The pelicans dance over the beach
Sandy wings dusting my sun hat
Tipped low towards the reaching waves
The foghorn breathes over raucous water
clumsy in its pursuit to touch the land
fueling those reaching waves
cardinals light above the deck
Kentucky red in a seaside town
their wings tipped low towards the reaching waves
Today is the anniversary
of Little
Girl with Popsicle.
It happened by the lake,
eleven years ago–
she was there,
and then she wasn’t.
The Last House on Needless Street, by Catriona Ward
I’ll crack open my head
right goddamn now
and you’ll see
the lightning bugs
burst into the twilight.
My mind is full
of intermittent fire.
I’d rather gently
blow steam
in the shape
of a dead bur oak
than belch flames.
The lightning bugs will
take over the neighborhood,
twinkling like lighthouses
on distant cliffs,
or stars calling
for other stars
to drift over, to start
a constellation
that looks just like
a screaming antelope.
Oh dear
I seem to be swinging
like Mercury—a year
in a few days, back and forth.
Yet I am as in control
as a hearth can be, just
a mason jar full of grass
with holes in the lid.
Rainy, rainy, thank you, thank you
In 2011, sociologist Sherry Turkle published Alone Together, a pioneering study of the explosive growth at the time on pc desktops and especially the new cell phone of virtual environments like MMO multiplayer video games, MySpace, and Second Life and their potentially deleterious effects on human social interaction and relationships.
bite of the apple
in a corporate logo
how did we not see
Turkle identified on these new platforms an emerging “sense of place” where people in real world isolation were able to interact and build relationships as strangers behind avatars – virtual 3D personas very easy to name, author, filter, photograph, spoof, design, revise, fictionalize, anonymize, keep, delete and fruitfully multiply.
i remember us
driven to find each other
these days not so much
Six billion active smartphones cover the planet today providing opportunities to author and canonize unlimited liminal nominal selves to explore, game, reach, teach, create, earn learn, buy, sell, lie, cheat, steal, love, betray, fight, fuck, and form attachments of variable honesty and constancy without ever leaving home.
thrall of narcissus
black mirrors eating the souls
of those who don’t see
I won’t push your walls
But I’ll build mine up
So I learn the mistakes
Of the unarmed Trojans
I won’t ask too much
But I’ll believe my heart
Sacrifice for Posiden
And build my Ithica today
the coffee is too bitter, I drink you
chew your temper and swallow it down
expose your course hands, slipping off my gown
tender they know me, but trace me like new
careful, don’t wake the house, don’t make a sound
the coffee is too bitter, I drink you
chew your temper and swallow it down
morning light paints your face, pray it’s not true
you cradle my face, press away my frown
sun peeks in, she whispers about sundown
the coffee is too bitter, I drink you
chew your temper and I swallow it down
expose your course hands, slipping off my gown
Junko Tabei was the first woman to “summit” Mount Everest (1975). She later scaled the Seven Summits (the highest peak in seven continents).
Men climbers shunned you
Disparaged your dreams
Thought you did it for money
Or to meet a man
But there are easier ways to find a husband
Warmer ones too
In their eyes
You were a kitchen
A nursery
A sidewalk
Your eyes saw
Wind’s glutinous thrash
Snow’s looming smother
Mountain’s tragic heart
The next step upward
The creek had always sung its song,
A gentle hymn through shale and stone,
Past porches worn by generations,
Past fields our people called their own.
It carried tales of springtime rains,
Of minnows darting clear and free,
But no one heard the warning hidden
Within that old familiar key.
The clouds came low as mourning veils,
They gathered where the ridges meet,
Till heaven loosed an endless sorrow
Upon the hollers at our feet.
The branches bent beneath the weight,
The hills let loose their muddy tears;
The streams we trusted all our lives
Became the sum of ancient fears.
A front porch drifted down the road.
A mailbox sailed like autumn leaves.
The church bell echoed through the valley,
Calling prayers no tongue believes.
The mountains could not run away;
They stood and watched with silent grace,
As water climbed the courthouse steps
And washed the color from each face.
Neighbors launched their jon boats early,
With flashlights cutting through the rain.
No one asked who owned the blankets—
Only who was cold or in pain.
Hands reached out through broken windows.
Strangers carried strangers home.
Coffee brewed on borrowed burners;
No grieving soul was left alone.
When daylight finally found the valley,
It scarcely knew the place at all.
Mud wrote its name on every doorway,
Silence answered every call.
Yet in the wreckage, flowers waited,
Their roots still deep beneath the clay.
The mountains whispered, “Keep on standing.
This darkness, too, will pass away.”
For those who live where ridges cradle
Homes built strong by hope and grace
Know rivers sometimes break their promises,
But never break a mountain race.
The water took what cannot be counted,
Photographs and years gone by;
Yet it could never steal the spirit
That keeps these ancient hills alive.
So when the creeks begin their singing
And thunder gathers overhead,
We’ll bow our heads, remember mercy,
And honor all the tears we’ve shed.
For every flood leaves more than ruin—
It leaves the proof, when all is done,
That hearts forged hard beneath these mountains
Still rise together, one by one.
