Category: poetry alive

New mini chapbook (mine)!

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I am in the middle of making a new lil chapbook. As always, formatting and photocopying are more traumatic than expected. But it WILL be ready by Saturday. About 5 people in the world are as excited about this as I am.

 

 

If you want one you should come to Agitprop on Saturday at 7pm. Or you can knock on my sideporch door any time after Sunday. Or, I can send one to you in a sort of delicious correspondence barter (you’d have to write me back). I’d do that. I have a lot of stamps.

 

($2 each, or traded for $2 worth of what you got. Photograph & cover design by my farmer, Misha J.)

 

My Saturday (song) & next Saturday (I’m reading!).

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Listening to Fleet Foxes, working hard all day on readings & poems & projects so that when Sam & Caity arrive on Tuesday I will do nothing but be with them.

 

 

Oh and San Diegans–I’m reading next Saturday night at a gallery called Agitprop, at 7pm. It’s not happening in my yard and it’s not related to SDSU–it’s like, a real reading! Please come if you live here. I’ll be selling mini chapbooks (one of the aforementioned projects getting finished today in preparation for my visitors).

 

(And so much thanks to Lorraine for inviting me to read. Makes me feel like a real poet.)

 

Brunch Sonnet 6: Patti Smith at St. Mark’s Bookshop (mine).

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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).

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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

 

 

Brunch Sonnet 4 (mine).

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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.

 

 

I now present to you…more brunch poems.

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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.

 

 

Poem about loving (mine).

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Loving you is just as full of color

 

as stepping off the train from someplace north

into the streets of midtown Manhattan and goodness

all the business women in their golden spires

of hair and heel and midday men with navy pocket

squares, even the children stop to stare at my patterned

country dress, my weak-tied ponytail. My duffel builds

a crease against my elbow’s hook—somewhere

in there, laid along the clothing and the slippers,

a jar of honey for a friend tilts and leaks, and the hive

at home goes on buzzing, run by a queen and the laws

of servitude, oh even the unemployed are dressed

in red and ready in New York, and I am standing

waiting for my ride, eyed by a policeman on the corner

like a villain sent from someplace blessed with vaster

spaces, and the taxis throw themselves with vigor

at the color green, and the city sky is purpling to black

with neon signs winking sales in capitals and every redhead

in the city is out here walking, no wait, shoving, past.