Category: poetry alive

Favorites list: a somewhat epic & hopefully never-ending poem (mine).

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FAVORITES LIST (an ever-accumulating poemlist)

Favorite color: periwinkle

 

Favorite book: “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck

 

Favorite thing I’ve ever written:

“Things I Want To Do When I’m 13 

1. Get a boyfriend

2. Have a bat mitzvah”

(written at age ten) (one out of two ain’t bad)

 

Favorite overheard pick-up line: “Your eyes are the color of my Porsche.”

 

Favorite human: Misha

 

Favorite strip club name: Nudie Cuties

 

Favorite finger: pinky

 

Favorite cocktail: “The Hillcrest Gizz”

 

Favorite way someone has misheard my first name over the phone: Kayra

 

Favorite soda: ROOT BEER!

 

Favorite animal: baby animals

 

Favorite thing about being an adult: throwing legal house parties

 

Favorite part about 4th grade: being the tallest girl in my grade

 

Favorite Celine Dionne song: “Because You Loved Me”

 

Favorite term of endearment that I’ve been called: “my little delicatessen”

 

Favorite part about going to the dentist: free tiny toothpaste!

 

Favorite wax: beeswax

 

Favorite way to eat kale: with my friends!

 

Favorite metal: copper

 

Favorite organ: brain

 

Favorite flower: dahlia. no sweetpea. or paperwhites!

 

Favorite rapper: Cam’ron

 

Favorite punctuation mark: colon

 

Favorite geometric shape: cone

 

Favorite fake invention name: The Nipple Fondler 2000

 

Favorite club I’ve created this year: The Poets’ Trampoline Club

 

Favorite pun using way/whey: “Move bitch, get out the whey”

 

Favorite outdoor activity: singing

 

Favorite sister: Sarah Schoenberg Katz

 

Favorite college: Connecticut College

 

Favorite dog: N/A

 

Favorite name of a past dentist: B.J. Mistry (say it out loud) (this is not a joke)

 

Favorite food on the seder plate: charoset!

 

Favorite modern acronym: YOLO

 

Favorite mustard: honey

 

Favorite way to wear a headband: the west coast way

 

Favorite thing to do when lots of people are over at my house: make each of them wear one of my hats

 

Favorite item available at a haberdashery: cufflinks

 

Favorite point at which to eat a banana: when it has a smattering of freckles

 

Favorite laugh: Scott Ballum’s

 

Favorite food that I never used to eat because I loved pigs and was a vegetarian but now eat all the time because pigs taste good and I am a flexitarian farmer: BACON

 

Favorite Woody Allen movie: “Midnight in Paris”

 

Favorite heat source: body heat

 

Favorite adjective: “deluxe”

 

Favorite name of a stop on the Croton-Harmon train line: Spuyten Duyvil

 

Favorite gay Pisces New York School poet: Frank O’Hara

 

Favorite gay Scorpio New York School poet: James Schuyler

 

Favorite bagel: everything with scallion cream cheese, please

 

Favorite basil variety name: Spicy Bush

 

Favorite city: NYC

 

Favorite name of a motel off I-95: The Honeyspot

 

Favorite remedy for when my hair gets greasy: stay home

 

Favorite yoga position: bird of paradise

 

Favorite food that Misha is making right now as I write this: hummus

 

Favorite way to end a poem: with an image that will sear into your mind forever

 

Favorite part about NPR: when they play short music clips in between shows

 

Favorite thing that’s about to happen: baby chicks and ducklings are going to arrive at my doorstep

 

 

The end. For now. The favorites are always accumulating.

 

“How happy the day” (poem) (mine).

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How happy the day:

 

the woodstove creaking with heat,

a mix of beans bubbling on the stove,

the new-again president taking one last look at the crowd,

the single chickadee landing on a grapevine,

new paperwhites greening upward,

a pile of sage drying on a tray,

a beeswax candle burning slow,

and my two friends engaged to be married.

 

Broadsides are important; poems are important (broadside; poem).

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I believe that literature is important, and I believe that beauty is important, too. I believe in aesthetics, not for the sake of aesthetics, but for the sake of adding curation to the world. I believe in beautiful books of poems and I believe in broadsides, poems letter-pressed (letter-punched) into thick paper. One day, I will own a small letterpress, and I will make small books, beautiful books, books that have forests in their peripheral vision. They will be for sale, and they will be available for barter, too, because I believe less in money than I believe in beautiful items, a jar of brightpurple kimchi, a set of photographs with thick white borders, a hand-sanded cutting board. I believe in love and I believe in matrimony if you want it and I believe in admitting fault and in feeding oneself and one’s loved ones. In essence, I believe. As a result, I share this stanza that I love (by someone I know), and this whole poem, which I understand completely (by someone I do not know).

 

In a movie we see a young family live through
a tsunami. Sheltering in trees. I think of the man I might expect
to find unhurt in a tree above any awful thing. This man who
on Christmas I said I would marry. When I met him I dreamt
we went cheek-to-cheek to the peak of the dome of my room to speak
privately. When something comes true it is like a wreath in your body.

and

 

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(via BLACK LEMON)

Joe Brainard & White River Junction (writings & photos).

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White River Junction is where I live, and work, and eat. It is also where I yoga and latte and gossip and discover treasures. It is where I mail letters & where I show off my extensive hat collection. Joe Brainard passed through here on a bus once (probably more than once), and he wrote about it, and these days I’m reading Joe Brainard again because I think of him as a pick-me-up, even though he was mostly sad and worried about being too skinny and anxious about the concept of being a “painter” and the concept of love lasting. Then how does he make me so happy? Because he enjoyed being alive and wrote a lot just to do it and he drew pictures of things on tables and hung out with James Schuyler, one of my gay dead loves. And he had a good attitude, he did his exercises and illustrated books and drove places with friends. He was one of those charmers, I think. Here’s some of him.

 

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*top image is from The Best American Poetry blog and the bottom image is from my phone’s camera, taken while drinking black tea with milk & honey.

Sometimes people you don’t know yet are your friend (poem) (Gina Myers).

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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’s snowing & I’m rhyming (sonnet) (mine).

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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.

 

 

Best Hannukah present ever (poemthing; photos)!

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OUR CHICKENS LAID THEIR FIRST EGGS

 

There needs to be something MORE

than capital letters to convey my joy. I swear

I feel like my best friend just had a child.

I feel like I just won golden admittance

to Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. Our little

chickies, getting sexy, making chickies!

For breakfast tomorrow: eggs on toast

and sauteed shiitakes, all of which

we’ve grown ourselves, oh heavens.

 

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(that’s a Brazilian bean soup in the process on the stove)

 

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Hot damn, horseradish (poem & photograph)!

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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.

 

 

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