Carlo is spending tonight in the hospital with Miles. Of course now I’m freaking out about every little bodily complaint Miles makes. The headache, the charlie horse. Miles is 2nd from right in the photo.
Wicked Alice: I have a poem up in Wicked Alice, but I’m not linking because there is an error in it. The first line, which should end with a dash, ends instead with a question mark. That just kinda fucks up the poem. A formatting error I’m sure but I’m antsy for the fix.
Finished reading: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. Liked it. Felt Ann Patchett’s article in the New Yorker, conjured up with google, added a lot to her sense of despair. I have never read a Lucy Grealy poem. That is the weird thing. Anyone got one for me?
which returns me to a related note that often occurs to me in life: when we were kids, my little brother said his favorite song was Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze. He had never heard the song, but he was pretty sure anyway.
Reading: White Fang (Wolfsblut) by Jack London. Actually I’ve been reading it aloud to Miles in hospital, and even in German it’s better than the “grown-up” book I was reading and may not resume reading (The Old Men at the Zoo by Angus Wilson).
Added to ipod: Mellow my Mind, Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown (1975)
3 comments:
Hi Sarah, I looked everywhere for Lucy Grealy poems after reading her memoir and Ann Patchett's book on their friendship. They are very hard to find, even with library connections. Here's a poem entitled "Ward 10" from the Paris Review, winter 1991:
Nothing melodramatic, it's just when the sunlight
came in through the wired windows and laid itself
down on the green floor, i twas nice, we liked it
there, then, playing our games. And like kids
anywhere, we were bad, always sneaking off
to buy chocolate in the lobby, over to Maternity
to make faces at babies, and one morning,
after a previous evening of hushed, excited planning
based on an overheard conversation,
we took the elevator all the way down to the lower basement
to wind our way through the deserted tunnels linking buildings,
nervous, fearless explorers among the bare floodlights
and echoes, looking for signs pointing
toward the animal labs. The night before
we'd lain in our beds unable to sleep with the image
of what we must have thought would be
some sort of petting zoo. We got giggly lots three times
before the stink of sheep's pee found us,
and then we found them, bleating in their concrete
strawless pens, raw geometrics shaved
in their sides. In the next room were cages
and cages of cats, most of them silent, some
with electrodes sewn in their heads.
We could hear monkeys nearby, but instead chose
to finally read the signs we'd laughed at minutes before:
we WERE unauthorized personnel, we weren't
supposed to be there. We went back to the ward
to find the nurses laughing, scolding.
They thought we'd somehow found out
the hated technician who took blood
was coming that morning, and that we'd sneaked off
to buy Hershey bars in the gift shop instead.
Always loving, they applauded our ingenuity:
"How did you know?" We hadn't, but
played along anyway.
"Guess," we told them.
*
Before I knew high school I knew words
like vincristine, cytotoxin, sarcoma, failing.
I understood the basic theory of radiation,
the vacuum principle of hypodermics,
that it would be a long time
before I would say out loud
the names of my friends again.
Listen, Michael, Tina: I'm the one who made it.
I don't know the reason for this.
Oh Sarah, you're a gem. : ) I haven't been around blogging so much in a while, and reading yours for the first time in a while reminded me of what anyone who doesn't read your blog is missing: a lot.
When I'm not so tired, I'll be back around and catch up on more. 'congrats on the acceptances and publications; I look forward to reading them.
Cheers,
Sara
(Oh, and beautiful photograph)
thanks so much, jessy. i recognize that scene from the book, and the name michael.
weird how hard it is to find her poems. I'd really like to read more.
hi sara -
nice to see you. my husband took that photo. i like it, too.
cheers
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