Category: friendship

Some facet of my Saturday is in this photograph (Sally Mann).

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It’s something about the stance, about looking perfect but wrong with a cigarette; something about that dress, about having a sister nearby with hands on hips and a kid on stilts in the background, about that knotty sideswiped hair and the frills on the side of her stark white dress and her watch

that reminds me of today with Elspeth, buying fabric in National City to make a dress and seeing little kids dance in a Subway where we bought a Sprite and used the bathroom, receiving flowers and wrapping stones in gold wire, drinking coffee with milk and sugar from my tea set, staring at the pinks in paintings, some or all of that is in this photograph, titled “Candy Cigarette” by Sally Mann. (More Sally Mann here, on Artsy.)

(photo via art-folio by michèle laird)

Valentine’s day (photo)!

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as it turns out, i love valentine’s day. misha  & i give each other little presents a lot (little things, just poems or a small round rock), but today we give each other a little present on the same day, and i like that. it feels nice to know that loving is emphasized today, even if it’s all hallmark-ized and hollywood-ized–still, people are remembering to act in the name of love today. i believe in that. i love so many people, my mom & dad & sister, & my grandpa with his broken shoulder & the rest of my family, & my friends in the east & some people out west & various chickens & cats around america. loving people is what i like to do. valentine’s day has gotten dumbed down a little–bad chocolates are dumb & so are teddy bears with hearts in their bellies, but a loaf of bread with a heart in it is not dumb it all. in fact, it is very savory & beautiful. & it slices like heaven.

(bread & photography by misha j.)

happy day to everyone i love. happy happy day.

xoxo

My Saturday (song) & next Saturday (I’m reading!).

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Listening to Fleet Foxes, working hard all day on readings & poems & projects so that when Sam & Caity arrive on Tuesday I will do nothing but be with them.

 

 

Oh and San Diegans–I’m reading next Saturday night at a gallery called Agitprop, at 7pm. It’s not happening in my yard and it’s not related to SDSU–it’s like, a real reading! Please come if you live here. I’ll be selling mini chapbooks (one of the aforementioned projects getting finished today in preparation for my visitors).

 

(And so much thanks to Lorraine for inviting me to read. Makes me feel like a real poet.)

 

New Year’s Eve Brunch Sonnet (#5) (mine).

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Max is also a Pisces

He hands me the astrology book while reading my “Lovepoem” out loud

My photograph is on the refrigerator

This is my first time at their apartment and my photograph is on the wall

At midnight a blonde girl lights my sparkler after two minutes of matches

Sam in her black turtleneck with a small cup of water and grooving

Kathryn dancing with her hair

Mallory on the couch getting the scoop

In Andrew’s room the bed is stripped

Max makes coffee and the room is mugged

No taxis in all of Brooklyn, no taxis in all of New York

After 4am I’m not especially human

Math and sleep are both about the numbers

This year, again, is all about the words

 

 

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.

 

 

Thursday night (mine) (poem).

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Illastep

 

Three dudes making music

on a rolled-out rug

 

Outside the table umbrellas

are lined with lights

 

One red guitar

One guitar with four shining knobs

 

Ian like a young Allen Ginsberg

on the drums

 

The lips of the man I kiss

taste like new smoke

 

People are talking and people

are nodding along

 

All my hair is safely stowed

underneath my hat

 

Good god thank you, this

is exactly what I wanted out of my twenties