Posts for June 4, 2018 (page 5)

1. roman noses. I don’t know, maybe because everybody just seems to love them. I always have.
2. the nichts mehr gefällt mir’s that keep running through my mind, the inherent futility in that verse, in translating it at all, somehow always at the front of my mouth when I switch tongues.
3. catching myself instead with these exceptionally american und’s and aber’s.
4. the kettle of flies swirling in the kitchen each morning. how they dissipate when I wave my hand. how setting sugar cup traps just draws more but kills none.
5. not every language lets you speak of love so easily. sometimes it’s just pleasing. some things you just enjoy, that’s all.
6. but what if my joy knows no bounds? what if I suffocate it with indirects and passives and find myself drunk and weeping on a park bench somewhere because us yankees can’t live holding back like that at every turn, dammit. 
7. repression has its place and maybe I do love the sun on the balcony, love this light, love the thick air trapped in this stuffy old room, maybe it’s not a matter of feeling good at all.
8. I didn’t realize birdsong sounded exactly the same everywhere.
9. or that all old buildings smell the same. I wake up and for a moment every morning breathe in and think my father is downstairs. I think it’s the room where I stuffed towels in the crack under the door, and where the dogs just snapped sometimes and tore one of the chickens to bits outside my window. what I mean is, I wake up waiting for the screeching.

Posing for the camera,
I took my grandma’s hand in mine,
They felt so soft.
I looked down surprised,
They were speckled with brown and purple spots,
Lined with veins.
Her knuckles were enormous,
The rest of her fingers,
As skinny as a pencil.
Her wedding ring hung loose.  

I stared too long.
I tried to cover up by saying,
“Your hands are beautiful.”
She laughed and called me a liar.

LETTERS TO THE DEAD: FOUR

#Never Again
(for Parkland)

After hours of “Oh”
                      and of “Of course”
our possessions
                      of air
                      of all discourse
grow alien to love and light.
Oh, let our hour be
always ahead of one’s “off
     with you” or a gun shot
                      through a cosmos
without us.  Our lives,
a simple bit of 1 or 0,
caught in the arc
of again and again.

Everywhere I go
I carry a journal and my favorite pen

But I hate the scurried scribble of my handwriting
When I only want (need) to scream

we sit on top of the concrete stairs
that stem down from the sliding glass doors
talking

the grass is long 
wind whipping
plastic panels of the white fence creaking

he looks over at me
with his small black eyes squinting
nose twitching

“is there anything out there?”

we look out past the fence
at the world we can see

i shake my head

”nothing worth knowing, at least”

Once there was a girl who always wore a green ribbon around her neck. Her best friend was named Alfred. He always asked her why she wore the ribbon, but she only shrugged, saying it wasn’t important. The girl grew up and fell in love. She fell in love with Alfred. He watched her ribbon very closely and even asked to touch it, but the girl refused. After they were married, Alfred said, Okay , now you can stop all that nonsense with the ribbon. But she didn’t respond. She just hung her head. In their most intimate moments she could just catch him, watching the rinbon from the corner of his eye, as if sleepwalking. She became preganant and he forgot about the ribbon for a time. She, too seemed to have outgrown it, feeling her cheeks burn red when she accidentally brushed it with her hand. She was going to be a mother to a daughter. The child grew and grew inside her. She kicked and turned as if listening to her mother and father. Alfred again asked , why do you wear the ribbon. But she only turned over , as if in sleep, and felt the gentle tug of childbirth beggining. We share a child, she thought , if not now, when ?  She had already lost so much agency over her own body that she could not bear to give it up. The child came and she took to the woman’s breast and nursed, all the while she shoo’d the little hands from about her neck.  She grew pale and her eyes grew large in her face. They continued on in this way until one day her husband rose from his chair and without a word, he grabbed for the ribbon. She backed away from him, angry and terrified,  but he persisted. He did not stop until the ribbon, wet and warm with blood lay on the floor. In this version of the story, the woman lives on but goes the rest of her life without speaking a word. She grows stooped and grey. Her husband begins looking for girls in town with ribbons around their wrists or ankles. 

                     For Dayana

Yesterday, the Volcan de Fuego,
Volcano of Fire, erupted for the second time
this year, proclastic flows of lava, debris
in avalanches, smoke rose, and ash fell
on Guatemala City where you live,
ash closing the international airport.

Today, I have tried to call you to get a report,
an update on how you and the family are. I’ve
not been able to get through, but that can only tell
me that disaster emergencies are in place. I see
you in my dreams, safe. I write these lines that rhyme,
dedicated to you. It is a way for me to show you

I care what goes on in Guatemala more
now that you live there with your extended family–
more then I ever imagined I would,
having only visited one time,
the time I was an obvious tourist,
and you were my interpreter.

Sometimes I want to tell you every thought that crosses my mind,
but I imagine laying it all out
would look a little like the possum’s guts
splayed across the highway tonight —
a useless sacrifice,
carnage unrequited.

Like the pearl of a cut worm
dark in silver queen 
it was startling, that’s all 
“What are you thinking?” he said.

She remembered a boy
from high school who drew
detailed pictures of naked women
how he knew where everything went 

Now she felt the full charge 
of their futures
She never asked for that
For needy kids in canvas shoes
who had minor parts in school plays
and fresh hair cuts in highlight reels
they cut away to his mother
sitting with her hulk and hungry look
in the stands

She felt it then,
there in the downstairs dark room
with the janitor’s broom swiffling
in the hall and outside
the clang of the flag pole
who he would be someday 
and how he would love

Clark Terry, I finally got to meet you when you played a concert with the University of Kentucky Jazz Ensemble for the Spotlight Jazz Series
I had a piano solo on one of the tunes, a fast blues, as I recall
Then you took your solo
I don’t think I was a hard act to follow.

You played with both Basie and Ellington
You played in the Tonight Show Band with Johnnie Carson
You played trumpet and flugelhorn
You also scat-sang, but you made it sound like mumbling
You combined fuzzy syllables into not-quite-understandable words.

On the concert, you played a tune called “Sheba”
Turns out Sheba was a dog.

The day of the concert, you sat with the band and told stories about famous jazzers
Not everything was complimentary
I’ll leave it at that.

You were also an advocate of jazz education
And you were a class act.