys
I don't think I totally understood this album when I bought it in high school, but it allowed me to have conversations like this:
Friend of my mom's from work: What if I named a band after your dead heroes?
Me: [Shrug]

15. Led Zeppelin IV
When we were teenagers, a friend from childhood once tried to hypnotize me into making out with him by playing this and telling me about how Led Zeppelin had sold their souls to the devil. I went along with it.

16. The Velvet Underground and Nico
Record store re-discovery of music I vaguely remember from childhood turns an important corner. Felt like I was cooler than everyone for about a year, until I went to college and met someone else who also liked the Velvet Underground and early David Bowie.

Year

Clif and I met a year ago tomorrow.

Droopy

Text message from Mom, 12:29 PM: Remember to eat protein in the morning and stay hydrated against droopiness.


[image from http://dfenestrate.blogspot.com/]

Flight Lists

Flight to Orlando

1. Is that woman carrying a marijuana plant?
2. Two fauxhawks within three rows.
3. Little boy in front of me opens the window shade before we've pulled away from the gate and says, "I can see our town."
4. The first ingredient in my orange juice is apple juice.

Flight back to New York

1. Guy with a comical hat featuring an illustration of a HUGE marijuana leaf is one of the last people to get on the plane. (Problems at security?)
2. Autistic grown twins in the row behind me with their father. They seem to function quite well, until they get into an argument about how elastic is made of rubber as we're getting off the plane.
3. Young woman in my row whose carry-on has a BOGOTA tag seems to be on drugs or delirious. She puts her head on the empty middle seat between us, basically under the arm rest that my arm is resting on, then looks up at me quizzically when I keep touching the armrest to change the JetBlue tv channels. (Cash Cab-Law and Order-Cash Cab-Law and Order).
4. There's a very very old woman across the aisle from me who had to be carried onto the plane and put into her seat by two strong men. She has on a sassy green jacket and a lime green John Deere-style hat that says TABERNACLE-something-or-other. Her daughter beside her has the same hat.

New Smyrna Beach

Things Mom has said so far:

1. We’re only watching this to see if she’s a midget.
2. The warmest fur is the underhair of a musk-ox.
3. I’m not going to kill you with a blood pressure cuff!

Back at Mom's

where it's Christmas in August.

Move it

We're in a new apartment with new rooms and a view of trees. And there's this hole in the kitchen wall.

The night we moved, we ate a beige meal-- hummus and cracked wheat crackers and Chimay. It was perfect. We also watched a movie, but not one of these movies. (We watched Silkwood, which I haven't seen in years. It isn't what you'd call a celebratory movie, but watching something so well acted is comforting, at least.)

The next day we were really tired. We went to brunch and then sat on a bench and looked at these geese.

We still have a lot of unpacking to do.