This land is my land

Things that kept me awake: whether my alarm clock would work, whether my back-up alarm clock would work, a lie my husband may be telling me, my daughter's education and future, my son's education and future, my doctor's appointment, the dog's broken claw, a story I'd edited perhaps with an error, the source of certain information (I got out of bed to check this), the story I had to write the next morning, dry skin, my son's sleeping hours, whether I should go to the bathroom (I did), whether I was warm enough (I got a sweater), or too warm (I took off the sweater), my lung capacity, why must I have a body, why must I have a mind, one or both of these are keeping me awake, the disaster administration, the glow of the energy saver strip, electromagnetic-wave pollution in the home, the earth, how miserable I'd be in the morning, the future of public lands.

(erasers by Anu Tuominen) 

Pure Spirits

To explain the long silence, I've been traveling. New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. And Toronto Airport, a regular madhouse. 

To catch up on recent poem news, my poem, "Headache, Amen," just went up at Mead Magazine. This journal publishes poetry in the categories of beer, wine, cocktails, etc., though the poems themselves don’t have anything to do with drinking. I was happy to find my poem filed under ‘pure spirits.’

"The Uppermost Affliction," published at DMQ Review a few months back, has been nominated for Best of the Net. 

Finally, "Ambien," about the sleeping drug that induces sleep-eating, has been made into a video by the generous Nic Sebastian. The poem appeared in my Homebodies chapbook. Here it is.

'Ambien' by Sarah Sloat from Nic Sebastian on Vimeo.

Text set in Moog

Before I fly off, here are links to some of the poems I’ve had published lately.

DMQ Review published "The Uppermost Affliction," a sleep poem. The table of contents is here. 

RHINO published two typeface poems, and is gradually making all of its new issue available online. Here’s the table of contents - scroll down for "Typeface #77 (Moog)." Its partner #71 should be liberated soon, too. 

Frostwriting published two poems from my chapbook Homebodies, "Spoon" and "Steam."

And this isn’t newly published, but Right Hand Pointing nominated my poem "Heiress to a Small Ruin" for Best of the Net. 

On the submission front, I've gotten rejections from Barn Owl and Linebreak, but acceptances from Beloit Poetry Journal ("Inksleep") and Sugar House Review ("Clinic Lilies" & "Schnapps Distilled from the Flight of Doves"). So I'm counting myself glad. 

House of cards

After the kids leave, I convert the second bedroom of my mother’s apartment into a bachelor pad. I deflate the air mattress Miles was sleeping on, and set the rickety card table up into a small, soft-lit paradise of books. I hold office there, taking notes on nothing, listening to the crickets. It definitely encourages nightowlness.

I finished Revolutionary Road on my trip, and now feel I never need to drink a martini. I also read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which I found on my sister's shelf. It warned me sufficiently of Swedish mosquitoes.

Unable to find Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl in either of the big used bookstores I visited, I borrowed it from my mother’s library. It’s a devastating book. You can eat all the radiation you want, but you'll have to bury your shit in your head. 

I picked up poetry books by Sappho, Tao Lin, Michael Ondaatje and Alison Titus. In the poetry aisle of a bookstore I got into a conversation with a bearded gentleman. He asked me who my favorite poets were. My first (unrehearsed, unhesitant) answer was Charles Wright. 

In Future Tense, he wrote:

All things in the end are bittersweet—
An empty gaze, a little way-station just beyond silence.

If you can’t delight in the everyday,
                                                         you have no future here.

And if you can, no future either.

And time, black dog, will sniff you out,
                                                            and lick your lean cheeks,
And lie down beside you—warm, real close—and will not move. 

I’ve nearly finished combing the white through my hair

In the name of confronting what makes you uncomfortable, I spent the night wrenched around myself, my pajama pants creeping to my knees to make my calves cold, my turtleneck too snug at the throat. I lay flat down on my belly because it is my favorite position although it makes it difficult to access fresh air and I wake with a kink in my neck and into my shoulder. Who said fresh air was free? Who suggested sleep should bring rest? And in the morning I woke a 5.55 am, although it is Saturday, to put my daughter on an uneasy bus to Berlin for a week because she said so.

Mica

The eyelid browses down 

like a tunnel wall collapsing 

in a mudslide and all 

the automobiles and spitfire drivers 

slam softly into 

the crucified for slumber’s sake one man 

no other way around this 

brown blur with black in it 

litter of nickels, 

and dimes

Sleep struggle

I thought "I am a rippled strip of bacon, undercooked."

I thought, "there are two small dogs yapping in my kneecaps."

When I pressed the alarm clock button to light the clock face and see the time I noticed how soothing the pattern of the adjacent tissue box was.

A few minutes later I pushed the button to figure out why.

(Because the pattern of leaves is very like decorative Matisse.)

I thought about Abraham Lincoln's melancholy.

I thought about how it's nearly impossible to find a book concerning Abraham Lincoln that doesn't include his picture on the cover, or at least his silhouette. Or hat. 

I thought, "those are pearls that were his eyes?"

I thought about trichinosis, more the word than the disease.

I thought I would never remember some of the things I thought so I got up to write them down.

I wondered if Happiness really is the best Revenge.

Set your monkey free

1. I always sleep alphabetically but last night God forgot and removed the W. I was sent back to sleep twice through the V.

2. In some parts of the world, the clocks are set back an hour at three in the afternoon rather than three in the morning. People sit back down to tea, and all the children who finished school at 2.30 are required to come back.

3. It’s an old story. I was in love but found the object of my desire terribly fickle – one hour cool, one hour on fire. Only at the bullring did it become clear that the matador with the floppy bangs had a twin brother.

4. As Chuang Tzu says: ‘To wear out your brain trying to make things into one without realizing they are all the same – this is called “three in the morning.” What do I mean by “three in the morning?” When the monkey trainer was handing out acorns, he said, “You get three in the morning and four and night.” This made all the monkeys furious. “Well, then,” he said, “you get four in the morning and three at night.” The monkeys were all delighted. There was no change in the reality behind the words, and yet the monkeys responded with joy and anger. Let them, if they want to.’

5. The year I spent in China was more like three years. At first the days were all equal, but soon moved unevenly as wheelbarrows pushed by a child. Pollution and endless exertion aged me threefold. The only way to offset this effect was to sleep all day, one brushstroke at a time. But once the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, time had spun out of control. When I set off for home it was as if one year were three. But three that flew by.

the oracle at work

It’s when I try to take a nap that everyone seems to seek my counsel.
Questions come up like “if someone wants toast but there’s no bread, then what?”
Or this one – “are you sleeping?”
Sometimes observations need to be shared, like “the TV won’t go on.”
Or someone simply opens the door and gazes at me, as if that were of great support to them.
Then my mother calls. After congratulating me for taking a nap, there’s just one question – “do you remember where I put the dumpling recipe?”

all you need

Again I woke up at 4.30 and couldn’t fall back asleep. I was thinking about work and other sundries, and waiting for my husband to snore. He didn’t, but I was waiting for it. Yes, even his not snoring was keeping me awake. I was also thinking about Kathleen’s prompt to write a short poem with a long title. I had started one last week, and it kept growing longer, so there in bed, without the poem in front of me, I cut it down. At 5.30 I got out of bed to write it down. It is tentatively titled: “Lines written in a Japanese noodle shop watching a bldg be demolished.” I abbreviated building to keep it from being too long.

In less than 2 weeks we fly to the states for the annual tour. I’ve been thinking of the books I want to buy, but also thinking how I don’t want to lug them back. Last time I paid an overweight fee. So I took a look at Better World Books, where I’ve ordered before, indirectly via Amazon. Turns out they don’t charge for international shipping. This seems impossible. I am waiting for the email that says “free international shipping applies only to residents of pre-colonial Rhodesia.” Still, I ordered four books:
The Journal of Helene Berr
I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On by Samuel Beckett
Citrus County by John Brandon
Faithful Ruslan by Georgi Vladimov

I found the LOVE sticker above today walking to the post office to send a copy of my chapbook to Emmanuel Polanco, the artist who provided me with the collage for the cover. It’s now on its way to Paris.

texture

The next morning I woke groggy but happy in my gold bed and, after a gold power shower, went down to the ornate dining room and ordered the "healthy and energising" breakfast Tej had recommended. The banana porridge was sublime, as was the creamy yoghurt scattered with nuts.

This excerpt is from an article about a hotel that offers an insomnia package.

Next to my husband's snoring, if there's anything keeps me up at night, it's worrying about whether I'm right or wrong, and how I can find out.
And so I ask, isn't there something wrong here with the use of "scattered?" The way it's used indicates the yoghurt is scattered, but I am sure the writer means the nuts are sprinkled on the yoghurt. Or have the nuts been thrown at the yoghurt in such a way that the yoghurt has scattered about the room, in which case, the writer could just as well have chosen "splattered?"

Or perhaps the yoghurt has disappeared? Or been recklessly flung away? These are among the possibilities.

Scatter (v.)
1. a. to cause to separate widely b. to cause to vanish
2. archaic: to fling away heedlessly
3. to distribute irregularly
4. to sow by casting in all directions
5. a. to reflect irregularly and diffusely b. to cause (a beam of radiation) to diffuse or disperse
6. to divide into ineffectual small portions

intransitive verb
1. to separate and go in various directions
2. to occur or fall irregularly or at random

I do have to say that if I had to rise and eat a meal that included both porridge and yoghurt I might decide never to wake up again.

song of the day: The Way We Were

Epilogue, for if all is fat

Years ago I gave up reading
in bed at night
as a kind of laudanum

as an instrument towards sleep
which is an insult to oneself
and a slap at the writer.

My books are stacked
bedside for morning, opened
in the hope of waking up.

I save nighttime for dull tasks
like simple math
like operating heavy machinery.

Police tape

Every morning she’s photographed waking up in another position.

Monday: Splayed, and mouth gaping like a union soldier

Tuesday: Crouching as if about to jump from a frosted cake

Wednesday: Collapsing into herself like Jack Ruby being mortally wounded

Thursday: Breaking into bits of birds

This morning she woke like Ophelia with her hair fanned out and floating, hands folded; and last week there’s a picture of her

knees tucked up, fingers curled against her cheek

as if making a desperate phone call to consciousness

snooze button

I find the best time for a nice nap is as soon as you wake up. You’re dressed for it, and often it’s still dark out. When I wake up, first thing I notice is how big my head is in relation to my body, like a crazy toddler, and in danger of toppling. My pillow makes a good table for it. Legless at this hour, like everything. Also my heavy are eyes. My sore throats. Sleep is heartbreakingly desirous of me. It finds me very attractive. But I am being brown-dogged by a kiss.

jet lard

Hello, my name is S. and I’m a jet lagger. It’s been a couple weeks since I last fell off the wagon, but it wasn’t serious; I was right back on until a day ago. Due to the predictable issues, this is the first meeting I’ve been able to make. I was up in time to catch the one at 3.32 a.m. but after I’d showered and shaved, I noticed the moon going in slow motion, so I put my pants on backwards and hit my head on the bathtub. If you’ve tried to contact me and I didn’t respond, it’s because jet lag is a kind of brain damage, reversible only in small doses. I’m not yet all there. Some of me is still aloft, bobbing for my wristwatch deep in the temporal lobe. But I’m trying to get clockwise, and working on my commitment to Central European. I go back and forth. Excuse my slur - it’s been an ungodly hour since the moment I woke up.

song of the day: reptile

rumpelstiltskin

In bed I like to sleep on my stomach with my left foot/calf extended off the side, blanketless. For the fresh air. I call this snorkeling.

At work I get lunch vouchers worth 5.50 euros each and when I use one to buy a 2 euro sandwich I get 3.50 back in cash from the sandwich man. I call this spinning straw into gold.

At my desk I chew my nails, crack the sides with my incisor then peel them free in a nice, clean curve. This is known as mulling the great horizon

and it reminds me how yesterday I was going through the automatic revolving door that I hate and it occurred to me that teething and seething have more to do with each other than just a lot of phonemes.

the gradual nap

On the couch I embarked on a gradual nap.
It began with the typical resistance of struggling to reopen the eyes.
The book I was reading was interesting, but not unsleepably interesting.
So I decided to go ahead and comply.
The eyes get tired you know, doing that reality check all day.
But first I put the bookmark in and put down the book.
I felt good, but soon got more serious.
I pulled the throw blanket over me and tucked it in, thinking,
as I always do at such moments, of that scene in The Naked and The Dead
where a soldier with bad kidneys has to sleep on the cold ground.
(This makes me thankful for the blanket.)
Then I moved the pillows from behind to the side of me,
being careful not to wake myself up as I keeled over.

electric boots

I took the day off. Pretty quiet week in Europe anyway.
Slept 11 hours, then three cups of coffee.

*
When I was 11 or less, my favorite song was by Elton John.
His real name was Reginald Dwight. Nerd name?

*
My poem "Voyager" was a finalist for inclusion in The Best of the Net 2009. Didn't make it though.
Did I need to know this?
I have a hard time with disappointment.
There's just so much of it.

*
Not to wallow!

*
song of the day: bennie & the jets

now you try

I tried lying on my back, but sleep would not have me.
I tried fetal position, left side, then right, but sleep would not have me.
I tried sleeping on my stomach with my right foot dangling off the bed, but sleep was not buying.
I tried the pharmacopoeia nesting snug under the childproof, but sleep was not fooled.
I tried holding my arms & legs in the air until they were exhausted. No go.
I tried feng shui brain,
yoga brain,
rack and pinion brain,
and brain of the fat shambling Buddha.
I tried breathing through my mouth.
I tried not breathing.

Is he strong? Listen bud,

Yesterday I read 150+ pages of The Crimson Petal: 361 pages to go.

Yesterday I home-made tomato sauce; today it’s hamburgers.

Yesterday I was killing myself in increments; today “go forth and prosper.”

It should be warm and puny today but now it’s damp and mismanaged; Yesterday it was cramped and overcast. I took a shower. This is an advertisement for rain.

I’m not eating my Wheaties, loving my neighbor, taking out disability insurance; time is money.

I got up around 7 am yesterday; today it was 5.30. Yesterday was a holiday.

I politely asked Carlo to roll onto his side last night when he was snoring and my effort was a great success; today who knows.

I hate tv; tv hates me.

Carlo is taking Luisa to an opera tonight; Miles and I are watching Spiderman. He’s got radioactive blood.

The insects will outlive everyone.