My fucking goodness, it's a strange world. I am NOT listening to the Chet Baker station on Pandora, as I often do while sitting in my room. I am listening, for once, to the "silence" of West Oakland. There are helicopters and many police sirens. I'm watching them, like bright dragonflies above downtown. The fan I sleep with (for, holy fuck, "white noise") is called "Hawaiian Breeze". It is a silver-ribbed, squat R2D2 of a fan with one named eye.
Colorado was quiet. Was snowy winter.
There is a protest going on. I am not there because I feared violence. I am here, on this white computer. I am retyping what I misspell. Delete. Delete. I am fond of short sentences, strung together like a garment of lace. I am not ashamed. Can you see my ass? From where you're sitting? Can you?
Sat in Revolution Cafe today. Went to the post office. Drank $2 wine. My mother says my writing ( the work I recently gave her) is unclear. "I must confess sometimes I miss the point when it reads so poeticly. Seems pretty abstract sometimes, but it was good."
She loves me. Still, how does a writer lose her own mother, you may be asking. Fuck if I know.
I found out tonight that I am getting another poem published in another magazine called Monkey Puzzle! SO strange to write. Do you all understand that you are obliged, as I said to Paola today, to read my shit from here on out? I have a lot more to say, I assure you. This is only the beginning.
Today, they arrested Johannes Meserhle, the young, white BART officer who murdered Oscar Grant, in Tahoe. My fucking goodness. I saw graffiti, two days ago, that said "arrest Johnnes Meserhle". Now what/
Helicopters. oh, polarized state! I like the notion of ending with a prayer: In name of the things that connect us. In name of the things that don't. Like the howl of a train, at night.
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I seem to recall a Summer with AO, desperate to pack her life into boxes and move to New York. You know her? The woman I can’t get into my life even if I paid her… I was eager, to know, to meet her in that space where one lives, but truly lives… the kitchen. And it was among the last things we packed. Among them a young man’s albums of experience, too precious for me to sneak a peek into, to painful to catch a look at… As payment for my efficient organizing were, dinner, and freebies. A “Hawaiian Breeze” fan. My own Summers are marked by the packing and unpacking of Akilah’s “Hawaiian Breeze”. She doesn’t know how my life is marked by hers. How yours is a re-verb and thus we all come back to a repetition, or to larger words. I too drank wine today, maybe at the same time. Mine was white and then red. If we were all to ask our mothers (there might be exceptions) they would all say the same thing, “Honey, I think it’s beautiful, but I don’t know what it means?” Frustration sets in. As if my next meal, my peace, my validation of life is just over that hill we seem to constantly run into… but the real truth is that, our poems are survivors, of their lives, testament to their eyes and as any juror will tell you: truth is hard to weigh against falseness. Specially when you don’t know which is which. It is January and I can’t wait for March and then July! I could put my coats and scarves away right now. You’ve only to ask! And Monkey Puzzle? Congratulations! I hope you keep on living so big, it gives me impetus for my own large living; also, it gives something really worth the envy.
Your colleague, friend, cheerleader and reader.
ignore the very first one
oh my love, the moms never understand. how long have you known you were passed her? my mom will tell you that our passing was long ago. but that's the glory of love, and of writing. does water know it's water, or stone stone? a well of material, yet confining by nature, home is what we grow from. we stretch now to the light of a new city, and begin to remember ... we always spoke a different language...
"we stretch now to the light of a new city, and begin to remember ... we always spoke a different language..." u slay me.
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