I cut my calluses slice through them with clippers, knives, scissors sometimes down to the meat past the dead unfeeling part to the part that bleeds It bubbles right up like crude, pressurized It’s surprising every time when it hurts when it bleeds and won’t stop I wrap tissue after tissue paper towels if that’s all I’ve got and pull them away to gauge the flow Once it’s down to a red dot I dig…
“What the Living Do” by Marie Howe Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living-room windows because the heat’s on too…
I heard Jennifer Chang read her poem “Again A Solstice” on the radio this morning. It’s wonderful. Listen here. Read here.
A little madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King, But God be with the Clown — Who ponders this tremendous scene — This whole Experiment of Green — As if it were his own! “1333,” Emily Dickinson
Risk And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to Blossom. — Anaïs Nin
That’s something we know. And yet when we create we do our best to try for something new anyway, against the damned odds. I’m always slightly amused/horrified when I belch up something (that’s always how it feels when I write, really: Like a force of nature, something to be gotten out of me and once it’s out, I feel better and lighter) and then later find something in this world that already existed for some…
by Leonard Cohen (from the Book of Longing) My time is running out and still I have not sung the true song the great song I admit that I seem to have lost my courage a glance at the mirror a glimpse into my heart makes me want to shut up forever so why do you lean me here Lord of my life lean me at this table in the middle of the night wondering…
I wish I could write erotic poetry about laundry day like Erica Jong does: This is the dirty laundry poem— because we have traveled from town to town accumulating soiled linen & sweaty shirts & blue-jeans caked & clotted with our juice & teeshirts crumpled by our gloriously messy passion & underwear made stiff by all our joy. No, my laundry poetry would sound a little more like This shirt, perfectly clean has been kicked…
The New Stranger by Sharon Olds (from Blood, Tin, Straw) They would peer in the carriage and ask was your father Chinese, your lustrous, curly-lidded, slightly tilted eyes, your elegant forehead. You were a stranger to me— I thought I would know you, but I had to get to know you— I know your bowl brow, and serious eyes, but sometimes you were alien to me as a foetus, the large-brained head, the brain forming…
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