Category: east coast

Brunch Sonnet 4 (mine).

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The river was swollen. There were rocks

covered completely by water. We three stood

by the water. It was too cold for smells.

There is nothing so serious as each instant

occurring right after the last. Only this. Then

this. We unribbon. We peeled back, pulled open.

And from our mouths: sets of words. Laughs

of white breath. The story of a star. We are anything,

except that we are only this: this single minute.

One truth after another. My hands were in

my pockets. The river licked at rocks. All

that liquid, all that thirst. The temperature took

away my toes. I see some people twice a year.

There is a fullness to the sky, an emptiness.

 

 

Brunch Sonnet 2 (mine).

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Brunch Sonnet 2

 

I hear you’re writing brunch poems again,

says Eoin. That’s very dangerous for me. He knows

anything he says or does may be used against him

in a poem. Last night I gave ten dollars to one person,

tonight to another. I spend my money on whiskey

and pens and paper goods and friends. They pay me

back. I wear my hair to the side and listen to Camus:

Today we are always as ready to judge as we are

to fornicate. It’s so easy coming home, yelling over

girls I learned to drink with, talking to boys I kissed

and afterward befriended. I get called by my initials

and thrown up into the air by someone who still

walks like a football player. We can’t escape ourselves,

not that we would want to. Not this holiday at least.

 

 

I now present to you…more brunch poems.

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this year, I’ll call them

The Someday Brunch Sonnets

(poems of 14 lines

occurring some days

& written in New York

during the last days of 2011

& the first days of 2012)

 

Brunch Sonnet 1

 

On the Hudson line, the Hudson’s misty white

and Harlem’s moistened bricks are held in color

by the rain. Years ago, I watched an airplane puff

a message to a lover from a lover but missed the name

when the train went underground. Usually I’m anxious

for the dark of tunnel, a sign that city life is close, all

the art and outfits waiting. This year it’s Christmas

and de Kooning, who painted roads and months on canvases

the size of my apartment.  I won’t tell you that I saw

the Merritt in his painting called the Merritt Parkway,

but the expression of the tiny patch of olive green

that beamed itself in angles from a corner was enough

to tell me that he lived here once and thought himself

a minor sight in comparison to all the trees.

 

 

Let me not forget…(images).

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on the subject of grading and packing and goodbying to everyone and gathering presents and cleaning the house and reviewing the whole year:

 

(via this isn’t happiness)

also, another truth, brought to you by britt appleton:

and I’m going to see my family so soon!!!!!!

 

 

Poem about loving (mine).

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Loving you is just as full of color

 

as stepping off the train from someplace north

into the streets of midtown Manhattan and goodness

all the business women in their golden spires

of hair and heel and midday men with navy pocket

squares, even the children stop to stare at my patterned

country dress, my weak-tied ponytail. My duffel builds

a crease against my elbow’s hook—somewhere

in there, laid along the clothing and the slippers,

a jar of honey for a friend tilts and leaks, and the hive

at home goes on buzzing, run by a queen and the laws

of servitude, oh even the unemployed are dressed

in red and ready in New York, and I am standing

waiting for my ride, eyed by a policeman on the corner

like a villain sent from someplace blessed with vaster

spaces, and the taxis throw themselves with vigor

at the color green, and the city sky is purpling to black

with neon signs winking sales in capitals and every redhead

in the city is out here walking, no wait, shoving, past.

 

Joe Brainard loved pansies.

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Joe Brainard (painter, collagist, writer) loved pansies so much. He cut them out of everywhere. He collaged them onto pages, in to entire books, which he kept and gave as presents to people like James Schuyler (I’ve seen them in the archives at UCSD–they’re beautiful; they’re shiny and layered, dozens and dozens of PANSIES).

 

 

 

His love of pansies (and flowers in general) reminds me of how I’ve always wanted to love football. Or the “Twilight” books. Or skateboarding. I want so badly to love something so simple, something that other people love so much. It’s incredibly appealing, the idea that there’s some new thing out there to get all excited about–I want to love these things; they are so available and other people love them and I would like to join in on that. But I can’t tell where the goddamn ball is on that huge field, even with the camera telling me where to look. And Bella is SO boring to read about. And I’m afraid of falling off a skateboard and hurting my knees.

 

 

Joe Brainard got something right with his love of flowers. He was a normal, human person like the rest of us, and by that, I mean that he was self-conscious and sensitive and he wasn’t sure he was ever doing the right thing. He made art and he tried his best to do days well. He wanted to be loved and he wanted to be known, and not as a celebrity. He loved flowers, especially pansies, and he found them everywhere. He collected and saved them. He saved them for himself, but also portioned them out to people he loved. People learned this about him and so sent him stationery with pansies on it. People learned what he loved and then there was more of pansies in his life, and voila: more of love.