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
She sits naked on a rock
a few yards out in the water.
He stands on the shore,
also naked, picking blueberries.
She calls. He turns. She opens
her legs showing him her great beauty,
and smiles, a bow of lips
seeming to tie together
the ends of the earth.
Splashing her image
to pieces, he wades out
and stands before her, sunk
to the anklebones in leaf-mush
and bottom-slime—the intimacy
of the geographical. He puts
a berry in its shirt
of mist into her mouth.
She swallows it. He puts in another.
She swallows it. Over the lake
two swallows whim, juke jink,
and when one snatches
an insect they both whirl up
and exult. He is swollen
not with ichor but with blood.
She takes him and talks him
more swollen. He kneels, opens
the dark, vertical smile
linking heaven with the underearth
and murmurs her smoothest flesh more smooth.
On top of the rock they join.
Somewhere a frog moans, a crow screams.
The hair of their bodies
startles up. They cry
in the tongue of the last gods,
who refused to go,
chose death, and shuddered
in joy and shattered in pieces,
bequeathing their cries
into the human breast. Now in the lake
two faces, floating, see up
a great maternal pine whose branches
open out in all directions
explaining everything.
I call this Rain Diego, rain for one minute in San Diego
The only thing a Fanta and a persimmon have in common is color
On the bus Scott looks gorgeous with the night moving black behind him
The martinis have back-up olives & back-up gin
You know him in the biblical sense
HIPSTERS*HIPSTERS*HIPSTERSATTHEARTGALLERY
There’s something about knowing someone in the biblical sense that makes it okay to take sips from their drink
I should’ve stolen that tiny tiny decanter when I had the chance
There’s no such thing as practice floral arrangements. You don’t waste flowers!
An empty Dr. Pepper bottle in my greenleather pocket
Green leather red leather three friends in leather would be better
I feel like such a GIRL when I’m with you
This tiny red can of champagne. This tiny red can at the Tin Can Alehouse
That girl’s got a wind machine
That tiny dog just pooped on the bar room floor
-We just danced in circles around thrown-off shoes, you missed it
-Oh I didn’t miss it/I was just waiting/for you to finish doing your thing
You’re doing something wrong, without a doubt, but it’s not that you’re wrong
I’m goin’ down to the bus station baby with a suitcase in my hand
In circles on the bar room floor
Walking up 5th is not nearly as hard as Main Street in Pittsburgh
If you know someone in the Biblical sense you can lean on them and whisper (the music’s loud)
If you know someone in the Biblical sense they might be asleep in your bed against the floor near the ground that will be rained on
I’m goin’ down to the bus station baby with a suitcase in my hand
Those girls are too skinny for girls
Those girls are too SKINNY for boys!
A chile relleno burrito/
and sauce/
Hot sauce
You have only just begun to love her
and therefore there is no way for you to know
how much I love her. I love her so ardently
that already I must and do love you. And not
because of anecdotes or the photo of your parted
hair, but because you loving her is a way to keep
my loving relevant, keep it safely and unwilted
in the air nearby her, air I can’t inhabit after moving
far away. I thank you and I thank you for keeping her
not in a jar but within a cloud of particles that love
her particles, within the air I see you breathing out,
visible as steam and towards her, no matter
what the weather calls itself that day.
One day you will give me
many gifts, hopefully
all at once, on a day
that is not my birthday.
The sideyard was better than ever before
The sideyard, according to a new neighbor-friend named Neil “felt like the 60s again.”
The sideyard had around 70 people attend which is record-breaking for the sideyard
The sideyard had a tiki torch
The sideyard had such good loud music that the police came
The sideyard thanks “Tendrils,” the new house band, who will perform acoustically from here on out so that we don’t get evicted
According to a girl I met, the sideyard was “the most fun event I’ve ever been to.” EVER!
Neighbor and friend Jed said about the sideyard, “Don’t ever let me miss this again.”
The sideyard offered free wine and decaffeinated coffee
The morning after the sideyard I had both a real hangover as well as a happiness hangover
Thank you to everyone who came to the sideyard
Thank you to everyone who let themselves enjoy something so analog
Thank you to everyone for coming out to hear poetry; we poets need you, we poets are you, we are all poets
(photos by misha marston johnson)
featuring the debut of the house band!
featuring flowers by ellie!
featuring “friends of the sideyard,” a group of loosely or not-at-all affiliated people who always come over to the sideyard!
featuring beer and wine if you bring it!
featuring foods also if you bring them!
featuring handmade arts for sale!
featuring poems spoken out loud!
be there or be square or be one of those people I love who lives very far away and can’t be there!
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
… kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
I’m hard of healing
for Jackson Allen
My friend wears my scarf at his waist
I give him moonstones
He gives me shell & seaweeds
He comes from a distant city & I meet him
We will plant eggplants & celery together
He weaves me cloth
Many have brought the gifts
I use for his pleasure
silk, & green hills
& heron the color of dawn
My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind
He backlights my dreams
He has built altars beside my bed
I awake in the smell of his hair & cannot remember
his name, or my own.
-Diane Di Prima
panache, perhaps 