i really wanted to write a poem about a certain dog, who recently fell ill and died after a long and happy life.
on peas and your dog
The first time I stopped wearing underwear
was the summer I learned how peas grow:
thin tendrils stretching green out of groggy soil
curly young fingers
barely green reaching up
grasping for posts you hammered into the ground before i got there
You taught me the word: trellis.
I always smelled sweet, like fresh manure
drove home barefoot
Those plants would reach six feet
make white flowers
wind themselves so tightly around those trellises
I moved in the wind more than they did
By the time it came to harvest
a pod for every blossom
I stood halfrooted between the rows
of alternating sugar snap and snow with an old five gallon bucket
Your Dog trailing behind,
she more careful than I to walk softly
4 paws reverent between beds you tilled before i got there
hoping I would turn
to bear witness
reward her good behavior;
your dog never ate peas off the vine
like i did, that summer.
(i like this wordpress format a lot; it is the only format i’ve ever had and i have no intention of changing it, i think the birds look pretty, but it fucks up my line breaks which i do occasionally think about sometimes for no reason and sometimes for lots of reasons and this wordpress format gets the longer ones wrong and i want anyone who’s reading this and judging me to know that.)
prompt: write something with velocity. something with movement.
Its my first time in provincetown
and I can’t walk
there are families holding hands and eating soft serve frozen yogurt
i cannot get the taste of salt out of my mouth
and i have no politics yet so i am the happiest i have ever been but
i can’t walk.
*
two weeks before my sophomore year of college i decide to take up running.
i have a pair of sneakers i think you can run in
i don’t see why not
and i buy a sports bra from k mart
and i remember that sometimes i wear mesh gym shorts to bed because i am eighteen and i have never yet slept naked and i think those shorts would be good to run in
so i put on my mesh shorts
and my new k mart sports bra
and my sneakers
and close the screen door after myself
*
i call my mother
‘sarah and i are on cape cod; the ocean is very beautiful here; school starts next week; how are you‘.
i
exhale
and
we hop walk down the jetty she used to hop walk down with her family on summer vacations
her rocks are full of footprints and moments and my family walked along here every summer
and my rocks are too far apart for small legs to jump across and i can’t clamber because i don’t know this jetty i can’t bend my knees kids who want to run fast over the stones have to slow their momentum as they pass me
i move slow
wince, cautious
i didn’t even know i had muscles in my ankles how can these parents let their children run these rocks are sharp that sand is slippery
i wanted to have memories of my parents letting me run until i fell and hit my head on a slab or fell into the water
*
‘you can do twenty minutes’ you tell me
i don’t know what it is like to be believed in
because last week i tried and i had to stop and walk six times in twelve minutes
and i got a stitch
and a blister
so i am going to try eight minutes
you tell me to stay on the left side of the road and then you are gone and i am running alone
scraping the bottoms of my sneakers along the road
i hear my own breath for the first time
feel the first stitch tighten under my right ribcage just keep your eyes on the mailbox
three minutes and twenty seconds
my shoulders hunched under my neck, i swing my arms like i think i’m supposed to, hands balled in fists legs pumping generally forwards knees and feet flapping in shoes that weren’t made for running on gravelly dirt roads on six pm august afternoons in central massachusetts
i have no idea what i am capable of
*
there are drag queens everywhere
(i think, but)
i don’t have any of the words yet
i still depend on binomial nomenclature for my schemas.
all i know is i have had sex with a woman three times
all i know is that i liked it
every storefront is a gay art gallery or a gay restaurant i want to cross
but you have to help me step down the six inch curb from the sidewalk into the street
my
thighs
the soreness in my body confounds an overload in my head i cannot make beautiful in poetry years later all i remember is my mind spilling over stalling out racing refiling contorting every minute for two days straight except for moments when the pain in my body hurt worse and that one hour when i ate a pound of fudge i was never so full so aware of my own self so nervous for my steps when was the last time i was afraid of walking i had never needed an excuse for you to carry me before.
*
four minutes and eight seconds pass by, each perfectly segmented in hundreths of seconds on my stopwatch
and i turn around to run back the way i came
over three small hills and two curves back down the left side of the road
i have never done anything until it hurt before and then kept going
move my eyes from mailbox to trash can to truck to mailbox six minutes just keep going so you can say you ran for eight.
when i think i might throw up
when i think my calves have been permanently charred and branded
when my blister pops
and a second stitch rips my right side open
the road twists the house is sitting there in the sun
the spot where i started already behind me eight minutes come and gone
i fall into the grass
warm wet green and throbbing with life
I
overflow
kiss the ground
and stretch.
*
you sprint in twenty minutes later
did you do it
if you can do eight you can do twenty
we should go celebrate in p town.
we only give positive feedback in my writing class, butsometimes i wish i was part of a group where people would call me out, tear apart my shit, let me know how i can make something better, because sometimes i write something like this, where i can’t decide if i’m honest, an asshole, or just forgettable.
the hardest part
about my yesterday
was deciding between the chocolate pudding parfait and the hazelnut brownie when standing in line at my favorite cafe
life is rough
biking home tired but hopeful
a faceful of cherry blossoms
stop it, you sexy happy trees, you
to a house with porch lights and dinner leftovers in a clear tupper blue lid my name on it i made curry with potatoes because i know you like it
bank statements came in the mail from jobs that aren’t firing me this week
lets go for a coffee let’s just spend time together
remembered to wash my sheets this month smells like clean
i don’t even have to remember to wash them anymore
undress in the dark, run my hands over my smooth belly constant like my bank statement
snuggle under my blankets and light a candle in my windowsill
settle in to let the words flow out of me into my eco friendly greenwashed notebook i bought at a store in my neighborhood
because i live in one of those neighborhoods that has corner stores with eco friendly greenwashed notebooks
i can buy anything at that store
pick up my favorite pen i remembered to buy in bulk and
let
those
words
flow
flow like rain when i’m inside at work thinking about my patagonia rain jacket
flow like good conversation with an old friend i’ve been waiting to tell you this i’m so glad you picked up
flow like wine at passover i drank ten cups in two days has anyone seen elijah
let
those
words
flow
its two pages before my notebook starts yelling at me
quit wasting these clean white spaces between these voluptuous blue college ruled lines that you picked out to fill with words that were worth your time
give up go to sleep little girl
it was better when you were unhappy
it was better when you were tortured by the feelings in your own head who gives a damn that you had a nice bike ride
it was better when you wanted girls who didn’t want you back a roof to sleep under another hour of sleep another meal in your fridge a way to tell your family what was going on in your life and a hammer for that fucking toothache
remember that week your mom shat blood and they thought she had cancer and your car wouldn’t start and you ran out of toothpaste
now that was a good week for poetry, little girl
dear liz,
I got your letters from December (November, maybe?) and February this week. I was expecting a new pair of glasses to come in the mail but I came home from work on Monday and opened the door and saw there was no package of glasses and I was disappointed yet again, but then I saw the same kind of airmail envelope that all of your letters come in and your big capital letters and I remembered that you still live in Turkmenistan and sometimes we write letters to each other and that is what they look like! I read them while I ate my afternoon afterwork snack on a couch in my living room. It was sunny. I ate raisins.
I love getting mail but I think my mailman looks like a serial killer. His name is Toby. I try to avoid him as much as possible, but all of my housemates like him and sometimes he leaves us little notes about how pretty we are. I think he reads our mail, but he didn’t open your letters, I think. I left the letters on my coffee table for a couple of days and my housemates asked me what they were and I told them they were from my friend living in Turkmenistan and they were both very surprised and curious, in a way that suggested they might have thought I was making you up when I talked about you before. It is good to have hard proof of friendship. Sometimes I think my housemates think I don’t know anyone else in the world, and sometimes I forget I do too. Cue collective sigh.
So, Liz. Here is my life in some issue-themed paragraphs:
a. it is very easy to talk about the weather. it is spring, and most things are blooming. first we had crocuses and snowdrops, and now daffodils, and the tulips are just starting to open. I saw my first opened tulips of the year last week, gigantic yellow bulbs with bright red splotches on a quiet street near my house. I took a picture on my cell phone, but I erased it because it didn’t look very good. We have a few tulips in our front yard, but we moved in during October so I don’t know what color they are– I am waging a bet with myself that they are a salmon pink color. Update forthcoming. The cherry trees are blooming this week and the air smells like flowers, especially in the early morning when I bike to work and it is very quiet and I have enough peace and time and quiet to smell the world. All that being said, I am holding out for daisies, because (shush, please don’t tell anyone) they are my favorite flower. my birthday is in one month from two days ago. Yesterday I saw my first bumblebee flying very slowly across my front porch.
b. i got new glasses two days ago (they finally came by ups! crazy!). i keep using the word ‘foxy’ to describe them, but every time i look in the mirror i jump a little because i don’t look like me. i had a pair of purple glasses that i liked an awful lot; i got them about a year before i broke them, which was on thanksgiving right after i got out of the shower i jumped into because i overslept (i know, how many times have i ever overslept for anything?) and was late for my bus to vashon island for thanksgiving dinner with my friend sarah who had just moved back from south africa and was in town with her family who had just moved to vashon island. anyway, while i was getting out of the shower and toweling the steam off of my glasses, they snapped in half, and for five months i just wore the glasses i used to wear in highschool. maybe you remember them? they are very big and round and thick and brown and when i got them in tenth grade i used words like ‘alternative’ to describe them without being self conscious or ironic at all.
i hated wearing them and i am so glad that they are off my face. these new glasses are black and white and square shaped with tapered ends. they make me feel older and more masculine-angular whatever and i vogued around my house in a towel with them on when nobody was home when they came in the mail yesterday. the towel was orange, in case you were curious. i feel different, and i don’t like that i feel different, that i can sort of tell that i’m acting a little different, because i have a different piece of plastic on my face. i think about appearance a lot, i think about what my body looks like and what my clothes look like and what my hair looks like almost as much as i think about the things i feel are worth thinking about… and i just don’t like that. my new glasses make me wish i was a better person, the kind of person who didn’t judge so much about what other people look like, and even more the kind of person who didn’t judge herself so fucking harshly all the time. sometimes i want to tell the people i’ve offended that they should listen to what i tell myself, because they might feel better. …and then i remember that i really am an asshole. an asshole who is really good at digressions.
c. work is hard. working inside on a sunny day makes me question the humanity of the world. i am sleepy. i am always sleepy. for the past month i have been taking a writing class, and i am in love with my writing class and it is getting me to think more about writing and pay attention to the words in my head, and even write a little more. for the first time in awhile i feel like i could constantly be writing, but i don’t have time or energy to get all of it down. that being said, i updated not one but two internet dating profiles this week so if i have time to do that, i probably had time to write more.
d. i got a bicycle! it is sky blue and its name is Little Sky and i ride it to work. i go for bike rides and now i am one of ‘those people’ in seattle, who walk around with bike helmets strapped to their heads even when they aren’t riding a bike. i used to make fun of my ex-girlfriend for doing this. one time our sophomore year she came home from a lacrosse team party at 3am completely wasted– i had been asleep for hours and i heard all of this banging in the hall and suddenly my door opened and the room was full of fluorescent dorm hallway light and there was this shadow with a gigantic bike helmet shadow standing over me. she actually got into my bed with her bike helmet on, crying because she couldn’t figure out how she had made it home and i think she was sad that they let her operate her bicycle under the influence… i had to help her get her helmet off before we went to sleep.
my bike has a bell. my route to work is up and down; all of seattle is up and down. this is not a flat city. going uphill is good for me; i needed more struggle in my day. going downhill makes me feel like i am seven again, i cannot do it without yelling ‘woo!’ or at least dinging my bell. my friend who gave me the bike said i could ring the bell if i felt happy or if i needed to alert a car or person of my presence. my friend who gave (okay, long term loaned) me the bike left last week on a long bike trip of their own. riding this new bike everywhere makes my crotch hurt all the time, which is unrelated to the previous sentence. i had no idea this was a problem for bikers. anyway, i have this great new bike, and i am using it til i lose it when my friend comes back in september.
e. it is passover. happy passover! i know it isn’t your holiday, but it is my holiday and i want as many people as possible to know that all week i have been thinking about the history of my peoples and liberation and the BREAD OF AFFLICTION and my family and all of these other weird and wonderful foods and songs that make parts of my life make a lot more sense. you don’t eat gefilte fish and horseradish for twentyodd years and not come out unscathed. we had a seder at my house for the first night– 13 friends gathered around the table going through the story of pesach with prayers and songs and questions and an afikomen. i cooked all of the food. it made me miss my mom and the way my family used to be, and i wondered when i will get to the age where i’m not lonesome for the holidays of my childhood. i think about whether my parents still miss theirs, or now if they miss the holidays they made for us when we were younger. in the past two days, i have had 8 glasses of wine.
f. one of my housemates moved to china. i love the absurdity of that statement. the night before she left, i kept asking her if she wanted to go to yoga or walk to the lake the next day, just so she would have to say ‘oh, sorry, i can’t, i’m moving to china tomorrow’. we ate ethiopian food and laughed a lot and we all told each other why we like each other, which is good, because we’d kind of been in a rough patch and things seem a little more cohesive now. i’d like to attribute this to all of the fried food i’ve been feeding everyone and the sunny weather, but the affirmations sure do help. we are getting a new housemate on the 15th. we picked her out from the internet. we are excited about liking her. we are not excited about doing all of the dishes from our seder two days ago so she won’t think we are very messy people (which we kind of sometimes are but we try hard not to be).
Okay, liz. That is my life right now. For the past long while I have been telling folks that life is quiet, life is quiet, and it is. It is still quiet, but lately I hear something humming. Or something thinking about buzzing. Something is building, and I think it is going to take a long time, and I am still telling everyone that things are quiet, but something big is going to happen to my life sometime in the future, and I can start to feel it, and that is exciting. I hope you are well and I can’t wait to hear about springtime in the -stans.
one breath at a time,
marne j
I am twelve. My mother takes me and my two friends to the mall, has me try on outfit after outfit in every store and I love it. I love every drop of criticism bestowed upon my four foot five inch mind–does this make me look fatter–be honest–my friends shrug but my mother fills in for them that makes you look chunkier–a wrinkle of her nose, a breath taken too deeply.
My friends stand around embarrassed to be in my favorite store, a clothing emporium for babies and younger children whose clothes I am unwittingly proud to still fit into. Nobody told me twelve was when I was supposed to start pushing the boundaries of heterosexiness and attracting unwanted attention from my father’s friends with clothing from the juniors section in the department store. I showed up to homeroom the next day in my new seafoam green cardigan with pearly green buttons, my friends told everyone she got that from the Children’s Place (how much of this am I making up? what could they have said that i crumbled under my sweater set and wore my jacket instead for the rest of the day?)
My friends forgot about me, and I grew a dash bolder, wearing my sweater out to weekend visits with my grandparents and I was in love and started wearing it all the time. Glamorous, I thought to myself, unbuttoning or rebuttoning. A classic look. I looked like a tiny, awkward paralegal I wore that cardigan like a skin graft.
And then I was sixteen or fifteen and I got a boyfriend, snagged me a man right out of fifth period creative writing, philip sat behind me, he wrote poems that were troubled tortured and symbolic short stories with titles like ‘The Lawnchair of an Old Man’, I won a poetry contest we both entered and he said he was too creative for the judges they had no taste, what are you doing after school?
I was sixteen or maybe not and I am lying on my back, my back on leopard print bed in a bag sheets bought from the walmart last week, eyes closed, pants off, I am wearing nothing but my seafoam green cardigan in a bedroom that is not mine, getting fingered. I finger the pearly buttons I bought seafoam green thread to sew back on, the first time I sewed a button on, the irony of wearing nothing but an item of clothing designed, constructed, and marketed for little girls ages 4-8 is not lost on me, calling it irony makes it funny.
I cannot look at my sweater the next day I stand naked in my bedroom closet, old frayed pink childhood carpet under knowing feet, yell at my sweater on the hanger how could you have let this happened what am I going to wear today.
The cardigan goes in a trash bag. The trash bag is filled with other clothes I do not want the teenaged equivalent of buying a coke and some paperclips with your pregnancy test or condoms or whatever we buy as adults to convince ourselves that our shopping trip had more than that one purpose, i like heavy handed metaphors so very much. The trash bag goes to a younger friend who loves some of my clothes, but not others, and in August the cardigan flutters in the late summer wind on a hanger outside at her garage sale.
To A Friend
When I am at work
and I am staring off into a case of food service pastries or
when I am restocking backstock, stacking cases of bowl appetite noodles
and reduced fat wheat thins
I like thinking about you
you riding your bike in the morning sun
pedaling until the world around you is gold and warm and so perfect that you can’t stop laughing
so you have to dismount and lie in the grass in the name of divine worship.
When I am pouring lattes
I like thinking about your arms
and how you laughed when I called them expansive
and fell back asleep,
with my nose pressed in the pillow of your left under arm.
you have no idea how you hold me.
My boss says marne what are you smiling about
but I like thinking about us fucking
in some queer kinky post-punk quiet riot backasswards kind of position.
I like thinking about the way you get up from my bed
to pee in my toilet because you are so committed to staying well-hydrated
even if it means we can’t go at it for more than twenty minutes
without one of us getting up to pee.
When I punch out and ride the metro bus home
I like thinking about standing in my kitchen and waiting for your knock
your face, you might be wearing face paint,
i’ll ask why are you wearing face paint
I rode my bike, you’ll say, I needed war paint for the cars
