What Matters

(this is where a poem lived)

Late Spring

Late Spring

Stone fruit season is around the corner
but I'm in a whirl: panties in a wad,
lump in the throat. This was not the tornado
that threw an 80-ton train clear across the sky,
not the one that plucked the feathers
out of chickens and left them bald
and wild in a dusty Kansas field. One May,
J. and I tried to race a storm across the state line.
This was back when we were young enough
to smoke, litter, hope to live forever.
All these seasons later, I've learned little.
I still reach my hands into bins; it's like
I believe I can squeeze the peaches into ripeness. 

The Park

(gone)
   
 

The Heart

That which I once named an apple, once,  a piñata, is actually a heart, a three hundred gram, four chambered, hollow muscle. There is heartache, heartbeat, heartblood, heartbound, heartbreak, heartbroke, heartbound. There is, upon eating firecrackers, heartburn. We can take heart, have heart, be heartened. One can be a hearter; it can be heartfelt. I can sit heartfully on the hearth, though I don't. I can laugh until I cry, which I do. At night, I can feel my heart stop when I wake up afraid that on the other side of the wall my daughters' hearts have stopped. Take heart, have heart. Be the woman holding her heart. Since the heart as metaphor is perhaps the most painful of all metaphors, you must separate the heart from the heart. It is the opposite of cake: you can have it and eat it too. Eat your heart out. Go on. Do it.

Blue Sky, Pink Trailer

Day 30

[poem was here]

Day 29

[poem was here]

Day 28

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Day 27

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Day 26

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Day 25

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Day 24

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Day 23

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Day 22

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Day 21

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Day 20

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Day 19

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Day 18

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Day 17

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Day 16

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Day 15

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Day 14

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Day 13

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Day 12

[poem was here]  

          

Day 11

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Day 10

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Day 9

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Day 8

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Day 7

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Day 6

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Day 5

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Day 4

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Day 3

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Day 2

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Day 1

[poem was here]

nightwaking

This time last year I was waiting for Ella to be born, imagining the scent and heft of her, already feeling the whole of her, watching her body rise and fall, even inside of me. For months after she was born, I was terrified of losing her. Those were yellow days, but night came: I would call her angel, and a thrush of a thousand wings would take her from me. She's not like her sister; she wakes so easily that I cannot go to her and place my hand on her chest, and so I find myself sneaking into her room--the streetlight shadows uncertainly static--and I stand (a mad bird) above her crib, straining my ears to hear her breathe, waiting and waiting, until I can finally go, run cold water into a glass before trying, again, to put myself to sleep.

Vehicle

Tell us what you know about the heart, I write on the board. The boy from Senegal, the one who put up drywall in Bed-Stuy in last summer's heat takes out his mechanical pencil. I have never been a fan of the sleek, plastic objects, opting more often for yellow wood. I remember buying my seventh grade science teacher a pen that was marketed as having been "used by the astronauts." He worried about me. He once stopped to get gas when he was driving me home. People will try to take advantage of you, he said, and he said it in the way that said he was making a conscious decision not to take advantage of me. He would just take me home, he seemed to be telling himself; he would make sure I got in safe, wave. Those days, I took too many rides. I don't know where my parents were, or if they shrugged their shoulders when other people complained about shuttling children around. These days, I use a pen. Black, inky. I dip its tip in the well of my heart and hope for things to say.

Valentine 2

[poem was here]

Terrarium

Yesterday, I chased Eva with a Q-tip,
and finally caught her, pinned

her down, like some exotic, menacing
butterfly, my knees on her elbows--

Just let me clean your ears. I growled.
She kicked, cried. But it was before then

when I went to find the Q-tips
that I thought, Sarah, of you.

They were on the highest shelf
(ears not being our top priority);

I had removed them from their blue box,
and they were in a glass jar, a jar

that had once been a homemade terrarium,
a gift from a friend who had driven

twenty-seven hours with two sick boys
and a moody man just to sleep on my floor.

It's its very own eco-system, she said.
Reaching into that jar, I thought of child-you,

of how child-you must have worn her hair,
of how child-you must have read Ramona Quinby,

and then there was the child-you (pensive) who
was told of her mother's death, the child-you

who must have stood on the other side
of doors, the child-you who might, one night,

have gone looking for Q-tips, pulling out drawers,
ripping through cabinets. Don't touch it,

my friend told me. It seemed, at first,
this Missouri-made world might really thrive,

might bloom impossibly. My heart ached.
Maybe I held Eva down harder than

I would have. Finally, she gave in. I swept the tip
all around. Some girls don't have anyone

to clean their ears, I told her. How do you think
that would feel? By then, she had wriggled

her way free. I stood there alone, feeling the heat
of the light that pressed in on our windows.

Next Big Thing Blog Chain: The "Self"-Interview

I was recently invited by writer Sarah Dohrmann for The Next Big Thing blog chain "self-interview." Here's Sarah's post. And here's mine (questions stolen from Sarah whose friend Quintan Ana Wikswo revised them from the original, which makes me wonder, how can I befriend this very pithy Quintan?):

I know you've had this mysterious manuscript going for a little while now, and I'm curious: Can you tell us the name of your book?

Let the sun in; or just Let the sun; or maybe valentine; or terrarium. What do you think? If you help me name it, I just might dedicate it to you.

I just got accidentally dropped on my head by the underpaid and terribly exploited assistant of this hotshot Upper East Side literary agent. Great - now I have a concussion. I can only remember one sentence at a time before my mind goes blank. Tell me about your book in one sentence. 

I'm really sorry about your concussion; does it allow for semicolons?; these are poems; they are about waffle houses and my mother and a lot of people I used to love and some people I still love very much, and there are ducks and hoho's and Bingo games, but also an abiding belief in miracles and poems; this must be hurting your head; can I get you a glass of water?; have you read this poem?; gosh, it's good.

From what I understand, this book has experienced a series of evolutions in its development. How would you describe its path from original idea to what it has now become?

I started the poems in this book fifteen years ago. In ways, I feel very far from them but also extremely protective of them. I want to brush their teeth and read them stories and pull their jammers over their heads. I want to tuck them into bed. I want to come in hours later and put my hand on their chest to make sure they're still breathing.

That sounds like a really compelling journey, both for the writer and the reader. Let's say I'm wandering the shelves of the most delightful indie bookstore in New York. On what shelf do I find your book?

On the shelf with the poems.

The elephant in the room for many writers is this whole admittedly lucrative and seductive - if a little bit embarrassing - adventure called "optioned for film" or "movie rights" or "dear god, don't let hollywood steal my soul." Do you think you're writing the kind of book that would want to take on a second life in Hollywood? If so, who would play your characters?

I think Olivia Newton John would play my mother, and Lauren Hutton would play me, and people would be like, weird, is the mother older than the daughter, but then we'd point to the birds and everyone would forget.

A lot of writers in New York are talking about the tremendous new variety of ways for adventurous writing to make its way out into the world of readers. E-books, art collaborations, traditional corporate publishing, limited editioned series - what do you think about that? Do you think you could find a home in any of them in particular? 

I generally can find a home anywhere. I walk into a hotel; I unpack; I call it home until I leave.

Are you a compulsive drafter who labors over a body of work until it's absolutely perfect, or are you one of those types who loads up on pills and booze and self-indulgence and just pops out a fat-sassy manuscript into the toilet after a nice three-day Monday?

Uhm, I'm not really into pills. 

I guess since I've been working on this for fifteen years it might seem like I'm a slooooooooooow writer, but I don't really think that's true. While I have spent hours deciding on a semicolon, I have also been known to crank stuff out. I do, though, have an almost ten-month old and an already four year-old so sometimes I, uhm, need to make dinner or help real actual children (and not old poem children) into their pajamas.

If your book decided to run away from home and go ride the rails, who would you hope would be the other pee-soaked bums in its boxcar? 

I'd hope for John Berger. And Jean Valentine. And James Tate. And Ruth & Hillery & Bianca Stone. And Terence Degnan, & Ada & Jen & Derek Joe. Ash & Al & Ijjy. & Dawny & Steph & KD & MW. I think I might need to get a bigger boxcar. I could go on and on.

You could do what all the other nice girls are doing: knitting, running for senate, saving up for expensive fertility treatments, stockpiling weapons for the feminist revolution, and so forth. Why are you sweating tears of blood over a manuscript? 

It's really my only way of understanding the world. When I'm talking I get too distracted by the windows. Writing makes me see through the glass.

Is your book the kind of book that would have to car-jack a reader in order for someone to want to read it, or would your book be the kind of book that people will follow down the street like cash is falling out of its back pocket? I think that's the conversation we mostly have about books and readers, right? If your book is one of the nameless faceless hoards on the F train, what is its little secret glorious glimpse of self that will steal away the heart of its seatmate? 

I would love for my book to ride on the f-train. If it did, it would crawl into the lap of whomever was reading it and bury its pretty little head in the crook of that reader's neck, and it would say, thank you for holding me so carefully and being so gentle with my spine; and if the reader was tired, say because he had worked a very long day, my book would sing the reader lullabies until they both woke up at the last stop. There, at Coney Island, the reader could tuck my book into a bag, or maybe even into a pocket very close to his heart, and then the reader could walk along the boardwalk taking in the sun and wondering if there had ever been a more beautiful day.

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Next up on The Next Big Thing:

Cricket Desmarais is a poet, writer, yoga instructor and creative coach living on the South coast of Connecticut with her family and naughty black cat.  A creative and commercial freelancer with an MFA from NYU, she is most enthusiastic about the completion of a poetry manuscript, a historic novel set in the Florida Keys and Cuba, and a blog about upping your sparkle ante.  She eagerly seeks an agent, and better will power when it comes to chocolate cake.  Visit her at  www.cricketdesmarais.com and look for the upcoming launch of www.thesparklepowerproject.com

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Valentine

Lucky

Scribble-scrabble of sky--the mother
parachutes through the blue.

(Hold your breath, child.)

Listen: there will be noise and death,
salt and teeth. There will be awful
weather. Your heart, if you are lucky,
will be broken; if you are very lucky,
will be broken more than once.
But for now, sweet girl, just come to me,
sit here, my love, let me braid your hair.
The stars, remember, are cruel but fair.

On Having More Fun

Because, (they say), that's what blondes do. Go here: see me bemoan quitting smoking yet again. Also, here, because, uhm, this is my blog, and sometimes I get to shamelessly promote myself. Also, have I mentioned I have never been happier and have I said happy new year and did I tell you I'm finally going to Hawaii?!?