Category: friendship

Things that are small: farmers’ market edition (photo series) (mine).

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Hello and welcome to the 2nd installation of Things that are small, where I’ll show you a fruit lineup, featuring the smallest of doughnut peaches. Doughnut peaches are like regular peaches that got sat on by very small butts. Perhaps squirrel butts? That’s funny to think of.

All fruits pictured are from Sweet Tree Farms, one of my farm bffs. Annie is their farmer (remember when I wrote about her boobs in a poem?) and yesterday was her birthday. In honor of it we all sang terribly and ate carrot cake. But nevermind carrots! Today is about tiny peaches!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem about eras ending (mine).

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For Later

 

We drove through bikinis, walked the paved strip

by the water as kids flirted and cursed. Clouds were low,

unmelting; dolphins moved through metallic

 

ocean. Sean found a piece of unopened candy on the road

and pocketed it. I wasn’t cold or sad or verbose; I was happy

he’d found something to eat later.  I’m always thinking

 

of the delight eating provides  me and how to dispense that.

At the party, Dean’s family was casual and kind, circles

of Ritz crackers beaming on trays. We saw the solar

 

eclipse, made watchable  by the thick sea’s clouds. Night

light over sun. She was scooped, our bulb; we watched

her portioned. Whether you care about weather or not,

 

you could see it. And on cement, below, a group of us

talking, all seemingly young, hands at our sides, no

stones in our pockets to smooth down, to hold.

 

Mary Moon: she’s a vegetarian (song).

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When I was sixteen years old I was the only vegetarian around—I lived in a small town and I guess everyone ate meat.

 

I had three best guy friends; we were a bit of a foursome. We once made a short film with my video camera where one of them, Eoin, turned into a cigar Indian while trying to thieve objects in a house (including toilet paper). The house was my house and we still quote that movie; it’s called “Sitting Bull” and my parents still have that cigar Indian.

 

The point is, I was the vegetarian of the group. They used to sing this song to me constantly. Listening to it now, I feel good about being compared to Mary Moon. She’s an intellectual, but despite this fact, remains quite sexual. I’m down with that.

 

This one goes out to Tom, Eoin, and Schnibbe, who taught me this song, to speed up at yellow lights, and the meaning of a “rusty trombone.” Gross.

 

Things that are awesome (Sunday edition).

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garlic scapes are awesome

roses smell awesome

tampons are awesome

women that use diva cups are awesome

old ladies who dye their white hair purple are awesome

men with babies strapped to their fronts are awesome (so is anyone with a baby strapped to their body)

bare feet are awesome

mixed recycling is awesome

happy hour prices are awesome

bicycling feels awesome

tie dye is awesome

“Made in the USA” is awesome

having a sister is awesome

homemade hot sauce tastes awesome

grilling is awesome

finishing projects is awesome

making pancakes for yourself is awesome (so is making pancakes with anyone)

driving a tractor is awesome

getting high on coffee is awesome

artichokes are awesome

handshakes are awesome

wordplay is awesome

DJ names are awesome

blueberry season is awesome

reading is totally awesome

i think rollerblading looks awesome but i only did it once so i don’t know for sure

being taken out to lunch is awesome

feeding people is awesome

riding shotgun is awesome

James Brown will always be awesome

writing poems is for sure awesome

giving poems to people is awesome

whiskey is awesome

ginger beer is awesome

old friends are the most awesome of awesome

homemade muffins are awesome

thrift stores are awesome especially the sunglasses section

records are awesome

the word “platypus” is awesome and so is “spritz”

hip hop lyrics can be really awesome

bartering is awesome

letters in the mail are undeniably awesome

bacon is awesome why didn’t anyone make me eat it earlier it so so goddamn awesome

summer coming on is awesome

Misha is number 1 awesome

treasures are awesome (like bird bones or gemstones)

wind turbines are awesome

root beer floats are awesome

notebooks are awesome especially new notebooks

woodcuts are awesome

worms are awesome

herbs are awesome

friendship bracelets are awesome

monks are awesome and so are nuns

hats are of course awesome but we already knew that

getting an mfa is awesome and i’m almost done doing it!!!! awesome over & out.

 

 

 

James Baldwin wrote it; Heather Garner sewed it (image).

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“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”

-James Baldwin, from “Giovanni’s Room”

 

Thank you, Heather, for the beautiful present.

 

(You can buy Heather’s handcrafts on her etsy site. She might even take embroidery requests!)

 

And here’s a painting of Baldwin, by Beauford Delaney, that I especially love.

 

 

Have you read “Giovanni’s Room” yet? Please do.

 

 

Poem of things I want to do tonight (mine).

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Tonight I just wanna

 

drink sarsparilla, cut tomatoes and watch their seeds drool out, paint my toenails raspberry, eat four pieces of bacon, roll down a hill of grass, drink an olive-juicy cocktail, hang out with Maya Rudolph at a bowling alley, cram onto a single bed with all my college friends and yell stories over each others’ stories, finish that friendship bracelet I started, read Sartre, carve my own stamp design into rubber, make a dozen beeswax tapers, soak my feet in hot eucalyptus water, lie in a room covered in fresh mulch and ducklings, talk on a landline with a coiled cord, stay in a hotel with really soft robes, get a fancy haircut, race a friend on parallel moving sidewalks, watch “Prime” with my sissy, grill peaches, drink whiskey in the thunder, wrap gemstones in gold wire, type up poems on the street and sell them for a dollar, bake chocolate croissants with Meryl Streep, or whittle a piece of cedar into a breakfast spoon.

 

 

Pisces come from under water (photo series).

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A month ago, there was a birthday party. The theme was “under the sea” and I was a jellyfish and Ellie made me a crown.

 

 

There are streamers curled and dangling from my tutu but you can’t really see them. Misha’s hair was huge and awesome and we danced to the band for hours. Everyone sang happy birthday to me, Lauren, and Sara, my other Pisces of the party, and we all birthday-hugged each other while they sang.

 

 

And then the singing was over and we all went back to drinking. And dancing.

 

 

What a night!

 

(Thanks to Colleen Dawson for taking these photos. They’re wonderful!)

 

 

Bird poem by Sean T. Randolph (he’s my friend!).

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Thoughts like ill-fitting socks

 

Many people write about birds

but not about birds’ thoughts.

I guess it doesn’t interest people

 

that all pigeons dream of living

in Paris, Texas and most penguins

prefer the look of mourning-men

 

to mailmen when given the choice.

When people write about birds

they often think only of themselves

wishing they could be birds.

 

 

(That’s Sean T. Randolph with his eyes all squinty from laughter, and that’s his girlfriend Hellen who is hilarious on Twitter. I took this photo in my kitchen over a year ago and both of them will say “shucks i look terrible!” when they see this, but GUYS, YOU LOOK GREAT. You look like life is funny. Which it is.)

 

 

I dreamt of Chicago (recap) (mine).

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I went to Chicago last weekend, or at least I think I did. I got a cold pretty soon after arriving and as the days went on I got foggier and foggier. It felt like I was peering out of two small telescopes from inside my body. And now that I’m back in San Diego, where it’s 75 degrees…the whole thing feels even more like a dream. A dream where

 

I flew on an airplane with writers from San Diego and drank bloody Marys

then ate a pizza so thick it reminded me why they’re called pizza pies

then got picked up outside the pizza restaurant by Eric Suffoletto in a blue Lexus

and we drove to a bar with thick curtains attached to the ten-foot ceilings and drank cocktails fit for a princess at a picnic

and afterwards we drove through a scene from “The Dark Night”

then Katie Conway arrived and we ate green curry with scallops and bought tights and tissues at CVS

and I heard Nikki Giovanni talk in a big room with chandeliers and she reminded me about surrounding myself only with people who love me

and there were a lot of hip people selling books with confusing poems inside

and I ate French fries with brie and mushrooms on top

and it was my birthday

and everyone was calling me but I couldn’t talk

and Ilya Kaminsky sang happy birthday to me and it was a hilarious treasure

and I rode the el and took a taxi cab and wore a turtleneck and various hats

and named Katie’s boyfriend “the maestro of love” and drank wine in the hotel room

and it was flurrying and freezing and the wind was coming from every direction

and I met the woman who wrote the poem about herpes in the Beloit Poetry Journal and I told her she was doing an important thing for the world

and I bought books and journals or took them off tables

and Kate Gale was there and we sat in taupe armchairs and talked and she said hello to a dozen famous people whose names I knew but not the faces

and there was a secret present from Misha snuck into my bag

and on the train it was snowing and Dean was hungover and Jen had so many bags she looked like a vagabond Amazon with fancy belts

and the guy at security took my lotion away

and outside the airport San Diego was hot and over-bright as if lit by bulbs stolen from the rest of the country and there’s Misha in our car waving like he does with one hand raised up, not moving, just raised in hello

 

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