Tag: adulthood

“I Should Know Better” (poem with candy in it) (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katz2 Comments

I Should Know Better

I grow my own food
& make my own pickles

I make my own yogurt
I make tomato sauce from scratch

but every time I leave a hardware store
a video store a country store a magazine shop

I want to put a quarter
into that crusty candy dispenser

selling Mike & Ike’s (which I don’t even like)
or peanut peanut M&Ms or Skittles

I know that candy has been in there for years
But I just want that one small handful

of cheap & attainable sweetness
I can’t help it

I want those candies
I want them bad

We Are Older; We Float, We Sink, We Sleep When We Can (poem) (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katz3 Comments

We Are Older; We Float, We Sink, We Sleep When We Can

I’m nearly thirty and capable of commanding my body
inside a vehicle. The car and I, we go places together.

I drive south and then west, four hours plus one coffee
stop, to see Scott and his brand new baby. We meet

at a French cafe with “vintage gas station” as its theme.
The baby is strapped away against his chest, silent

and unseeable. We drink white wine and eat Frenchly
-titled meals by the window. Scott covers the baby’s head

with a napkin while he eats, which I both notice
and don’t notice. He is exhausted & he is a father

& I’m so proud of him. He looks natural with a baby.
He looks like someone related to me. Maybe this is why

I love him, or maybe it’s his excellent taste
in wall clocks, or the sandy fields & shifting days

we survived together in laughter. His husband is away
that day, working in the city. When he arrives home,

his face is nearly yellow from exhaustion. I want to feed
them both: applesauce, keffir lime leaves, matzoh ball soup.

At Scott’s birthday dinner party the next evening, there is wine,
deeply chocolate cake, and lentil soup with a pad of floating butter

on top like the raft we each contain inside us, each of us
the fat, the proteins, the flavor, the impending melt.

The Good Ole Day Job.

Published on by taylor mardis katz2 Comments

cow getting milked

I’m a poet & a farmer, sure, but also, I’m a freelancer, I’m a poet for hire, and I have a day job selling dairy equipment to farmers. The photo above, from Sugar House Creamery, displays the type of equipment I sell. I never thought I’d be in Sales, talkin’ teats (literally) with old guys over the phone, but life is mysterious & often hilarious & as it turns out, I like my job. I have access to the most delicious milk; I’ve learned how to make cheese, butter, yogurt, and kefir; I now understand how milk is made; the paycheck is more like a big-girl paycheck; the benefits are multiple.

Cheers to the jobs that pay the bills. Cheers to the dreams they fund.

Magazine articles for ladies (list I made while laughing).

Published on by taylor mardis katzLeave a comment
These articles don’t exist yet because maybe they don’t have to be written because maybe just their titles are enough. I came up with them in a rush of hilarity one day last week. It was way too easy. Can I make a career out of this? Show me the money!
 

8 Ways To Tell If You Fell Asleep Or If You’re Still Watching That Movie

Seven Ways To Wear Your Hair That Will Convince People You Definitely Have Hair

Top 10 Best Books To Read While Pooping

Twenty-Seven Hotties To Think About While the Gynecologist Does Her Thang Down There

Six Sexy Songs To Make Your Sex Sexier and Songier

“I Can’t Calculate That”: One Woman’s True Story of Trying to Figure Out How Many Tampons She Has Used In Her Whole Life

The Best Dog Breeds For Keeping Your Secrets

Do the Dougie, Or Don’t: Women Confess Their Sad True Tales of Dancing Really Bad

How To Eat Garlic For Dinner And Still Get Banged That Night

Best Ways To Integrate Your Sad Childhood Stuffed Animals Into Foreplay

10 Fruits That Will Make You Say, “Wow, Fruit Is Good!”

Classiest Slutty Wedding Dresses

Six Nailpolishes That Scream “I’m Hungry!”

“Yoga Takes Forever”: One Woman’s Story of Downward Dog Boredom

5 Easy (& Photogenic!) Weekday Recipes That Are Actually Just Take-Out Placed in a Pricey Bowl from Anthropologie

7 Kittens That Will Make You Puke and Never Want To See a Kitten Again

Poem written at dusk, written right this minute (mine).

Published on by taylor mardis katz2 Comments

I am making plum jam and it smells divine

because of that vanilla bean steeping in it

grown by an orchid in another county’s humidity

 

Misha is outside snipping grapes off the vine

to bring to his parents

because we can’t make all the jam

 

It’s sunny now after  a day of bluster and greys

and there’s a catbird screeching near the chickens

and the rooster’s screeching back at her

 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been injured

because it would sound unimpressive

and I like to impress people with quantities

 

Multiplication has never come easy to me

not even after years of memorization

I wish numbers were something I could intuit like moods

 

Being an adult means being able to eat an entire box of macaroni & cheese

And I can do that

But only every once and a while

 

Perhaps I’m still not quite fully grown

That would be really great news for me

Because I check my upper back daily for wings

 

On the day when I finally grow my wings

I will act as nonchalant as a teenager

And fly away for a daytrip but return home at dusk

 

Because dusk is the best part about autumn

And the best part about summer too

And the best part about right this minute

 

So I’m off to enjoy this current set of minutes

Because as you know they are already flying away from me

At a pace that not even the wingful can achieve