Pet shop

long day. after work I dropped in to buy something for stella at the pet shop but the line was long and the lady at the front had many jackrabbit questions so i ducked back to watch the mice trot the wheel, and to stand in front of the aquarium wall for a while, communing with the fishes, and the fish despite their very unpresumptuousness all had long german names, like Schneckenbarsch, and their eyes caught the lamplight, and they swam slow, wondering, teeming, and it was the best thing that ever happened.

Lodgings to remember

A tidy room in the soot and collapsing labyrinth of Naples where I sang “On the Street Where You Live” in the marble bathroom because I was infatuated.

A powdery flowery hotel room in Paris with two double beds and a TV on the bureau where my friend Carle and I watched Saddam Hussein crawl out of his hole.

The Silver Saddle motel in Santa Fe where I stayed twice - first on my maiden voyage to NM where I met a rancher from Telluride who asked to come in, and second with my friend Amy on a road trip from eastern Kansas to Taos.

The Hotel Manin in Milan where I lived with my husband and two toddlers for six weeks in utter misery while we looked for permanent quarters.

Stranded in Japan in the smallest room imaginable where you could touch the opposite walls with your arms outstretched and the only place to keep your suitcase was with you on the bed.

In Vienna in an attic room of the Hotel Regina, a dim room like a maid’s quarters with a slanted roof but very pleasant in the grey rain all quilted and muffled and far away.

The beautiful Hotel Bad Schachen on Lake Constance where I was for work, unfortunately. I attempted writing a poem, which failed, and didn’t try again for more than 10 years. 

The Beijing dormitory I had to walk 3-4 miles to get to in the bitter cold in shoes too small in a relationship of unreciprocated love which my superhuman efforts failed to change. 

The Presidential Suite of the Watergate Hotel where due to a hotel flub we were upgraded to expansive living quarters and a panoramic view and what struck me most at the time (I was 11 or 12) was the phone installed next to the toilet. 

A motel on the Canadian border on the way to Montreal where I stayed with a boyfriend I didn’t love anymore and indeed he too appeared very weary.

Get your kicks on Autobahn 6

Saxony was a surprisingly interesting place to visit. We stayed in an area called “Saxon Switzerland,” which is hilly and full of impressive rock structures, as well as the Elbe river, which famously flooded ten years ago. We saw some great sites I didn’t know existed, including the Bastei and the Königstein Fortress.

I cock an eyebrow whenever someplace claims the fame of another, e.g. “the Florence of the north” (Dresden), or “Little Venice” (London has one, so does Sweden, not to mention the cities of Treviso, Chiogga, Vrobska, etc.), or the personally painful “Mainhattan,” the New York-wannabe nickname for Frankfurt (am Main). It’s lame to rely on resemblance to make a place sound worthwhile. Without exception, the area making the claim is not going to measure up. 

Why the area we visited is called Saxon Switzerland I do not know, and not to ruin the experience I will not inquire further. I’ve been to Switzerland. It’s mountainous! Stunning! Expensive! And riddled with kitsch.

Homebodies

Having happily made it to Saxony, largely offline, I missed the chance to say my chapbook, "Homebodies," was out at the very moment it happened.

Yup, it's out, and at $5 very inexpensive for 20-something poems, including 'Steam' and 'Ambien,' and prose poems about wines, teas and Monopoly tokens. There is also a ghazal and a homage to Francis Ponge.

I consider myself a homebody, something I was convinced of again today when I returned from a short vacation and was relieved to find I had not been robbed of my books or computer or silverware! Like police homicide outlines, all the crap I left on the floor was just where I left it, and the papers lying around because I don't know where they should go were still lying around, thank God. 

Anyway, the little totems and other subjects of this chapbook revolve around the home, whether it's a horror of a toothbrush standing up in its cup, or the transformation promised by the toaster. You can order it here from Hyacinth Girl Press.

The cover art is by a Chattanooga-based collagist named Hollie Chastain. 

vacation bookbag

People Are Tiny in Pictures of China - Cynthia Arrieu-King
Selected Poems - WS Merwin
The Ninth Life of Louis Drax - Liz Jensen
The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
Charles Dickens - Jane Smiley
What Narcissism Means to Me - Tony Hoagland
Atlantis - Mark Doty
Foe - JM Coetzee
The Wind Blows through the Doors of my Heart - Deborah Digges
One Hundred Poems from the Chinese - Kenneth Rexroth (ed.)

Elastic language

Who knows if we’ll make it to Dresden. First Carlo broke his arm, so he can’t drive. Then one of the friends we’re going with offered to drive our car. Then the doctor wanted Carlo to stick around for physical therapy, which he was able to delay. Then our car ended up unrepaired in a locked lot after the mechanic came home to find his wife dead, and himself, not unexpectedly, incapacitated. 

Will we, in 2-3 days time, get our car repaired? Or will we pay for a vacation rental we never see? I’m considering asking the hospital to induce me into a coma for a week instead. I might come out more refreshed. 

On the upside, I have some dynamic poems out today in the new issue of Glasschord. Dynamic because that’s the theme of the issue, and submissions were in some way supposed to embody “dynamics.” I have a prose poem about the piano called Counterpoint, and two poems about the imaginary typefaces Cascade and Abbing. The poems are going places, even if I’m not.

If you are a writer or artist, check out the themes of Glasschord’s upcoming issues - funk, for example, and commerce. The thing about themes is thinking “outside the box.” Still, the guidelines leave plenty of room: 

FUNK 1) a style of music perfected by James Brown 2) a dejected or fearful mood 3) a musty, overwhelming odor of organic origin 4) that sweet that nasty that gushy stuff

Dog days

It was a slow week. My husband broke his arm. I struggled like an ox with a poem. At about 91F on Friday, we had the hottest day of the year, alleviated by rain. Germany's circumcision debate continued to brew, the Olympics started, and my daughter returned from a camping trip in the south of France.

Yesterday I won the GoodReads poetry contest with Dictionary Illustrations. Every month the site's largest poetry group holds a contest that gets about 200 entries. This was the seventh time I entered and the fourth time I won (over about 4 years). I thought I'd had this poem up on the blog before, but I guess I only posted about it. The seed of it is here. It's also in Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair.

Dictionary Illustrations 

Searching for a word I set off
browsing the dictionary illustrations,
pages flush with fish

and obscure instruments and myriad
breeds of duck, which, colorless,
end up looking much the same.

These artists don’t dawdle
amongst the obvious; they illuminate
the oriel window; they trace

the lobate foot of the grebe.
The reindeer appears tame and boxy
on paper, gigantic antlers bearing

the weight of reincarnation.
On page 1291, drawings disambiguate
the difference between paly

and paly-bendy, two patterns of heraldry:
think roadblock versus barbershop, TV
off-air image versus LSD.

They don’t do verbs in dictionary pictures,
so for zip here’s an inch-wide depiction
of two men intent on fencing.

In one two-page arrangement,
the seahorse floats peacefully beyond
the reach of the scythe. Pen-and-ink

sketches break the columns up
like little windows opening
from one side of the brain

to the other. Tiptoe through, and pay
attention to the shapes of leaves,
which can be hard to describe.

Sleepless Fragments

At two, I trace the lamp from base to switch, 

wide awake, circling an urge for hours. 

Like holding a telescope to the bones – 

the cat’s purr, gurgling a dirge for hours. 

To revive the blooms of cut hydrangeas, 

lay them in cool water, submerge for hours.

Reaching the undulating area

I am vaguely afraid of revolving doors. Especially the automatic ones, like those at my office, make me uneasy, since they are out of my control. If I must enter them while they’re in motion, I can’t help but think of joining a game of jumprope. Two people stand at each end, turning the rope, and you have to plunge in, and overcome the fear of getting thwacked. 

Or better, I think of swimming in the ocean. Some people just throw themselves in without worrying. But when the surf is churning, some stand at the edge and calculate when to enter. You don’t want to get stuck at the shoreline when a big wave comes plowing in. You need energy and good timing to make it out past the crashy part, with its shells and stones, to the undulating area. Once in, it’s fun, the peril abates, until it's time to get back out.

There's a word for the fear of waves and wave-like motion: kymophobia. 

Thx to Shannon Rankin for the collage image

Tearjerky

I finished Little Dorrit. It took me over a month, but it is long, and I had a couple projects going. It never struck me as one of Dickens’ most famous, and I was thinking it might be so-so, but it was wonderful. Everything you want from Dickens - humor, well-drawn settings, colorful characters, orphans, villians, penalties to the bad and rewards to the deserving. And, man, there is a lot of deserving going on. I cried all over it.

To my surprise, Time Magazine rated Little Dorrit as Dickens’ 3rd best book. I don’t know the judge’s credentials, but I am glad to see there are some on the list I’ve yet to read. Before I’d ever read Dickens my favorite was Oliver Twist because of the 1968 movie, which I saw as a small child and adored. It surprised me that the book is only #10. Bleak House, #1, made me roll my eyes occasionally, but I read it in 2000, a year I spent in a very bad mood. Great Expectations, #2, was the first Dickens I ever read (9th grade), and I re-read it some years ago and do think it’s marvelous. I love that Dickens always has some mysterious secret going. Little Dorrit was not an exception.

Here’s the list, and the order. 1) Bleak House 2) Great Expectations 3) Little Dorrit 4) David Copperfield 5) Our Mutual Friend 6) A Tale of Two Cities 7) The Pickwick Papers 8) Hard Times 9) Dombey and Son 10) Oliver Twist.

swords & dagrrrls

The earth is not round; it is a geoid, larger around the equator than from pole to pole. As it should be.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance, said Socrates. 

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes, said Czeslaw Milosz. 

Your ignorance is more scandalous than my promiscuity, said the Riot Grrrls. 

In the morning, for what it’s worth, I open my eyes.

The sword looks foolish beside the dagger. 

Asymmetry, too, has its own gorgeous order. 

(Not writing, but typing.)

Long stretches, and short

Study links cat litter box to increased suicide risk
Study links dust to glacial melting

Study links low IQ to racism, right-wing beliefs
Study links juvenile arthritis to pet store dogs

Study links motivation to finger length
Study links Hitler's genocidal tendencies to playing violent board games

Study links owning a dog to feminine appeal
Study links narcissism and Facebook activity

Study links bestiality to penile cancer
Study links flowers to increased productivity

Study links night shift to breast cancer risk
Study links flaming water to fracking

Study links masturbation to prostrate cancer
Study links rural suicides in China to stress

Study links hair relaxer to early puberty in girls
Study links smoking to hot flashes

The Cape

The wind is my little cape,

all smoke-ring theatrical. 

The cape is my wing, 

steering me onto 4th street, 

into weekends and kiosks. 

Once the clasp’s fastened, 

it’s a small leap to the catwalk, 

the bullfight, to knighting 

sidewalks with my footfall, 

or staging Dracula’s black madness. 

Out and about in it, shop windows 

reveal my inner magician. 

My cape is not much to look at. 

Some don’t even see it. 

I wear it walking 

to my day job, and when 

moonlighting as me. 

june '74

Why is the owl & pussycat's boat pea-green? Is it made of bamboo? Has moss grown on it?

What is a bong tree? Is it in the south pacific? Is it gong-like, or hollow like a hookah? 

Why honey? With what? 

If there’s plenty of money, why offer the piggy-wig just a shilling for the ring? There seems little else to spend it on.

Why did they sail for a year and a day, or 366 days? Is it because even numbers are more harmonious?

With the delightful picture of marriage portrayed in the owl and pussycat, why did Edward Lear never marry? Is it because he entertained a number of pet peeves, including noise, gaiety, and hens? "When I go to heaven, if indeed I go -and am surrounded by thousands of polite angels- I shall say courteously, 'please leave me alone.'"

sex, death

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

* 

I think of menopause as the end of biological usefulness. The dizzy faltering, the ache, the everything. 

* 

Cesar Vallejo expected to die on a Thursday, as he wrote in one of his poems. But he died on a Friday, Good Friday, “aching without explanation.” 

* 

Every year when my kids’ birthdays arrive I remember the German word for placenta is “Mutterkuchen,” literally ’mother cake.’ 

* 

If I were a man, my pants would be waiting for me when I woke up. Right where I left them. Rumpled on the floor. 

Forming a church. Maybe a steeple. 

*

My mother finds it a tragedy when a man goes bald. She never fails to comment - ‘Oh him, he went bald.’ An old boyfriend of mine, a client at her firm, has not escaped this fate, she tells me. Rather, she whispers it to me, as if I were in on a joke.

from the Varieties of Pain long list

in the right hands, the harmonica
in the wrong hands, the harmonica

Trove

Reading this book is like being waterboarded with truffle oil.

Reading this book is like seeing the ripples widen after a stone of great consequence has been cast into the waters of history.

Reading this book is like watching a bunch of self-absorbed narcissists trying to talk over each other about who the biggest drama queen of them all is.

Reading this book is like receiving a shamanic healing limpia over and over again.

Reading this book is like sitting down to a big round table full of the best food you ever put in your mouth.

Reading this book is like opening a folding table after closing a door.

Reading this book is like switching from a fuzzy, black and white television screen to a full color, HD portrayal of Jesus.

Reading this book is like eating good bonefish.

Reading this book is like listening to a personal CD, a compilation of songs (singing drives away sorrow, as they say in Spain), with music by the Ronettes.

Reading this book is like sipping hot cider in front of a crackling potbellied stove.

Reading this book is like watching a three-dimensional person gradually unfurl from a mouldy seed, almost the personal equivalent of the Big Bang.

Reading this book is like reading all 320 books that Dayna has read.

Reading this book is like witnessing a debate with the resolution that reads: Be it resolved, that men are descendants of monkeys.

Reading this book is like meeting each animal and getting the chance to ask them your most pressing questions.

Reading this book is like shaving with a cheese grater.

Reading this book is like traveling to an older culture and going to a village where women are not wearing miniskirts, for example.

Sunday arrives

I slept like shit, but so it goes. At least it is Sunday, and my blackberry is kaputt. I am the featured poet in the new issue of Avatar Review, meaning I’ve got a boatload of poems over there, and even videos. I wish I could make a video I didn’t have to be in, but I am not that learned yet. 

A couple days ago I had another poem, a fragment, up at Utter, a new online magazine. It looks good, so give them a try if you’ve got wares to peddle. My fragment is named ‘Grace,’ appropriate for Sunday.  

Also inside me it is Sunday, the last day of the week or the first, depending on whose calendar you look at. Vague and blurred blue. I went back to the cemetery to read but first spent 15 minutes peeling moss off someone’s grave: Gustav Horwarth, 1905-1986. Didn’t fall in either war. Nice little plot he had, and his rent paid.

the dickens

Reading Little Dorrit is like having your own portable fireplace to cozy up to. It’s also huge, like a log or a brick. At 1,000 pages, if you set it on fire, it would burn for a long time. But I don’t mean it that way. I mean reading Little Dorrit makes you want to take off your shoes, don your housecoat and lean way the hell over the open pages, soaking up all that homey tenderness.

Reading Little Dorrit is like suffering the ritual of birthday cake. It’s also enormous like cake is enormous, heavy and sticky like children’s fingers. But with the ritual I mean watching the cake float towards you in the dark, luminous with spindly candles. You want to lean way the hell over it and, soaking up the glow, make your best wish, blow, and collapse into all that icing. 

Reading Little Dorrit is like being dragged off by your parents to a revival festival teeming with tents and strange people. By dragged I mean you used to like going but now think you’re too old for it. You wander around -it’s on the edge of a forest- and you like the smell of the pines and campfires but you stick to the parking lot where some other characters share their six-packs, and there’s a puddle of rain and spew and you lean way the hell over it and see your reflection.

Oratory

You think of a mouth as lips and tongue but it is just a vacant piece of real estate. You notice when the police talk about finding the body parts of some poor victim or other strewn about town they never mention finding the mouth.

If someone tells you that you have a dirty mouth don’t believe it. They need to be more specific. 

When it came to washing kids’ mouths out with soap, my nana’s choice was Ivory. ‘So clean it floats.’

She also liked to say, “He’s got a mouth on him.” But whose? His own mouth turned in. 

Orajel. Orafix. Orifice. 

The Chinese word for mouth is “kou,” which looks like a lopsided box. The German word for mouth is “Mund,” which I occasionally mispronounce as “Mond,” or “moon.” 

Shut your moon, for god's sake.

We 2 kings

May & June are peppered with Catholic holidays, and today was one. Bang Thursday and no work. I decided to take a walk and couldn’t think of a good park so I went down the road to the cemetery. It’s the best possible park, huge and fabulous with trees. Sometimes a person goes by; most of the time not. I chose a bench among the many insects and birdsong and sat reading for over an hour: Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, which says in section 404 -

To wrap the world around our fingers, like a thread or ribbon which a woman twiddles while daydreaming at the window...
Everything comes down to our trying to feel tedium in such a way that it doesn’t hurt.
It would be interesting to be two kings at the same time: not the one soul of them both, but two distinct, kingly beings. 

To be honest, though, I was on a relatively open path, and worse, I was looking at the back of headstones, and I hate that. It’s like sitting in a restaurant with your back toward the door. If you’ve ever seen a mafia movie you know that is a mistake. So I set out for a more sheltered bench and switched to Little Dorrit, in which Mr Clennam asks, 

“The name of Mr Tite Barnacle has been mentioned to me as representing some highly influential interest among (Dorrit’s) creditors. Am I correctly informed?”
It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr Barnacle said, “Possibly.” 

This was the funniest passage so far, not least because of that name. And so, though I am not truly able to be two kings at once, reading two good books on one afternoon in pleasant weather did give me the feeling I could be two distinct, kingly beings, both, at the same time.

3 good things

First, my poem “Everything is Taking Entirely Too Long” went up at the Coachella Review. I didn’t know the issue had been up for some days already, and when I went to check today, there it was. I wrote the poem last year in a hotel in New York, and remembering being there makes me as happy as having it published.

Second, I subscribed to Court Green and got my first issue, with its dossier of short poems. Love! Especially good are the poems by Elise Cowen, whom I’d never heard of, maybe because she killed herself before she was 30 and before I was born. Tony Trigilio is putting together a book of what little survived of her poems, set for 2014 publication. 

Third, soccer season is coming up and my colleague asked if I’d bring in some books to get her through since her family is into it but she is not. Suddenly I am the book dictator. I like that. I made a little pile to start with: Waiting by Ha Jin, A Pale View of the Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro, John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins, Stoner by John Williams, Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, and some non-fiction.

Jealous of her, about to read some excellent books. Though I can't complain, being well into Little Dorrit myself. Little Dorrit's given name was Amy, in case you are asked. 

Much ado

Here’s a question that always fills me with dread: “Don’t we know each other from somewhere?”

Whenever I hear this, I expect a fleet of black-robed judges to spring from the wings, because surely this person recognizes me from my axe-murderer days, or my erstwhile job as a pole dancer, or saw me that time I threw up eggs and whiskey outside my house. 

Ok, it has yet to turn out so badly. But I was in a store the other day in my never-ending search for a decent white t-shirt, and the sales person asked me, “Kennen wir uns nicht?,” which of course means, “Don’t we know each other?,” which for me usually means, "I really hope not." 

You know, another difficult thing about this situation is, say we did know each other once and have no contact anymore - well there must be a reason for that, even if it’s not because we got drunk and slept together 20 years ago and you or maybe even I never called back.... 

Anyway, on the note of sleeping dogs and difficult goodbyes, here’s a funny typo I saw today: “without further adieu.”

head case

When I see a box the first thing I think of is putting something in there, namely my head. Because it’s safe inside: there’s no news, nothing is broken, no cars or wayward pedestrians. And the intimacy makes me forget my loneliness.

Lost of things come in boxes. Appliances do, and jewelry if it’s properly packaged, and board games, all of which got their start inside someone’s head. 

You know how Emily Dickinson said she knew a poem was good when it seemed to take off the top of her head? For the same effect, just put your head in a box - no permanent damage. 

You don’t have to dress up to do it. You don’t have to comb your hair or brush your teeth, although you should brush your teeth. In all cases, it’s good to have fresh breath, especially inside a box. So I take that back. 

I like the neat quad-ness of boxes. Four walls, four winds, the four noble truths, the four horses of the apocalypse, the Beatles. 

Putting your head in a box isn’t as dangerous as sticking it in an oven, or into a shaft that spits rocks at you and dirt, or a pipe that might be a tight fit. I saw a kid once who got his head stuck between the posts of a balcony, and for all I know he’s still there.

Sognidhia

I've written a series of poems about typefaces, all of which are imaginary (the typefaces, not the poems).  It occurred to me to write these after I'd read a number of books that had "Notes on the Type" at the end,  notes which in some cases seemed longer than the author's own biography.

Tangent: Though I guess if it's in his/her own book, it's actually an autobiography, written in the third person. Something to think about next time you're asked for a 50-word (auto)bio.

Anyway, two of my typeface poems were published today at Used Furniture Review. They concern 'Sognidhia' and 'Dardont Modern.' I hope you'll try them.

circumlocution office

For the past two weeks or so all I've been able to think about is that I haven't yet read Little Dorrit. I tried to ignore it, but the inner reprimand/promise became insistent. It's got an orphan in it, I understand, and I love stories with orphans.

So I went to the downtown bookshop that has a good English selection and what did I see? A display of Charles Dickens books with bold, inviting covers - a classic dominating typeface dwarfing some poor cartoon-like character.

But of course the relatively obscure Dickens title, if anything by Dickens can be obscure, Little Dorrit, was not among the titles Vintage is publishing with the new covers, and the woman at the bookstore, who looked it up for me, said it looks like there's no plan to do so. Dang, I have read, and own, all these. So I left with my generic Penguin Little Dorrit, and it goddamned better be good.

the woolen crypt

Madrid. If you’d asked me a day ago if I’d ever set foot in the city, I would have said no. But yesterday I was having dinner in a pseudo-tapas restaurant that served Schnitzel and potato soup with wurst, and I remembered Madrid. I could barely recall why I went, or why I spent only one night. But there I was, out alone at 10 pm or so on a terribly busy square, dark and staircased, teeming with families. As the mother of small children at the time, I could only think it was a school night, and how would these children wake up on time. What a world, I thought, take me back to my cobblestones and mittens and punctual bedtimes. The memory was so vague I was almost afraid of it. But it came back. There were people waiting for me in a restaurant. I had a place to stay. It was the year Tom Jones had a comeback hit. Maybe that’s why I was blocking it.

In the less distant past, which I’ve barely had the opportunity to forget, a lot less exotic and mysterious things happened. There was, for example, a supposed tapas restaurant that served Schnitzel, and herring. Still, I do have some poems out concerning plants, birds, sleep and doodling. In honor of control freaks everywhere who like kids to go to bed on time, the Foundling Review has my poem Bonsai. And Curio Poetry published three of my poems, Spinning the Vines (ufos), Snooze Button (utmost reluctance) and Boone Hall (zoning laws). Be sure to read Dan Nielsen’s poems when you’re at Curio. You will be glad.

Song of the day: Sex Bomb

i sing of Olaf

I’ve lived in Germany so long I’m thinking of changing my name to Wolfgang. I like it most because it’s got a wild animal in there, and though you may think it refers to a gang of wolves, “Gang” in English means “gait,” so it is more like “(s)he who walks like a wolf.” Which could practically be a movie.

Not for me Lothar or Uwe or Klaus or Ulrich. As for women’s names, well, there just aren’t any I’m crazy about, except maybe Kunigunde. But the last time a girl was given such a name was around 1230, so it would be difficult to wear comfortably. 

Most people have, at least as children, come up with a name they would have preferred to have. My son, for example, wishes I’d gone with Jack instead of Miles. An acquaintance, whose son’s name is Max, says the boy complains that that’s a dog’s name. 

I have wondered if we give our children the names we would have wanted for ourselves. For me it's not the case. When I chose my daughter’s name, Luisa, it struck me as a dark, sensual name because of the deep /u/, and very feminine. But it was never the case that I said, “I wish my name were Luisa.” And I never would have named my son, or daughter, Wolfgang.

it will not be a pansy heaven

I called my mom. She wasn't home. We'll survive. I sent her a book as a gift that she got in the mail a few days ago. Of course it's one I want to read, too. As for me, my daughter also got me a book, and my son, well, he was completely oblivious, which we will also survive. It worked for me, since I guilted him in taking the dog out although it was my turn. What are mothers for.

Becoming a mother changed my relationship with the whole world. My ability to empathize exploded, as did my concerns about “the future” of just about everything.

Unlike women who say motherhood gave them something to live for, for me having children gave me something to die for. Not only in that I would jump between them and a hail of bullets, but also in that if they were to die, I would want to die, too. This is clear to me every time they ride the rollercoaster. I don’t want to, but when they get on, I get on. Like I'm going to cushion the crash. Sometimes, though, in a glitch of logic, I send their father.

Here's a poem ee cummings wrote for his mother, read in a not entirely serious way and accompanied by some very low-tech effects. Enjoy.

Tonic observations

I do not live in my dream house.
I do not live in my favorite town.
I do not have the job I once imagined in fantasies.
I did not marry my soulmate.
Surely I would hate my soulmate.
In my inner life I tend to come down on the negative side.
And this has done me a lot of good.

Money talks

One day my friend's car battery dried up, so she approached a man in the parking lot to ask if he could jump the battery. She had cables in the trunk. He said yes, but when he opened his hood he said he'd just bought the car and wasn't sure he would do it right. So he went over to two house painters eating lunch in a nearby van, and asked them if they could lend a hand, which they did. When they were done, the first man asked if they wanted to be paid, and they said no, and left. He, however, told my friend that he wanted to be paid for helping her, as he'd worked as an agent. She gave him $10.

There was a lawyer who worked at my friend's office, who specialized in estates. He was very well off and brought a lot of money into the firm but didn't work there long. While he did, once a week he could be seen throwing bags of trash out in the dumpster behind the office. This let him avoid paying for garbage service at his home.

Another lawyer at my friend's office, another successful and wealthy man in his late 40s/early 50s, one day complained to his father that the family had spent more money on his sister's college education, who'd attended an Ivy League school. He calculated that his mother and father had spent $39,000 more on her education than his, as he'd gone to a school with a lower profile. He felt he was owed that money and told his father as much. The father gave it to him. My friend knows this because the father, who frequently drops by the office, whispered it all down for her.

Giveaway

I don't know what happened to this week. Here we are at the end of National Poetry Month, and I only managed to write anything within the last week, like a reluctant IV drip. Because of my trip over the ocean, I also didn't participate in any giveaways and wish I did. So here, with my last opportunity, I'm offering a couple of copies of my chapbooks (=2 altogether) to whoever is interested. Just tell me if you have one or the other and leave your snail mail and I'll choose at random, provided someone answers....

On that topic, Dave Bonta the other day reviewed Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair. Thanks Dave. Elsewhere earlier this month, a poet talked about my Book of Hours Ghazal at her blog. Thanks to her too!

Tomorrow is May Day in Germany, which is labor day, and I look forward now to a long sleep.

Mileage

So where wasn't I? Montana, for one, and also Maine. But I did all the states that start with 'New,' including the southwestern one, and some one-word states, too. What did I learn on my traipse through the states? Mostly that crazy is given way too much air time. And that air time in general, even the supposedly serious talk shows, are against the serious.

On the upside, Americans love to interact. They gladly enter conversation. They stop your daughter on the street to say they like her hair, or lack of it. They ask you where you got your shirt. They call you darling and honey. Sometimes their zeal gets the better of them, as with the man who woke me up on the flight from Albuquerque to Houston to ask if I'd ever flown United. Well intentioned, I am sure. Even headphones could not stop his heart surgery. On another flight, after a guy across from me complained to the stewardess for the fourth time about the way she phrased something(!), the guy behind me told him politely to shut up.

I have been away. So long! I didn't get a chance until now to mention that I have three poems in the spring issue of Menacing Hedge: 'Snow Globe Shepherd,' 'Village' and 'Crepe Paper Body.' Like the label on the bottle in Alice in Wonderland might as well have said, "Read Me."

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.

Tears, who needs them

Cedar smells better than lilies, and does not sicken the audience as it fades.

Camus suffered from tuberculosis for years on end, an ailment compounded by heavy smoking, but a car accident killed him within seconds.

Exercising one's willpower over a bad habit just for the sake of saying so is exchanging one weakness for another.

In the barracks of Russian labor camps, those who had memorized stories were the most prized inmates.

What could ever be objective about choosing between the last names Motherwell and Frankenthaler?

I considered learning Spanish to read Garcia Lorca, but if I pursued that line with consistency I'd also have to learn Portuguese to read Pessoa, Polish to read Szymborska, Serbo-Croatian to read Vasko Popa, Russian to read Akhmatova, etc. etc. und so weiter.

The bulb throwing its dim light down the steps like grey fur.

Misread "abominable teeth" as "abdominal teeth."

spoils

I went to the Strand bookstore yesterday equipped with a notebook page of 55 writers' names - from Samuel Beckett to Marguerite Yourcenar - all from my Good Reads to-read list. For some of them I noted a particular book, but mostly I was going for anything. Due to time constraints, and various family members pursuing me, I made it only to fiction and poetry. 19 of the authors I looked for weren't there; another seven I found and decided against.

I came home with seven books, each the first I've bought by the respective writer. 

1. Wonderful Wonderful Times by Elfriede Jelinek. "It is the late 1950s. A man is walking in a park in Vienna. He will be beaten..." (I would have preferred The Piano Teacher, but they had this and Greed.)

2. The Nervous Filaments by David Dodd Lee. "Imagistic, passionate and uncompromising ... transforms the harsh realities we experience as brutal and permanent into transient informative moments of release." (The volume I wanted.)

3. The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen. "Louis Drax is a boy like no other. He is brilliant and strange, and every year something violent seems to happen to him. On his ninth birthday, Louis goes to a picnic..." (I wanted The Ark Baby, but happy to give this a shot.)

4. Reader's Block by David Markson. "In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind -literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities- the residue of a life's reading, which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth." (I wanted Vanishing Point, but no go.)

5. The Tanners by Robert Walser. "(Walser is) the dreamy, confectionary snowflake of German-language fiction." (I would have taken anything.)

6. The Garden Going On Without Us by Lorna Crozier. The poem 'Onions.' (Exactly the book I wanted.)

7. The Quincunx by Charles Pallier. "A remarkable book ... in mood, color, atmosphere and characters, this is Charles Dickens reincarnated. It is an immersing experience." (The book I wanted.)

from The Catalog of Swallowed Objects

Padlock
Safety pins
Straight pins
Toy opera glasses
A quarter
Radiator key
Buttons
Wool
Wire
Tin steering wheel
Umbrella tips
Nails
Chains
Toy dog
Sticks
Burnt matches
The letter Z
A half-dollar
Beaded crucifix
Toy goat
A medallion that says 'Carry Me for Good Luck'

a book about the man who removed the objects

tiny kingdoms

A tree is considered too huge and unruly to bring indoors, unless you choose the docile bonsai. We have four bonsais in the house, in various stages of surrender. Tending them is an exercise in patience, but also a show of power. We love them because they’re beautiful. We love them because they make us giants.

off we go

We leave for America tomorrow and I have not packed any snacks. Despite airplane food, I have not packed any wheat bread or fishes and I don’t consider it my business to make money exporting the dirt around Schopenhauer’s tombstone. Dear suitcase that comes smashing down my mottled halls, things go better with clean underwear. Things go better with a change of socks and soap and jewel-like jars of eye moisturizer. Tonight I will lie conscious of the long bodies of airplanes, their cool wings waiting, their tailflukes and inner chambers that explode with headphoned entertainment. Like any man I will refuse a blanket that’s become a sack of static. Like any man I may drink a tomato juice once we have reached cruising altitude, and I won’t take Manhattan but will accept a moist towelette expertly folded and packed tight with a hint of lemon.

thanks to catherine mellinger for the collage.

death & vegetables

Nothing much happened. I woke up. I made coffee. I washed my hair, and in the elevator later in the day I noticed how very grey it's growing. I had my mozzarella sandwich and worked non-stop all day long. I gave up on a crappy book set in NYC in favor of a promising one set in Poland.

I also had a prose poem up at Juked called "Mist," which involves death and vegetables.

Another reason to love Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

I have dueling versions of Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands on my iPod, Bob Dylan’s and Joan Baez’s. For a long time I only listened to hers, but in fact I prefer his. She has a distinctive, beautiful voice, whereas he just has a distinctive voice. But he’s also got personality, and that piercingly sad harmonica!

Ok, so what's another reason to love the song? Because it is a list poem that reminds me of the French surrealists, that’s why.

Take this, from the song:
With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns (etc)

Then this, from Benjamin Peret’s “Here:”
my ghetto of black iris my crystal ear
my opal snail my mosquito made out of air
my bird-of-paradise mattress my hair of black foam
my exploded grave my rain of red grasshoppers
my flying island my turquoise grape (etc)

Then this, from André Breton’s “Free Union:”
My wife whose hair is a brush fire
Whose thoughts are summer lightning
Whose waist is an hourglass
Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the teeth of a tiger
Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the fragrance of a star of the first magnitude
Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white mice over snow
Whose tongue is made out of amber and polished glass
Whose tongue is a stabbed wafer (etc)

See! I told you.
Listen to André Breton read his luscious poem.

Word Thursday

The word mellow acquired a dubious reputation in the 60s with that goofy Donovan song and later with the antics of Cheech and Chong. If it didn't reek of marijuana, it would be a useful member of worddom.
Sometimes it manages, for example in talking about wine and dogs that lose the desire to bite, or in this odd sentence from Wolf Hall:

"The mellow brick frontage is smaller than he remembers, but that is what memory does."

I had to wonder when I read it how on earth mellow was being used. I imagine the red bricks have faded with age? They've gone soft and chalky, and are possibly intoxicated?
The proximity of mellow to brick also evoked Oz's yellow brick road, and I wondered what on earth kind of bricks those could have been. Gold, I guess. I'd never asked myself.
Though mellow and the prefix melo- have no known ties, there is a hidden affinity between mellow and melodrama, that which makes the eyes well stupidly with tears and softens the grey matter to a mushy pulp.
I guarantee none of this happens in Wolf Hall, however. The stiff upper lip prevails.
It has been a busy morning on page 510!

Song of the day: Factory, Martha Wainwright

legs too short

It's the first day of spring, and our transport union celebrated with a strike. This is the second time in two weeks, and after a grueling, pointlessly long taxi ride last go-round --at one hour I could have walked it in the same time, less expensively-- I took my neighbor up on the offer of borrowing her bike. It was a bit too high for me, at least so says my sore crotch. It took about the same amount of time as the UBahn, maybe less, and indeed there was fresh spring air, but cycling would never be my preferred way to and from work. I don't know if you've noticed, but it is impossible to read a book while commuting by bicycle, even if it's Wolf Hall. Make mine the UBahn, even if it can be rough company.

I celebrated spring with a poem in the new issue of Birdfeast, their second issue. It's one of my short poems with long titles: "Lines written in a Japanese noodle shop watching a building being demolished." I hope you will enjoy it, and celebrate by liking spring on Facebook.

spring&all

the chest
the pretty chest
the pretty chestnut
tree

The zone

I was downtown today, and noticed I have officially entered the mental “near-home zone.” This occurs every year before I visit the states. I go into a store, see something I like, then turn up my nose and snort:

“I can get something better in America.” (tough luck, potholders)
Or “I can get this much cheaper in America.” (hope to see you in 3 weeks, Calvin Klein tote)
Or “I don’t like this enough not to covert the 30 euros I would have spent on it into $40 I can spend in America.” (good try, pillow covers)

This is really a great money-saving psychological device, also because there's often no follow-up. I don't go LOOKING for potholders, for example....

My retail dreams of America are no longer wholly realizable since the airlines started charging for overweight baggage, rather than just threatening to. Last April when I came back they told me I had to pay $200 for overweight, or $50 for a second bag. Needless to say, I whipped out a second bag and transferred the 50 books I’d bought from my suitcase into it, mentally adding $1 to the price of each book (which was still kind of a bargain).

snakes and birds

sometimes it's as if i lived my sister's life / or i am inside it / i inhabit her gestures / my sister had a clique of friends in college / ages ago / they claimed all people resembled either birds or snakes / there were no hybrids / there were no cats no horses no starfish / they went around categorizing whole populations / they did their best to be outrageous / one threw up in my room / though i would not admit it to them / i have been surveying the data / 30 years later i can report back / the split is not even