Chutzpah (pronounced huuts-pah) is a Yiddish word used by Jews and non-Jews alike to describe someone who is particularly audacious or has a major guts, or, more crudely put, someone with balls.
Category: new york
Mary Moon: she’s a vegetarian (song).
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.
As a Pisces, I feel strongly connected to feet (photographs).
as well as inexplicably charmed by hats
photos by Garry Winogrand
Belated brunch sonnet #7 (mine).
I want to walk around Hastings but nobody lives here
anymore. Pretty soon I won’t either. My home will be
some yellow morning in a place with seasons, a couple
of strips of bacon still scenting the rooms near the kitchen.
Tomorrow I’ll show friends the spots on my tour of Hastings:
the tennis courts, the entrance to the woods, the back door
of the bar where you can smoke anything, the long lightless
road along Reynolds Field. I haven’t lived here for years,
proved by today when I tried to mail my letter in two mailboxes
no longer in service, painted brown but still standing, handled
mouths glued shut. When I come home, the cat relearns me.
I sleep under a mountain of blankets. My appetite is misplaced
and I get lost driving simple places. All this not-knowing
is a sort of exhaustion. All these knots have pull.
Brunch Sonnet 6: Patti Smith at St. Mark’s Bookshop (mine).
Brunch Sonnet 6
Patti Smith at St. Mark’s Bookshop
Patti kicked the g’s off the ends of words—thinkin’,
fryin’. She had long dyed hair with undercurls of grey,
no secrets there. She arrived on time in a black beanie,
her voice skidding out of her throat like wet feet on sand.
She was amazed to have her name on a New Directions book,
she waited fifty years but it happened. Fifty years isn’t so long
for a dream. Her neighbors in Detroit used to spiff up her lawn
while she was gone on trips, she hated that, she wanted
those flowers for tea, for wine, the dandelions. The worst thing
about Detroit wasn’t the lack of a coliseum or museum, but
the lack of a café. She said she’d sit in some whitewashed
corner at the nearest 7-11 and try to read, pretending herself
at the Café des Poètes with a mug, a watch, a bit of time,
a few sips left, a cigarette, the table wooden, stained.
New Year’s Eve Brunch Sonnet (#5) (mine).
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
Off to brunch, New Year’s Eve (song).
Brunch Sonnet 4 (mine).
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).
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.
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.
panache, perhaps 