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?!?

Among other things: A Bird

I have fallen in love with this book

which Anna gave Eva for her birthday last year.

And lately, I am also in love

with poems and my girls and just being here.

All morning I have been watching the saddest news.

I stare at my computer and cry:

14 small coats hanging on hooks.

I keep waiting for Ella to wake so I can go to her and nurse her

but the house stays quiet.

I wonder when the snow will come again.

A Snippet

From a new essay I've been working on about sororities, cigarettes & Elle Woods:

There was one girl in my sorority, Jennifer, actually there were many, many Jennifers, but this one Jennifer, one who I sometimes ran prayer group with, even though out in the quad I questioned not only the existence of sororities but also of God, and on really, really cold days, the existence even of a self, but this Jennifer had worked at Disney World as a Princess, and even though, she looked EXACTLY like Cinderella, and had the most beautiful Cinderella-like hair I had ever seen, they made her wear a wig. That’s just the way it is, she told me.

For Drowning

Dreams. I recommend them.  

The easy way to go. Tipped siren,

sip of Benadryl.

There are days I want nothing more than to

step onto the seabed. There, I lived

in the hollow of your throat.

Do you remember? (It was only

a day; it's okay if you forget. Really.) Then nothing,

just the creekbed,

crawdaddy graves, Poprock husks.

Last week, I went to my sleeping baby

and reached for her. An empty crib. I knew

that they had taken her to Mexico, and I

would have to kill myself (gas)

or move to Paris. But I was still dreaming.

She was actually in my bed, had never been

in the crib. I sang and sang to her.

Louder. Still she slept.

A mistake, but I kept dreaming anyway.

In the dream: a strand of seaglass and you. I

was there too. It seemed like a punchline,

the slippery side of a gesture, end

of a joke: us, there, on the seabed,

too deep for the sun to reach.

Are we shells? you said. 

I tried to answer, open my little shell mouth,

but nothing. Only bubbles.

A river is a river is a river. Yes?

My student wants to write a story

about a man who thinks he is in love

with a woman but is really

just in love with the air around her.

My student is still young enough

to believe these are different.

And so I write on the board:

pools are pools,

oceans, oceans.

  

Thanksgiving: A Poem

In honor of all I'm thankful for this year: a poem I wrote fifteen Thanksgivings ago when I had just moved to New York City and was still in the habit of chasing love by taking buses down south. Incidentally, it's also the poem where I first wrote of my tenderness towards Hostess cakes. It was published in Washington Square in the Winter of 1997.

Thanksgiving

3 bags of pork rinds,

6 cans of warm Pepsi,

18 mentholated cough drops,

a couple of HoHo’s, a DingDong,

2 and a half packs of Marlboros,

and Dee from Louisville

pressing her elbow into my ribs,

talking her hysterectomy,

her 13 year old gone on birth control,

her 16 year old thrown in a Boy’s Home

south of Memphis for stripping butt naked

and flipping off God on top of the county library,

the 3 men who’ve beat her,

her 1 cup coffee maker,

and the turkey dinner

she’s packed in her suitcase, all boxed up,

so the jackasses won’t crush it.

We talk about the stars

‘cause I don’t get many where I come from,

and she teaches me a song about bumblebees.

Waking up alone’s the hard part,

we agree till Nashville rises too soon,

sticking up sore-thumb style on the horizon,

and a man without flowers awaits my arrival.

Yesterday I could almost love him,

could almost hear him breathing,

but today, I’m afraid,

my ass isn’t the only thing gone numb

above the roar of white walled, greyhound tires.

So we sit at the Waffle House,

careful not to touch for fear of nothing special—

coffee weak as rainwater,

jukebox blaring Blue Christmas.

The Cupcake Story

[poem was here.]