The Station
9pm, downtown LA,
hugging a book like
it’s my family. Maybe it is.
*
Stir
There’s no real milk
or cream for coffee
Just some terrifying
portioned creamers
*
How do we know?
A man’s on his laptop
at dinner. The drink
I order comes lidded
in a jar, sprig of rosemary.
*
Convenience
In Venice Beach
you can buy a joint
& get your teeth
whitened next door.
*
Doncha know?
A hot dog on a stick,
I learn, is something different
than a corn dog.
Today it’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Specifically these songs:
Girl from the North Country
Masters of War
A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right
Oxford Town
Corrina, Corrina
And now I’m thinking about college: about Charles Hartman, and Jen Superson, and Andrew Oedel–about second semester of senior year, when Winged Nike was right outside the window and my refrigerator had only pickles & cheese inside it and my jeans got lost in Sam’s room for so long that when I got them back, they felt new. And dinner was a far walk away but at least we never had to cook it. And we did this on the streets of New London:
Now Andrew’s in his own real band and doesn’t have to pretend anymore. Now Jen is somewhere in NY gesturing excitedly, I’ll bet.
Now I’m in a house that smells of sweetgrass, with a lot of papers all around that mean I’ve done hard work, and also that I have all of it to do. Robert Hughes once said, “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” God I hope so.
One day
you can come stay at my house in Hastings
and sleep in the guest bedroom
and we’ll watch 3 movies downstairs
with snacks and water
and I’ll show you where I crashed my car and how hard it is to open
the freezer after you’ve just opened the refrigerator
I keep hearing O’Hara in my head–
There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?
But is the earth as full as life was full, of him?
Just when I thought I’d finally gotten over this song…I’m presented with a new reason to love it.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
you were talking so brave and so sweet,
giving me head on the unmade bed,
while the limousines wait in the street.
Those were the reasons and that was New York,
we were running for the money and the flesh.
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left.
Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe,
you just turned your back on the crowd,
you got away, I never once heard you say,
I need you, I don’t need you,
I need you, I don’t need you
and all of that jiving around.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, “Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music.”
I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best,
I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,
that’s all, I don’t even think of you that often.
because it’s not every day that I get compared to a famous fucked-up artist duo
as told by Joanna Roberts to my message machine
I’m moving from my apartment
and I can’t stop thinking of this past fall
in which I only wore two pairs of boots—
such. city. boots. in that the tall brown ones
always made my ankles bleed and the little
black witchy ones somehow left
this irreversible lump of cartilage on my heel
and I walked so. much. in them and they’re not.
meant! for walking! they’re meant for viewing!
and they’ve left hilarious damage on my feet
and what makes me think of them is
that there’s this old woman who lives
in the apartment below me and I always hear her
coughing in the morning through the pipes
and I rarely every see her, the only times
I‘ve ever really seen her were when
in the fall I’d go trampling down the stairs
to get to work or to go off on some adventure
in those boots
and I would almost run her over
and she was coming back from brunch
with her sister or something like that
in her cane and her big floral dresses—
In the earlymorning lamplight you
Were hiding from I asked you for a safety pin
You did not respond (you had fallen back asleep)
I found a safety pin on my first attempt
In a bowl of jumbled bracelets by the mirror
I know you
I know where it is that you
Would stow a thing like that
A friend is a poem is a friend is a poem, and sometimes this is true on a Monday.
TK
as my favorite poet, i thought i should send you a poem i really like. today i am making paninis with honey-mustard. i don’t know how to spell ‘panini’ and either does the computer. i miss you.
may
Snow by David Berman
Walking through a field with my little brother Seth
I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow.
For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels
had been shot and dissolved when they hit the ground.He asked who had shot them and I said a farmer.
Then we were on the roof of the lake.
The ice looked like a photograph of water.Why he asked. Why did he shoot them.
I didn’t know where I was going with this.
They were on his property, I said.
When it’s snowing, the outdoors seem like a room.
Today I traded hellos with my neighbor.
Our voices hung close in the new acoustics.
A room with the walls blasted to shreds and falling.We returned to our shoveling, working side by side in silence.
But why were they on his property, he asked.
A piece from my creative translation project of last semester, made up of letter poems: letters to Alice Notley, from all sorts of cool ladies, turned into poems. This one’s based off of a letter from Anne Waldman. You poets might recognize some of the names she’s referencing.
Thanks to Heather for her handwriting.
Scanner inspiration comes from Frankie.
panache, perhaps 