headshot

the frog is to me.
green as a wheat-grass shot (kapow) but instead on my wall
like guts. green as shockingly as red.

the green is as shocking as red gets.
the frog within a dangered state,
palpating like a live heart would on my wall instead.
if the house had a heart inside its own chambers,

oh boy if these walls could feel.

magic is ambient, p.s.
i’d like to be a frog upon THAT wall,
someone must have said.

These days

maybe my body is not here yet,

I hurled across the ocean, after all, and those things should take time.

I sleep, involuntarily and repeatedly,

and after a day maybe I wake up.

Does a thing become strange from too much looking?

or is it my mind racing, pouring out through my eyes?

it comes as a surprise:

I can spend hours, days, alone

leaned over the bicycle handles and makeshift drafting tables

ink stained hands, snack strewn kitchen

it's urgent when it's urgent,

and the days move slowly, resisting hurry

when it's only me.

despite the looming Fall of not knowing.

I think I can be okay today because of the Just Enoughs:

space to strew

bouts of company

phones to answer

food in fridge

sun in sky,

cash in wallet

yes, that's it. always. that's the one.

Bread

The cat has finished another potato
And I wonder, what am I missing?
Not B12, surely, I've been tested
Nr Arendt/Heidegger correspondences, no,
but I'll hang my posters
and hem the drapes
restock on emulsifiers
re-engage my rear breaks
And? Well?
Days arranged in a strained trikonasana,
Lungs that vacillate, not respirate.
The cat has turned her focus to the bread,
gnawed plastic, pointed ears, errant dough.

How Best Despoilt

Practically mitotic fleas, motherfuckers.
burring the room like static would,
screwing the simple surfaces.
Roommates my loves: with athletic sock
make pale your shins,
and gallantly toast bread,
tucking unwhitened eggwhite under,
there are infinite points between one point and another,
and they bite.

?

last night, i was thinkin, things are bad when i see someone is reading my tumblr
from jersey city and i get excited

but tonight, only hours after posting a plea for company,
to not have this house, empty and big, in the dark to myself for the weeks following,
promising home-cooking and the swing set,

i've never heard from so many lovers, old and new and (bashful, teasing)
potential, promising, and
all at once, remembering past years of the empty house
remembering my room in all stages of me, and long before the marmalade walls, remembering my bed with its crisp white sheets, stretched across the mattress like our
arched backs, the curl of our toes, waking with kisses and cups of tea

am tempted by all of it, a little for each of them, a little more of that peach of a girl,
a little more for hoping you'll see my words too, out there, and will say a bit of something
will give me a sip of your cigarette for old times, will come take your clothes off slowly

and get into bed the way you do always, as if you are diving into the ocean

there is the other hand, that dreamcastle boy driving me to shakepoint, to wrapping me all up,
to making me pinky swear to him and then deserting
to not ever reaching for me first, and damn, doesn't a girl just sometimes
want to be sure of something

resumAY partAY

ok so we're all in a room

and some of us are SO OLD

and we have a lot of advice to give

and it's a party, but a party with advice

and multiple generations

and all of us at different ages

it's a resume party

it's the WORST

but our whole lives have lead to it

to this party where we can still get young people to come

but we also have a lot of practical knowledge

it's a total nightmare

it's a job?

jobbing for jobs?

resumes in the fruit bowl

car keys in bags

and pockets

who related to my resume?

who wants to come home with me?

who has a cracked copy of powerpoint?

i want to present you

with my presentation

resume party

resume the party.

-A Collaboration

we have seen our cat eat: tuna, placenta, a mouse

being that there are for Adam four ways of being—mood-health professionals being of accord—namely madam, badam, gladam and sadam— and being that said Adam rarely if ever reports himself unabashedly one -am or another, rathering when questioned to declare himself Fine-am, a nonhappening phenomena if ever there wasn’t, this illustrator in an idle moment finds his drawing paper quite spontaneously accordioned, as if to suggest division from the quite path of unimien portraiture into, instead, a quadtych, gilded, its parallel panels of –ams doing Adam a good justice, concurrently relieving said illustrator of his woothy burden, that of choosing.

a Quotation

If with the literate I am

Impelled to try an epigram,

I never seek to take the credit;

We all assume that Oscar said it.

~Oscar Wilde

I'm Not a Librarian, But I Wrote This at Work

I.) Librarians burst into song

every day

desperation and cosmic peace come together as

self-assurance via self-awareness of a joke of who you are;

last night I slept on the floor for no reason.

And today everyone is singing all the hits.

I woke up at 6:30 am hallucinating Alexandra

Alexandra you were so happy I was up so early!

I felt I’d failed you when I awoke again at 9:30, on the floor

bathed in light.

II.) Madeleine met her husband at a conference;

You can’t even say “conference” around her; she blushes!

When librarians go to conferences they doubt they’ll find love but

Librarians can find love anywhere else just by saying they’re librarians

Anyone can find love that way, it’s ok, you have permission -

not from me, but you have it.

III.) I feel close to my mother lately.

She can pee in front of everyone.

It seems normal to her but terrifies me

knowing how she used to live, who and what she used to do;

like a librarian who goes on dates -

and

talks about them!!!

I worry that I, too, would bear a child

Who is so prim, who must be trained to accept nakedness

to unlearn her inborn manners

in order to be happy.

slow-roasted tomatoes, a hymn:

buying up full rows of them, two bunches,
two to four to six to
slicing the fruit thickly not minding the juice lying the slices flat on the baking tray

heating up the oven to two hundred and fifty degrees, listening to it hum as it cranks up,
sprinkling the following over them:
olive oil, rich and full and of that wildgrass taste / balsamic vinegar / garlic (powdered or fresh, of course, fresh but crushed into submission) / dried oregano,

a teaspoon of sugar carefully over top. salting and peppering.
roasting painstakingly, lazily, until it fills the whole room and you can taste it from upstairs and everything is absolutely unbearable
!
- about 2 and a half hours.

the only time being an ex-hoarder has come in useful

one hundred and sixty dollars found in hard cash, pennies though dimes, stashed into purse pockets, honey pots, vodka bottles full of orange flowers crafted out of felt,

a full bottom drawer of pennies, heavy, gloating, unaccustomed to the light

two wooden boxes full of clean, white feathers and whiskey bottles all in a row, well-scrubbed, filled to the cap with sequins divided by color

i'ma buy me a bus ticket to new york city, i'ma sew together wings out of dust and must,
shine, gold and glass

Fantasie

Don't you know my throw-away fantasy?

You can see it in my glinting eyes.

I fantasize about throwing things away.

Armloads of clothes evaporate

I carry light bags, vulnerable to breezes

I seem easy to handle, low stress.

Three people with short hair and hats

who are my friends, who have it

all figured out

invite me to stay with them for a while.

They have a dog and are always in and out of love.

While I'm there I get smart to my potential.

I finish every book I've ever started

and when I manifest a thing it is just myself

I manifest myself over and over

I count the days like 7,9,10

and never wonder what went wrong

where the time went

on moving to LA without water ice

drunk, in and out, wine-mouthed teeth trembling. goosebumps.
passenger seat driving, vibrations and fingernails and the yellowing of light seeming
to take up whole expanses of sight. everything in vision in horizon lines in one.
here, fella, you wanna come back for some loving? wide bed, wide thighs or stride. fill you up some.

7x7

He is unpeeled of his sheets and shaken,
and dreaming harder against the day,
deflecting light and movement
that would break his focus
Sleepy inflates her memory and swings it.

Bashful pretends to be sleeping too.

Murderous in the brow-bump,
yes striated with fury
and hairs knitting to hairs
in the fleshly folding--
Menaced by clouds,
upchurned by coffee,
Grumpy, not with whom to be trifled,
grieves her.

But some conventions keep.
Happy can’t hold it back.
Dopey is unaware,
and Doc frets over Sneezy as before.

While meanwhile underneath
her transparent
covering she tans beyond
apellative convention.

daysleeping

you were in my dream last night, last afternoon, last hours
you and you and you and all of us were in little vignettes of moss and dusk
and mode and carriages with plush velvet cushions, a pumpkin pulled by
oh!
considering her eyelashes against a cheek, the curve she scooped
into a shellshape on the grassy hill above the hudson, a pile of leaves you long
promised we would hide ourselves under (but we lost you to the wolves
long before the autumn fell) and all of your pairs of lips and palms revolving
as if to catch the sun

Three Nonnegotiable Swords

She coldly washed the sword.
Sugar limped from tongue and tooth.

She cut the fruit to squeeze it.
Juice eventually ended.

But what we counted ended.
The mouth in kind has ended.
Even the sword has tapered to a point.

STRONG BACK BUG BACK

Always I'm going to the doctor

Always I'm "I can't remember"

Can't remember what happened the last time

I went I

am always saying "what's WRONG with me

am I filled with

fungus or

flowers or

both?

I'm so drunk!

The doctor, a woman, always staring off

remembering

her mother's sacrifices

her old friends, long estranged

taking slower paths and

sleeping on rocks

bathing suits untied and oh!

I am always saying

"I'm a good girl"

my mother always in the room...

(my favorite book of poems

was written in the winter:

she goes to the herbal doctor;

new england is awful)

I am always

wondering about phantom bugs

and my mother and

what would happen if you

ignored them and

what if bugs gave up and

I am always

going to the doctor and

shielding myself from bugs

joking with my mother

asleep on rocks with

bathing suit untied I'm

slower and slower like a cave

inside I'm

filled with flowers and fungus I'm

going nowhere, going to the doctor

looking at her diploma her

faraway gaze she's so drunk!

her long nights, her mother

my long nights, my mother

the herbal doctor

the stalagmites inside me

the sudden flash of bugs

the absence of bugs

I am always

forgetting where my body is

in time always

draped over rocks, aging

inside alone

all the stalactites inside

centuries and

centuries and

centuries

brain surgery while you're wide awake

seeing with the brain not the eyes, feeling with layers
beneath the skin like playdoh, acid options
for losing fingerprints to scar tissue, to breaking and
entering, to leaving no trace

remembering amnesia, forgetting the brain itself
is without receptors for pain, remembering you can go
blind from a brain trauma even if your eyes are fine

too many rememberings for scrapbooking organs
too much for buying a human rib or a clavicle bone
to form around the outside of your own

Small Talk is Whatever

Strangers are

ok

they're willing to discuss God

i.e. weather

the heavens, primitive selves

they don’t mind that you’re no longer a citizen activist

they only care about cloudy infinities

things felt by skin, by nerves

together, you talk about your bodies contacting air

changing your hearts; your brains; your moods;

your bodies are whole, and new, and everything is connected to everything else

you talk about what “it’s” going to do as though you’ve already established a code together

you smile at strangers because of your mutual understanding of “it.”

It’s “doing” something and it will be “doing” something else, later, hopefully.

You don’t want to look at a stranger and think

“everything will always be the way it is at this moment.”

Everything will always be the way it is at this moment.

oh, no.

“doing” something now doesn’t stop “it” from “doing” something else completely different in the near future

knowing "it" and not each other is

ok.

Noknown words

When the spoken word is Princess,
each syllable is Precious.

Then a bespoken Cyst:
nonetheless.

But when the babble comes up Nickle:
woeful we, we who might someday want a bicycle!



(mistranslation of Trzy Slowa Najdziwniejse by Wislawa Szymboska)