"everything is something trembling on the brink of something else, thus to be clutched and cherished..." ~Spring in Fialta, Vladimir Nabokov
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hunger
sometimes it takes a week to rip off a band-aid. sometimes more, because you ripped it off so fast, because you were trying not to rip someone else off, and you ripped your self off in the process. now there’s this raw-red welt where fawn-brown skin was, sticky and bitter as a bruised apple. now you have a bellyache, but you never took a bite. here’s the scabbed-over bite / mark in your heart to prove it. see?
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vanishing point
we finish our dreams, slippery, push each one into each other’s mouths like warm berries. there are only two stories, he says. a small, wet knot holds him together. someone new shows up, or someone goes on a journey. it’s the same thing, i think. our blueblood hearts, the horizon berry-colored. he squeezes it, and a dream drops out. there’s only one story, he says, and looks right at me, which is like looking away. someone loses something.
.
"One writes out of one thing only...
...one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art." -James Baldwin
...
13 the bar has all these different stained glass lamps that hang from the ceiling. sepia-colored gold-rush photos of san francisco that hang on the walls. a torn painting of the old cliff house, which hangs over the sea. it looked like a castle before it got old and crumbled. a fireplace crackles by a dart board. beams. couches. wooden tables and chairs and mismatched furniture that looks as if it’s been crumpled by generations of bodies, sinking down with a whiskey into heartache, or break, or warming, burn, felt words. you know. i love best the big lamp hanging directly over the long chestnut bar, fat glass flowers with round petals, all glowing reds and deep oranges and yellows and greens, lit from the inside. overturned-trough shaped. beneath it, an old man with a smoke-colored horsehair moustache pours beers from a spicket and smiles into the dark. behind him, glossy rows of bottles, asleep on their shadowed shelves. i just finished explaining how three different young men wanted me to marry them. the first two are drug addicts now (downers and uppers, respectively), and the third was a joke.
“look what you did to them!” D said.
“were they always drug addicts?” L said.
“no,” i said, “but they always had the potential.”
it’s L’s birthday. she keeps calling herself old. we toast. “when i look in the mirror,” she says, “i don’t see the person i think of myself as. i’m stuck somewhere around twenty-eight. but that’s another story.” she is forty-two, beautiful, laughs with her whole body, and looks you right in the eye.
my heart is stuck in my body like a broken record. it skips and skips. i’m not wearing my wires because i wore them all morning at work. it was cold and sunny after days of pouring rain and everybody wanted hot chocolate. outside, in the bluish dark lit by yellow streetlamps and red tail lights, people bury their chests under layers and layers of clothing, and take most things for granted. they gesture to each other, slap-happy, laughing, and their voices make steam out of their words, which push out against each other and coalesce, then disappear completely. from inside, they look like a silent movie. i name it february, getting older. it dropped down to the low thirties last night, and early this morning B said he saw frost in the park, frozen grass holding its breath for the sun to come up over all of our cold rooftops. the light from the stained-glass flower-lantern falls on us like something holy. i am thirty-one. i’m not wearing the wires, but i’ll put them back on tomorrow. the tear in the cliff-house painting looks like a weird cloud, flesh-colored, like someone ripped a hole in the sky on accident, and discovered there was skin behind it. i look up at all of it, trying to know something i’m too young to remember.
“when i look in the mirror i don’t know what i’m looking for,” i say.
...
7 finally, it’s raining. i come down with a faint case of vertigo. keep tilting to the right. heart side, other side. maybe i’m trying to get some distance. hard to win a stare-off with your failings. “if you get wet,” she says, “couldn’t you be electrocuted?” cherry blossoms gather in plastered pink on the sidewalks. everything smells like blossoms and rain. my valentine won’t stop throwing up. i’m trying not to fall over.
...
3 it looks like a giant manta ray. swimming through my small insides like they’re the open ocean. that manta ray has a big mouth. Breathe in, he said, listening, Again...Again... “the imagination,” says the novelist, “is like a muscle: the more you use it, the better it performs and the quicker you get ideas of higher caliber.” bright metal snaps where soft brown skin should be. maybe i’m stable where everyone else is electric. my heart is like a muscle. my heart is like a muscle. my heart is a muscle.
.
.
back there in that november crisp
of leaf-pile, back where on your tall wooden deck you outlined a life, drew a frame in the night filled with stars moving, i still hold the feeling of having come unmoored, of having arrived, suddenly, at the end of my tether. later, pretending to sleep, curled with you like an egg in a nest while you snored your music of autumnal dreaming, i talked myself down from my barren treetop. life left dissolving on the dry ground. i gave flesh to our fancy, my evergreen hair, leafy eyes, moon pupils, but you fell asleep alone wrapped around me, another woman tied to your finger with a dusty string. something vanished from my middle. i was an opposite egg, empty, a clean, slender branch, stretching from everywhere into winter. i let go a last leaf, felt it drop at my most naked. i carefully kept breathing. outside, the night sky was rearranging. cold stars divided, trickling down the sky, glint of a faraway fire on a dark window. the chickens were asleep in their quiet coop, each one tucked into herself like a secret wish.
.
.
i'm trying to burrow inside of something. i would like to flip back and forth between worlds, and i do, and my plane goes down, or my raft pops a leak, or my starship hasn't been dreamed yet, and i'm wallflowering around like a bluebell grows through a crack in the corner of a roomful of windows, i've built myself a home here. at the edge of things. twigs and cattails and feathers. lengths of string i've gathered from so many different cliffs or ditches, crawling inside looking for something with which to tie my ends together. being a seasoned old sailor of dreams, i'm wavelength, starboard watch, i'm a maven in the art of knotting.
when did i become wallflower of the sea and everything in it?
wallflower |ˈwôlˌflou(-ə)r| noun 1 a southern European plant of the cabbage family, with fragrant yellow, orange-red, dark red, or brown flowers, cultivated for its early spring blooming. • Cheiranthus cheiri, family Brassicaceae. 2 [informal] a person who has no one to dance with or who feels shy, awkward, or excluded at a party. the truth is, i'm at the party because i wanted to be here. the truth is that nobody knows what's at the bottom. maybe there isn't a bottom. sea lilies and feather stars, sea urchins and starfish who don't have brains, or eyes, or hearts. the heart urchin comes sailing from the sand when disturbed, lands in the same water, and burrows back under the floor of the world. we are some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet, hiding. moveable spine, suction-footed. sand to rubble to coral to cold. the resulting locomotion is generally slow.
some of us can regenerate missing limbs, arms, spines. some of us (bat star, blue star, pincushion) can reproduce by breaking an arm or by deliberately splitting our bodies in half. each half becomes a whole new animal. well.
our upper surface is often very colorful, but our underside is mostly a lighter, a guessing, an aurora. don't see the sky except through water. if you're still wondering what's at the bottom- this is it, swarming with stars. basket star, beaded star, sugar star, brittle. cup-shaped feather-star with an ocean inside. you crawl, roll, walk, swim, cling, quick. loop your arms around something. slip-knot, anchor. cryptic, we hide in the crevice. situated in the middle. in especially strong currents, looped arms are liable to break. so who were you before, who are you now? this is all i wanted to say: look at how many one can become
.
i'm trying to burrow inside of something. i would like to flip back and forth between worlds, and i do, and my plane goes down, or my raft pops a leak, or my starship hasn't been dreamed yet, and i'm wallflowering around like a bluebell grows through a crack in the corner of a roomful of windows, i've built myself a home here. at the edge of things. twigs and cattails and feathers. lengths of string i've gathered from so many different cliffs or ditches, crawling inside looking for something with which to tie my ends together. being a seasoned old sailor of dreams, i'm wavelength, starboard watch, i'm a maven in the art of knotting.
when did i become wallflower of the sea and everything in it?
wallflower |ˈwôlˌflou(-ə)r| noun 1 a southern European plant of the cabbage family, with fragrant yellow, orange-red, dark red, or brown flowers, cultivated for its early spring blooming. • Cheiranthus cheiri, family Brassicaceae. 2 [informal] a person who has no one to dance with or who feels shy, awkward, or excluded at a party. the truth is, i'm at the party because i wanted to be here. the truth is that nobody knows what's at the bottom. maybe there isn't a bottom. sea lilies and feather stars, sea urchins and starfish who don't have brains, or eyes, or hearts. the heart urchin comes sailing from the sand when disturbed, lands in the same water, and burrows back under the floor of the world. we are some of the most beautiful creatures on the planet, hiding. moveable spine, suction-footed. sand to rubble to coral to cold. the resulting locomotion is generally slow.
some of us can regenerate missing limbs, arms, spines. some of us (bat star, blue star, pincushion) can reproduce by breaking an arm or by deliberately splitting our bodies in half. each half becomes a whole new animal. well.
our upper surface is often very colorful, but our underside is mostly a lighter, a guessing, an aurora. don't see the sky except through water. if you're still wondering what's at the bottom- this is it, swarming with stars. basket star, beaded star, sugar star, brittle. cup-shaped feather-star with an ocean inside. you crawl, roll, walk, swim, cling, quick. loop your arms around something. slip-knot, anchor. cryptic, we hide in the crevice. situated in the middle. in especially strong currents, looped arms are liable to break. so who were you before, who are you now? this is all i wanted to say: look at how many one can become
.
starlight
.
all things parallel or seemingly symmetrical in the natural world, these of which i have a few. a handful of rain, a handful of sand. i put a period where one doesn't belong.
in a rush of hopefulness, i keep a flimsy whisper going. i keep a goldfish finching its bowl in my mind, swimming laps flush with the edge of the bowl in my eye, i fray the edges of everything with my fingers, knowing nothing all at once.
at someone else’s celebration, i sat at a full table with an empty chair beside me. i pushed a bit of lemon around a plate, i pushed a pat of butter, parsley, bitter green. mostly i imagined myself a little boat of bread, i sailed a crumb of my crust into that solitary sky with champagne bubbles leaping like stars.
empty belly full, my delicate lips parted, filled to empty with a wind like milkweed, all these accidental seeds i've scattered, a smattering of all i want across a moonlit field. i have something to tell someone. i want you to be spellbound, to make a bold gesture, give me something to write about. i want you to know this like i do: sunlight is starlight. sunlight is starlight! do you get that?
(i know he’s blind because supposedly there’s no use for sight down there, but i swear i saw him see me.)
i'm barred and latched, i'm golden. i'm being a birdcage. empty with such full, swinging, winged things inside. safe with my belly full of birds, but awkward, ready to be overwhelmed, like the air before the wind switchbacks and its clouds collapse in thunder.
i'm being a bug, a firefly in a mason jar. i hear with my fingers and taste with my feet. i don't know what i'm wanting. my glassy vantage, i can see you through the walls. tap a thin wing at the window between us. i'm thinking you, i'm trying to light you up like a room. can you see it?
nobody really knows what's at the bottom of the ocean, except there's for sure this blind prehistoric shark who lives there and haunts my dreams. first, he was in a pool, he came out of nowhere twice trying to swallow everything i loved most.
i've lost something. i'm hoping you can help me with something. i found something i want to show someone. i have something someone might be looking for but i don't know what it is.
so full of giant heart-things, so full of flimsy flowers to wish on, loves me / loves me not. loves me / loves me not. said i was concerned with light and i meant it. see my bright blood blue-belling this soft outer skin, you can see a petaled tilt in the streamline of it, not much further. okay i'll tell you, but don't breathe a word to anyone:
--second, he raced at me from the other side of a well-lit room with his mouth stretched, predatory, black like a hole to fall straight through the earth. i tricked him into swallowing a puzzle of space shaped like me, i left a little warmth in my wake, bathwater, hiding in the shadow of a doorframe.
promise? my heart is not a dark tangle of vessels and threads. it's a subterranean creature, undiscovered species. it’s glowing like a lantern with the moon inside. i swear. look: your eyelashes are so long, so dark and unreachable. don't let me get carried away. mio caro bello, i'm having trouble breathing. brighter and brighter in there, look ali, remember about starlight! you'll tap against the glass, holding your breath. i’m here. i see you! i remember.
.
all things parallel or seemingly symmetrical in the natural world, these of which i have a few. a handful of rain, a handful of sand. i put a period where one doesn't belong.
in a rush of hopefulness, i keep a flimsy whisper going. i keep a goldfish finching its bowl in my mind, swimming laps flush with the edge of the bowl in my eye, i fray the edges of everything with my fingers, knowing nothing all at once.
at someone else’s celebration, i sat at a full table with an empty chair beside me. i pushed a bit of lemon around a plate, i pushed a pat of butter, parsley, bitter green. mostly i imagined myself a little boat of bread, i sailed a crumb of my crust into that solitary sky with champagne bubbles leaping like stars.
empty belly full, my delicate lips parted, filled to empty with a wind like milkweed, all these accidental seeds i've scattered, a smattering of all i want across a moonlit field. i have something to tell someone. i want you to be spellbound, to make a bold gesture, give me something to write about. i want you to know this like i do: sunlight is starlight. sunlight is starlight! do you get that?
(i know he’s blind because supposedly there’s no use for sight down there, but i swear i saw him see me.)
i'm barred and latched, i'm golden. i'm being a birdcage. empty with such full, swinging, winged things inside. safe with my belly full of birds, but awkward, ready to be overwhelmed, like the air before the wind switchbacks and its clouds collapse in thunder.
i'm being a bug, a firefly in a mason jar. i hear with my fingers and taste with my feet. i don't know what i'm wanting. my glassy vantage, i can see you through the walls. tap a thin wing at the window between us. i'm thinking you, i'm trying to light you up like a room. can you see it?
nobody really knows what's at the bottom of the ocean, except there's for sure this blind prehistoric shark who lives there and haunts my dreams. first, he was in a pool, he came out of nowhere twice trying to swallow everything i loved most.
i've lost something. i'm hoping you can help me with something. i found something i want to show someone. i have something someone might be looking for but i don't know what it is.
so full of giant heart-things, so full of flimsy flowers to wish on, loves me / loves me not. loves me / loves me not. said i was concerned with light and i meant it. see my bright blood blue-belling this soft outer skin, you can see a petaled tilt in the streamline of it, not much further. okay i'll tell you, but don't breathe a word to anyone:
--second, he raced at me from the other side of a well-lit room with his mouth stretched, predatory, black like a hole to fall straight through the earth. i tricked him into swallowing a puzzle of space shaped like me, i left a little warmth in my wake, bathwater, hiding in the shadow of a doorframe.
promise? my heart is not a dark tangle of vessels and threads. it's a subterranean creature, undiscovered species. it’s glowing like a lantern with the moon inside. i swear. look: your eyelashes are so long, so dark and unreachable. don't let me get carried away. mio caro bello, i'm having trouble breathing. brighter and brighter in there, look ali, remember about starlight! you'll tap against the glass, holding your breath. i’m here. i see you! i remember.
.
.
damned, doomed, boneless. i'm a fish out of water. i mean, i'm a goldfish in the bathtub. have you seen my family? dreaming fish-dreams of glittery shoals, swooping the sea like a net of jewels, you're a gem. this one said. your tail all a glimmer, angling an arrow, pointing half of you in different directions at the same time. but it's not like that. there are too many of us. moving. we bump up against each other and off our edges like moths trapped inside of a lampshade. wolfing at artificial light, when the moon is high in the sky, hidden by shadowing buildings, windows to everyone else's inside. i'm trying to stop seeing. i'm trying to howl in private. i'm trying a dream to leap canyons back, back to the rain where i came from. wearing the open sky for a hat, what with stars and clouds and wings and all.
:
my favorite documentaries are about animals or big-hearted farmers. this means that. one day, i'll be envoy extraordinary of my own living document. milkweed and bolted, dandelion stuck in the staples, between the nibbling teeth of the pages. here's the picture: slice of land nestled in a hillside. apples to everywhere. tin buckets bent, strapped, sweet on their trees, mutually enamored. one pig, one cow, one chicken. we'll farm apples and maple sugar. i'll name the pig Henry and give him all my sweet scraps of pepper-stem and rhubarb. apple core galore. he'll snort, blush, wild rose-petals pressed, stuck as a scented mosaic for his snout. for the others, the grass in this place is glistered with chlorophyll, quiet worms working, happy and blind, dirt-nibble, what comes from the ground there, clean and sweet, what's buried there is old. i come from that ground, i'm sure of it, twisted from its tree trunks and the winding roots of bittersweet. cumulous, bluejay, milky way, where. the rain is soft and holds the sky up.
what sort of name will you give your chicken? if you were a chicken, which would you choose?
Princess Pansy Lavender
Gooseberry Woods
Gertrude Stein. Venus De Milo. Queen Elizabeth?
Lulu!
|ˈloōˌloō| noun
1. an outstanding example of a particular type of person or thing, a person or thing remarkable or wonderful. 2. a Samoan barn owl.
is a chicken a person or a thing? if a chicken is a thing, a person is a thing. or if a chicken is not a thing, a chicken will have to be a person. we'll wear spectacles and read from the dictionary. we'll make pancakes on sundays, and eat them in our pajamas. we'll go out dancing and come home late and laughing. lightening bugs will speckle the base of the tree line, at the edge of the pasture, miming a million stars. the cow will be asleep standing up, giant orb-eyed like dreaming planets, long eyelashes like an antique fringe frames a wet window. i'll smooth his velveteen ears and tell him a secret, the rain will start barely, bounce off the barn roof like a snow of stardust, i'll name him Sweet William, after a wildflower.
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damned, doomed, boneless. i'm a fish out of water. i mean, i'm a goldfish in the bathtub. have you seen my family? dreaming fish-dreams of glittery shoals, swooping the sea like a net of jewels, you're a gem. this one said. your tail all a glimmer, angling an arrow, pointing half of you in different directions at the same time. but it's not like that. there are too many of us. moving. we bump up against each other and off our edges like moths trapped inside of a lampshade. wolfing at artificial light, when the moon is high in the sky, hidden by shadowing buildings, windows to everyone else's inside. i'm trying to stop seeing. i'm trying to howl in private. i'm trying a dream to leap canyons back, back to the rain where i came from. wearing the open sky for a hat, what with stars and clouds and wings and all.
:
my favorite documentaries are about animals or big-hearted farmers. this means that. one day, i'll be envoy extraordinary of my own living document. milkweed and bolted, dandelion stuck in the staples, between the nibbling teeth of the pages. here's the picture: slice of land nestled in a hillside. apples to everywhere. tin buckets bent, strapped, sweet on their trees, mutually enamored. one pig, one cow, one chicken. we'll farm apples and maple sugar. i'll name the pig Henry and give him all my sweet scraps of pepper-stem and rhubarb. apple core galore. he'll snort, blush, wild rose-petals pressed, stuck as a scented mosaic for his snout. for the others, the grass in this place is glistered with chlorophyll, quiet worms working, happy and blind, dirt-nibble, what comes from the ground there, clean and sweet, what's buried there is old. i come from that ground, i'm sure of it, twisted from its tree trunks and the winding roots of bittersweet. cumulous, bluejay, milky way, where. the rain is soft and holds the sky up.
what sort of name will you give your chicken? if you were a chicken, which would you choose?
Princess Pansy Lavender
Gooseberry Woods
Gertrude Stein. Venus De Milo. Queen Elizabeth?
Lulu!
|ˈloōˌloō| noun
1. an outstanding example of a particular type of person or thing, a person or thing remarkable or wonderful. 2. a Samoan barn owl.
is a chicken a person or a thing? if a chicken is a thing, a person is a thing. or if a chicken is not a thing, a chicken will have to be a person. we'll wear spectacles and read from the dictionary. we'll make pancakes on sundays, and eat them in our pajamas. we'll go out dancing and come home late and laughing. lightening bugs will speckle the base of the tree line, at the edge of the pasture, miming a million stars. the cow will be asleep standing up, giant orb-eyed like dreaming planets, long eyelashes like an antique fringe frames a wet window. i'll smooth his velveteen ears and tell him a secret, the rain will start barely, bounce off the barn roof like a snow of stardust, i'll name him Sweet William, after a wildflower.
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the gap
.
as if we were walking down an autumn path, dead leaves curling their toes under the flat of our feet, legs that make a slow scissor along a scrappy turning, a falling-of-things, a green to rust to falling. "as if the boats in your eyes were preparing to winter," you'd say. i'd say in a whisper, peeking treetops for waking owls, "as if a lilypad through the floorboard, green surrenders to yellow and falls." i can't find the cloth i use to clean the surface.
shining my small blue light in the gap, a crack of finding, a treasure hidden in the linted limbo of sleeping furniture dragged in off the street some time back. bent paperclip, an earring, a miniature stack of paper, a sharpened pencil. further in, or down, or under, a bent intention, a scribble, a paper apology, a songbird sleeping. "how long has she been there?" you'd ask, your brow snagged with worry, your lips pulled together like a cinch-sack with a song inside.
i sigh, standing up from a crouch to linger in the doorway. "she's always been there." you look back at the darkened gully where again there's nothing, where all that's been lost becomes invisible, translucent against the backdrop of the dust and clutter that envelops the surface of our voices like snow. i can't find it. sealed in with sharp crystals of ice, delicate, each is shaped like its own friend, its own country, you shake your head, i stop looking. i lace up my eyes like skates, sail off toward some other edge, a sunk ship rinsed in blue.
.
as if we were walking down an autumn path, dead leaves curling their toes under the flat of our feet, legs that make a slow scissor along a scrappy turning, a falling-of-things, a green to rust to falling. "as if the boats in your eyes were preparing to winter," you'd say. i'd say in a whisper, peeking treetops for waking owls, "as if a lilypad through the floorboard, green surrenders to yellow and falls." i can't find the cloth i use to clean the surface.
shining my small blue light in the gap, a crack of finding, a treasure hidden in the linted limbo of sleeping furniture dragged in off the street some time back. bent paperclip, an earring, a miniature stack of paper, a sharpened pencil. further in, or down, or under, a bent intention, a scribble, a paper apology, a songbird sleeping. "how long has she been there?" you'd ask, your brow snagged with worry, your lips pulled together like a cinch-sack with a song inside.
i sigh, standing up from a crouch to linger in the doorway. "she's always been there." you look back at the darkened gully where again there's nothing, where all that's been lost becomes invisible, translucent against the backdrop of the dust and clutter that envelops the surface of our voices like snow. i can't find it. sealed in with sharp crystals of ice, delicate, each is shaped like its own friend, its own country, you shake your head, i stop looking. i lace up my eyes like skates, sail off toward some other edge, a sunk ship rinsed in blue.
.
open the dream to Eden, Conversation 5
.
memory, faulty mechanics.
i haven't decided whether i'm confused or unconcerned.
a character you've never met in a book you've never read
spooks me a note from you.
i think you're pretty.
i'm disarranged. i'm sure of it.
the long-sharp edge between us, collapsing in a ruffle.
i'm saying something out loud. do you hear me?
i don't know which dream-He you are. hiding-He or growling-He growling. i want to
know that in my ear. we could step into an image of what we have lost.
i chalk a map of the continent into the street between our houses.
pinks and browns and lavenders.
butter-pat yellow. seagreen.
your face is just an idea. or,
my face is just an idea. or,
our faces are golden, wet, wanting, displaced.
do you remember me?
don't let your lips lilt, or wilt, or wander my way. i miss you.
even a bold garden / is already wistful.
what?
nothing, i never
said that.
let me check my notebook. that last one. the eleventh letter at the hour with the feather hidden between those last two pages. the edges matted. stucktogether.
the note in the margin reads unreachable, left of the left margin. a moment suspended. as if it didn't apply, didn't invite to bite the apple.
let me check. i'm checking. i move each page i ever read as if a sail, as if a veil, as if in amber, as if.
haven't you? haven't you always.
you've always been a ghost.
.
memory, faulty mechanics.
i haven't decided whether i'm confused or unconcerned.
a character you've never met in a book you've never read
spooks me a note from you.
i think you're pretty.
i'm disarranged. i'm sure of it.
the long-sharp edge between us, collapsing in a ruffle.
i'm saying something out loud. do you hear me?
i don't know which dream-He you are. hiding-He or growling-He growling. i want to
know that in my ear. we could step into an image of what we have lost.
i chalk a map of the continent into the street between our houses.
pinks and browns and lavenders.
butter-pat yellow. seagreen.
your face is just an idea. or,
my face is just an idea. or,
our faces are golden, wet, wanting, displaced.
do you remember me?
don't let your lips lilt, or wilt, or wander my way. i miss you.
even a bold garden / is already wistful.
what?
nothing, i never
said that.
let me check my notebook. that last one. the eleventh letter at the hour with the feather hidden between those last two pages. the edges matted. stucktogether.
the note in the margin reads unreachable, left of the left margin. a moment suspended. as if it didn't apply, didn't invite to bite the apple.
let me check. i'm checking. i move each page i ever read as if a sail, as if a veil, as if in amber, as if.
haven't you? haven't you always.
you've always been a ghost.
.
spoonerism |ˈspoōnəˌrizəm|
noun
a verbal error in which a speaker accidentally transposes the initial sounds or letters of two or more words, as in "you have hissed the mystery lectures," accidentally spoken instead of the intended "you have missed the history lectures."
ORIGIN early 20th cent.: named after the Rev. W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), an English scholar who reputedly made such errors in speaking.
.
a verbal error in which a speaker accidentally transposes the initial sounds or letters of two or more words, as in "you have hissed the mystery lectures," accidentally spoken instead of the intended "you have missed the history lectures."
ORIGIN early 20th cent.: named after the Rev. W. A. Spooner (1844–1930), an English scholar who reputedly made such errors in speaking.
.
.
you peel an orange in one, long skin. reassemble it minus its belly. leave a pennybank slot in the top to drop a treasure.
an orange tabby, the color of a cantaloupe: fruit is one of the plates i'm spinning. plates are one of the places i spin from. i hate being dependent on food and water. i don't want to be dependent on anything. i leave my last saucer of milk on the back step, trying. my Declaration of Independence. later, when i'm hungry, i start nibbling my lower lip. way down in thought, i can't decide, my vertical dive, near the bottom where those toothy glow-fish live.
leave me be, i'm eating a submarine sandwich.
i'm designed to operate completely submerged in the see for long periods.
i'll sea you in the morning.
i can't think straight when i'm wet, or hungry, or chasing a glowing worm-lure around the ocean. i got a bowl of plankton for my brother for christmas, but i've decided to keep it: the lighting in my ship is all wrong. i'm trying to get it right. a little less incandescence, a little more lighthouse, starboard, bioluminescence. about ninety percent of the organisms who live in the ocean have the capability to produce light.
fireflies, the lights / flights of my life.
bioluminescence is the only source of light in the deep ocean where sunlight does not penetrate. the earth is swarming with animals.
i had to fill out this form, and sign my name. are you ready? not really. a little lightheaded. nekton verses plankton. one can swim on her own, independently of water currents, the other must drift in the directions of the tides, her Bigger Picture. the mutual enrapture of the moon and the sun. do i really have to choose? can i not be both.
sea what i mien.
.
an orange tabby, the color of a cantaloupe: fruit is one of the plates i'm spinning. plates are one of the places i spin from. i hate being dependent on food and water. i don't want to be dependent on anything. i leave my last saucer of milk on the back step, trying. my Declaration of Independence. later, when i'm hungry, i start nibbling my lower lip. way down in thought, i can't decide, my vertical dive, near the bottom where those toothy glow-fish live.
leave me be, i'm eating a submarine sandwich.
i'm designed to operate completely submerged in the see for long periods.
i'll sea you in the morning.
i can't think straight when i'm wet, or hungry, or chasing a glowing worm-lure around the ocean. i got a bowl of plankton for my brother for christmas, but i've decided to keep it: the lighting in my ship is all wrong. i'm trying to get it right. a little less incandescence, a little more lighthouse, starboard, bioluminescence. about ninety percent of the organisms who live in the ocean have the capability to produce light.
fireflies, the lights / flights of my life.
bioluminescence is the only source of light in the deep ocean where sunlight does not penetrate. the earth is swarming with animals.
i had to fill out this form, and sign my name. are you ready? not really. a little lightheaded. nekton verses plankton. one can swim on her own, independently of water currents, the other must drift in the directions of the tides, her Bigger Picture. the mutual enrapture of the moon and the sun. do i really have to choose? can i not be both.
sea what i mien.
.
just at the edge, where solid and liquid mix to make mud
i was probably eight years old, but does this have to be about me? i ate a frog-egg. and i mean i really ate it. i didn't just lick it or put it on my tongue and spit it out, i actually ate it. i was in a pond. i was covered in muck. it was so lord-of-the-flies or something. i didn't have a lilypad in my eye. the ground didn't crack open like a speckled brown egg with a yellow yolky duckling inside. instead, it was slimy and slippery and slipped down my throat and nothing happened. julie rolph was sitting next to me in the pond, lakeblue eyes big like globes, wet with reflected pondwater. swimming minnows. something. i think we were naked. i think we were tired of kissing captured (terrified, peeing) frogs and toads and were going for something more consequential. we were waiting for some magic to happen. to rise up from out of the muck and prove itself, like it does. does it?
there was a church on that island. bear island, it was called. in the summertime we paddled a canoe across the lake to the island. once we brought a whole garbage bag full of barbie and her friends and their endless pink and white artillery. it sat on the bottom of the canoe all the way to the island. sloshy. i don't think we ever even played with it. there was always a more interesting Very Important mission to take on. like that church, for example. there was something spooked about it, something always-autumn, something like a bucket to catch a leak that has a long way to fall. that hollow plunk or thump. julie rolph and i would take these Very Important pilgrimages to the church, which was on some other edge of the island, just to spook ourselves. the titillation of some old-fangled danger. shades of brown. stain-colored, iodine. abandoned birds' nests. colonial ghosts. witch-dust. in the winter when we couldn't canoe we cross-country skied across the lake. all winter long, back and forth. walking on water.
in my memory of that island, there's something very salem witch-trialy about it. something tutuba, scarlet letter, something rustling the autumn underbrush. some kind of trap we never got caught in, but that danger was so delicately infused into everything. sun through birches, sun sinking into water, long afternoon lakeshadows shaped like mysterious creatures, like intrigue, dangerous ideas. all of it you could walk right through, the light and dark moving, falling across your eyes in ancient patterns like water seems to. we were a maple-people. a lake-people. a canoe-people with some sunwarmed water splashing the bottom around our sneakers. it's how lorine says fish / fowl / flood / water lily mud / my life, that makes me love her.
what's a giant bird that starts with a vowel? it's not a riddle. the church was in the forest, and so was the frogpond because everything on the island was. it was a cut-out chunk of new england forest floating belly-side-up and all by itself in the middle of that giant lake. is there a shadow under an island? i was never really afraid of the dark, but i was afraid of the shadow of our little sailboat. treading water in my smudgy tangerine life-jacket, i'd imagine that the shadow was a whale and it was looming just under my feet, waiting for it's chance to gobble me. the lake-whale became an almost mythological creature, showing up every time i swam from the boat. i never told anybody. nobody knows about the lake-whale but you and me.
so but that bird- that bird lived in the forest with everything else, on the way to the church. it's nest was high up in this tree. was it birch? maple? something. a lot of birch out there. skinny white trunks you could bend like licorice. dug-up bone-colored. the nest was enormous. at the edge of my mind, it's as big as a treehouse. five stories high in its licorice branches. if the nest was that big, julie rolph reasoned, how big was the bird? it wasn't egret or osprey, definitely not ostrich- that bird could fly. i never saw it. i imagined its wingspan as big as a rooftop. a bird who could drape itself over a crumbling church. a bird who casts a shadow big as a boat. i recently discovered the largest flying bird who ever lived. its name was (is) Argentavis Magnificens, which means "magnificent argentine bird". six-million years ago, Magnificens wandered the andes mountains and the treeless plains of argentina with a wingspan of 19 to 26 feet, a height of 6.5 feet, and a weight of 140 to 180 pounds. feather-size for this bird is estimated to have been about 5 feet long. though it may have needed a downhill running-start into a headwind to get off the ground, it is said that Magnificens was an excellent glider, like a sail plane.
how much do you think a five-foot-long feather would weigh?
.
there was a church on that island. bear island, it was called. in the summertime we paddled a canoe across the lake to the island. once we brought a whole garbage bag full of barbie and her friends and their endless pink and white artillery. it sat on the bottom of the canoe all the way to the island. sloshy. i don't think we ever even played with it. there was always a more interesting Very Important mission to take on. like that church, for example. there was something spooked about it, something always-autumn, something like a bucket to catch a leak that has a long way to fall. that hollow plunk or thump. julie rolph and i would take these Very Important pilgrimages to the church, which was on some other edge of the island, just to spook ourselves. the titillation of some old-fangled danger. shades of brown. stain-colored, iodine. abandoned birds' nests. colonial ghosts. witch-dust. in the winter when we couldn't canoe we cross-country skied across the lake. all winter long, back and forth. walking on water.
in my memory of that island, there's something very salem witch-trialy about it. something tutuba, scarlet letter, something rustling the autumn underbrush. some kind of trap we never got caught in, but that danger was so delicately infused into everything. sun through birches, sun sinking into water, long afternoon lakeshadows shaped like mysterious creatures, like intrigue, dangerous ideas. all of it you could walk right through, the light and dark moving, falling across your eyes in ancient patterns like water seems to. we were a maple-people. a lake-people. a canoe-people with some sunwarmed water splashing the bottom around our sneakers. it's how lorine says fish / fowl / flood / water lily mud / my life, that makes me love her.
what's a giant bird that starts with a vowel? it's not a riddle. the church was in the forest, and so was the frogpond because everything on the island was. it was a cut-out chunk of new england forest floating belly-side-up and all by itself in the middle of that giant lake. is there a shadow under an island? i was never really afraid of the dark, but i was afraid of the shadow of our little sailboat. treading water in my smudgy tangerine life-jacket, i'd imagine that the shadow was a whale and it was looming just under my feet, waiting for it's chance to gobble me. the lake-whale became an almost mythological creature, showing up every time i swam from the boat. i never told anybody. nobody knows about the lake-whale but you and me.
so but that bird- that bird lived in the forest with everything else, on the way to the church. it's nest was high up in this tree. was it birch? maple? something. a lot of birch out there. skinny white trunks you could bend like licorice. dug-up bone-colored. the nest was enormous. at the edge of my mind, it's as big as a treehouse. five stories high in its licorice branches. if the nest was that big, julie rolph reasoned, how big was the bird? it wasn't egret or osprey, definitely not ostrich- that bird could fly. i never saw it. i imagined its wingspan as big as a rooftop. a bird who could drape itself over a crumbling church. a bird who casts a shadow big as a boat. i recently discovered the largest flying bird who ever lived. its name was (is) Argentavis Magnificens, which means "magnificent argentine bird". six-million years ago, Magnificens wandered the andes mountains and the treeless plains of argentina with a wingspan of 19 to 26 feet, a height of 6.5 feet, and a weight of 140 to 180 pounds. feather-size for this bird is estimated to have been about 5 feet long. though it may have needed a downhill running-start into a headwind to get off the ground, it is said that Magnificens was an excellent glider, like a sail plane.
how much do you think a five-foot-long feather would weigh?
.
critical analysis
limp critic of my own measly projects, prospects, predisposed to running in place i watch the scenery change but not the shape of my feet. all this running is making my feet skinnier. muscle and bone cling to each other under my thin membrane of skin, the arches rising up and pushing against gravity like a woman arches under a silk sheet, a bent-over in a long robe, in a dream i took a staircase out that i didn't take in, running in place my mind wanders like a viny plant, an albatross: there's always more than one way out of a place
helpmeet-less days, nights are less meet-less, my dreams are infused with characters real and imagined. when i am wedded to the Sentence. when i am waiting to find out what i'm bad at. when i am fiddling with the dial on the radio, fine-tuning my reception to the land of the ground that surrounds me and my flimsy wishes. i stir the concoction in the latest pot. nothing sticks or melts, Simmer-Things that i do best. i do my best work when the moon is about to drop out of the sky. the blackened silhouette of trees, charred in shadow as if in dream where nothing leaves the ground. my premonition stands to be corrected. i am the judge and the jury and the girl on the bench, lying on the bible to worm around testifying myself. a testament to my insensibilities, secrets of predictability, i fidget my toes under the witness stand, dreaming my skin to run, to Find something, to Mean something, to staircase-out my dream-feet
.
helpmeet-less days, nights are less meet-less, my dreams are infused with characters real and imagined. when i am wedded to the Sentence. when i am waiting to find out what i'm bad at. when i am fiddling with the dial on the radio, fine-tuning my reception to the land of the ground that surrounds me and my flimsy wishes. i stir the concoction in the latest pot. nothing sticks or melts, Simmer-Things that i do best. i do my best work when the moon is about to drop out of the sky. the blackened silhouette of trees, charred in shadow as if in dream where nothing leaves the ground. my premonition stands to be corrected. i am the judge and the jury and the girl on the bench, lying on the bible to worm around testifying myself. a testament to my insensibilities, secrets of predictability, i fidget my toes under the witness stand, dreaming my skin to run, to Find something, to Mean something, to staircase-out my dream-feet
.
the last six things
.
one i tie a garbage bag around my finger to remind me what we have, to remind me what we had not, cuts off the circulation, bloodrise plum-colored, bejeweled, glimmering in sunrise see-all, sunset scavenger garbage trucks wink me in malfragrant collaboration as they zoom down the block toward the sea.
two turns me into a monster, little easy-does-it, little glitch of pretending second-guess our dream-people, our concocted bedtime cocktails, our slivers, incisions, the angle to the arch in our feet. feet are for touching together, for asking, for come with me, don't you want to go where i go. run. brake squeak, a baby terydactile. a street before time. a cloud-shaped dinosaur batting her long eyelashes at the crows who howl at the traffic from treetops and telephone wires. looking for lost things.
three banging pots and pans around in an elevator shaft, my digestion sounds like a chorus of machinery. sloppy gulp, i swallow a flower, oops. empty, ouch, we're going up when we were supposed to be going down. things are growing from every direction. i end up somewhere i never thought of, never even made up, and you know me, i make up everything. you miss that, don't you. are you or aren't you. what, dying? i forget your name when the adjective follows the noun. lost. looked-for. liar pretend. i'm growing your name like a forced bulb, my sweet saliva keeps you alive where you are, buried in my cheek, keep you like a miniature garden with my tongue. shhh. if i open my mouth, a bird flies out.
four i is for me is the girl is a character in a book is the way to be is to be like her is like taking nothing for granted is difficult but not impossible is the skylight in your cheekbone is a nutmeg brown is a nice color is integral to survival is tough in the city is made of rock is wedged in a the doorframe is the way to get in is the way to get out is to flee is flight is limited to a bug or a bird is.
five in the middle of me lives a hurricane, hurricane ali. it's nice to meet you. i'm looking for a lamp, i'm looking for an emergency candle, a knitted-blanket-and-beach-towel fort in the den. i'm looking for a bear in the pear tree. withstanding the wind, i cup my hand to my forehead and look out over the ocean. in the distance, a lighthouse with a dumb dragon inside. drenched. sneezing little smoke-bombs, allergic. in the other distance, a scrappy moon. pierces the purplish drape of sky. holds together our two sides of horizon. a frankenstein-stitch. a lilypad. an anchor.
six all arrows are pointed down. i hide myself for you in the hole of a tree, a broken curb, under a rock with wildflowers or weeds. purple, yellow, some are edible. some are both. "which is which?" you whisper. you can't tell the difference. only i can. from the ruins of my box of shipwreck tricks, i have one left. i play the cards like each is my last, and it is. i stroll like a porcelain pony, chinadoll in a white frock and bonnet. threaded with pocket roses, i bat my plastic eyelashes. i lie to your face every time.
.
one i tie a garbage bag around my finger to remind me what we have, to remind me what we had not, cuts off the circulation, bloodrise plum-colored, bejeweled, glimmering in sunrise see-all, sunset scavenger garbage trucks wink me in malfragrant collaboration as they zoom down the block toward the sea.
two turns me into a monster, little easy-does-it, little glitch of pretending second-guess our dream-people, our concocted bedtime cocktails, our slivers, incisions, the angle to the arch in our feet. feet are for touching together, for asking, for come with me, don't you want to go where i go. run. brake squeak, a baby terydactile. a street before time. a cloud-shaped dinosaur batting her long eyelashes at the crows who howl at the traffic from treetops and telephone wires. looking for lost things.
three banging pots and pans around in an elevator shaft, my digestion sounds like a chorus of machinery. sloppy gulp, i swallow a flower, oops. empty, ouch, we're going up when we were supposed to be going down. things are growing from every direction. i end up somewhere i never thought of, never even made up, and you know me, i make up everything. you miss that, don't you. are you or aren't you. what, dying? i forget your name when the adjective follows the noun. lost. looked-for. liar pretend. i'm growing your name like a forced bulb, my sweet saliva keeps you alive where you are, buried in my cheek, keep you like a miniature garden with my tongue. shhh. if i open my mouth, a bird flies out.
four i is for me is the girl is a character in a book is the way to be is to be like her is like taking nothing for granted is difficult but not impossible is the skylight in your cheekbone is a nutmeg brown is a nice color is integral to survival is tough in the city is made of rock is wedged in a the doorframe is the way to get in is the way to get out is to flee is flight is limited to a bug or a bird is.
five in the middle of me lives a hurricane, hurricane ali. it's nice to meet you. i'm looking for a lamp, i'm looking for an emergency candle, a knitted-blanket-and-beach-towel fort in the den. i'm looking for a bear in the pear tree. withstanding the wind, i cup my hand to my forehead and look out over the ocean. in the distance, a lighthouse with a dumb dragon inside. drenched. sneezing little smoke-bombs, allergic. in the other distance, a scrappy moon. pierces the purplish drape of sky. holds together our two sides of horizon. a frankenstein-stitch. a lilypad. an anchor.
six all arrows are pointed down. i hide myself for you in the hole of a tree, a broken curb, under a rock with wildflowers or weeds. purple, yellow, some are edible. some are both. "which is which?" you whisper. you can't tell the difference. only i can. from the ruins of my box of shipwreck tricks, i have one left. i play the cards like each is my last, and it is. i stroll like a porcelain pony, chinadoll in a white frock and bonnet. threaded with pocket roses, i bat my plastic eyelashes. i lie to your face every time.
.
when you call
when you call, i'll be knitting a hat for an elephant. droopy, gray. gigantic.
when you call, i'll be making lasagna in a quiet kitchen listening to my voice in my head. i'll be just beginning my fall pledge-drive, trying to raise the vibe, or the roof, or the stakes. someone sad will call in and pledge their thirst or their art or their love, and i'll accept.
when you call, i'll be in the bathtub filled with ice. i run so much my legs are like lamp-posts. because i can't keep my feet still. because someone is always around threatening a game of tag. because i want to be faster than everyone, just in case.
when you call, i'll be writing a jacob-poem. a poem like jacob would write. or i'll write a matthew-poem. a leaf-poem. a dave or vaughan or tully poem. the only one who writes poetry i think is actually jacob. it's nice poetry, too. about sweat and love and loneliness. all these women.
when you call, i'll be sleeping.
when you call, i'll be eating a peach in silence. i mean slices.
when you call, i'll be trying, lying, spying on the doctorman in green scrubs who lives in the building next to mine. his bonsai needs water. he sets it on a paper towel and gives it a bath. looks at me funny.
when you call, i'll be peeing in the tiny bathroom, investigating my fun-house facial reflection in the silver faucet. my eyes are so goddamned big sometimes. no wonder.
when you call, i'll be banging out something on the typewriter. it'll say "when you call, i'll be angry. when you call, i'll be trying to be so angry," and it won't work.
when you call, i'll be a pacifist.
when you call, i'll be a buddhist.
when you call, i'll be a waitress. thanks very much. hope you enjoyed yourself. come back soon.
.
when you call, i'll be making lasagna in a quiet kitchen listening to my voice in my head. i'll be just beginning my fall pledge-drive, trying to raise the vibe, or the roof, or the stakes. someone sad will call in and pledge their thirst or their art or their love, and i'll accept.
when you call, i'll be in the bathtub filled with ice. i run so much my legs are like lamp-posts. because i can't keep my feet still. because someone is always around threatening a game of tag. because i want to be faster than everyone, just in case.
when you call, i'll be writing a jacob-poem. a poem like jacob would write. or i'll write a matthew-poem. a leaf-poem. a dave or vaughan or tully poem. the only one who writes poetry i think is actually jacob. it's nice poetry, too. about sweat and love and loneliness. all these women.
when you call, i'll be sleeping.
when you call, i'll be eating a peach in silence. i mean slices.
when you call, i'll be trying, lying, spying on the doctorman in green scrubs who lives in the building next to mine. his bonsai needs water. he sets it on a paper towel and gives it a bath. looks at me funny.
when you call, i'll be peeing in the tiny bathroom, investigating my fun-house facial reflection in the silver faucet. my eyes are so goddamned big sometimes. no wonder.
when you call, i'll be banging out something on the typewriter. it'll say "when you call, i'll be angry. when you call, i'll be trying to be so angry," and it won't work.
when you call, i'll be a pacifist.
when you call, i'll be a buddhist.
when you call, i'll be a waitress. thanks very much. hope you enjoyed yourself. come back soon.
.
solar systems
"the whole point of kicking it with someone is to feel good," i say. this week i said that. next week, who knows. i rarely take my own advice. never say never (never say never in a poem). it's the moon, harvest-time, something. we need to sit on some straw. we need herbs. Monogamy is also zoological term. we need sleep. we need tea. we need stairs or ladders or welcome-mats. we need to not have to climb in through the window. we need to get spooned, or laid, or Left Alone. we don't know what we need. we need a way to get from Me to You. all the women i know are freaking out. i can only gamble. i can only speculate. i can only know what i know.
gertrude stein was an aquarius. frank sinatra's moon was in pisces. i was born in november, which is the month for bare branches and tones of orange into brown. i live where i was not born, in this pacific city, in this toppled landscape of dollhouse and palm, and november (the month i was born) is the month of picnic-blanket bookreading and cheery green flea-grass. miles in between, weather systems, mountain ranges. what i'm interested in is something not-so-different. something bigger. i know i said that last time, but listen. all those in-betweens. dark matter only makes sense to astronauts. those poofy space-suits. that giant fishbowl you have to wear over your head, even when you're sleeping. is your head swimming? you're upside-down, dreaming. you're missing something. the mutual attraction of everything in the universe for everything else. gravity, the glue that holds us together.
it's been one, two, three-four-five, six days. since Someone came to my house but snuck around outside, downstairs, without ringing the doorbell. something small through the mail slot. some things are left to be mysteries forever (never say forever in a poem.) never put the period inside the parenthesis. never try to use the plural of a thing you don't know the plural form for. i was one, Someone was two, the weird concoctions we put together are three. the Lady upstairs moves furniture at three A.M. when her guy goes home. stompy. i think she's on drugs. weird concoctions, everybody's on it. we're all trying to work it out with the moon, the stars, mythologies real or imagined, all that dark energy beyond our galaxy. our interpersonal trajectories. does everything really revolve around one sun or another? is that where the saying came from? stars collect themselves into galaxies. our Sun is an average star in an average galaxy called the Milky Way. the Milky Way contains about 100 billion stars. do you see where i'm going with this.
dear,
there are people about to be silly with, and there are others about being above it. way up there where you can't read out loud to, can't (wouldn't, didn't) sing with, don't laugh at my jokes. even when i explain how funny they are. blocked me in my orbit. e-brake on a spaceship. a downed tree on venus. timber, got a splinter. Caught A Light Sneeze. looking down too much / tried to stop / stepped in a mushy thing. our multiplicities of mush in between. lost my footing. you sucked the mystery out of a flower. glower. jerk.
down on the ground, in the life of the plants i keep, oftentimes one plant pluralizes of its own volition. (medieval latin volito, from volo, "i wish".) there are spider plants everywhere. in every room, they stretch and droop their striped legs from a central spine. they propagate themselves profusely. sending little shoots out, go and make more of us. can't ever just be one. the root system of the spider plant isn't very complex. most everything (all those multiplicities of a plant-self) stems from a single fat, white knobby root that looks a little like a creamy carrot, an albino slug. a giant white worm with a weight problem. swollen. but what do i know? according to the some particular astronaut in some orbit somewhere, "most of the stuff in clusters of galaxies is invisible and, since these are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, scientists then conclude that most of the matter in the entire Universe is invisible," (His capitals, not mine). where's that weird piece i wrote about picasso? pablo picasso was born in spain with the sun in scorpio. was a good kisser. his women shaped like windows. people are bridges, that's what i think. we make bridges with our bodies from one to another. defining space with matter, matter with space. expanding, collapsing. mostly living to make sense of those electric places where gravity collapses us. we send shoots. we send starships. we make bridges with our hands, our feet, our fingers, with how hard we try.
.
gertrude stein was an aquarius. frank sinatra's moon was in pisces. i was born in november, which is the month for bare branches and tones of orange into brown. i live where i was not born, in this pacific city, in this toppled landscape of dollhouse and palm, and november (the month i was born) is the month of picnic-blanket bookreading and cheery green flea-grass. miles in between, weather systems, mountain ranges. what i'm interested in is something not-so-different. something bigger. i know i said that last time, but listen. all those in-betweens. dark matter only makes sense to astronauts. those poofy space-suits. that giant fishbowl you have to wear over your head, even when you're sleeping. is your head swimming? you're upside-down, dreaming. you're missing something. the mutual attraction of everything in the universe for everything else. gravity, the glue that holds us together.
it's been one, two, three-four-five, six days. since Someone came to my house but snuck around outside, downstairs, without ringing the doorbell. something small through the mail slot. some things are left to be mysteries forever (never say forever in a poem.) never put the period inside the parenthesis. never try to use the plural of a thing you don't know the plural form for. i was one, Someone was two, the weird concoctions we put together are three. the Lady upstairs moves furniture at three A.M. when her guy goes home. stompy. i think she's on drugs. weird concoctions, everybody's on it. we're all trying to work it out with the moon, the stars, mythologies real or imagined, all that dark energy beyond our galaxy. our interpersonal trajectories. does everything really revolve around one sun or another? is that where the saying came from? stars collect themselves into galaxies. our Sun is an average star in an average galaxy called the Milky Way. the Milky Way contains about 100 billion stars. do you see where i'm going with this.
dear,
there are people about to be silly with, and there are others about being above it. way up there where you can't read out loud to, can't (wouldn't, didn't) sing with, don't laugh at my jokes. even when i explain how funny they are. blocked me in my orbit. e-brake on a spaceship. a downed tree on venus. timber, got a splinter. Caught A Light Sneeze. looking down too much / tried to stop / stepped in a mushy thing. our multiplicities of mush in between. lost my footing. you sucked the mystery out of a flower. glower. jerk.
down on the ground, in the life of the plants i keep, oftentimes one plant pluralizes of its own volition. (medieval latin volito, from volo, "i wish".) there are spider plants everywhere. in every room, they stretch and droop their striped legs from a central spine. they propagate themselves profusely. sending little shoots out, go and make more of us. can't ever just be one. the root system of the spider plant isn't very complex. most everything (all those multiplicities of a plant-self) stems from a single fat, white knobby root that looks a little like a creamy carrot, an albino slug. a giant white worm with a weight problem. swollen. but what do i know? according to the some particular astronaut in some orbit somewhere, "most of the stuff in clusters of galaxies is invisible and, since these are the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity, scientists then conclude that most of the matter in the entire Universe is invisible," (His capitals, not mine). where's that weird piece i wrote about picasso? pablo picasso was born in spain with the sun in scorpio. was a good kisser. his women shaped like windows. people are bridges, that's what i think. we make bridges with our bodies from one to another. defining space with matter, matter with space. expanding, collapsing. mostly living to make sense of those electric places where gravity collapses us. we send shoots. we send starships. we make bridges with our hands, our feet, our fingers, with how hard we try.
.
cardboard cut-out of how to Be
what did i say? you said it's who you are. then, later, when the wall had cracked spiderstyle down the one corner you said it's who you have been. where are you trying to go? your high place, happening place where nothing and everything happens or doesn't. what does it mean to not have expectations? i expect the sun to come up swinging, then i get hooked like a fish in the lip with the moon in my eye. milk-moon blanket over all of it and you have nothing to say. headinyourhands. your irises like lilypads with dark things underneath, growing lungs and legs.
i said i was water and i am. what are you? a book on the shelf pressed with the others, somebody burrowed a hole through the inside of. i had my binoculars, magnifying glass, i was starting a fire. i just wanted to know what you kept in there. i speculated: A Dead Mouse. A Family Of Dead Mouses. A Falcon Feather. A Paper Mask With Dried Leaves. A Bodiless Stretch Of Skin. an extra. a glass fruit. A Handful Of Seeds. a book like a ground, like a room, like a you-sized hole in the universe. a place where so much can stay but no much can grow. a place where trees start from their sweet-seed and stem, but never fruit. aren't you getting hungry?
so our bellies met and the moon tilted and flung itself across the frame of window to the rest of the world. in bed with your book open. two doors away from escape and you stayed, sifted the sand with me for all the little sharp things chiseled smooth with water and time. then two days too late and i turn up in this photo where i remember the play but not the players. the rules to the game that seem ridiculous tinted yellow in place of blue, orange in place of lavender. our half-lit production was the color of a bruise, a star-speckled-garden, the inside of a box. in the glint of sun on saltwater it all seems to be made of paper, plastic, tempera pain mixed on cardboard palettes and watered down. i mixed a runny blue glitter glue to water the paper flowers. a paper-mache moon strung up in the rafters or hanging on a wire from a lamp post, a porous eggshell crust with shallow plaster craters, a new foreign terrain mapped with sticky fingers and some necessary abandon.
on your way out this morning you stepped on a paper bird, the one i liked best in fact, and ran off with one eye and part of a wing smashed to the bottom of your shoe. because i wanted you to notice, and you never even noticed, i looked straight at the sun to temporarily blind myself and said nothing. your plan backfired, made that sharpquick popping sound that terrifies the warmhearted birds in the plum trees, that shakes the neighborhood for a moment, the birds and the girls with our heads in the trees, snapping us out of it. the sun had nothing to say of my performance. one little branch fell, under the weight of some miniature winged thing i never even saw, and you were gone.
.
i said i was water and i am. what are you? a book on the shelf pressed with the others, somebody burrowed a hole through the inside of. i had my binoculars, magnifying glass, i was starting a fire. i just wanted to know what you kept in there. i speculated: A Dead Mouse. A Family Of Dead Mouses. A Falcon Feather. A Paper Mask With Dried Leaves. A Bodiless Stretch Of Skin. an extra. a glass fruit. A Handful Of Seeds. a book like a ground, like a room, like a you-sized hole in the universe. a place where so much can stay but no much can grow. a place where trees start from their sweet-seed and stem, but never fruit. aren't you getting hungry?
so our bellies met and the moon tilted and flung itself across the frame of window to the rest of the world. in bed with your book open. two doors away from escape and you stayed, sifted the sand with me for all the little sharp things chiseled smooth with water and time. then two days too late and i turn up in this photo where i remember the play but not the players. the rules to the game that seem ridiculous tinted yellow in place of blue, orange in place of lavender. our half-lit production was the color of a bruise, a star-speckled-garden, the inside of a box. in the glint of sun on saltwater it all seems to be made of paper, plastic, tempera pain mixed on cardboard palettes and watered down. i mixed a runny blue glitter glue to water the paper flowers. a paper-mache moon strung up in the rafters or hanging on a wire from a lamp post, a porous eggshell crust with shallow plaster craters, a new foreign terrain mapped with sticky fingers and some necessary abandon.
on your way out this morning you stepped on a paper bird, the one i liked best in fact, and ran off with one eye and part of a wing smashed to the bottom of your shoe. because i wanted you to notice, and you never even noticed, i looked straight at the sun to temporarily blind myself and said nothing. your plan backfired, made that sharpquick popping sound that terrifies the warmhearted birds in the plum trees, that shakes the neighborhood for a moment, the birds and the girls with our heads in the trees, snapping us out of it. the sun had nothing to say of my performance. one little branch fell, under the weight of some miniature winged thing i never even saw, and you were gone.
.
homesick
back home i have tiny lights strung all twinkle-flip around the edges of the planet- i live on a planet with the makings of an urban bird's-nest, of books with colored bindings, spraypaint blackchip bookshelf, pokerface moon poking lightfingers at sidewalk couchcushions. jelly-jar flower stolen at moonlight bicycle. spell your name in the rain between trees, sharpen a pencil with your teeth. i only invited you because here you are, finding yourself tongue-tied, halloween cat-tailed, flutterspent at the edgey curb between this and that. rat-a-tat-tat. tapping your own lip with your own finger. blurring yourself in the mirror.
back home i have a dresser drawer with exactly 2 condoms and 2 plastic tests. oops. an invisible picture i took of us. bent heart rocky: missing. hankercheif crumpled with salt, snot, sweat where you draw a map of the bed. flowerbox wound yellow with years; bear-colored clump of hair; silken steel string; a thimble. memory of floating compass. memory of grain formation; rice castle. memory made of water and fallen leaves. memory bald, empty, layers of paint as thick as the crust of the earth. sometimes when the earth is a pie and you are slit at the center, steam-seeping your inside heart out. children make beautiful music when they dream. the picture of them. the curl of them like birds, bent, sip the air up like a sugar-cloud.
i am falling out in another place.
i miss everything at once.
spin birds up in my twinkled web of sleep.
breathe.
.
back home i have a dresser drawer with exactly 2 condoms and 2 plastic tests. oops. an invisible picture i took of us. bent heart rocky: missing. hankercheif crumpled with salt, snot, sweat where you draw a map of the bed. flowerbox wound yellow with years; bear-colored clump of hair; silken steel string; a thimble. memory of floating compass. memory of grain formation; rice castle. memory made of water and fallen leaves. memory bald, empty, layers of paint as thick as the crust of the earth. sometimes when the earth is a pie and you are slit at the center, steam-seeping your inside heart out. children make beautiful music when they dream. the picture of them. the curl of them like birds, bent, sip the air up like a sugar-cloud.
i am falling out in another place.
i miss everything at once.
spin birds up in my twinkled web of sleep.
breathe.
.
spanish for bird
i want to meet a man who keeps a clean, old paintbrush in his pocket. you know, horse-hair. featherdown. a man who keeps a pocketfull of feathers. the tips of my fingers have gone missing, numbed by a certain empathy for pending weather, autumn and all that comes after, a certain picking-up-of-habits, nailbiting as a sign of solitude, sorrying, emotional wandering, taking out your worry and wonder on yourself.
i meet a man with a pink plastic-bag full of bones. a man collects birds. reads me winged words in the way their feet are flung. once i found a green bird, the color of a perfect lime in a picture of a lime. flavor-color that sweet pucker on one's tongue. a man leaves his window open all night. the pattering heart of a sweet-lime bird is flung into the sky and bursts into a star i get to name. i want to meet a man who lets me name a star. when i name the star i bite my lip and name it pajaro, spanish for bird.
i meet a man who worries that it's too late for chickens.
"it's never too late for chickens," i tell him. the moon is in my eyes.
i meet a man in the dark. we sit on a green parkbench, breathing giant quiet tree-air. a pirouette of fog lifts the sky away from us, just a little. lets the edge of a secret in, under a crack in our grass doorframe. i meet a man who holds his cards close to his chest. a man who is sleepy. a man who keeps looking at nothing in the distance. who puts his head on my shoulder under the streetlamp and sighs, as if we were lovers instead of strangers.
i want to meet a leaf-eyed man who whistles like flying, like slicing the clouds to nibbles, pictures, brush the blue away from my secret expanse of stars. exposition:
i want to meet a moon-flavored man who will kiss me on the lips.
.
i meet a man with a pink plastic-bag full of bones. a man collects birds. reads me winged words in the way their feet are flung. once i found a green bird, the color of a perfect lime in a picture of a lime. flavor-color that sweet pucker on one's tongue. a man leaves his window open all night. the pattering heart of a sweet-lime bird is flung into the sky and bursts into a star i get to name. i want to meet a man who lets me name a star. when i name the star i bite my lip and name it pajaro, spanish for bird.
i meet a man who worries that it's too late for chickens.
"it's never too late for chickens," i tell him. the moon is in my eyes.
i meet a man in the dark. we sit on a green parkbench, breathing giant quiet tree-air. a pirouette of fog lifts the sky away from us, just a little. lets the edge of a secret in, under a crack in our grass doorframe. i meet a man who holds his cards close to his chest. a man who is sleepy. a man who keeps looking at nothing in the distance. who puts his head on my shoulder under the streetlamp and sighs, as if we were lovers instead of strangers.
i want to meet a leaf-eyed man who whistles like flying, like slicing the clouds to nibbles, pictures, brush the blue away from my secret expanse of stars. exposition:
i want to meet a moon-flavored man who will kiss me on the lips.
.
wanderlust home
a dress made of poems, i thought, a paper dress for a paper girl. you're no paper girl she said. who am i. you're a little blue egg with a bird inside. i'm a bird. you're that blurry star the sun makes for the camera. i'm a star? you're a camera. you make faces. i am trying to see the big picture through you. you're a road atlas with scribbles all over it. really. yes. you're the pages torn out. you're someone's imaginary friend. really i said. it goes both ways. well pleased to meet you, i never did figure that out. plunk. lakewater me looks over grass-stained me's shoulder. my grass-stains are shaped like knees. knees are shaped like scabs shaped like band-aids. the clouds are shaped like clouds. plunk. the clouds are shaped like broken airplanes.
some people sneak around on the internet looking at porn. girls eating poo from a cup. some guy jerking off into his wife's shoes. stuff like that. i sneak around looking at this new hampshire real estate website. it's called Bean Group. what the hell does that mean. maybe someone named Bean started it. maybe it's like jack and the bean, how he started out all tiny in his crumby hole in the ground then whoosh up he went on his magical bean to the clouds. is that how it goes. so close to the stars you could singe your eyelashes. maybe that's what this group is all about. i don't know who they are but i love them. back yard abuts conservation land, Bean says. easy commute to boston. mature fruit trees. peek-a-boo. sometimes my mom's in on the game. that yellow one is so cute i can't stand it, let's buy dad a castle. sale pending. eleven extra photos. longing fills me like liquid. it's easier to breathe. sitting up in bed glassy-eyed at pictures of wooden kitchens with millions of baskets hanging. captivated by the made-up prospect of owning magic beans. backdrop of bus doors folding and unfolding down the block, plexiglas wings on a clumsy bird. open, close. open, close. cabs shoot by in the night.
my mother always hung baskets from the beams. josh used to hang upside-down on them like a giant sloth. maybe i was sucking my thumb or eating grapes maybe i thought i was at the zoo. either way looking up. i was always looking. oh my look, would you look at those big eyes. grown-ups would ask me a question and i would just look at them. look out from behind the corner of my curled fist. little pointer finger snailed around my nose. oh it's okay. she never takes her thumb out of her mouth. josh would talk for me. her name is ali. she's four. she's pleased to meet you.
my name is ali. i'm twenty-eight. i live in san francisco. you've never met me. that's all you really need to know.
the noontime announcer on public radio says later there will be a guy on the show who was eight years old when he watched his mother slit her wrists and write his name in blood on the wall. i think about my mother drinking coffee in the sun leaning against the kitchen counter. balancing the phone on her shoulder. watching my dad knock the icicles down and fill the birdfeeders for the blue jays and purple finches. sun on bare grey branches. maybe the cardinals were my favorite. bright red against white. chickadees are mom's favorite i think. look at the chickadees. look. little birdfeet make arrows all discombobulated in the snow. that's her word. it's chinaberry i tell her. blooming. that's why my block smells so sweet. ack. but it's february. balancing the phone on my shoulder. come visit later for the lilacs she says, and we'll plant you a cantaloupe.
i can't remember what happened to jack. the houses all have something green somewhere around them. they have the sky behind them like toy houses in a sky theater. that clean blue that means north. that means birds who have never seen a sidewalk. for a while when i was in maybe the third grade, i probably wanted to build sceneries for theaters. when i am twenty-eight i want them again and also a messy playwright lover. if i built theater sceneries i would paint them all blue. fee fi fo fum. when you see pictures of jesus, like in your grandmother's florida bedroom on a little wooden plaque near the lightswitch, his eyes are the color of the sky. do they do that on purpose. my mother grows bright green beans and basil. clean cucumber and mint. puts it in her water and drinks it. my mother believes in birds and doesn't believe in god.
Dear Mom,
I'll take this one. It's even older than our house. Look at the garden. You guys can come over and help me plant it. We can plant lots of watermelons and cherry tomatoes and eggplant. Jake and Elwood can come over and play with Olive while we're gardening.
I like that it's blue with red trim. How adorable.
I would like to buy and move in to it immediately.
Love,
Premenstrual Syndrome In The City
new hampshire thinks the west coast is hula hoops. a coast of flimsy flower-people. new hampshire drives its truck out onto the middle of the lake and sits with its pole in the snow. steaming black coffee hot from a thermos. slurp. light a cigarette. slurp. sun coming up like a grapefruit. lights another one. little nosehairs frozen. comparing the sun to various fruits, new hampshire thinks i'm worldly. how 'bowt that cyurious one, new hampshire says. that theya little one from the treefaam up theya by Miles' place, go on off to be somebody. yup. new hampshire i love you. new hampshire wait for me. new hampshire. wanderlust is overrated. new hampshire the west coast is bright mango slime is flowers all year and nothing dies you're right. new hampshire plant me a pumpkin. new hampshire sit down with my heart. stuffed the last of my maps in a picnic basket and buried in the garden. roll out your carpet of mudsalt and snow to tug me home.
my mom said the last storm brought so much snow, the plow guy had to come with a backhoe. a whole new layer to the earth. you should come in the spring. when the first tulips shoot up through the ice. the grass in hibernation down there. under the world with the worms. under that old foundation, which is like the ground, laid down in 1775. it says so on the chimney. but not everyone signed the Declaration of Independence she said. in the spring. the birds make such a racket. everything's new.
when my friend leaf was a kid his family had no money. he desperately wanted this remote-controlled airplane for christmas. maybe he was seven. his parents couldn't afford it. no way we can't afford that. on christmas morning the three kids sat in the living room by the tinsel tree and opened their presents. tore off the paper and there it was. the airplane. holy crap. the airplane! could hardly contain himself. ran outside little barefoot. los angeles christmas morning it's 68 degrees and mostly clear. some of the smog melted off. got the plane up in the sky. the plane is flying. he's flying it. he's a pilot. he's sailing over the neighborhood. he's flying flying, higher and higher until the plane is just a spec. flying off toward the world. ahh. o.k. turn around now. turn. he doesn't know how to turn. come back, plane. come back. take me with you. turn. it won't turn. he doesn't know how. he wants to go with it, wants it to come back. he doesn't know. so off it goes without him. no. he never sees it again. merry christmas.
when i leave it's summer, the middle. like the part where you're thirteen and have bug bites all over, even on your butt from sitting in shorts in the grass sneaking cigarettes behind the barn watching the sun go down past the pine trees. here's a picture: i have two braids in my hair. i'm sitting at the wheel of my brother's station wagon, both of which are dropping me off in my new state of oregon. i am to cruise down the driveway to the road that goes to another and another for three thousand and fifty-three miles. i am twenty. i'm grinning. yeah i'm doing it and i don't care get me outta here. manifest destiny, man. i have maps. i have sunglasses and coffee. i have my brother who hates both cat stevens and cigarettes so i have to wait until he's asleep in the passenger seat for all that. here's my mom off to the side with the birds. just be careful. who probably have tears in their eyes. bird-tears. put on your seatbelt says my dad. and don't sleep at truckstops. live free or die says new hampshire. be careful. keep your eyes on the road. don't forget new hampshire.
josh had this, his favorite hat. if it's not on his head he put it on the dashboard. it's too hot for hats. somewhere in one of those vowel states, iowa, ohio, illinois, indiana, something, we are in a nasty yelling car-fight and i roll down my window and his hat flies off the dashboard and is sucked into outer space. he is so mad i think he will give himself an aneurism. i am laughing like crazy because i'm nervous he might kill me and i really need a cigarette and i also know that the next exit is in like five million miles because i saw a sign. i think i won the fight by default. over the next six years he will keep trying to move away from new england and won't. i will live in permanently moveable places, tents and vans and various couches coast-to-coast. for a while i even lived in a cave which is not moveable on some beach on this island but it did fill up with the ocean when it was autumn and the tide comes up. we had to evacuate. what was out came in. our stolen plastic salt and pepper shakers floating. get the guitar. has anyone seen my other shoe. did you even have another shoe. ali get your shell collection. some people got stung by manowar. they had to pee on the stings because that's the cure for it. and there was a giant sea turtle, i saw him.
my name is ali. i have a van with expired plates from north carolina, whose state motto is "a better place to be". up until 1893 they were the only one of the original thirteen states without a motto. i have an oregon driver's license, which has a hologram of evergreen trees. i graduated from the evergreen state college in washington state. i have one brother who is 13 months older who has a fiancé and a dog and a house in colorado. my best friend is colleen searcy who has pumpkin-colored hair and lives in ohio. i am twenty-eight and my address is 1892 grove street san francisco california 94117. my phone number is 781-9277. the area code is (603) which is new hampshire, which everybody thinks is weird.
fireflies actually don't bite. evidently they are capable of biting, but they choose not to. i just made that up. i don't actually know if they have teeth or not. i kind of doubt it. they have light-emitting organs in their bellies. for christsake. female fireflies glow 1. to attract mates and 2. to lure other bugs in to eat them. maybe at one point new hampshire seriously considered making its state-insect a firefly, but the legislature never put the measure to a vote. i'm not telling you this so you'll go there. i don't actually want you to go there. when i go there i want everything to be exactly how i left it.
.
some people sneak around on the internet looking at porn. girls eating poo from a cup. some guy jerking off into his wife's shoes. stuff like that. i sneak around looking at this new hampshire real estate website. it's called Bean Group. what the hell does that mean. maybe someone named Bean started it. maybe it's like jack and the bean, how he started out all tiny in his crumby hole in the ground then whoosh up he went on his magical bean to the clouds. is that how it goes. so close to the stars you could singe your eyelashes. maybe that's what this group is all about. i don't know who they are but i love them. back yard abuts conservation land, Bean says. easy commute to boston. mature fruit trees. peek-a-boo. sometimes my mom's in on the game. that yellow one is so cute i can't stand it, let's buy dad a castle. sale pending. eleven extra photos. longing fills me like liquid. it's easier to breathe. sitting up in bed glassy-eyed at pictures of wooden kitchens with millions of baskets hanging. captivated by the made-up prospect of owning magic beans. backdrop of bus doors folding and unfolding down the block, plexiglas wings on a clumsy bird. open, close. open, close. cabs shoot by in the night.
my mother always hung baskets from the beams. josh used to hang upside-down on them like a giant sloth. maybe i was sucking my thumb or eating grapes maybe i thought i was at the zoo. either way looking up. i was always looking. oh my look, would you look at those big eyes. grown-ups would ask me a question and i would just look at them. look out from behind the corner of my curled fist. little pointer finger snailed around my nose. oh it's okay. she never takes her thumb out of her mouth. josh would talk for me. her name is ali. she's four. she's pleased to meet you.
my name is ali. i'm twenty-eight. i live in san francisco. you've never met me. that's all you really need to know.
the noontime announcer on public radio says later there will be a guy on the show who was eight years old when he watched his mother slit her wrists and write his name in blood on the wall. i think about my mother drinking coffee in the sun leaning against the kitchen counter. balancing the phone on her shoulder. watching my dad knock the icicles down and fill the birdfeeders for the blue jays and purple finches. sun on bare grey branches. maybe the cardinals were my favorite. bright red against white. chickadees are mom's favorite i think. look at the chickadees. look. little birdfeet make arrows all discombobulated in the snow. that's her word. it's chinaberry i tell her. blooming. that's why my block smells so sweet. ack. but it's february. balancing the phone on my shoulder. come visit later for the lilacs she says, and we'll plant you a cantaloupe.
i can't remember what happened to jack. the houses all have something green somewhere around them. they have the sky behind them like toy houses in a sky theater. that clean blue that means north. that means birds who have never seen a sidewalk. for a while when i was in maybe the third grade, i probably wanted to build sceneries for theaters. when i am twenty-eight i want them again and also a messy playwright lover. if i built theater sceneries i would paint them all blue. fee fi fo fum. when you see pictures of jesus, like in your grandmother's florida bedroom on a little wooden plaque near the lightswitch, his eyes are the color of the sky. do they do that on purpose. my mother grows bright green beans and basil. clean cucumber and mint. puts it in her water and drinks it. my mother believes in birds and doesn't believe in god.
Dear Mom,
I'll take this one. It's even older than our house. Look at the garden. You guys can come over and help me plant it. We can plant lots of watermelons and cherry tomatoes and eggplant. Jake and Elwood can come over and play with Olive while we're gardening.
I like that it's blue with red trim. How adorable.
I would like to buy and move in to it immediately.
Love,
Premenstrual Syndrome In The City
new hampshire thinks the west coast is hula hoops. a coast of flimsy flower-people. new hampshire drives its truck out onto the middle of the lake and sits with its pole in the snow. steaming black coffee hot from a thermos. slurp. light a cigarette. slurp. sun coming up like a grapefruit. lights another one. little nosehairs frozen. comparing the sun to various fruits, new hampshire thinks i'm worldly. how 'bowt that cyurious one, new hampshire says. that theya little one from the treefaam up theya by Miles' place, go on off to be somebody. yup. new hampshire i love you. new hampshire wait for me. new hampshire. wanderlust is overrated. new hampshire the west coast is bright mango slime is flowers all year and nothing dies you're right. new hampshire plant me a pumpkin. new hampshire sit down with my heart. stuffed the last of my maps in a picnic basket and buried in the garden. roll out your carpet of mudsalt and snow to tug me home.
my mom said the last storm brought so much snow, the plow guy had to come with a backhoe. a whole new layer to the earth. you should come in the spring. when the first tulips shoot up through the ice. the grass in hibernation down there. under the world with the worms. under that old foundation, which is like the ground, laid down in 1775. it says so on the chimney. but not everyone signed the Declaration of Independence she said. in the spring. the birds make such a racket. everything's new.
when my friend leaf was a kid his family had no money. he desperately wanted this remote-controlled airplane for christmas. maybe he was seven. his parents couldn't afford it. no way we can't afford that. on christmas morning the three kids sat in the living room by the tinsel tree and opened their presents. tore off the paper and there it was. the airplane. holy crap. the airplane! could hardly contain himself. ran outside little barefoot. los angeles christmas morning it's 68 degrees and mostly clear. some of the smog melted off. got the plane up in the sky. the plane is flying. he's flying it. he's a pilot. he's sailing over the neighborhood. he's flying flying, higher and higher until the plane is just a spec. flying off toward the world. ahh. o.k. turn around now. turn. he doesn't know how to turn. come back, plane. come back. take me with you. turn. it won't turn. he doesn't know how. he wants to go with it, wants it to come back. he doesn't know. so off it goes without him. no. he never sees it again. merry christmas.
when i leave it's summer, the middle. like the part where you're thirteen and have bug bites all over, even on your butt from sitting in shorts in the grass sneaking cigarettes behind the barn watching the sun go down past the pine trees. here's a picture: i have two braids in my hair. i'm sitting at the wheel of my brother's station wagon, both of which are dropping me off in my new state of oregon. i am to cruise down the driveway to the road that goes to another and another for three thousand and fifty-three miles. i am twenty. i'm grinning. yeah i'm doing it and i don't care get me outta here. manifest destiny, man. i have maps. i have sunglasses and coffee. i have my brother who hates both cat stevens and cigarettes so i have to wait until he's asleep in the passenger seat for all that. here's my mom off to the side with the birds. just be careful. who probably have tears in their eyes. bird-tears. put on your seatbelt says my dad. and don't sleep at truckstops. live free or die says new hampshire. be careful. keep your eyes on the road. don't forget new hampshire.
josh had this, his favorite hat. if it's not on his head he put it on the dashboard. it's too hot for hats. somewhere in one of those vowel states, iowa, ohio, illinois, indiana, something, we are in a nasty yelling car-fight and i roll down my window and his hat flies off the dashboard and is sucked into outer space. he is so mad i think he will give himself an aneurism. i am laughing like crazy because i'm nervous he might kill me and i really need a cigarette and i also know that the next exit is in like five million miles because i saw a sign. i think i won the fight by default. over the next six years he will keep trying to move away from new england and won't. i will live in permanently moveable places, tents and vans and various couches coast-to-coast. for a while i even lived in a cave which is not moveable on some beach on this island but it did fill up with the ocean when it was autumn and the tide comes up. we had to evacuate. what was out came in. our stolen plastic salt and pepper shakers floating. get the guitar. has anyone seen my other shoe. did you even have another shoe. ali get your shell collection. some people got stung by manowar. they had to pee on the stings because that's the cure for it. and there was a giant sea turtle, i saw him.
my name is ali. i have a van with expired plates from north carolina, whose state motto is "a better place to be". up until 1893 they were the only one of the original thirteen states without a motto. i have an oregon driver's license, which has a hologram of evergreen trees. i graduated from the evergreen state college in washington state. i have one brother who is 13 months older who has a fiancé and a dog and a house in colorado. my best friend is colleen searcy who has pumpkin-colored hair and lives in ohio. i am twenty-eight and my address is 1892 grove street san francisco california 94117. my phone number is 781-9277. the area code is (603) which is new hampshire, which everybody thinks is weird.
fireflies actually don't bite. evidently they are capable of biting, but they choose not to. i just made that up. i don't actually know if they have teeth or not. i kind of doubt it. they have light-emitting organs in their bellies. for christsake. female fireflies glow 1. to attract mates and 2. to lure other bugs in to eat them. maybe at one point new hampshire seriously considered making its state-insect a firefly, but the legislature never put the measure to a vote. i'm not telling you this so you'll go there. i don't actually want you to go there. when i go there i want everything to be exactly how i left it.
.
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