Category: holidays

Brunch Sonnet 4 (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

 

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).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

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.

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

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).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

 

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!!!!!!

 

 

Happy poem in your pocket day (April 14)!

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment

Today I celebrated a holiday that no one ever seems to believe is actually real. The night before this day each year, I stay up as late as I need to writing poems on stationery emblazoned with my name in purple script (thank you, Jeannie Scheinin). Check out these pocket-sized poem PDFs, if you want one of your own.

If I saw you today, I gave you a poem. Here’s the poem I gave to Misha today.

Letter Poem #3

The night is quiet
as a kettle drum
the bullfrog basses
tuning up. After
swimming, after sup-
per, a Tarzan movie,
dishes, a smoke. One
planet and I
wish. No need
of words. Just
you, or rather,
us. The stars tonight
in pale dark space
are clover flowers
in a lawn the expanding
universe in which
we love it is
our home. So many
galaxies and you my
bright particular,
my star, my sun, my
other self, my bet-
ter half, my one

-James Schuyler

The Last Brunch Poem, Day 20 (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katz1 Comment

Goodbye grandma and grandpa and suckers
in ceramic bowls in their just-cold house where

I came into some Steinbeck and heard word about
the “two-cent plain,” a small glass of seltzer

at the fountain and a single smoke for a penny
less. Goodbye New York, goodbye high school

(though I should’ve said it years ago); goodbye
thick scarves that warm my chin, goodbye smallperson

chance at the lottery win. In an apartment floor
on Warburten we sang “The Weight,” planned the three

-part chorus note and in our rendition humor didn’t pull
us out, half our faces painted and the other half about

to be. The photographs I seized these weeks are grainy
and behind the gloss the noise is coiled. Sam didn’t

snore. Andrew’s voice across the phone was hushed
and pious for the past. He drove. Goodbye pink

backdropped cheetah where we’ll pose until we’re all
too fat for year-end dresses. Goodbye Euclid and Villard

where I didn’t exercise but hoped to hold a face or two.
Goodbye avocadoes posed in pitied winter pyramids

and goodbye to mothers in the store and on the street,
catty-cornered on a mat or in the heated trainstop.

And here’s the last full stop after a half day’s research
into telegrams: I came, I saw, I ate late meals. I ran.