MISHEARING LATTICE FOR LET US

“WHAT’S A FOUR-LETTER WORD FOR OBSESSION?” 

     “Frigate like a Book.”  Emily Dickinson, #1263

Always you read in

bed, belly down, boards of the

book you’re holding like

shoulders in your hands,

posture the missionary

position, face cupped

over the splayed words  

moving horizontally,

vertically, cross-

word clues, (2 across,

7 down), symmetry not

that of Escher’s birds

or chessboard squares; yet

you believe in them--shadow,

dark serifs, glyphs of

letters; I have faith

in silence, the spaces in

between, the light that makes

it work. You say to me

Clue me in; I say to you

Stanza break, the curve

of the bee over

the imbricated rose.  Fill

in the blanks, dear. How

do I spell this out?

Imagine your hands against

my spine; go ahead

and turn the dog-eared

corner; see what’s waiting for

you on these white sheets.

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Roll Call

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My great-great-grandfather in the Union Army, writing letters home to my great-grandmother, letters still in my family; my great-great uncle hanged as a 17-year-old by night riders for being a member of the Confederate Army (do y'all see why Kentucky was never reconstructed?); my great-grandfather gassed in World War I; my grandfather and his oldest son, my father, and all of his brothers, including my uncle David who served in Viet Nam; my first father-in-law, Charles Johnson in Viet Nam for two tours of duty; my college boyfriend Ken, also there; my former brother-in-law Steve, serving in Desert Storm; a legacy of service starting with my current father-in-law, JD Parker, and continuing unbroken through his son/my brother-in-law Jesse II, his wife Susan and her son Jesse III (both of the latter on active duty); another of my nephews, Chris, graduate of the United States Naval Academy; my teacher (albeit briefly) Bruce Weigl; my student, Denny; my friend Butch; Major Dale A. Johnson, whose POW bracelet I wore.

Air Force. Army. Coast Guard. Marines. Merchant Marines. Navy.

Thank you for what you've done, for the history you've provided.

There's also the history of my first mother-in-law, Lilo, who spent her childhood in bomb shelters in Mannheim, learning to play chess in the dark; of my friend Mai, who escaped Saigon on one of the last flights out of the country; of my friend Jules (name changed) who left the service after being raped by his commanding officer. Those stories will wait for another day, but they're no less true than the ones above, and no less worthy of being remembered.

Hang Fire

"Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves.”
  Like Water for Chocolate

 


Enlighten me. Please.

Joaquin Sorolla, A Walk on the Beach

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Sometimes I long for a turn-of-last-century life , one with white dresses flittering in the wind, shawls and parasols, net-veined straw hats.  

That's not the life I've been dealt.  

I've heard all my life By fifty, you have the face you deserve.  I'm not dissatisfied with my face.  

But what did I ever do to deserve this loneliness?  It's my first memory in the world, my adolescence and youngest adulthood.  For 23 years I was safe from it, mostly.  

Although my doctor refuses to medicate me for it, for which I am ginormously glad, I am so depressed.  

Words drip slow as pitch from my fingers.

How slow is that?  

The Pitch Drop Experiment

Billy Elliot (10/12) Movie CLIP - What Dancing Feels Like (2000) HD

This, this, this--is why I write.

Not because I sometimes get published, not because I can't NOT do it (I didn't do it for 15 years and I have few regrets), but because once the stiffness stops and I get going, there is nothing, nothing like it.

Well, sex, but that's muscle memory, too.

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In the last month...

Eight poems were accepted; four of them are up right now--three at Parable Press; one at The Centrifugal Eye.

My MS was a finalist, still a bridesmaid, but the dress is a little more fetching this time.

I finished off two batches of 214 students and now have two more.

My 342 students are awesome.  I love them, their poems, their hard-working attitude.

I donated 18 bags of stuff to the thrift store behind my house.

I fixed up the man I was dating with my friend; they have moved in together.

I am a poem-writing, teaching yenta.

I have only cried once today.  That's an improvement.

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Stjepan Hauser "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" (Samson et Dalila) by C. Sa...

Everything you need to know about my heart is here, legato.

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Channeling Medusa

I am strangely happy today--I think it's being surrounded by snaky hair and other writers.  As long as I meet no Harry Hamlin/Perseus types, I shall continue with twisty locks and sculpting all things statuary. 

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Happy New Year's Day

  Three Fragments from Virginia Woolf

                                            

) dens of lions, speckled eggs, decks of cards

) a skein of writers, a smart set

) a desk set, a settee, a nest of vipers

) two steps into the darkness but no more

Ephemera for Christmas--Santa Head

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Inexactitude of Aubade

Sunlight in an Empty Room, Hopper

This morning, something touched the curve of my hip, and I awakened, thinking for a second it might be you. Only the sheet slithering to the floor, only a touch that echoed a touch I once took for granted, your hand in sleep, burnishing.

This morning, you're a little bit farther away from me; this morning, I'm a little bit closer to going where you are. And where are you? And why are you there? And where? And why? And....

This morning, I long for something--the scent of your skin, the scratch of your beard, the thunder of your laugh--and I remind myself that thunder is an echo, it fills a void.

This morning, this mourning.

The Young Widow, Gosselin 

BROWN STUDY

Cy Twombly on influences, on secrets

"I would have liked to be Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time. I had a Poussin period in my head. I did Woodland Glade and it was a kind of romantic English thing rather than Poussin. It was just a homage. Just someone I had respect for. I had different crushes on different artists. But I look a lot at Poussin and I have got a whole set of etchings for example. I've always wanted to do brown paintings, because when I was in school I realised in that great room at The Frick Collection in New York, with all those incredible paintings, that the secret to great paintings is brown. And that is one of my great ambitions, to strive to do a brown painting."

brunette, bay, coffee, chocolate, brick, toasted, ginger, rust, chestnut, hazel, dun, auburn,tawny, umber, fuscous, tanned, browned, bronze, bronzed, tan, dusky, sunburnt, seared, sauteed, toasted, sepia 

If I had a choice, I'd like to be an artist like Twombly, to make art and make a life and not worry so much about what others think.  I started late on this poetry business (2007), and after five, almost six years, I feel that I'm ready to start writing my own poems.  Rejections from Rattle, from At Length, from the Oxford American--one of the best rejections ever--for my long poem (which is damned good) only solidify this desire to write more long poems.  I know that the poems will be all right.  Some editor will love them some day.  

Woodpecker, Woodpecker, Woodpecker

When I looked up my Native American horoscope, I was pretty sure that I'd be a big cat or a snake or something else that slinks or slithers, yet I'm pretty happy to be a woodpecker. In fact, my favorite image in all of my poems is that of a woodpecker--maybe I was channeling my inner self-regard when I wrote it.

Here's the poem, which (as are all but a handful) is dedicated to Harv, our long marriage, and how I would rather walk with him than almost anything.  I miss you, sweetheart.

"Taking a Walk with You"

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Caddy Compson, Talk to Me!

Ragged, Unkempt, Strange: On William Faulkner | The Nation

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[HD] Noisettes - Every Now And Then (Live - New Pop Festival 2009)

There's a curtain between Harvey and me, and I want nothing more than to tear it down.

Let the light back into this empty room.

Curtains.

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