I’m a flexitarian
which means
I consume mostly vegetables,
flex a lot,
and eat bacon whenever possible.
Category: poetics
Sometimes people you don’t know yet are your friend (poem) (Gina Myers).
Dear Gina Myers,
This poem was delivered to me by the Academy of American Poets. I read it and I knew you were my friend. I sent it to Misha, and said, “Read this poem please?” He read it sitting next to me on the couch, then turned to me and said, “Woah, that girl is your friend!”
Once, I read a tiny chapbook of poems, and I thought the girl who wrote it might be my friend, so I wrote her a letter, and now she actually is my friend. In fact, she’s engaged! I guess that’s neither here nor there. What I’m trying to say is: this poem is how I feel a lot of the time. I think you’re probably already rich with friendships, but if you want another one, hi! Want to get a latte sometime?
With smiles,
Taylor Katz
***
For N & K
Otis on vinyl
carries from
the barn. Blessed
is this day. The camera
captures us youthful
& triumphant.
Blessed be this day,
a celebration
of friends coming
together. Last night,
surrounded by
those I love, I had wanted
to read Berrigan’s
“Words For Love,”
but I didn’t want to say
the heart breaks, even though I know
it’s true & the breaking
can be a good thing
sometimes, like the way
my heart shatters
a little each time
I think of my friends
& how lucky in life
I’ve been to get
to know them, to have
had the time to laugh &
drink & dance & to argue
& feel hurt too.
How can one possibly
say everything
that should be said?
These feelings
just feelings, not
defined by words.
To be overwhelmed,
caught in a whirlwind
& up to one’s
ankles in the creek
as lightning bugs
polka-dot the sky
& Otis, again Otis,
always Otis in my
memory, provides
the soundtrack.
Not every day
can be a good day
but this is one
of them, one
of the best days.
“It is marvellous to wake up together” (poem) (Elizabeth Bishop).
It’s snowing & I’m rhyming (sonnet) (mine).
First Snow Sonnet
And the world is sugared, softened
down & battened in. The snow a saucy
mistress touching every twig & every
trim. Nothing prim or proper to divulge—
staying in means fireheat & yokey eggs,
legs piled on each other’s legs. Aloe
plants abound indoors, spread
their prickled fingers wide, keep
their soothing goo inside themselves.
A chicken’s feet can freeze on ground
like this, she’ll lose her beak-picked
way. Inside the house, two lives can stay
preserved like bees in comb, can buzz
around each other in a home.
Hot damn, horseradish (poem & photograph)!
Let me tell you
about a spicy experience
a very spicy experience indeed
when I made pickled horseradish
from thick dirty roots Misha dug up
from our little vineyard in the frontyard
which I washed and scrubbed in the sink
with a round bristled brush and let them soak
in the righthand sink and peeled them with a lefty peeler
and chopped them and threw them in the Cuisinart with salt
and whey and pulsed it pulsed it added water blended it until HOT DIGGETY OUCH
I ran yelling from the stuff when I opened the lid and horseradish slid down
my throat and in through my eyes and cut off my breath and my tears
and cleared my sinuses. Hot damn, not since hot sauce have I been
that spiced outta town. Now the stuff’s in jars, stuff you’d say
you’d never eat and I rarely eat it either but every year
there it is on the seder plate and Geoff from work
tells me you can take a tablespoon of it
with lemon juice to cure an asthma
attack and hey if horseradish
is just out there growing
in your yard all free
and spicy, you’d
jar it, too.
Poem for Caity in Haiti (mine).
Poem for Caity in Haiti
Yo girl not all of us get to go
to a country that rhymes
with our name! And here
you are, going twice!
All I’m saying is:
you’re lucky.
Just a book (wish).
I just wanna be published, you know? Have a book with my name on it? Hardcover preferably, light purple in cover, somewhat slim, priced to move, about me on the back flap, a list of titles at the front, one poem per page? Just a book I wrote, that someone liked, and wanted to make, and printed copies of, and told their friends about. Even if no one bought it except people who know me, it’d be a book that exists, a quarter inch on the shelf at two small libraries, a book that I wrote by myself, that some people would read, some people would hold. I would just love a book.
(via siesta)
Thankful for bacon pancakes & so much more (poemthing) (mine).
On the night before Thanksgiving, I am thankful for friends. Thankful for the emails I get from friends like Chase, with this enclosed:
because I’M LAUGHING and because that video is so much like my life, my life is so much of making up songs about loving the things I’m cooking, picking, making, seeing. Thankful for friends who have and will come visit, and thankful for new friends in the making, thankful to be back east nearby closefriends I felt so far away from and thankful for the busestrainsandautomobiles which transport me and them to and from the country where I live. I’m thankful for my family members who are my friends in the deepest sense, the friends I haven’t picked but who have made me and it continues:
Thankful for
winter sun and
a grownup rooster fluffed with feathers (his name is Claude!) and
the shoes on my feet and
good soup and a fire and
the ever-discovery of poems and
the way lighting a candle makes me feel sacred no matter the time of day I do it and thankful
and apologetic to the mice we’ve killed in the basement who did not deserve to die and
thankful for free health insurance from the state of Vermont!
and emoticons and
thankful for sage and sweetgrass and cedar incense and
for the pond that I hopehopehope will turn to ice and hopeful
for finding ice skates at the thrift store for our pond and
thankful for nice thick socks
thankful for nice coworkers and kind customers and a wall of windows
thankful for how cheap a stamp remains and
for letters and packages and our big box from “fungi perfecti”
which means we’ll grow mushrooms underneath the sink throughout the winter and
thankful for the boldness of 2012 and all the good change it’s wrought and brought and
thankful for mittens
and a yellow hat from my sister
and a red hat from the country store which makes me look like a hipster which I am a little bit I guess but mostly I’m just a farmer who likes clothes and colors and thankful for
a grey hat from amsterdam
and thankful for all the things that weren’t stolen from our truck
like eachother and my gorgeous blue rounded piece of sodalite
which a woman at the stone store told me to select
because she said the purple of my aura was sagging that day
and it was
I was sagging that day
I’m thankful for people who help me unsag
like that cosmic lady who made me buy a very dark sodalite and also for my family and friends and
now I’m back to where I began which is thankfulness and
yayness and love and thankful and giving
this tinysmall poemthing in thanks and
in preparation for a bigmeal tomorrow, amen.
Sappho Saturday (fragment & photo).
Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on the black earth. But I say it is
what you love.
-Sappho, as translated by Anne Carson
photo of Littleleaf by Misha
Joyful poem of New York City (mine).
Scott in the Guggenheim’s whorl
stared at a Picasso with both eyes
forward, said to me “I see the Eiffel
tower, a saxophone and some boobs
on a plate.” We laughed in the museum
and got in trouble for photographs
and got kicked out a closing time
and talked right up to the stop
where we split off from each other
in the underground undergrime
of the subway. I zoomed to Kathryn
with her foster dog who did not
love me but he loved my thigh
and dinner at a tiny restaurant
where we cried in the moment
in between dinner and dessert
when the cook in the kitchen
right behind us began slicing
tomorrow’s onions. Eyedrops
and overdue birthday presents,
hummus scooped around, wine
and wine and a whiskey, a bouquet
and a beer and asleep in Sam’s
bed with the lock fully bolted.
And so much to eat every day,
scalloped potatoes by Kath
in the sweet lowdown space
where she’s made her small home.
And Andy so tall that we hug
like a tree and a sapling. And Max
even taller, so full of face that I’ve missed
since last winter in Bushwick when
the cabs were all taken. Awe of piled
trash on every street, awe of the ease
of jokes and jingles made around a small
wooden table. Only three tiny pills
twice a day for Sam. Schiele for free
in a gallery uptown. The subway running
as if the storm never blew. Sean lives
with Scott and they’re both my true
friends. Poems and lentils and The Strand
and more whiskey. Running down 12th
like a bat outta barn. Coffee in mugs
and coffee to go. Dancing in honor
of a liver restored. And back on the bus
to my home in the country, fat to the gills
on signage, on sweetness.
panache, perhaps 