Category Archives: memory

by

At least there will be no babies, then there was.
At least there will be no episodes, then there was.
At least there will be no heart attacks, and then there was.
At least there will be no ripple effects, and then there was.
At least there will be no conversations.
At least there will be no love, or no love lost.
Yes, no love will be lost and none to find in heaven’s first place,
seat at heaven’s gate,
dessert on trays and
inaccessible.

by

What is it? We don’t have it, something we don’t have.

The mystery the mercury the moistery the mastery. The wiggle room,

the where we ought to be. The shame of oughts the sin of noughts,

of nougats piled high and sickly sweet.

What are you, sweet or sweat? The giggle room, the pickle room,

the ambidextrous grace. Kids cannot find you,

longing longing for the kindness of your mercury.

Kids cannot find you, quicksilver. Not find nor chase you.

Not aligned.

And he is not aligned. Just at cross purposes,

and cross as well. Overarching cross and crass and

cress, the water crescents of belief. The ripple room.

Semantics, syntax. The sticky aftermath of wine,

here I am, table, table, table, table, baby.

by

I can imagine river living, living by the river,

the Willamette where it winds through Creswell,

life between the buttes when there was so much

more to uncertainty than there is now.

Calling calling Colorado Gail, calling on my

dead ones, death, calling on the red ones,

milk red spots or stains, the blueberry of

buildings, the gray of grass, it dominates.

by

Shock of Ron Ferguson’s reference to Gail Godwin’s novel what it was. About coalescing, coming together and apart, Monrad and Rob in trouble, what about Joe, what about Warren?

by

I am expecting. She is expecting in a voice so juicy with disgust or secrets I hated the way the syllable “pect” came out of the mouth oozing with gossipy fruit juice The word is ruined forever as is duds as is a lot of words like revery. Need the poets to reteach me.

by

may 15, 2007

Lost luxuries, lost goodbyes. Lost opportunity villages, lost forever. Lost and found. Once was lost. Now am found. Find a lot, lose a lot. Remember. The memory of forever. The memory of Rembrandt. The awfulness. The offing. The offertory. The the the How repetitive. Mind is cramped, contracted. How to land. Wanting to land on an object. Wanting to observe theory. Observe theory. Observing theory. Notheory. Nothery. Nothing.

The Amazon River. The big river, the small people. Adaptation.

by

She doesn’t want to do the “right” thing, just create a crisis. “Ask the hard questions.” And who was so careful here? And who gave such good advice? And who worked through tears watering the pity plants the plants of plot the plot of price the price of play. And who uses paints? And what’s the picture?

by

brief thoughts of sex—need for writing about sex—some struggle in the bedroom and some insight—my mother unable to find comfort unable to take refuge—what is my refuge? yes the moment’s smell and that sensation walking on this trail this step-by-step, yes, your shoulder and pow—the odors of your hair sensation pressing mouth into your shoulder upper arm, sensation from other parts of body sensation pleasure from the use of muscles in my limbs with a calibrated abandon—leading okay—leading out of mind—it is a kind of practice—the flexibility to change your frame of reference—to let the body lead (no breath awareness) but—this is something I have learned

by

A soft, soft inversion, a simple comfortable balanced inversion. Spent no time at table. Practice scooping, scooping into singing veins, the hard attack. The tremolo. The tremulo. My dad, his hand under the baby’s chin, familiar escapade.

by

april 17, 2007

The coldness of this spring to go out with the trash and breathe a moment in the cold air. To know yourself. I can’t really tell what’s going on. I feel an awful lot like a narrator. I have no story, just to let go of that tail.

The long tail, prehensile.

Happy tail, silly tail. Tail of my dreams.

And also—toil. And toile.

Old fashioned fabrics, what has happened to you? In Girl Scouts, I made a book of fabric swatches trying to learn their names like “Dotted Swiss.”

by

I wish this could be warmer. Or more expressive somehow. I wish I wasn’t tempted by shit, and tales, and mentally ill. I wish I wasn’t haunted. And am I haunted after all? I feel like yes. I feel some burdens, but you know what—it’s no longer all that interesting.

I’m interested in the magical indigenous under the sound of rain.

by

Traveling back and back, remembering oh yes, failing to see the point. What is this? The pale awareness leaks, someone who really wants to make it work, solve it through all sick thoughts, solve for x, for him, for her, solve through all, something to be made right.

by

november 9 later

When the boughs breaks—practicing writing in traditional meter like Longfellow—trace of tobacco in the air—would like to regress, remembering Indian days—would like to expel         have my nails done

by

Still sad. Last night I had an apple and a few chunks of parmesan cheese for dinner, and watched an Italian movie “I’m Not Scared.” Intense. I was distracted from sadness by my awareness of what was going on inside Michele, the 10-year-old boy. Empathy, I guess. I also felt the heat of the sun and the joy of running in the wheatfields. I played and ran in fields. Corn fields. Forests. Meadows. I played in brambles and thickets, streams, streets.

by

My mother had very few stories. She repeated some familiar ones often. How great Christmases were. How she broke her leg riding a tricycle. Her problem students when she was a second grade teacher. How she developed a dread of throwing up from an incident in her own second grade classroom. How she ate the same thing every day for years. Now I can’t remember what that was—an egg sandwich? fried egg? maybe it was with tomato and mayonnaise, maybe not. The world of stories was very thin.

I wanted the juicier ones. The ones about menstruation. Her relationship with mother and sisters. Her thoughts about her father. I wanted the whole scoop. I was fed crackers. My next door neighbor said our house smelled like crackers. She found that comforting. Many people found my family comforting.

by

I heard about Immaculée praying the rosary to survive while shut up in a bathroom for weeks, hiding from murderers.

Something I want to know? Don’t know.

I said the rosary everyday for a year. Maybe it was a school year. My sophomore year. The cheesy pearlized paint flaked off my little white first communion beads. Once I lost the rosary—it fell from my pocket. That immediate pang of irrational loss— desperation. I retraced my steps and found it, on top of a desk in a classroom. I was ashamed that someone had found it on the floor, maybe even identified it as possibly mine, and decided to place it on the desk for the owner to more easily find. It meant another person was thinking about my things.

by

There’s fantasy. I wish I could access fantasy. I mean real fantasy, not just the odd fantastic incidents of my past—drug addiction, murder, alienation of the corporate world, near-fatal blood disorders.

by

There’s a stack of paper next to me and a stack of poems in front of me. “Backwoods Broadsides.” I enjoy seeing them there, in a little box decorated with pears. There’s a pile of pink ribbons with white dots on this desk. I picked them up from a rainy Nantucket sidewalk outside the Unitarian church. After a wedding. I guess they’d been used to tie wedding favors together.

by

The train goes by. It’s lovely to ride the train at this time of day. Very quiet passengers, almost empty trains. We took a train from Amsterdam’s train station back to the airport at this time. Working people with staid composure. Kids in dark baggy clothing.