the aesthetics/of my poetics

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the aesthetics/of my poetics (subject to unceasing changes)

 

love despite the world’s negations/love as a way of staying here

 

here are my flaws, my imperfections

 

food is more than nutrients/food comes from a land

 

an item, held enough, is more than just a noun

 

I am sometimes angry sometimes many characters

 

nakedness is best/and sexiness/and salt

 

there is a music of adornment

 

words inspired by their sound is not a way of cheating

 

honey       apricot      brisket       subterfuge       caramel       kettle       perhaps

 

the city is an interstitial space

 

a poem is a present

 

a poem as a way of hitting on

 

a poem as a piece of evidence

 

if I could sing, I will

Words to live by (Chris Kardambikis).

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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…

Tomato poems! In honor of the last day of summer (Guillermo Saavedra).

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On the Tomato

Brief Vaudevillian Hypotheses Apropos of This Androgynous Fruit

 

1

Behold the hero of the vegetable patch

a modest American marvel

with the face of a Chinese lantern.

2

Sheer light made of water:

a fleeting heart, pumping

muted cries of jubilation.

3

Her fancy dress, her festive

fantasy of red confirms a doubt:

she’s a lady tossed in the salad by mistake.

16

A tomato rots: here lies

a misfortune greater

than the fall of an empire.

39

Voluptuous little flag:

he makes every dry spell

fresh.

41

To sink one’s finger into

its soft flesh: a crime or copulation

as vague as your idea of bliss.

44

A tomato crosses the river

on a moonless night:

becomes a plum.

55

(Mark Twain)

A salad can be an anthem to joy

but the proof

is in the tomato.

60

To bite into a tomato thinking

of nothing: so the peak

of summer will burst in your mouth.

64

Columbus’s was egg

and prophecy: America

is a tomato under sail.

66

A tomato was raised

by two elderly lemons:

now it’s a sweet tangerine.

75

And yet, there is no more

voracious love than that of salt

searching for it on the plate.

97

The taste of tomato

remembered: the damp

face of a barefoot child.

 

 

translated from the Spanish by Cindy Schuster

I am not a painter, I am…

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Why I Am Not a Painter

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. 

“5” (a poem exists, exists) (Inger Chistensen)

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5

early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;

seclusion and angels exist;

widows and elk exist; every

detail exists; memory, memory’s light;

afterglow exists; oaks, elms,

junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;

eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar

exist, and the future, the future

***

unfathomably translated from the Danish by Susanna Nied

 

poem inspired by the photograph (mine).

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girl you have way too many

jackets & too many of those

 

girly bows as headgear but rest

assured i’ll hold a broken down

 

umbrella over us as our hairs

grow big & frazzled and the spittle

 

of the rain delivered on the wind

strums our faces like a set of bitten

 

teenage fingernails touching

grandpa’s heirloom fiddle

Two Mondays later & it’s over…

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We came by plane and boat, we beached

(he left), I danced in rain, I trained in along the Hudson, I saw Erwitt at the ICP and photocopied Sanchez at Poet’s House, I advised and pyschologized an entire closet, I lounged briefly in the 70s,

I quiched and coffeed, I dined and dozed, I family-ed and friended, I parked at Prospect, gave a gift, hugged tall men, ran in rain again, ate squids and octopus, shared kiwi chapstick and met two new boyfriends, hugged a crying friend and hot sauced a burrito, licked honey off my pinky and wouldn’t leave a restaurant, listened to my grandma’s birthday song and was dropped off in rain and sun, I bageled and I slept until I wanted to, I missed west people and wore a wide-brimmed hat…and tomorrow I’ll head to San Diego.

On the subject of bacon.

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(I’ve been a vegetarian since I was eight years old. I just started eating bacon this summer.)

“Eating bacon is like skipping all the other bases and just…fucking.”

-J. Harte, August 10, 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(partaking of bacon with K. Conway in June, 2011)

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