written at the summer sideyard & since then stationed on my refrigerator. & now you too can have this friendly reminder on your fridge, these words of wisdom, this clever counsel, to guide you through your future beverage selections, just save the pdf, click on print, and enjoy a future of smart hydration…
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have SARDINES in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s SARDINES?”
All that’s left is just
letters, “It was too much,” Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.
painting by Elspeth Sherman. poem by Frank O’Hara.
For a while now the poets have known
the farmers and now the farmers know
the poets and they say hello and hug them
and Elle says again, You were so wonderful
on Friday night and Frankie is smiling
because it is never too late or early for
a compliment meant genuinely and I give
Frankie free zinnias by Ellie not because
she is a poet but because she is a very good
human who has such strange handwriting
that it makes people want to tattoo it on their
bodies, and she tattooed it on hers but not
in a braggy way, in a columnar/cut-off way,
and I like to watch people ask her about it
and I think to myself that I’d never tattoo
myself because I hate repeating myself
but, to repeat myself, now the farmers know
the poets and they like them for their words
and savvy presentation (I think of Scott
in the front row of the sideyard smiling like
someone gave him the exact correct birthday
present) and the poets love the farmers
for their very good foods like Nardello
peppers which are sweet and the most
divine, they’re Ellie’s favorite and she’s
a painter and a farmer, too. And life, I think,
is not as simply roasted as a pepper is, but
it is sweet to watch a farmer hug a poet
hug a professor hug a trapezist hug
a graphic designer slash table maker
hug a videographer hug me, I’m hugging
all of them one after another or two
at once at the farmstand on a Sunday,
and I think we’re all farmers inside somehow,
all artily growing or having newly grown.
Sometimes my life is hip(ster)/I love you Heather/I’ll (we’ll) miss you Heather
And off we go to the east…
We eat cheese we drink
rosé, eat salad (eat olives),
finish off some soup, sort
through plums & nectarines,
flip the laundry, pack jars
for presents and the house
is hot as fired bread. There’s
a pile of my paper booklets
standing in an fruitcrate
on the shelf and everyone
will get one. And anyone
who wants will know I’m
home. And friends we farm
or farmed with might miss
our little yard. I’ve packed
my new red shoes and we’ll
eat peaches on the plane.
The neighbor with the high
white socks will grumble
at our incorrectly-plated car,
the banana plant will grow
another, stronger leaf and
the chickens left last night.
The house is vacuumed,
mopped, and marveled at;
we’ll be flying through the night.
mostly just this
mixed in with this
(thanks kaz)
and misha sold four prints
and there are flowers all over the house, even by the sink and right here on the desk
and there are four dollars in “20,000 words” which means at least 2 people have my chapbooks
and maybe, maybe, some sort of art scene to remember is getting going in san diego, but even if not, even if we’re all just smartpeople in a yard for a party, it feels good to remember how many good people there are in this city, and that with some wood and tacks and trashbins-turned-to-tables and the help of farmily, art can happen right next to where we live, and even though no one on the east has seen this thing we did and made, we will bring it wherever we bring our selves, sideyard or sideporch or sideacre of a plot of land…
the frazzled state of hair in this photograph is no where near to the frazzled state of my hair right now. by tomorrow, i will be groomed. by tomorrow, 29 photographs around the yard. by tomorrow, poems and poets and flowers by ellie and good people in the sideyard hearing art, seeing art. you should come. 7pm.
I believe in signs: yesterday got some
right great news, no explanation needed,
just love inside a courthouse. I could’ve
crossed my legs and cried. Today
got punched straight in the face in the nicest
way she could have done it, two days ago,
two letters in the mail, black ink that
wouldn’t smudge. Times They Are
A Changin’, as Dylan’s wont to wail.
Time’s got a slew of whys headed straight
for its wagging, wettened tail. Yesterday
a colored message on the sidewalk, red
and pink plus orange with the arrows
pointing toward the house. Today one
block of cheese melting in a canvas
bag. To signal with one’s arms is a signal
of our times: we’re tired. We’re all choked
up. I wrote two dozen signs in waxy
pen today, words like, Stuff these Peps
with Cheese. Market signage is important,
as is signage sketched on cardboard,
like the piece above the closet that
tells me where to go. Judging from
the unkissed sky, time is rushing in
on us again, neckties and bowls
and rickshaw almost-yeses, morphing
into no’s. Ears nose and throat all crammed
with altered cries: if you duck out or
cancel on the weather, it doesn’t mean
the rain will cease. If you invite me
with your nostrils to the pleasure
of your presence I doubt I’ll turn you
down. Pried from the edges of these
brightblue eyes is a type of scuffed
acceptance: what you do won’t make you
who I think you’ll always be, but it makes
you who you are. The liars and the thieves
were right: it’s easier to jet than
stay and watch the garden go to seed, all
that food that someone loaned good soil to,
all that high green-watered need.
Misha shaved all his hair off and we got a new chicken. Her name is Vicky. Vicky Christina Chicky-Wicky. V’Nilla and Vicky: the sideporch chicky-sissies. Is that a good name for a movie or for nothing at all?
In other news, I held two baby goats this week and they melted into my arms like butter. I also finished “Bossypants,” (by Tina Fet duh), sewed Misha’s robe, and watched the spectators of the pride parade like a granny, in a plastic chair on the corner of the sidewalk, with my other granny friends. (“Look at that lady! SO much purple! AND HER BUTT IS OUT! YEAH!!!”) Afterwards we made hot sauce. On Sunday, at the farmer’s market, I wore a mustache for three hours. I highly recommend this experience. So many jokes.
And last night I found this poem again. Swoon.
Between houses appears your unmistakable
hair, the hair of a wild man, wilderness
clothed in cottons. We warm
each other and warn the seasons
of their attributes. The winter steals
the softness from our elbows and you,
browned soldier, are older than
the weatherman predicts, more full
of starch, your heels unpeeling. Hot
beet skins stain a paper bag.
1. NOONIE link. Nuni. Nuny—SNL, you win on this one.
2. David and Sandy Katz, summertime
3. Long poem that’s worth it and made me cry, in a good way.
4. Today I planted thousands of sunflowers. Literally thousands, and about half a dozen types. In a few months, there will be a 1.8 acres more of beauty in the world, and I will have been part of it.
panache, perhaps 
