Month: October 2010

I believe I would come out and wash my face

Today’s subject line is from James Wright’s “Yes, But,” which is mentioned in Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life as the one she read at her father’s memorial service. She writes that her father “would have loved the fact that this poem allowed me to say ‘making love’ — while wearing fishnets, I should add, an edgy touch he would have also applauded — before a priest, a bishop, a rabbi, and an overflow crowd of 550 people in an Episcopal church in Bible-belted Oklahoma City.”

The poem, and more about her father, are in this 2004 post at her blog, Orangette.

I picked up the book on remainder earlier this year, on impulse. I took it to bed with me last night (having slipped on a step fourteen hours earlier and landed on it hard, I was feeling too achy to think and too sore to sleep) and it was just right — it includes a fair bit about Paris, and a powerful chapter about her father’s last days, and a cast of opinionated food-lovers that include a vegetarian composer and a Seattle menage-à-trois: “Jimmy is the baker, John is the cook, and Rebecca is the force of nature.” MW continues:

“Moll, you need two husbands,” Rebecca announced, stirring a snowdrift of sugar into her iced tea. “You can’t expect one person to be everything for you. You need at least two. At least.” I nodded. She had a point. I have thought about it many times since, and I don’t know that I entirely agree — so far, one husband is almost more than enough for me — but she did have a very good point. But that morning, the scent of melted butter was rising from the stove, and talk of husbands, singular or plural, had nothing on it.

The book also devotes pages 216-17 to “radishes and butter with fleur de sel,” MW having reminisced two pages earlier about visiting her boyfriend on West 123rd Street in NYC and how “sometimes we would wake up late and walk to get a jug of orange juice, a bunch of radishes, a baguette, and some butter. Back at home, we ate lazily at the wobbly table with the window open, the box fan blowing, and my bare feet on his lap.”

Reading this took me back to the last time I’d eaten radishes — which was indeed with toast and butter and salt, over at Holland House, with three dear friends — and it made me wish there were radishes in the house. And I went shopping earlier today, so now there are. What marvelous times these are.

I’d taken to sleeping naked. He took a good look at me before reacting.

So, “Hamiltons” won. Many thanks to everybody who commented!

In other news, Per Contra has just published my literary short story “Toy Boy.”

I’m working right now on a full-length book manuscript of poetry about the US. I saw Molly Peacock read last week, and she read her poem “Aubade,” which got me thinking about aubades, and I wrote one based on the “morning in America” Reagan ad. I’m feeling quite brilliant for that.

The Heart’s Astronomy

by Julia Ward Howe, published in Passion-Flowers, 1854

This evening, as the twilight fell,
My younger children watched for me;
Like cherubs in the window frame,
I saw the smiling group of three.

While round and round the house I trudged,
Intent to walk a weary mile,
Oft as I passed within their range,
The little things would beck and smile.

They watched me, as Astronomers
Whose business lies in heaven afar,
Await, beside the slanting glass,
The re-appearance of a star.

Not so, not so, my pretty ones,
Seek stars in yonder cloudless sky;
But mark no steadfast path for me,
A comet dire and strange am I.

Now to the inmost spheres of light
Lifted, my wondering soul dilates,
Now dropped in endless depth of night,
My hope God’s slow recall awaits.

Among the shining I have shone,
Among the blessing, have been blest,
Then wearying years have held me bound
Where darkness deadness gives, not rest.

Between extremes distraught and rent,
I question not the way to go,
Who made me, gave it me, I deem,
Thus to aspire, to languish so.

But Comets too have holy laws,
Their fiery sinews to restrain,
And from their outmost wanderings
Are drawn to heaven’s dear heart again.

And ye, beloved ones, when ye know
What wild, erratic natures are,
Pray that the laws of heavenly force
Would hold and guide the Mother star.

Everything that stinks is instinctual.

Since I last posted at the end of July, I’ve had a few publications: “The Casualty Notification Officer” and “Everything that Divides” at Prick of the Spindle (love their layout and design so much); “Improving on Nature” at Strange Horizons; and a scifaiku at microcosms.

I’ve also been playing with a text-to-movie application and have made two “movies”: Improving on Nature and The Queen of England Talks About Pigeons. Those have been a lot of fun. I end up spending all kinds of time with little fiddly details but the basics are dead simple.

My poem “Hamiltons” is a contestant in the 10-10-10 Poetry Contest. Each poem had to be ten lines of ten words each somehow relating to the theme of “ten.” Some of the other poems are pretty sweet too. I was initially undecided about submitting – Peg and I had dinner last week and had a long conversation about this market, which pays well (and the editor certainly has his heart in the right place) but which is more of a popularity contest than about the merit of the poetry (the winner is decided according to how many positive comments it gets). I ended up deciding that I wanted the exercise of writing within the limits he’d set, and I’d had what I thought was a pretty good idea for what to write about—and then once it was written I figured I might as well shoot for the $242 prize, and worse case scenario my entry fee would go to some other poet. If you like my poem, please say so in their comments!