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Showing posts from 2020

After "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"

If I could ask the wind to make me fly, I’d sail over clouds and sea to your tiny island, drifting down slowly to land on the hills, lying in grass before running to find you. Where would you be? The sun's in the dewdrops and you’re on the path, bucket in hand on your way to the well. Flying on wind made me pale as a pearl so I stand back to watch you where you cannot see. The jumper I knit you has bunched at the collar, needs to be washed, yet I’d lay down and die that you’ve worn it every day. How young you are, how soft your skin. In 50 years I’ll come and tell you, “How good you are, how deep your eyes,” for in aging we are better than we were, if we can love. And how I love you as you bend to clasp a rope upon a pulley, looping hook to pale as the bucket is lowered down into dark; happy bucket to gather your drink, your wash, your life. The sun comes in full and you wipe down your brow, hoisting out your sloppy bounty, gripping strong then walking again with me at your heels.

Untitled, 2018

I love to hear the sound of the wind from a sheltered place. Particularly when it travels and circulates in gusts, bending back the palms slightly; commanding a chorus of rustling fronds. To be on the other side of a window from such a night is to be in harmony with my own flesh and blood, my own flashing mind.

The City, Pt. 3

Today is a day for great joy in the city. Stand in its throngs as the doors are thrown open, pouring out people whose arms all reach outward to touch and to hold, to lift and to twirl and to carry their loved ones up over the street, where dirt and debris all get trodden and ground into Earth’s finest dust. A warm wind comes to paint the sky, streaking cheeks with all that’s left of what was said, though we’re past that now. Watch the men who take long strides, long lost friends all gripping hands or backs of heads, laughing just to feel some quivering bow-upon-string, this music of life.  Someone claps you on the back then hands you a drink, calls you by name, waves out an arm where people are dancing, hiking up skirts and kicking out feet, hands clapping to keep the time and always someone shouting, “More!” You drink as children flutter past the legs-like-playgrounds, britches clean from living hidden; dirtied soon for the games are progressing. Mothers eye them, touching

Girl in Field, 2004. Silver Gelatin Print.

My little sister stands in a field because I, her older sister, tells her to. She does not argue nor delay, and puts a cap upon her head as I direct it—tilted slightly and to the left. Her gaze is unflinching, unaware of others’ words to bring her down and looking like a soldier, too young to fight but ready in her heart to hold a knife. The field is wide, the grasses dry from winter’s drought, her boots very small but no less able for trampling weeds and filling in the holes left behind by moles and mice. Her pale legs are showing despite the cold, normal in this humid place, and a pale hand covers her face because I, older sister, wished to make the blush of youth a story though she, little sister, never blushes, youngest of four and ever seeking stillness in the wild.

Jerusalem Day

I loved and hated Jerusalem. Loved and hated. These were the two sides of myself I had to reckon with from my bedsit on Yafo Street: the side that was quiet and easy, no fuss; and the side that was alien, terse and unforgiving. What I loved, I also hated. And what I hated, I somehow loved. I had never felt freer, nor more trapped. Never more sated, nor more hungry. Never more lost, nor more found. I was a stranger there, even to myself, just a brooding shadow following the body of a girl. “Where will the girl go today?” I would wonder, tying up her boot laces, too hot for the desert climate. I hated being an outsider but I loved that it felt like a secret. My secret loving lead to a refuge made of secrets: whispered prayers between the cracks in The Wall; a passage of white where the crowds would not go. My secret loving brought me beauty—antique chairs made of glass mosaics; brass chandeliers to hold flickering candles; tattered, sun-bleached cloths like flags, waving in the wind. Beh

Flarf Poem after Frou Frou

Wanted to, thought she might, eat up the world, eat it up whole in the sound of a laugh. Thought she might, tried she might, swallow the world, swallow it hard and swallow it fast.  When she might, could she might, eat all the clouds, eat them up, reap them up, sun stars and moon. Though she might, told she might, go without path, eat it up slowly and eat it up soon. When she might, then she might, eat up the world, brightly and lightly, one Summer’s eve June.

The Beach II

A little girl drops down in a crouch on the sand at the beach. Her bent knees patched with salt. Her hair wet, like little wet blades of grass. She turns her head—one ear to the sun, the other to the earth, the cool shadow-space made by the architecture of her bent frame—and feels the heat like a great, warm towel just pulled from the dryer, its tan sheen left upon her skin, layer after layer and day after day.  The tide slides in but it’s thin and foamy, sucking up her feet down below the brown, making her think of the film she saw that made her cry when a horse drowned in quicksand though his boy tried to save him, calling the horse’s name over and over and both of them weeping, she and the boy.  This new, thin veil of wet is good for drawing, gliding fingers across its surface, fire-bright sunshine, new geometries bent and twisted and made into words. A little bird flaps to land nearby and she watches its needle-beak piercing the beach, over and over, searching for sand fleas a

The Lizard Poem

Two lizards danced on the eve of the night that I knew I had come there to love you. Parted by screen, they circled unseen,  on the eve of the night that I knew I had come there to love you. Curling their tails, they danced between veils, on the eve of the night that I knew I had come there to love you. Kept out of sight, I watched them alight, on the eve of the night that I knew I had come there to love you. And when they had done, two lizards were one, on the eve of the night that I knew I had come there to love you.

The City, Pt. 2

The city is empty but for the men who sweep the streets, sweeping and happy to sweep in the quiet, eyes cast down on pebbled pavement, wishing for always to sweep up alone. Your presence there makes them stop with contempt, eyes cast down to trim the edges of your shadow, still as statues until you pass, the echo of your heels reverberating in the dust that floats then settles to be swept. You wonder aloud why the street is so quiet, asking one of the men with brooms but he speaks to you in nonsense, eyes focused on some mirage, lips making shapes for shallow nonsense words to flourish.  This city is eerie. Makes you tally and take stock of what contents you carry, how much bread and water, oil and cheese. Is it enough, you ask yourself. Enough for what, comes the reply and it sends you back inside yourself where the hearth is wide and warm and burning well. Still, these sweeping men line the streets, sentries of a disordered realm, brooms held crossways like matted shields, hunchi

Tracy Lord helps me come to grips with myself.

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Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord and Cary Grant as CK Dexter Haven in 1940's The Philadelphia Story I have gone back and forth a lot this week. What should I say, how should I say it, or should I just keep my mind to myself and say nothing at all? I've started and stopped, erased and rewritten, tried to reframe bad feelings and amplify good ones, and still, I'm here, professing my confusion but hoping it will disappear before I publish this so I can take it all back again. To be both an artist and confused is a terrible plight. I have set myself up to be a confidence factory, certainty factory. Pumping out the short and the long of what is True and Right and Worthy. The public sphere is no place to air out your confusion, I'd think. Keep that in your journal, I'd think, away from the eyes of those who wouldn't care, or worse, understand. There's a character in film history who has been coming to mind these last several days. Tracy Lord. Do you know

After I. Calvino: The City, Pt. 1

The City is old. Its streets, uneven and paved in stone, the main road stretching the length of the city and never breaking. Alleys snake off from it in curving detours, too narrow for two carts to pass at once. If you continue from where you began and walk the Rue de Saphir, your leather bag slung across your back, your pockets heavy with antique coins, you will come to a convergence of streets beneath the statue of the Angel Michael and the maiden who bends to gather water from a brook with a jug. The road to the right finds the Hills of Moriah. Take it on a Tuesday when the cafĂ© shutters fan open along the way, the aproned proprietors standing in their doorways, wiping down their hands from butter and flour, smiling invitations, wordless grins from knowing racks of  warm and fragrant pastry and bread, and stop before the dirt path at the vignoble to buy a bottle of rouge saisonnier before trekking up the dusty, weedy, knotted mound of seasoned earth. At this convergence of street

How to Talk to Strangers, Pt. 2

      There’s a little cafe on the corner where the buildings huddle together at the bend, and past their angled edges you can sight the line of the beach, over the hill like a hump as it rolls into sand.       I sit at the little cafe most days and drink sweet coffee or sparkling mayim , little round table, dark    glasses on when the sun hangs at offense, though she could never truly offend me. The coffee always tastes so sweet and I must sip it slowly, dabbing at the corners of my mouth with a cloth napkin, vowing to only sit like this at cafes which can afford me such finery, as this. A tiny porcelain spoon for sugar. A porcelain saucer with silver scuffs. A cloth on the table which waves in the breeze like a flag or the hem of a jacquard skirt, dancing, flying, waving at the sea. The waiter brings me a little cookie on a silver platter. “For your kafe, ” he tells me in Hebrew, and I know that he is fond of me, coming here every day, glasses on, pen like a dagger, pen like a kite.

How to Talk to Strangers, Pt. 1

For one month, I could rent an apartment in Tel Aviv. Go out to the beach, to the shops, to the parks and the restaurants. I could keep to myself, only coming and going, making no friends, no new acquaintances. Always alone. Cooking dinner. Gazing out the window during breakfast. Always rising early but not knowing why except to do it. And I could scribble, scribble, scribble in my journal, just like this, accomplishing only an awareness of my own feelings, desires, and shortcomings. At the end of the month, as if I had never been there, I would put my belongings back into my trunk, leave a handwritten note for the landlady to say todah rabah , then leave.

Pre-Beach

Have you ever sat on a beach? If you're reading this in the month of February or March, in the year of 2020, chances are, you have. Because you know me. And most everyone I know has sat on a beach at least once in their lives, more probably like 100 times. 1,000 times. But that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m sitting on a beach in the month of February in the year of 2020. To be fair, I’m actually not sitting on a beach, but at my computer, 30 miles from the beach. Tomorrow I will go there, though, and today I am practicing for what I will write. I will write about sitting, and beaches. And most probably about the wind, because it will be very windy on the beach in February. And the sun is supposed to be shining tomorrow, so I will write about the sun and how there are no clouds because the February wind has blown them all away. Despite this, the ocean will be gray. Steely gray, and dark. It’s the Atlantic, you see. Dark and gray and steely-eyed. If you fly over top of the beach l