Bloodshot Cartography

My poem Bloodshot Cartography is now a blockbuster movie! The generous Dave Bonta of Via Negativa fame is the video artist, with a reading by me.
This poem began with my wondering whether the word 'amazon' had anything to do with 'amaze,' and finding out it doesn't. Mix in a little homesickness, lack of sleep and antipathy for insects, and it's done. The poem was originally published in Crab Creek Review.


Bloodshot Cartography from Dave Bonta on Vimeo.

Joy Alert

Things like Marie Kondo’s book about owning only items that ‘spark joy’ and articles like “Arrange Your Morning around Tasks that Bring You Joy” make it seem like joy is some kind of everyday commodity, within reach just by a trick of organization. 

That’s not joy. That’s what the marketing department and the cereal packaging designers are telling you to sell books and smart phone apps and Coca-Cola. 

Beware of products that promise you joy. It isn’t something you buy or pencil into your schedule. 

Joy is a mystery. Joy is a very welcome but unexpected guest. Joy is going to surprise you when you didn’t make careful plans for it.

Joy is exaltation. Joy is overwhelming, discombobulating happiness. Joy is emotional and/or spiritual. It isn’t a glutton, a hoarder or a hedonist. It does not appear on the menu. 

Joy is not a voluptuous blouse or a silk tie or an almond chocolate bar. Those might be a pleasure. They might give you satisfaction, even deep satisfaction, but they will not exalt you. Joy is of another order. 

Here’s a goofy listicle hellbent on debasing joy at your expense: “100 Things That Can Bring You Joy.” Among the supposedly joyous activities here are things like Go Shopping, Have More Sex Than Your Friends, Organize Your Bedroom, Eat More Steak, and Make a Gigantic To-do List.

If Starbucks brings you joy every morning, what word are you going to reach for when your underappreciated, much-beloved, deserving daughter against all odds wins an award for bravery? I feel sorry for you if you group these two things in the same category: joy.  

It is exaggeration that cheapens value.

Stalks

The wind is torn.

In the field behind my house, flowers not on stems but stalks.

As a child driving at night with my parents and uncle, so foggy my uncle threatened to get out and walk, and threw the door open on the highway.

Why has ‘debauch’ been usurped by ‘debauchery?’ ‘Debauch’ being one instance?

Most people have to invent their own pain, but I lived not far from the factory.

Some cut flowers can be revived by submerging in cool water. Warm makes the wilt worse.

As a child I was a fervent devotee of prayer. I had a looming divorce to pray against, and dreaded going to bed, knowing how long it was going to take to bless everyone I loved, or who deserved my love.

A horse is prized for beauty and strength, and to hell with its inner qualities.

“Children go through divorce in single file,” said Judith Wallerstein. It doesn’t matter if their friends got there first.

A gentleman is not an implement, Confucius said.

And the flophouse is no place for a lady.

Damage to a person

Coming home on Thursday the subway driver said we’d be delayed by what German rail jargon calls “Personenschaden,” which literally means “damage to a person” and really means a suicide on the tracks. The subway pulled slowly into the station and my car drew up alongside the man, who lay directly below my window. He was alive. You could tell because his lips moved and paramedics were caring for him. There was a little blood coming from his head but otherwise you couldn’t make out an injury. Some passengers gasped.

We stood there for 10 minutes since traffic was a mess. I was glad I’d seen him. It was of course terrible but not in a graphic way. I’d rather have seen him than be in the next car and just see everyone staring curiously out the window. And though I had my new iPhone in my hand 1) I refrained from taking a picture, and so did everyone else. 2) I decided not to cancel my annual donation to the paramedics association, which I’ve been considering. 3) I hoped that he would live and that whatever pain brought him there would abate, and that someday he’d be 79 and glad to be alive. 

A church I have sat in

I recently had two poems in Sundog Lit, a journal that tastes good and is good for you.

The first poem, “Whittler,” is a poem I was particularly fond of when I wrote it, and I was disappointed after the first rejections came in. A Sundog editor asked me to change a clumsy stanza with a semi-colon like a door stop. And he was right. 

I wrote the second poem, “Flush Sky,” for a project with the Found Poetry Review. The idea was to take a text and replace some recurring words with alternatives. I took a text called “English Speakers, You Stink at Identifying Smells.” I switched ‘smell’ for ‘cloud,’ ‘speaker’ for ‘sleeper,’ and a couple other more minor words, then choose different passages and changed the order, but without adding anything that didn’t otherwise appear in the original text. 

These pencils were made by the Finnish artist Jonna Pohjalainen.

The monstrously long week

Listened to: Titled by Arto Lindsay, my new favorite song
Read: Dusk Litany (what is better than a good short poem?)

Ate: Cheeseburger, grilled tuna, cake, broccoli, cookies
Drank: Juice with disgusting iodine/iron supplement poured in

Outside: Heat, sunshine, pollen
Inside: Chores & tasks 

Yeah: Wore a blouse that I have hardly worn at all, making me feel better about the money I spent on it 10 years ago
Nay: 149 euro t-shirt, 27 euro body lotion 

Cursed: The moment I was ready to submit a poem & realized the title sucked
Learned: ‘Monstrous’ means large as much as it means monster-like

Visited: Frankfurt cemetery, Germany’s biggest
Dreamed: I was in prison for a minor offense. I was sentenced to a year but escaped to see my mother. I fled in the dark in uncomfortable shoes. I got to her house. I was changing into Birkenstocks & knew I had to return to prison or get more time but as I was making to return two Chinese ladies came in. They were prison reps come to apprehend me & although my story made them cry they took me back.

Made: Meatballs
Discarded: More moth-nibbled clothes

Word of the week: Purview

Pithiness: Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle. - Lichtenberg

Jewels and Binoculars (week 21)

Listened to: I’ll Keep It With Mine, one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs, in honor of his birthday

Watched: This spoof on women fending off compliments

Inside: Dog hair city
Outside: That time of year when the wisteria rhymes with hysteria

Read: Wislawa Szymborska’s “The Kindness of the Blind”
Wrote: Lots of “(noun) of (noun)” phrases

Ate: Rucola with feta, pine nuts and potatoes
Drank: Italian red 

Yeah: Galleys for upcoming poem in Bird’s Thumb 

Nay: sports fandom and “patriotism” that depends on war glory

Discussed: Handwriting. Writing a letter by hand nowadays is like walking instead of driving a car. Everyone looks at you like you’re weird, or at least that’s how you feel.
Decided: I should get a full-length manuscript together, just lazy and insecure.

Missed: My parents
Acquired: Birthday presents for the kids

Cursed: Housework
Learned: There’s a swath of grey hair under the top layer of my hair. I found it at the hairdresser's. I thought it was (undissolved) mousse. 

Word of the week: Ampule, which sound electric but is filled with liquid

Pithiness: If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough. ― Meister Eckhart

Last week

Listened to: Vogliatemi Bene, Un Bene Piccolino (Madame B)
Read: Paul Hostovsky’s poem “Man Praying in a Men’s Room”

Saw: Photography Forum exhibition ‘Augen auf!’
Watched: Dressed to Kill with Michael Caine & Angie Dickinson (Brian De Palma) 

Laughed: The End of the World news bit
Cursed: Long, unproductive conversations 

Nay: Overcrowded yoga class
Yeah: Poem accepted by Gravel Magazine

Acquired: It was a low-spend week. I bought a magazine.
Discarded: Uneaten food gone bad

Visited: The mountains
Learned: Most refrigerators are set at too low a temperature to keep meat until its ‘best by’ date

Ate: Blueberry pie
Drank: Coffee, coffee, coffee 

Word of the week: Small, as noun (the small of the back, the small of the valley, would you like to try a small)
Pithiness: Language most shows a man: Speak, that I may see thee. - Ben Jonson

die Taube

One regret I have about not having been born a man is never being called a gentleman.

On top of regrets about being born.

Marlene Dietrich said of Meryl Streep: ‘In the old days such an ugly person would have played the maid, or not even have gotten a screen test.’

Everyone lives under an assumed name.

The character was described as having “abominable teeth,” which I misread as “abdominal teeth.”

In German the pigeon and the dove are the same thing, die Taube.

When you chose a name for your child, was it a name you once wished for yourself?
 ( luise   gudrun   josefina )

For years after Albert Camus died his car was housed in the garage of a mechanic he’d been friendly with. It was a 1955 Citroen that Camus had named Penelope. 

I told them I didn’t care if he wrote like an angel. An angel wouldn’t write anything I’d want to read.

Everything holds up a mirror, while the mirror holds up a door.

‘Comme tout le monde je m’appelle Erik Satie.’ - Erik Satie

The week that was

On a 1-10 scale, the past week gets a weak 5. No one died or anything. Nor did a tree fall on my car, but I don’t drive. The week didn’t win an award for leading actress, or screenplay, or original score. And I banged my elbow. 

Listened to: Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro
Reading: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust

Saw: Birdman. I wasn’t crazy about it. And the popcorn sucked. 

Learned: To properly pronounce sangfroid 

Laughed: My own joke at work, which involved an English nursery rhyme peppered with German. That’s how desperate I was for humor.
Cursed: Being 5 minutes late for yoga, meaning I was locked out.

Failed: The moths are back.
Succeeded: Drafted a poem; received an acceptance

Regretted: My desk calendar. Every day there’s a new photo, and 55% of the time it seems to be a selfie, and god knows we’ve had enough of that.
Dreamed: My father was taking a bath in a shed in a rural setting. He got all contorted and was shouting for help. Luisa and I were nearby but I said he was just making noise and didn’t need help but Luisa went and helped him get out of the tub, exasperated with me.

Acquired: A rose-scented candle
Discarded: A purple poncho

Ate: Risotto Milanese
Ingested: A mouthful of exhaust smoke

Word of the week: Flummox, a well-built verb with an unconventional ending. 

Pithiness: "We spend our time envying people we wouldn’t like to be." - Jean Rostand

Pages flush with fish and obscure instruments

The text of the poem is here.

New year's misreadings

Lately instead of doing upper-body or lower-body I just do full-body stench workouts.
(strength)

It’s a grueling procedure, so prepare for preposterous care at home.
(post-operative)

The app makes photo mortgages of your face and much more.
(montage)

The room had a sort of underwear light.
(underwater)

We are in the midst of disgusting an entire library.
(digitising)

It’s the thought that gonuts.
(counts)

Perhaps when you ejaculate everything, you’ll see you’re wealthier than us.
(calculate)

Get out your handkerchiefs

This week I continued to struggle with sitting down to write. I waste much time, and I’m uninspired. I fritter away. I vacuum dog hair. I check my mail. I loiter at work. Do I have lipstick on my teeth?

It snowed a little one evening, fat damp flakes that came only to wave their handkerchiefs. Snow you know won’t last makes me want to break into a construction site and smoke cigarettes under the floodlights.

In keeping a dream journal, I notice that trying to recall a dream later in the day is like trying to remember what I charged to my credit card over the course a month, i.e. near impossible. In the dreams I’ve written down I am invariably dowdy and middle-aged. I dote on my son. I command small police squadrons. 

One thing I remember charging is this pillowcase with pussy willows & three oranges. It’s now warming up a place on the couch. 

The word of the week was integrity, which is a word I use more and more to talk about physical things. Today it was the Christmas tree, which was too tall for the living room. My husband said he would lop off the top and I said it’s important to preserve the tree’s integrity. I don’t even know if I’m driving it quite right but I am at the wheel. 

A week of limited daylight

Read: Walter Benjamin radio broadcast on dogs. I enjoyed the stories, but objected to how Linneas’ description takes the male as the norm and sets the female aside as a special category of dog.  

Listened to: Sharkey’s Day

Laughed:  Loud eating in the library

Learned: Pigeons, through a genetic glitch, can breed all year round.

Failed: Photography. I need to photograph a stationary, outdoor object for a piece I wrote and I can’t seem to get it right. Limited daylight has not helped.

Triumphed: Guided two well-coiffed Swiss ladies from the Hauptbahnhof to the Chrismas market via the UBahn 

Watched: A typeface video using part of Borges’ poem “Break of Day” (below)

Observed: It is too warm for December. 

Started: Keeping a dream journal

Dreamed: (Dec. 7) "I wanted to become a detective in a seaside town, and as part of the application I had to write a poem. As a prelude, the police department required I sleep with a young man, then write the poem. I was anxious about this, also because I’m married. I had to really consider how much I wanted to be a detective. I was worried the poem would be worse than the sex. I was worried the sex would be worse than the poem. The police department was populated by nicely dressed middle-aged people, polite, but not particularly sympathetic. They did not look like poets."

Discarded: A scarf I never wore. Threw it away once before, then rescued it. For real this time. 

Acquired: A tablecloth. This may seem trivial, but since our kitchen tablecloths serve anywhere from one to three years, it’s revolutionary. 

Received: A Pushcart nomination for my poem “Smoking Jacket” 

Ate: Braised carrots with honey and thyme

Drank: Glühwein without alcohol, though I’m not sure how that’s possible

Visited: Drawn by the children’s books in the window, the bookstore Weltenleser

Realized: No matter how many ads you ‘hide’ on FB, there are more. 

Word of the week: Skirmish. A quirky-sounding word related to scrimmage, probably from old German skirmen, to defend. 

Pithiness of the week: Tradition is the most sublime form of necrophilia. - Hans Kudszus

Montserrat from Fernando Lazzari on Vimeo.

Two minutes of morning

Going to the UBahn I walk through a small park, too small really to earn the term, it’s more of a pathway with a bench or two, tall trees and what was once a sandbox, which nonetheless offers two minutes of relief from the apartment blocks and monotone of sky. I would call it a glade because of glide and because it’s leafy and keeps a cool temperature, but a glade, if I am not mistaken, intersects a thicker wood and is neither manmade nor even man-fashioned.

Along the walkway leaves have fallen in such a way that they resemble - also because sometimes they are in the midst of tumbling - sunbeams or patches of sunlight on the ground, and when I am close enough to apprehend what they are it’s both a disappointment and a consolation, a let-down because my expectations are dashed, and a consolation because they’re just as luminous as sunshine, and I have been beautifully fooled.

This morning amid the damp ambient of leaves and mud and cobblestone I see my new boots come slicing, the flat heels so comfortable I’d like launch into a run. I think of the saying “fit like a glove” which amuses because we’re talking shoes, and the German word for glove is ‘Handschuh,’ i.e. “hand shoe,” and somehow an item got mashed on backwards in translation, and it’s frosty and I don’t have gloves. 

When I’m walking in the cold thinking of running I remember the essential thing is to breathe. Have I mentioned how my face is falling apart?

Inhale, exhale.

Or had I rather say collapsing? The lengths, breadths and heights of it?

In, hale. Ex, hale. 

For months I have been considering a chin tuck. 

Inhale.

Abstractedly and noncommittally, now running past houses.

Exhale.

Desuetude

Reading: Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
Listened to: Le Tourbillon by jeanne moreau

Laughed: Bible Verses Where The Word “Philistines” Has Been Replaced With “Haters”
Learned: “Humility” and “humiliation” come from Latin “humus,” aka dirt. 

Failed: Went to the Christmas Market, but it wasn’t open.
Triumphed: My chapbook “Heiress to a Small Ruin” was accepted by DGP and will be published next winter. I almost didn’t send it in. 

Dreamed: of an encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness
Realized: Sugar drenches everything

Watched: Memento, a poorly executed psycho thriller
Observed: The introverts seem to have stopped talking about how introverted they are. 

Discarded: indecipherable German snail mail
Received: Dogfight at the Pentagon from a colleague 

Ate: Falafel
Drank: Chai tea, coffee, wine, sparkling water 

Bought: very little
Did without: very little

Pithiness of the week: "There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us." FH Bradley 

Word of the week: Desuetude
“Even when she had to give an armchair, silverware, a walking stick, she looked for ‘old’ ones, as though, now that long desuetude had effaced their character of usefulness, they would appear more disposed to tell us about the life of people of other times than to serve the needs of our own life.” (Swann's Way)

Not to Decide

The minute and a half waiting for the tram, pondering whether or not it’s raining enough to warrant opening my umbrella.

The raindrops are large but there are not many of them.

I think of the word ponder, which has a pond in it, and those four rounded letters take up more space than most on a line. (Except w.) You may only write the word so many times before exhausting the line.

The segment swollen like these aimless raindrops, which sometimes miss anyway. Most of the time they miss. 

They are large but there are not many of them, and an umbrella is such a bother.

Russian Stepmother

Contained heroin is a guide to the world’s unusual produce items.
(herein)

Made with calculus extract
(cactus)

European banks sign loans to Russian Stepmother
(steelmaker)

Looking forward to having the family here for a cerebral palsy St Patrick’s Day Guinness.
(celebratory)

To the culturally urinated, working abroad can be a puzzle.
(uninitiated)

The disgust on the corner is open all night.
(druggist)

The jury began deliberations after two hours of closing arguments in a much-watered trial.
(watched)

Some people use aspergers to shorten texts.
(ampersands)

The 3 Degrees

big
large
sizable

substantial
considerable
jumbo

vast
immense
massive

huge
tremendous
giant 

enormous
mammoth

immeasurable
gigantic 

gargantuan

humongous
colossal

Pebble arrangement

Read: Heat Wave by Penelope Lively. #excellent

Watched: Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon). #great

Discarded: A blouse I loved but didn’t suit me. I would have continued to let it hang in the closet as if I might someday wear it, but apparently I wore it enough to get a stain on it. Saved the buttons and threw it away. 

Received: A letter from Sardegna with a small seashell from my Italian daughter. 

Bought: Painterly pillowcase.

Did without: Went to IKEA to get a new rug for under the dining room table, and decided I didn’t need a rug under the dining room table. 

Dreamed: I was 20 and decided to abandon Europe to go to college in Tennessee.

Visited: Took a walk through Frankfurt Cemetery in the pouring rain in honor of the birthday of Arthur Schopenhauer, who’s buried there. 

Failed: Stress galore. 

Triumphed: Moths ate my husband’s sweaters. 5 points for window screen advocates. 

Ate: Raspberries, chicken soup, fontina, toast, chocolate-covered almonds.

Drank: Spinach & cabbage juice.

Word of the week: Mosaic. That's what I wanted to tell the tour guide who talked about "the interesting pebble arrangement." But I didn't. 

Pithiness of the week: The art of not reading is extremely important. It consists in our not taking up whatever happens to be occupying the larger public at the time. - Schopenhauer