I Woke Up Feeling Like the Bionic Woman Doll, and Not in a Good Way
Now that you are finally, in reality, hopefully in the actual middle
of your life, are you completely different? The Queen
of Sandalwood? The Hobo of Denmark? The Count
of My Toes? Does your first mind tell you that capability
is a water table we can all tap into? That if you're sufficiently
interested you can do anything except force external cash
prizes? There are certain symptoms of symbolic rebirth:
a singing right ear, a stutter, waking with a feeling
like a sock to the jaw. Thinking fire made of blood
but meaning blood made of fire. Some nights the only
comfort is in tube socks, the contemplation of a ballroom dance
by a vivacious cross-eyed Australian, and the hush that comes
when the music of the spheres is set to "off." This is how
you got into this predicament in the first place: Walking around
thinking "only child syndrome" and waiting for your brother to call.
April 28th poem
Friday, April 29, 2011
The Everything Dance
Everything's a little too stylized when you call it a dance
but the alternative is another conversation about my allergies.
According to their commercials, if I take the pills my neuro-
transmitters will do a sleek and elegant dance of light and quiet
victory. I'll stand in the dance studio in the white-gray light wearing
a hoodie with other middle aged ladies wearing hoodies, stretching
gently to the side one time. I'd rather stay on my regimen of coffee
and almond butter and fish oil every two weeks when I remember
to take it. A mojito and fish tacos on a sunny day. Three Reese's
eggs around Easter before I go off sugar again. I'd rather start
writing down everything I eat and stop writing down everything
I eat and walk clear across Central Park 2.5 times ruining my ballet
flats I bought on credit at the Ann Taylor Loft three years ago.
This is my dance.
Everything's a little too stylized when you call it a dance
but the alternative is another conversation about my allergies.
According to their commercials, if I take the pills my neuro-
transmitters will do a sleek and elegant dance of light and quiet
victory. I'll stand in the dance studio in the white-gray light wearing
a hoodie with other middle aged ladies wearing hoodies, stretching
gently to the side one time. I'd rather stay on my regimen of coffee
and almond butter and fish oil every two weeks when I remember
to take it. A mojito and fish tacos on a sunny day. Three Reese's
eggs around Easter before I go off sugar again. I'd rather start
writing down everything I eat and stop writing down everything
I eat and walk clear across Central Park 2.5 times ruining my ballet
flats I bought on credit at the Ann Taylor Loft three years ago.
This is my dance.
April 27th poem
Thursday, April 28, 2011
I Remember
[from an in-class writing exercise; apologies to Joe Brainard]
I remember strawberry Shasta.
I remember chocolate chips in front of the tv with Joe. I remember how close to the tv we would sit and how the tv was a piece of furniture. I remember how the word "Special" would spin around.
I remember The Wizard of Oz and how I would inch toward the stairs during the flying monkeys.
I remember hanging onto my grandmother's hips.
I remember going back downstairs and the field of poppies.
I remember she would wake up in Kansas too soon, and what if I woke up in Kansas. Everyone would be around my bed, but would I miss Oz?
I remember the creek we shouldn't go in because it was downstream from a meatpacking plant.
I remember Joe saying he saw a cow skull in there.
I remember a nightmare that I had to hide under my quilt with the leaves because there were Nazis in our neighborhood, and would the quilt hide me?
I remember that I was a girl with dark hair under the quilt, alone by the bridge over the slaughterhouse creek. The Nazi boots walked on by, but would I make it back home?
[from an in-class writing exercise; apologies to Joe Brainard]
I remember strawberry Shasta.
I remember chocolate chips in front of the tv with Joe. I remember how close to the tv we would sit and how the tv was a piece of furniture. I remember how the word "Special" would spin around.
I remember The Wizard of Oz and how I would inch toward the stairs during the flying monkeys.
I remember hanging onto my grandmother's hips.
I remember going back downstairs and the field of poppies.
I remember she would wake up in Kansas too soon, and what if I woke up in Kansas. Everyone would be around my bed, but would I miss Oz?
I remember the creek we shouldn't go in because it was downstream from a meatpacking plant.
I remember Joe saying he saw a cow skull in there.
I remember a nightmare that I had to hide under my quilt with the leaves because there were Nazis in our neighborhood, and would the quilt hide me?
I remember that I was a girl with dark hair under the quilt, alone by the bridge over the slaughterhouse creek. The Nazi boots walked on by, but would I make it back home?
April 26th poem
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
[Foot tanka]
Tell me, when you think
of us later, of our year
of touching and not
touching our feet together,
what will you remember most?
Tell me, when you think
of us later, of our year
of touching and not
touching our feet together,
what will you remember most?
April 25th poem
Monday, April 25, 2011
Spring Is Undoing the Damage of Haste
There’s no cerulean in this poem. There’s celadon maybe,
but not really, not celadon. It’s just the way spring refuses
to move, its giant glass gears of a machine you didn’t build
and will never understand. It’s standing on your poet barge
on dead water, knowing all the living water moves much
farther down. Now the apartment is quiet, except for
those contentious birds and that non-jet rumble. I’ve swept
the floor. I’ve eaten lunch. The trees in the middle distance
glow from within, their green. The closest tree refuses to budge.
Is anyone else dizzy about the time it takes to live a noticing
life, and how in two generations, no one will know? There’s dark
chocolate with tart cherries. There’s tea. There’s cloud cover rolling
over and back, over and back, like the scrim at some boring opera.
This is my life being lucky. No, really. It is.
There’s no cerulean in this poem. There’s celadon maybe,
but not really, not celadon. It’s just the way spring refuses
to move, its giant glass gears of a machine you didn’t build
and will never understand. It’s standing on your poet barge
on dead water, knowing all the living water moves much
farther down. Now the apartment is quiet, except for
those contentious birds and that non-jet rumble. I’ve swept
the floor. I’ve eaten lunch. The trees in the middle distance
glow from within, their green. The closest tree refuses to budge.
Is anyone else dizzy about the time it takes to live a noticing
life, and how in two generations, no one will know? There’s dark
chocolate with tart cherries. There’s tea. There’s cloud cover rolling
over and back, over and back, like the scrim at some boring opera.
This is my life being lucky. No, really. It is.
April 24th poem
Monday, April 25, 2011
Thought
If I'm hating the idea of writing poems that use words like tendrils and cerulean then I should just not write poems that use words like tendrils and cerulean, instead of sitting around using tendrils and cerulean a million times in a poem about how I'm hating the idea of writing poems with tendrils and cerulean.
If I'm hating the idea of writing poems that use words like tendrils and cerulean then I should just not write poems that use words like tendrils and cerulean, instead of sitting around using tendrils and cerulean a million times in a poem about how I'm hating the idea of writing poems with tendrils and cerulean.
April 23rd poem
Saturday, April 23, 2011
A Visit
I was drawing some doodles like cobra swans with purpose
and family members were in the other room observing Easter
with Yul Brynner. Mom was saying things like, "I'd go to France
for a fruit tart like this. Or just to the France at Epcot Center."
But the weather made us all morose for much of the day, except
for Bill, who walked around saying "Hola!" to people
in my neighborhood and cheering up the newstand guy
with his yellow tourist vest. It may just be that certain days
my lymph nodes do a thing, or no one notices that my hair
looks good, or my mom keeps grabbing my hand saying,
"Put some cream on these. You're just a baby. I'm going
to paint your fingernails." I'll be fine after I sit in this room
for a while and rest the left side of my throat. You should
be so lucky. Happy Easter!
I was drawing some doodles like cobra swans with purpose
and family members were in the other room observing Easter
with Yul Brynner. Mom was saying things like, "I'd go to France
for a fruit tart like this. Or just to the France at Epcot Center."
But the weather made us all morose for much of the day, except
for Bill, who walked around saying "Hola!" to people
in my neighborhood and cheering up the newstand guy
with his yellow tourist vest. It may just be that certain days
my lymph nodes do a thing, or no one notices that my hair
looks good, or my mom keeps grabbing my hand saying,
"Put some cream on these. You're just a baby. I'm going
to paint your fingernails." I'll be fine after I sit in this room
for a while and rest the left side of my throat. You should
be so lucky. Happy Easter!
April 22nd poem
Saturday, April 23, 2011
In the Hall of Human Origins
You and your little Indonesia skull
You and your Lucy bones
Unexpected kinship with the modern humans
(the ones behind glass)
Something in me remembers the mammoth bone hut
You and your little Indonesia skull
You and your Lucy bones
Unexpected kinship with the modern humans
(the ones behind glass)
Something in me remembers the mammoth bone hut
April 21st poem
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Found poem: Visit from Mom
What is this, Afghanistan tea?
Put a big blob of Vaseline between your eyebrows every night before you go to bed. You're starting to get a 1. Not an 11, just a 1.
It's great to be here. I tried to make everyone jealous before I left.
What is this, Afghanistan tea?
Put a big blob of Vaseline between your eyebrows every night before you go to bed. You're starting to get a 1. Not an 11, just a 1.
It's great to be here. I tried to make everyone jealous before I left.
April 19th poem
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
April Soundings
Waking up two hours behind to a quality of weirdness.
C's alarm not having gone off, the two of us sleeping through
loud drilling, scraping, and banging noises just outside our window.
An unsettled ship-like feeling to things. Sea legs. Rations.
Measurements and fittings and huge spools of ribbon everywhere.
It's near-kite weather. Or just, I'm moving in circles on my day
off, trying to work up momentum to take off out of the apartment.
All of us curators in private museums of loss. Wait,
see? Even there. I meant sloth and wrote loss.
Waking up two hours behind to a quality of weirdness.
C's alarm not having gone off, the two of us sleeping through
loud drilling, scraping, and banging noises just outside our window.
An unsettled ship-like feeling to things. Sea legs. Rations.
Measurements and fittings and huge spools of ribbon everywhere.
It's near-kite weather. Or just, I'm moving in circles on my day
off, trying to work up momentum to take off out of the apartment.
All of us curators in private museums of loss. Wait,
see? Even there. I meant sloth and wrote loss.
April 18th poem
Monday, April 18, 2011
I have a mysterious story to tell you.
My grandfather was born in Kentucky in the 1920s. Later, we were on the earth for about seven years of the same time. We were even at Carowinds together! (The amusement park.) Then he became ash and cloud, and I became this other person who would not fit into one of those small planes on the kiddie ride at Carowinds. Someday I, too, will become ash and cloud. By which I mean, in doing so, learn about yourself.
My grandfather was born in Kentucky in the 1920s. Later, we were on the earth for about seven years of the same time. We were even at Carowinds together! (The amusement park.) Then he became ash and cloud, and I became this other person who would not fit into one of those small planes on the kiddie ride at Carowinds. Someday I, too, will become ash and cloud. By which I mean, in doing so, learn about yourself.
April 16th poem
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Window
In the middle of our fight, I turn my head and see this very round black bird with a bright yellow beak out your office window. Then I go into the living room and look at the same bird out that window. I want to call out, "Hey! Look at this bird!" But I only say it softly.
In the middle of our fight, I turn my head and see this very round black bird with a bright yellow beak out your office window. Then I go into the living room and look at the same bird out that window. I want to call out, "Hey! Look at this bird!" But I only say it softly.
April 15th poem
Friday, April 15, 2011
Inside
We're some kind of funny animals in this picture,
my pregnant mother in her flowered mini-dress
and me inside there, being a fetus. When I think
of love I think "as if to weep" and also of the breaking
laugh my grandmother used to do. You'd get her
going and she couldn't stop and couldn't stop. As if
to weep. We lived for that sound. That day I found
my mother on her bed, her eyes all red, looking
dissolved-- I was just scrawny and eight and back
from running stringy-haired around the neighborhood.
"Are you crying?" "It's hay fever." "Are you sure
you aren't crying." "It's just hay fever." That's when
the crying lodged in me. My hair got thicker; I grew
six inches. I started moving in circles, away from their
laps and back again. That old joke about being
a daughter. That helpless laughter.
We're some kind of funny animals in this picture,
my pregnant mother in her flowered mini-dress
and me inside there, being a fetus. When I think
of love I think "as if to weep" and also of the breaking
laugh my grandmother used to do. You'd get her
going and she couldn't stop and couldn't stop. As if
to weep. We lived for that sound. That day I found
my mother on her bed, her eyes all red, looking
dissolved-- I was just scrawny and eight and back
from running stringy-haired around the neighborhood.
"Are you crying?" "It's hay fever." "Are you sure
you aren't crying." "It's just hay fever." That's when
the crying lodged in me. My hair got thicker; I grew
six inches. I started moving in circles, away from their
laps and back again. That old joke about being
a daughter. That helpless laughter.
April 14th poems
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Teaching today, I read out loud
That scene where she still doesn't fit, she's still on the road
She must drop all her assumptions and start at zero
My eyes well up like idiots
Found poem, Alice Neel documentary
By looking at herself
and examining herself
she could give herself a chance
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