Posts for June 18, 2023 (page 9)

Shy little scrawny
knock-kneed girl
finds brio

on the back of a big grey
mare, falls in love
with the warm animal

musk that clings
to her hands and jeans
from the barn, bits

of hay stuck in her hair,
remnants of soft
dusty beast’s breath.  

She feels kinship
with any creature
who would not deny this

world is terrifying
sometimes — she, too, spooks
at her own shadow.

But sensitive beings
are extraordinary
in strength. The horse

teaches her to carry
heavy things
with unmatched grace.

737 destined for Minneapolis
delayed. Alone I munch
on Melba toast & mini-cubes

of mild cheddar. Tuck away my laptop,
make sure my ticket is safe in
the inner pocket of my thigh-length

trench, retie my running shoes. Two
children chatter, their brown
palms pressed against the rain-

splattered window. Dad sits two
feet away, calls them to his side
& opens a glossy paperback,

Make Way for Ducklings. Another day
I might have chatted about my patch
of red peppers, showed him photos

of my Torch Pink Begonias but today
I’m a silent observer. Sometimes
it’s enough to be a human

camera, take in a brief slice
of time, an interruption
of joy. All I want is to sit near

the three of them, listen
to the kids’ voices — tender
& high as an otter’s purr — repeat

passages from the book: 
So they chose a cozy spot among the bushes
near the water & settled down to build their nest.

I take these sudden joys
when I can. There’s another 100-year
flood in Tennessee, street

riots in Minneapolis, but in this
moment, trapped for now in time,
there is true delight.

Los ángeles colegiales

(The Grade School Angels, from Sobre Los Ángeles – Concerning the Angels [1929])

The nightly humming mum of the blackboard chalk
        not one of us understands,
nor why the armillary sphere, exhilarated, dances when 
        we gaze at her.
We only knew next day that her circumference might suddenly
        light into a square dance,
and an eclipse of the moon might mistake the flowers
and spin the bird clocks many
        speeds faster.

No one understands a thing:
not why our fingers were stained with India ink,
why the afternoon closed its rhythms so the dawn could open books.
We only knew a straight line, if it wants, can be broken or curved,
and that the wandering stars are children ignorant of arithmetic.

Author: Rafael Alberti
Translator: Manny Grimaldi

I got my brown rice vinegar in the mail
I note it’s black label has sparse and vertical Japanese writing, elegantly proportioned, framing with a natural imperfect beauty,  a collection of white patterns on a square of black. 

It resembles hand pressed biology-inspired wax resist on fabric. Or fishing-net impressed plum shapes or flat flounder fishes floating, intricate baskets of white on black.

But when I plucked it from the box, from hundreds of pieces of sundry silverware for crucifying canvas to wood,
I discover it is wrapped in sticky bubble wrap, (the kind with great big bubbles, the biggest I think you can find)
And I removed it slowly and carefully, trying not to rip the label
(it’s incredibly sticky stuff). 
This wasn’t the cheapest vinegar, as vinegar goes,
it should at least look nice if I will have it for a while,
I think.
Or maybe I’ll use it in everything
I just dont know yet.
It smells great. Like sunken ships in burned out barley fields
Sunflowers or leather saddles
I vaguely imagine Christ on a cross
His next to last dying words a request for vinegar.
I wonder would it meet the standard.

As I am bowled over by the perfect art on the label I notice something kind of, well, almost unbelievable, even now.
Focusing my vision at close range, I have a flash of intuition or suspicion that the sticky wrap has pulled away or damaged bits of the black ink. The art on this label has only in this moment appeared. The marks were not present at birth, but developed here in this arrival, in it’s last journey.
The writing and the rest of the label is unaffected,
The white print only appearing on the black background, in the main and mostly empty square of the label
and only in shapes corresponding directly with the backside of the big bubbles in the wrap.
The result are these beautiful white thumbprints,
Smushed circles of snail trails on the moon’s surface, fish scales, primitive abstraction, porthole-shaped mono-tinted drawings or old fuzzy xeroxed photos of the ocean, some alien language, some naturally growing form. Loch Ness Monster news clippings.
They look like they absolutely had to have been purposely printed there, so much I don’t believe the staunch vigour of my vision until I confirm the marks still on the bubble wrap…a perfect black replica of the white drawing on the label 
I am simply stunned at the sheer level of this art. Impossibly created. A level which the vinegar must frankly, deserve
I secretly hope
And I wonder how the rest of the bottles that have ever been made at this plant could possibly be missing out on all the earthy and spontaneous opulence.

that beat up door
I walked through 
so many times in
my life; countless

we peeled it off
the rusty hinges
brought it home
where I painted 
it bright green
and affixed it to
my new writing
studio; mine now

that door holds so
many memories
now it will be part
of everything that
I write; every piece
of art that I create

that door;
home embodied

Lock up the sharps.

Set the alarm and 
backup alarm
(the shared calendar is
insufficient), and
dear God
prep the coffee.

Post your learning intention and success criteria.

Other people’s 
children will arrive on
various levels of Bloom’s
at 7:15 am with their respective
needs and trauma.
Greet them in the
doorway and prepare to
carry it throughout the
next seven hours. 

Hide the pill bottles.

No trip up or
down stairs without
laundry in arms, no
stroll to the
kitchen without trash or
dishes in hands.

Monitor social media posts.

Skip the staff meeting. Explain later.
Keep the rattling tray of
red and white Transfer-ware from
sliding
          off
               the
                     passenger
                                        seat,
while calling for an
emergency appointment
hands-free, your glazed
eyes on the road in an
infinite ellipse of
drop off and pick up.

Practice self-care.

Looks like the day got
away from you before
you could work out or
write in your 
gratitude journal. 

8 years ago
I would have given anything
to receive the text you sent last night.
The invitation to give up everything.
To re-live 2am under your checkered sheets
and return to that night
when the turn I took turned the world over.

Instead, I wave to you through the distance with my feet firm.
No more wavering at the edge of darkness,

I turn around.
Turn off my light,
and go to sleep.

You can’t keep the dust
from coming back
no matter how
often you sweep.
The stack of unopened 
mail grows deep
until you lose
the will to tackle it.
Unwashed clothes
grow legs, climb out
of overflowing baskets. 

Sometimes laughter is
the most effective way to
make peace with the world. 

KW. 6/17/23

its continuity silent and still,
the earth has remained spinning in the absence
of our realization.

a year later, we gaze back up
at the same facet of this same sun,
back to the place where twelve new moons ago
we lost familiarity and traded it for something else, something
they told us we would never be able to define with our words
so what’s it worth to even try to write about it?

in the time that moon takes to be full we became the stars
encircling it, not forgetting
there is no shortage of stars in this sky,
only those hidden in the streetlamps, like moths
come to become indistinguishable in swarm
at the first magnetic glimpse of false light.

Or, i was the only one who forgot
to forget the truth, the one who learned how to learn
instead of being taught how to think,
starlight caught up in the interplanetary storm,
soul reaching out to the endless space.