Fragments from Unwritten Poems in April

Yoga for Anxiety: “now PUSH yourself up!”

My students: the way they spoke to each other

Julian Pauli: finding food in my hands where he hid it

Forwarded picture of a bard owl in a pink tree

Forwarded picture of two bard owls in a pink tree

Forwarded picture of a cat hissing in the face of a black bear

April's Shower on a sunny day

Reading at Doll’s PLACE—not HOUSE

Assholes, assholes, assholes

“Yippee for Y—pie!” Bri-Pi cried

“Daddy Doctor” Reprise

Surprise!  Nana is wearing my Mother of the Bride’s dress

Rutgers grad students do the poet in different voices! 

The Pain

The first thing some people say is are you afraid of the pain. I think how can you be scared of pain more than a minute beforehand. More than five seconds. I'm no dancer but I know my body carries me through. Foot finds the stair and I'm up. Skin opens, bleeds, closes up again. I feel every edge, I know with some certainty how it's going to feel. I catch my breath but keep pushing, don't you. I mean when picking off a scab, I mean when putting on a shoe, cutting off a heel, slipper brimming with blood, I know this far and no further. I know what edges are mine and beyond them I don't know, can't push. I have that t-shirt that says MINE over a screenprinted uterus. I forgot I was wearing it until my mother-in-law said not just yours, not anymore. I bristled because did she fucking mean her son's? I bristled even as Paul explained the politics of the shirt presuppose that it is always her decision to make. I bristled but she must know the truth of it. Little organ dancing forever outside.  Third foot that edges the ravine, won't send its perfect limit to your brain. A new navigation always blind. Body you can never trust again. Yes I'm afraid of the pain.

from Time Travel: 1922

There was no shortage of words—
only an outbreak of rickety indelicacy
that had baked into your phrases, at their
very infancy, a blinking partition between
the unfinished and the inarticulate.
Your wild and disordered figures
broke into a high falsetto meant to
prodigiously open the dead little girl's
whitewashed ribs into a blue effusion,
a great penitentiary of reddened sound.
From two blocks away, you saw
a hundred streets feebly gesticulating
at the end of the ruined sentence
and, further out, people in wide frosted offices
who have never learned that the rapid gait
of runaway meaning can uncontrollably
attack its accuser. The fugitive month,
meaner now under the touch of your
principal industry, was staggering
to an echoed, inanimate close...

Read the rest here.

Grownups

Having been here
                               (back in New York, for one,
                               but also this apartment that we bargained for)

long enough to see our friends move two or three times,
break up, get back together, get fired, get promoted,
start grad school, finish grad school, move away, move back,
long enough to have had all the same friends and lose them all
& make new ones and start to have history with the new ones
to have institutional memory about the neighborhood
different from the Brooklyn we lived in before Baltimore
that four-years Brooklyn of my early twenties
that two-years Baltimore that keeps me from being a real New Yorker
that everyone blames the band breaking up on

as if we didn’t come back every week
I’m always tethered as long as you want me to be

**

What I’m learning as I get older,
& own property
& begin giving dinner parties
& stop giving dinner parties
the thing everybody learns & tells you but you ignore:
however successful you are, however rich, however cool
you’re still tending toward that middle age
and middle-aged craziness
& having at least one set of china people can admire
or not, maybe you eat off paper plates and can’t pay the phone bill
but you’re still putting out figs and photograph albums
& complaining about your apartment & your kids
& bragging about your kids
& gesturing with a glass of wine & saying something inscrutable
whether or not you have an oeuvre
or a legacy or whatever, whether or not
you’re a failure

ask me sometime about something I realized about failure but for now

This time, the early the middle thirties

or the late thirties the early forties if you're really a New Yorker
turns out to be our only time not to be crazy
I don't mean not terrible I don't mean not mean or selfish I don't mean not brilliant
but you know, it's when you get to be ordinary like a human
and also somehow our only time to be successes
but also our only time to be failures
If I’m a failure now it’s irrelevant to my daughter
It’s irrelevant to my sixtysomething self
with her glass of wine and her grizzled mane
or her dyed bob
or her washed-silk jacket

Daughter, you might not know it
Grizzled/bobbed self, you might not either
but you and you and I were only ever just alive

Pop Don't Hop

I spent all weekend in a sick funk with those flaky red patches under and around my nose

so when I finally determined to leave the house I had to put on lipstick

and a pair of huge pearl earrings, like definitely as big as the Ritz

I said, "I'm putting on these earrings for PEP" and Paul said "Don't get too much pep"

because if I got too peppy I might hop like I do sometimes when I'm getting better

and then the coughing fit could last one thousand and one nights

but it was hard to restrain the PEP because in addition to my pearl earrings there was

Kate's long silver earrings like knives

Marisa's imaginary hippie feather earrings on a pile of clean dirt

Marisa's daisy necklace

Marisa's daisy dress from Express

Kate's English garden-party partydress (with no tights! but it was so warm!)

Becca's cat dress, meow

Becca's iphone piano, plink

Kate's back-up dresses, with silver beading and who knows what

the kimono-snap onesie Krystal gave us for Margaret Ursula Maleficent

(who will be so intellectual with her elbow patches she'll just get smarter and smarter,

until the wall of thorns engulfs us all and we'll have to give her whatever she wants to put in that breast pocket)

and Brooklyn Bridge which was so iconic that I almost gave up on New York

and decided we were driving home to our townhouse in a leafy London suburb

that's how much pep I gathered, it shot me across the Atlantic

to where the gardeners are always carefully planning their hedges

to be decorative but also thorny enough to discourage little boys

from hopping in

Long Late Poem for Arbor Day

“The whole bough bending then springing back as if from sudden sight” – Jorie Graham, “Self-Portrait as the Gesture Between Them [Adam and Eve]” from The End of Beauty

But the other tree—the Tree of Life—wasn’t surprised at all.  

  It bent

its lowest limb (the one the boy’d been swinging)

                                                                                    and relented. 

We two found it there after Hurricane Sandy:

great, grey and ashen, as the charred head of a dragon.

I remembered the spot because for yards round no other trees grew tall.

I thought the little roots were choked out

and that was how life gave way to life. 

Now I know

the bigger roots play surrogate parent to so many unmeasured things: 

the dark durance of my backyard.

What really happened is

      the limb broke like a bone. 

It happened suddenly, but with much warning.    

      It didn’t give in; it gave out.

It broke like a bone and swung once or twice and fell and soaked up rain.

There was no boy until the next day, and his mother didn’t let him swing on it, for fear of what it would do.  (I, too, keep my distance.)

Meanwhile the tree rots from the inside.

Meanwhile furry things find out.

Meanwhile fungi take root.

Meanwhile the order of things upsets.

The dead wood releases carbon one billion times slower than fire.

The big tree is dying one billion times faster than it grew.

And one billion times faster than it will grow again, if by some miracle

            it outpaces the developers that lie in wait,

already sharpening their eyes.

Misanthrope

You should only be one on Wednesday
b/c mercredi and Moliere and the letter M
but sometimes Wednesday leaks into Thursday
and even Friday if you don't sleep well
& the nurse says that medicine will kill you
& won't say why, so you spend all your time
deducing like the Sherlock of OTC active ingredients
and it turns out to be alcohol? That's the problem?
Well, fuck you, Nurse Molly Hatchet
and fuck you five inhalers and fuck you Neti Pot,
even if I seem to be the only person in the world
whose cough and snot these miracles make worse
and fuck you casual racist guys I heard about at lunch,
I wish I could call you up and yell at you
but my throat hurts and also I don't know your last names,
and fuck you weirdly racist definition of inclusive
that maybe I'm not really understanding because anyway
I don't want to see anyone I'm already two people
just like those twins from The Social Network
did you know there are all these girls who want to believe
Jesse Eisenberg and that other guy are in love?
I don't really want to see them either.
I don't want to get texts from my uncle
where I can't tell who else is on the recipients list
and do you call it a recipients list in texting
and who is the person who wrote back saying
wtf and who is this, like is it my cousin or a stranger
and do questions like that matter to misanthropes?
and don't try to initiate an entirely unscheduled business call
and claim we are "playing phone tag" when in fact
you just made an entirely unscheduled business call,
that's not how it works, business associate,
uncle, crew-rowing twins, jerk on the subway,
racist art guys, obstructionist nurses, I hate you all
even though if I close my eyes and lie so still on the pillow
I can kind of feel my way back to about a week ago 
when I was so so happy to be alive and the world was blossoming
and I was part of it

Coughing Poem

Try not to breathe no breathe
Try not to rattle but I don't
rattle it does

once you hear the rattle
open your mouth
the rattle announces

Ribs are a broken accordion
Music is the most mysterious
art form

Book over knees
squeezebox opens
every knob

Book over knees
Open mouth
Sweatshirt

The lady next to me
changes her seat in horror
No subway wifi for Brooklyn on TV

On the train I go the wrong way
say oh shit
like twelve seconds later

somebody in the crowd parrots oh shit
I want to cough
all over all of them

Poets Without Clothes: Ezra Pound

http://poetswithoutclothes.tumblr.com/

How like a bird with clipped wings,
or a bird with clipped wings that has just been fed,
Ezra Pound seems to me.
A picture of one deeply grateful and deeply nourished.
Or, a bird about to take flight.

Or a man singing through open rib cage,
making no sound.
Maybe he has said many times over, "I Am Ezra."
Maybe he is crying while singing.
That streak down his left cheek could be the well-worn track of a smile or a tear or both.

It could be that he is drinking air,
letting it drip messily down his mouth and chest.

I imagine him like this for a long time.

And now it seems to me a penis.
Skin and hair pushed back wide.
But where are his hands?

5 of Wands

A lot of shuffling
but just one card
today

It’s a jam sesh
or a jubilee
or a war

They might be
bayonets or long
rain sticks

It’s gonna be a
struggle no way
out

LadySphinx
Volcano
Phoenix

riddle
eruption
rebirth

Nobody likes
to see their
own pain

played out on
the flat surface
of myth

Food is Gross

My mom can stand up on the 6 train without holding on,
’cause she’s just real like that, like J-Lo.

I move to another car ’cause two people are talking

about food ingredients, and food is gross.

I like your glasses because they’re a continuation
of the glasses trend that I started.

Food is gross because it all has fat in it.
And I feel sad every time I eat it.

And I’m worried that I’m gonna get pushed on the tracks
’cause I’m so beautiful and young and get eaten by rats.

I buy all the shirts with fleur de lis on them

because fleur de lis remind me of you

and me when we couldn’t stop fighting,
and when we were in bed but I was mad at you,

and you were mad at me,
and I hated all the fleur de lis.

And someone told me they’d make me my favorite food,
but then they didn’t. But that’s fine ’cause food is gross.

Perfunctory Variation for A

Just to confirm,

I have not written

the essay

that was due

in March

and which

you were probably

hoping to grade

last week

Forgive me

the whiskey was sweet

this paper

is cold

Everything Is Better With Princesses

Princesses and roommates who worked as bottlecappers in a fictitious Milwaukee brewery called "Shotz Brewery"

The two princesses head out in a 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible for a two-day vacation in the mountains that quickly turns into a nightmare before they reach their destination

9 reasons why princesses should strength train at least 2 or 3 times a week

Doctors weigh in on how much weight pregnant princesses should gain

A courageous, adventurous one-year-old princess and her group of playmates — several other infant and toddler princesses 

Four desperate princesses who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal acts—from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation and burglary—to sell undesirable real estate to unwitting prospective buyers

Furthermore, the absence of the media contributed to the Accord's successes: there were no possibilities provided to either princess to reassure her political body or be driven to conclusions by members of her opposition. An eventual scrap of negotiations by either princess would have proven disastrous, resulting in taking the blame for the summit's failure

Hieroglyphs and sculptures reveal that the pyramid is a hunting ground for princesses who kill other princesses as a rite of passage. The humans are caught in the middle of a battle between two princesses

An unemployed Los Angeles princess and avid bowler, nicknamed "The Dude"

Proceeding on her way, Rubber Duck runs into fellow princesses Pig Pen/Love Machine and Spider Mike, when another "princess" informs them over the C.B. that they are okay to increase their speed

Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the princesses returned safely to Earth on April 17

Tell it Slant : keywords for today

shower : half-way

dream : within a dream

chapped lips : sympathy

brushes : take care of them

evil : insurance companies

nap : want one

penguin : song & dance

phone call : empathy

mattress : expensive

lunch : experiment

coffee : charity

change : don’t

poetry : uneven development

wandering : Eve

Eden : left it

honesty : undergrads

Tyger : symmetry

Google : left China

panda : Kung-Fu

Linens ’n Shit

I got an email with the subject line “10 signs your boss hates you”

and I thought if I were a boss I’d forward it to my direct reports

as a joke, LOL, and they’d probably think I was crazy

but it wouldn’t matter, cause I’d be their boss and they’d have to

be nice to me anyway. Last night I remembered a bag of Reese’s

Peanut Butter Cups in my cabinet, and when I saw them I said

“game changer” out loud. Who am I? I saw a grown man

slide down the railing to the subway this morning and I asked,

“where are we?” I said, “you look like a teddy bear” out loud,

on the street, to a dog and its owner. I scream at all of the babies,

all of the time. When Jon Shina called Linens ‘n Things

“Linens ’n Shit” we were outside Van Meter, standing under

a rainbow. This was way before I worked at ­­_________ but after

9/11, before the secret Sonic Youth show at the Flywheel.

Way after I learned to put my hair in a ponytail but

just before the war, around the time when I smoked pot with

Ant and said, “aren’t dogs weird?” on the bench outside Greenough.

In the workplace, you can say “hey” sometimes. You don’t have to

always say “hi” or “hello.” When you’re fighting with your

sisters you have to just ride it out. Like a wave I guess, or pile of snow.

In the bathroom, I heard someone talking about their wedding

invitations, and they used the term “fallout rate.”

I used to work with a girl who said, “God forbid” about

everything. And I once got a company-wide email asking us

to back up our work just in case we’re ever hit by a bus.

When I put my hair in a bun it just looks like a “ghetto”

version of ______’s, but I don’t use that word in that way.

I also don’t use “beater” to talk about tank tops, and I try

not to say, “fight signs of aging” but sometimes I have to.

My coworker sneezed and I said “bless you,” in the sweet

voice of a guardian angel with wispy blonde hair.

You guys, my nails are so shitty right now that I can’t even look at them.

I just stare ahead at the sun and pretend they’re not even there.

Style Power

reading how you only become a body
when the tools of the law begin
to exert themselves over the flesh
that then becomes your body

Cat Power singing
at the same time
never give away
never give away your body

and build your style of being
out of thrifted jean jackets and
duct tape arrows pointing up
busk and bask in the underbelly

clothes might still foil
the strongarm of the law

Novels by Men

Don't you just hate them? I know they are most of the novels;
Elaine Showalter showed me that even in the mid-nineteenth century
when everyone thought only women were writing novels
men were writing most of the novels. Some people I know avoid novels
for precisely this reason. I like them, as most people know
but they make me mad, and sometimes I hate them
and I don't even hate them the most when they're super misogynist,
like when all the women are horrible like Daisy in the Savoy
Headpiece, or when there are no women except a couple of implied ewes
like in The Hobbit (although I must say I have always hated The Hobbit,
it's so boring when they go up in a tree), or when all the women are murdered
horribly (although I can't bring myself to read American Psycho
having read some of the worst parts in 2002 in a bookstore in midtown
and lost a lot of sleep, wondering if I myself could drill through someone's mouth
and teeth, and worrying that I could, or of course that it would happen to me
like when I read that scene from Seven in 1996 in Covent Garden
and thought the IRA was coming for me somehow to gorge me
with Safeway-brand Coco Krispies and Rhode Island Muffins until I died
and no one would ever know because we knew no one there, me and my mom
and my little brother who just thinks Mad Men is sad and doesn't get
why anyone would kind of fantasize about living in that world), I hate them most
when there are all of those handsome competent three-dimensional women
who know about finance or art and have been disappointed by all their sex partners
and are so grateful that the protagonist looked at them that way in the car
and want to remember they have a body and not just shoulder pads
but also they are such straight-talkers, they won't take any shit
and it's somehow always the 80s even when it's the 60s or the year 2000
there are always these straight-talking moms who can teach you something
even if you're already fifty and who can learn something from you
even if you're only twenty-eight and why do I hate these novels so much,
is it that I myself am so sad and have forgotten my shoulder pads
are not a part of my body, is it because I said once that women never forget
they have a body, even though today I read that Difference Feminists
are "ladies" who "conflate being female with having a body
scientifically designated as female" and I thought hey wait I thought I was a Difference
Feminist but I thought it meant you thought it was amusing to wear an apron
not that you had a vagina or that you could tell the difference between shoulder pads
and your body, not that you could carry a child because I told you before I'm pretty sure
that has nothing to do with it, that is the research I'm doing right now, and it's research
that novels by men don't seem to have access to somehow, but am I saying
they can't do that research, because if I am I'm disproving my own point and anyway
you can't prove a negative, I heard that once, and by that logic, therefore,
ergo etc etc those women still exist in three dimensions, buttock-cleft
and all, moaning their weird desperate pleasure in the walk-in closets
of the neverending 1980s white America, so my objection isn't on the grounds
of verisimilitude, it's just that I'm bored by hobbits in a tree, I'm bored
by women coming when you look at them in a limo, I'm bored
by your respect for these bodies, these shoulder pads, these vocabularies,
these bodies that can and should not and always do wear shoulder pads