.
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
.
.
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.
.
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.
.
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
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)