Tuesday, November 03, 2009
i hate that i don't blog anymore. i need something (someone?) to wake me back up.
6:06 PM
Sunday, October 04, 2009
before 9/19/09, my life had been relatively unscathed by death. sure, i had lost a few extended family members and one old friend, but i was no longer close to any of them, and--looking back on it--any pain i felt at those times was deeply sympathetic in nature, as i had to watch those who were close to me mourn.
but now i have had my rude awakening. and, in many ways, it has yet to fully sink in. when do you finally delete that number from your phone? when will the visceral worry that now accompanies even the slightest silence between text message exchanges go away? how long do you stay facebook friends with a ghost? and how do you regain a sense of safety, for yourself and for your loved ones?
at this moment, i wish i knew.
12:47 AM
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
delphiniums in a window box
every sunrise, even strangers' eyes.
not necessarily swans, even crows,
even the evening fusillade of bats.
that place where the creek goes underground,
how many weeks before i see you again?
stacks of books, every page, characters'
rages and poets' strange contraptions
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn't one.
every thistle, splinter, butterfly
over the drainage ditches. every stray.
did you see the meteor shower?
did it feel like something swallowed?
every question, conversation
even with almost nothing, cricket, cloud,
because of you i'm talking to crickets, clouds,
confiding in a cat. everyone says,
come to your senses, and i do, of you.
every touch electric, every taste you,
every smell, even burning sugar, every
cry and laugh. toothpicked samples
at the farmers' market, every melon,
plum, i come undone, undone.
-dean young
3:44 PM
Friday, August 21, 2009
7:10 AM
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
HAWAII!
see more here.
2:18 AM
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
reconstruction
her husband matthew had only been dead for six months when she heard a knock on her door. she did not recognize the man, but he was able to align reality with remembrance at last.
he had seen them two years before, while working the lobby bar of the hotel on main street. they had saved up for months in order to stay somewhere nice for their fifth anniversary, matthew had cheerfully informed him while ordering their drinks. she waited at a table near the window, adjusting the pleats of a new dress she had spent days making for the occasion.
he pretended to clean the bar while watching her empty a mint julep in slow, deliberate sips. her long, auburn hair was stacked on her head with seemingly effortless elegance, as if it had been dropped there by some clumsy goddess. sunlight bounced off the ice in her glass and danced on her face, drawn to her beauty as much as he. when they passed by him to leave, she left the faint smell of lilacs in her wake.
he read about the mining accident in the paper and waited six long months, nursing an ache that lived deep in his gut and descended at night when he would lie awake in bed, wrapping and unwrapping the memory of that one afternoon, holding it in his hands like some precious thing that might fall down and break.
and so, like edmond's mercedes she fell, freshly wounded and feeble, into the comfort and security of another's arms. but even after years of his desperate worship and febrile attendance, she remains but a molted casing, her soul hidden behind a gray-eyed scrim, her hand weak and limp in his. and he knows that she will never love him.
so sometimes he gently grabs her behind the neck and kisses her wetly, like he can worm his way into her passions with his tongue. and on dimly moonlit nights, as he moves above and within her, she tries to imagine that he is matthew instead. but her effort fools neither her spirit nor the melting candle at their bedside. and so she remembers the feeling instead--her heart a white-hot center of flame, her fingers the red-licked, flickering ends of the world.
5:00 PM
Sunday, June 21, 2009
every time i read kendra's work, i am breathless with the honor of knowing one of the most talented poets in the world.
Prayer in Red
Today I hovered around a single baby
seal's corpse, split-stomached on the beach.
I witnessed the infinite chewing
of the earth taking it back, leaving
only a dark slick behind. Most days
I don't need you to tell me who I am.
Let me stay where I belong, somewhere between
the glass jar in the back of the refridgerator,
one marachino cherry left,
and your mouth, gleaming and sugared
with thirst.
-Kendra DeColo
3:33 AM
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