mmmmmccxxix

Assessment of an Ass Gone Backwards

my assessment: i am too honest,
straightforward, blunt...redundant,

but not enough to get a point across
with clarity (a cross; put a pin in the

genetics of it) (each year the research
seems to bring us closer to the roots and

branches of the family tree; i only sug
gested the pin as a—would it be a joke?

—because it is a too-used phrase i’ve
grown to acknowledge with an eye-roll,

but has its overuse perhaps peaked by
now...the things that become more dif

ficult to stay on top of [the things to
the top of which it gets harder to climb]

[the things to top upon which i attempt,
and with diminishing gusto, to climb] or

rhyme.  this blusterous noise of nothing,
this noisy nothingness, this bombastic

barrage of blanks that boom as if mere
duds were all that filled the barrel of a

pistol that has its lever pulled repeatedly
by a blistered digit belonging to some

trigger-happy creep, that’s what this
godforsaken week has been.  all noise,

mere distraction and bleeding eardrums.
this is what happens the further away from

the structure of steady employment or the
regimen of appointments or lessons, of

sitting bored in classrooms from nearly dusk
until the embers of the winter sun have faded

into a moody hue of indigo.  you wish the rest
of light away, crave the impossibility of obsidian,

but the slowly dying city never dies enough, and
so, with smoldered haze of light that won’t allow

these eyes to distinguish but the basics of the
complicated map that once unfolded becomes

impossible to finesse back into a semblance of its
original state, you stumble down the path toward

the ocean, or so you think, weaving in and out of
brazen, brash and awkward through poetic frivolity

and frugality, never finding the tide nor even a
a swath of cooling sand, where all of the paths

that cross this city with which you’ve become so
intimate, and without failure, end.  this is a con

fusion which drags the light of day, the clearest
way from the muck that you’ve been stuck in

toward the least resistant trail with the slightest
slope that will lead you back to clarity, back to

distinguishable signage and perhaps a crew in
recognizable uniforms that might help you through.

which is all to say it has been a week.  with setbacks
that have turned all clocks back to somewhere we

once and not so long ago called past.  with almost
no commitments nor resistance you’d think we would

be getting somewhere, and fast.  but, exasperatingly,
here is where we find ourselves.  here’s to hoping that

our next stop will be somewhere over there.  and

please, we pray, not at some familiar point that

lies between here and where we started, when

ever it was that we did.  all that time ago.

mmmmmccxxviii

Richly Espousing

for a few moments
we each got lost in
our own versions of
etymology.  when lydia

walked into the room,
the person who appeared
to be the leader was addressing
the classy crew, “okay, it’s time

to do a bit of time travel.”  lydia
quietly assessed how calm the
charge, tried to mirror that tranq
uility with what she had come to

believe was her superpower.  she
seated herself with a slow-motion
grace that, what emanated from the beauty 

of such deliberate movement numbed the

perimeters of consciousness of the inhabitants 

of that comfortable space, taking the
edge off of the cumulative
verifiable presence within the

room.  her presence had
not only been accepted,
but it had done so by those present 

with such mutual acceptance

and ease that all were
working almost instantly
as one.  and with such
an openness.  the

cooperation was so
ideal that the aforementioned
”leader” took an extra long breath,
expanding coolly out of what had been

a necessary moment, releasing her charge
until an equanimity took hold, until neither
of the individuals, not one soul in that space,
could with any of the laboratory’s tools (which were

the best available, and the best were truly stellar) measure

even a micron of inferiority or superiority.  this had
always been the goal. and we each remained equally 

insistent upon maintaining it, unwavering but for 

such moments of transition that had just been

experienced; entrances, occasional
exits, rare dispersals that long ago and for time
immemorial had so carefully and gently been built into their lives,

its structure, so that their civilization could
now and for all times, an expanding stasis,
as a whole, as one, progress; no individual,
no citizen, ever relying or leaning upon this perfection,

this expansion, any more than another, no one
stumbling or losing a bit of footing during such
transitions, relying any more or less upon a thing.  this
peaceful and enlightened whole, as one, progressing, no individual....

mmmmmccxxvii

Happening Right Now

“are you upset about my premonition,”
i ask him, “about you and your quinoa
this morning?” imaginary beginnings.

trying to learn how not to walk straight,
i always seem to walk a line (it’s alright if this
has you thinking of johnny cash).

when gliding through semi-consciousness,
barely touching upon any context, except that
we’re dancing, me and my machine.  and

we’ve all the context we need (the
only memorable thing thus far, now that
you are reminded by a change in volume

that you hit play on a recent tiny desk concert
that now replays on the big television screen at
the foot of the bed, to your right, just over

the still life of fruit and vegetables) noticing as you do
that the lead rap-mama just used the word texts in
some no doubt salacious sense but has prounced it,

distinctly, texas.  this is after she’s sung
three of four boring numbers at the top of the
set.  but now she turns the volume up as we all know

she can, stretching those bronx vowels
at a clip that’s about twice as fast as a horse’s
trot and, waving her arms around and about in

an illogical but fluid fashion, she shifts gears,
booms: CHANGE THE VIBE! CHANGE
THE VIBE! CHANGE THE VIBE!

whatever stain from being so down
and out for the past few years, no
matter how impossible it is to

scrub away the ink of that squalor (life in the
institution of destitution) .... i grew up
with folks who worked like mad just to

ensure us kids got to coast up through
adolescence and beyond unaware of any
hardcore financial obstacles – oh, we each

got our turns helping clip coupons, it’s
not like frugality wasn’t preached at us from
numerous angles with regularity, but

we had it easy peasy. whatever my father’s
lesser dreams or otherwise perverted
desires (of which there seemed a

seemingly endless supply), his overarching
motivation of giving us each a better life
than he had when our age was the loudest,

the most consistent. just back from my
weekly food pantry clack-tapping these
lines onto the laptop perched upon

my circular pillow, my wrists bouncing around
on either side of touchpad, rocking it back and
forth atop my bed, next to a pile of cantaloupe,

bok choi, onions, tiny white potatoes, zucchini,
green oranges, squash, lemons, a package of
spaghetti and two big bags of green lentils.

oh, when your lower back is hurting and your
body can’t help but begin to dance like a marionette
that mimics the oversized cellphone or the miniature

word processor that dances before you, at your whim,
and you’re sated (but slightly dry-mouthed) by the
multi-colored array that’s wrapped like a cornucopia

half-in, half-out of your fuzzy brown comforter that you
promise yourself will go into the wash this evening, when
you’ll clean, chop and then sautee a select and generous assortment

in the frying pan you’ve been wanting for years but have
only just been able to purchase.....and you’re not
much of a chef but you just know you have

so much desire that you’ve become convinced has
an intense potential for talent—so much so (and this
happens often enough) that you can barely contain yourself.

mmmmmccxxvi

death by earthquake

everyone thought the
screenname was a mysterious-
enough avatar: everyboyshot.

arthur was sure that a gun was in
volved, but remembered “them” as any

boy; only one manchild down.  sebastian 

knew better, grasped the inclusiveness of 

every single male (there was some deliberation 

over the actual sex of characters and whether 

the paradoxical moniker had any del 
iberate inward sexism or, just as possible, any 

outward diminution, was perhaps a derogatory 

joke that dedicated to the female of the species). 

it’s so true!  thought greg, we all want the endless
choices, mutual attraction being such

a modern given.  just amongst us boys,
thought trev, almost sufficiently
revved.

mmmmmccxxv

heart to heart
(another sonnet with a big blue wave)

         I was careful to use the right words
                                  —Micah Ballard

watched it stroke the midnight
sometimes     i’m a person who’d
much rather relay all the feels
   there’s so much more     and at such
a faster pace           is life really happ

ening again?      and i must repeat
that it is not that i am holding
back what i hold deciding not to
reveal          i have my reasons    death is not
one of them sounds like a diversion

the jackhammer has the sidewalk pur
ring tonight        a loss of self forces a hand    sense
of self?       sincerest self       boards boost bodies
over behemoth wave at one and some

mmmmmccxxiv

amber granite

everyone knew the moment
the mosquito was infected, the
thanksgiving turkey notwithstanding.

the broadcast wasn’t mutually beneficial.
and the moment the malarky hit the air
waves was met with laughter at first, then

was sufficiently divisive, after which some folks
calmed down to about a three and a half.  i like
how this exercise is working

the crotch area into a seismic tizzy.  youth
remembered as more haze-soaked than dizzy
(vertigo, o vertigo; sung to the tune of galveston)

mmmmmccxxiii

a show of hands

if folks don’t mind terribly.
we just don’t know where
one is coming from (though
we have a pretty good idea).

such things lower the odds of
common misperception.  keep
murderers from intervening.
give us all a sense of inequity,

with and without any more
intense focus given to probes,
to problems.  the likelihood that
someone (not just the culprit, of

course) has already narrowed this
down sufficiently continues
to get higher and higher.

mmmmmccxxii

[Rimshot]

                  [Kumquat]


This would be the text of an

assuredly funny house made

of words I don’t know.   It being

Disclosure Day.   I saw a couple

of cockroaches.  First time in

ages (several weeks).  Seems like 

a day of pretty significance, actually,

a pretty significant morning, with

an afternoon and an evening 

clamoring after.  “What are you 

doing in my kitchen?”  “Haven’t 

had a kitchen in years.”  May 

our lucky lotto combo well be 

remembered (though I find 

gambling worse than a waste 

of time):  6, 7, 5, 5, 4, 2.  Remind 

(an imperative verb acting as a

transitive action verb when

used as a command, mind

your memory, disburse en

couragement, remine, rem

and) the lover from the him,

he’s spherical other that 

he’s got great taste in divas, 

that he’s practically nourished 

some of them into pop existence

all by himself,  so he should by 

all means never give up on one

so easily (and with such finality!).

My openest-mouthed prayers of

perplexed gratitude with loudest

headaches and whiny moans (el

bows to the floor beside toes

twisted achingly toward the

nearest door) are gravely

chanted twice weekly at the

chosen cathedral, Our Dear

Lady Pessimist’s Frown-

Dimpled Furrow (may

she rest in stasis or,

at the very least, in 

an emotionless peace).

mmmmmccxxi

“loss is the end of a conversation”

says conan o’brien, as if it is a
poignant cliché, and i suppose
it must be.  he’s speaking today
with kyle maclachlan, and the
context is the death of kyle’s friend,

who also played a very sigificant

role i shepherding him into the

big leagues in show biz: david lynch.

but it strikes me almost like a
bell that’s been clanged while
over and around my head, that
then echoes with  duh!  duh!  duh!
mom has been gone a couple
of months now, and i keep
wanting to call her, have gotten
so annoyed, depressed, dumb
founded, with not being able
to give her a call, not getting
a chance to continue the
conversation, which wasn’t
much, really, was this almost
nothing that i worked so hard
creating so that we’d have a
lovely excuse to gab every
week or so, when we would

continue our pretty humdrum
conversation.  it was a thin
conceit that we’d developed
for over forty years, and it
turns out it was tremendously
important and relevant and
i miss it terribly.  i miss her
tons.  and of course i do.
which should not feel so unex
pected.  after all, i went through
the same thing for the longest
after dad died, twenty-five years
ago.  i often felt that it was a
construct created just to
maintain a connection, but
the urge to call her up occurs
so regularly now, and when it
happens, those are the moments
when i miss her, when i realize
she’s gone, when i want to call
her even more as that impossibility

sinks in each time.  how lovely

it would be just to extend

that conversation.

mmmmmccxx

tonight, i love

being who i am

and doing what

i’m doing.  i am

imagining you

listening to the

same songs i

am listening to,

going this music

freaks me out,

and that makes

me feel such

contentment.

i want to remain

on the verge of

ecstasy as i am

at this very mo

ment, hearing,

as i do, that

confounding

wrench being

thrown literally

into a wheel, or

something like

it but new and

undefinable, at

every single

beat.

mmmmmccxix

short take

imagine my surprise

when a country beat

hits my ears as I’m

listening to my latest

release radar.  i rarely

read social media

comments, but if i’m

not mistaken, i read

a couple this past

week, both of which

began something like

‘if i see the phrase

defying genre one

more time...’.

mmmmmccxviii

having been born near the end of the world

to be born in the year 1999
near the end of the world
is surely no luxury....

having been born in 1967
in the summer of love....

my love,
born in the year 2000,
has an exhausted brain,

keeps rattling on and on
about mid-terms, how
excruciating physics

and calculus must be,
was, is....

i took, i believe, exactly
three physics courses

in my lifetime,

three of calculus, as well,
or am i remembering
correctly, here,

at the end of the world?
it doesn’t matter
much, does it?

my boyfriend, who lives
in the opposite hemisphere
of this planet to the one

in which i live, keeps
hammering away,
studying in between bouts

of complaining (but so little,
i do miss his complaining)
about physics and calculus....

but instead, it’s humor, or
it seems to be humor,
how can one tell

at the end of the world
what is humor and
what isn’t?

“google,” he texts, “is
calling me dumb
and tired and defeated,”

and before that, something—
was this a practice question
in physics, or was it calculus—

that tells him that he is okay,
essentially.  he sends me a text,
the box’s background is, unusually,

black: “your brain is officially empty,”
the text within the black box proclaims,
“which is exactly why this is the

perfect place to stop.”  and then,
as if poignant in its meaninglessness,
“the answer is 600 deer.”

mmmmmccxvii

The Daily Humdrum

By now, you must think me terribly
boring.  If you know me or have ever
hopped onto this distorted narrative,
been the least bit intrigued, or were
simply patient, thinking that anyone
who’d whiled away so much of their
precious time concocting page after
page of such circuitous suspense
(am I giving myself too much credit
even there, I wonder) would surely,
at the end of such a self-obsessed

endeavor, have swollen into a semi-
satisfying period of recompense, for
both the narrator and, most especially,
for our dear reader (who is the real
hero of this all-too-interminable story,
in the end; which I relay with the most
sincere apologies, since these lines must
have caught you very much in a state

of sheer chagrin).  But that is most 

assuredly not the case, or has yet to be, 

and shall, by all logical calculations and 

sensible prognostications, never be.

mmmmmccxvi

Old School Shopper

I suppose that I’ve never found a good enough
reason to appreciate shopping online, at least
for clothing, accessories (I wonder when I last
purchased an accessory; it has been eons, for

sure) or groceries.  I have tried getting a few

items of clothing once; well, I was enrolled in a 

job placement program that allotted two hundred
dollars or somesuch for business clothes, and

everything I chose came to me in a color that wasn’t
anywhere near the color it looked on the screen,
or the material was something I’d never imagined,
and most items, of course, did not fit me at all.  I

can say the same for groceries, which I’ve attempted
to order online a few times.  When I’d give in to doing
so, I’d always assume the experience would be easier
to manage financially and would have me being more

practical with my choices, so that I’d get more of what I
needed and less of what I’d never eat or use.  But not 

only did it turn out to be more expensive than if I had, 

like usual, swiftly scooted down each aisle of the market,

barely even considering the items I tossed into the cart,
and most often I’d forget to adjust the settings to “do not
substitute” and wind up with brands I’ve spent all my
life avoiding or—for reasons that would soon become

clear—I had never heard of.  I’m not sure why in the
heck I’m thinking of shopping for anything, given that
I am living through a stretch in which am more destitute
than at any other duration in my life (yes, it’s too true,

despite my all-too-public bouts with being in the poor
house over the past few years, despite my every effort 

at attempting to become gainfully employed; it’s all
too exasperating).  But would I ever kill for a diet soda

right now.  It’s nearly one o’clock on a homebound Sunday
morning, and suddenly I remember I have, yes, I think
a couple of dollars and just enough change to purchase
a two-liter bottle of Diet Dr Pepper.  So, without a thought

on how to wrap this up in a sensible manner, I’m up
and out the door before the corner store closes.  It’s the
weekend, and I’m giddy with the notion of pouring a
cup of cold carbonated diet soda.  Until next time, when

The Ennui Continues.

mmmmmccxv

Vanishing Plot

sound is important.  he’s dreaming.
he can’t get out of his consciousness.
he’s awake.  who’d he wake up next to?
he’s alone.  he was always awake.

not always.  for a few days.  how many
days?  he stretches his forehead to flatten
it out, trying to concentrate.  when was he
last dreaming?  he didn’t just wake up.  he’s

been awake.  but just a portion, a fragment.
he’s trying to remember anything from his
latest dream, even when it was, what he
felt.  he wasn’t alone.  he was with the

people who blow themselves kisses.
all the time.  it’s all he remembers.

with these people.  they must be
friends.  they kiss the prints
on their fingers, blow the
kisses off lightly, and

then, very delicately,
gracefully, as if through
a freshly spritzed scent
flowing through the air

of a department store,
they walk through the
swirling air filled with
their very own kisses

until they, presumably,
feel sufficiently adored.

mmmmmccxiv

Optimism Revisited

woke up yesterday feeling like
i slept through a time warp.  now,
it’s past 4am, haven’t been able to
sleep, except a couple of hours after
a day full of errands and bureaucratic
nonsense, daylight hours that were packed

with back to back kidnappings, bad news 

oozing from the tight spots between each 

appointment.  my headache reminds me that

there were also a lot of dreams.   not that i recall
during the short and dead gone snooze i had
after zipping all day through oozing errands,

but before waking up yesterday, when i slept

a little bit better, a little bit longer, than the

scant and unrestful durations of rest that

i have had for a few weeks now.  so.  today,

or yesterday, the warped bank, three banks, 

two banks, one bank brand, all the bank’s 

talking heads pointed downward, aiming

their mouths, their voices at me, angles
of disdain, bully talk.  no member of their
happy club, i part ways with the bank,
and with my money, so that it can now live
at the bank without me.  maybe without

me forever.  i woke up thinking it was
around seven the next morning.  i squint

at the phone and the laptop unable to

read the time, it looks like it could be

eleven, maybe twelve, but no, it is 
not even midnight, in fact somewhere 

between nine and ten at night, and
i am intent on sleeping another
week away, can i do that?  do
i have enough food.  have i

eaten enough.  i don’t
even want to leave the
apartment, can i manage 

that?  what a break this day 

and night have been, being busy
having given me an interruption 

from the grim noise coming from
my phone, television, laptop.
i should stick to music videos,
dancefloors, remember those?
there is a long tunnel from here
to—i’m not sure—a week from now?
ten days?  then i promise things are
going to change.  here, i’ve got proof
[he pulls out a bunch of receipts].  another
great song awaits.  i want to apologize for
not giving you a little warning about the
strobe lights.  (i’m really sorry.)

mmmmmccxiii

At First Sight

     & since you’re a charming creature please stay that way
                                                       —Micah Ballard

when you feel a presence in a room
electrical      a cross between a premonition
and a giddy shiver       the warmest gushing

but i don’t think you’re having a heart attack
now with a stance built with terror        who are you
here for?       with a voice that fills the room like a backed-up

toilet           but you light right up     crimson life     for 

whom are you here?    those big moments interspersed through

out your 20s and 30s      the ease with which, when first ex

periencing that piercing flutter upon entering a crowded 

room        becomes a kind of a return to familiarity      all fluttery

define shallow?     reeling in the five pound catfish with flair like 

it’s a fancy new acting exercise     the drama class you took for 

the experience of commingling artistically        oh he’s the cat’s

pajamas                mom always said that the way to a

man’s heart is directly through his stomach                red
cork bobbing a mirage out on the shallow river this after
noon           i’m not much of a cook       not much on

cooking      rarely do i get an even somewhat clear drive    i

cannot recall firing up the oven   ever     to be in charge of a 

home-cooked meal             so i brought the wine 

seeing at least two books by david sedaris on the living room 

bookshelf almost put me into a tailspin      how much of a 

disappointment the last half a dozen (or so) were       he is 

trying to remember    he is pursing his lips in an effort to 

shape the voice of a certain human’s name     i knew him     

you never did           i knew          i knew      the stilted 

living room      in the house that held you safe until you were

seventeen       he is out of here      a safety i had no idea 

i wanted                           i am so out of here 

mmmmmccxii

when i think
i might not
be living

i remember
spending time
with people

that seemed
so far away to
me as in gone

already they
were phasing
in and out

existing on
two planes
or multiple

simultane
ously—seem
ingly unable

to compre
hend or un
derstand it

to be so—
was it?  i
cannot ask

any of them
as they are
not here at

this moment
but i feel as if
it would be

the truth if
i say to you
neither am i

mmmmmccxi

The Problem With Making Some Room For Hope

Reading what is surely the 100th primer on 

how to gain meaningful employment I've given
a bit of scrutiny over the past fifteen years or so.

These have been the years when, rather than having

the luxury of full-time, permanent employment, I’ve 

been that uncredited cog in the corporate machine
doing contractual, or short-term—finite—work.
Pedro Pascal, Tony Gilroy, Eva Victor and Will

Arnett are being interviewed by Justin Chang
for the new film, Behemoth! on the monster

screen at the foot of my bed.  I have picked
the magazine’s first poetry submissions for

issue 42; and there now visible proof of life

that can be witnessed if one happens to find

themselves at the website today, which no

one who happened to visit in several years

has witnessed (actual construction, actual change) 

in years.  It’s the middle of the night, as it often is 

when I am at my most productive.  Even more regularly

when without the structure of a regular paid work 

schedule.  And I am determined to see the upcoming day

light hours reversing or at least easing the precarious 

financial turmoil that has been unrelenting and all mine 

for as many years as I have not been putting together 

new magazine issues, which I have just confirmed 

has now been a stretch of thirteen years between

the completion of issues 40 and 41.  Last week 

was basically an elongated interruption of a 

hopeful headline that came unexpectedly (literally

out of nowhere) and promised at least a momentary,

significant, immediate, positive change to my financial

situation probably for the rest of the year, during a

week in which a box of fourteen fresh meals was slated 

for delivery to me, as one has been for the past fourteen

weeks now, on Monday.  But this week the box never came.

Despite the fact I waited anxiously all day Monday for the 

arrival of no box, no money.  I even sat in the lobby of my 

apartment building being assured multiple times over a two 

hour period that the box was soon to be delivered (this was

over two hours after the deadline by which the box had been

promised).  That, plus non-event that has had me anxiously
awaiting a bit of incredibly needed dollars, cash that I had
not expected might come at this time.  It as not even a 

remote possibility.  These two things have taken up my 

focus this week.  They introduced a series of expectations 

and hopes, filled with a lot of nerve-jangling hurrying up 

and waiting.  The news of the unexpected cash came

to me a week ago.  At least I do not think it is mere

hallucination, the excitement of which has been

quelled by a forty-eight hour stretch of no food, two 

days in which I ate absolutely nothing.   So this set

of events and non-events have twisted me out of sorts 

in ways more if more elevated stress than I have seen 

during a pretty stressful year, during a couple of years

in which I have been rendered inactive due to an absolute 

lack of cash influx (I feel more broke than I have been in 

a decade and a half, essentially).  In short, this vapid 

lyrical hodge-podge that I have erected for you, therefore, 
is an effort to get my ducks in a row so that my focus is 

solidly on making this week and the following several, 

to turn the weeks and days into knock-out, fantastic, pro

ductive periods of time, one after another after another,

with the primary hopeful consequence of such focus 

would be to see obvious, calculable, ascertainable results, 

the kind of productivity which I have almost forgotten into 

non-existence.  I hope they have me flying like some fancy 

firecracker from the static limbo that is, cumulatively, the 

shitty swamp of the past thirteen years and soaring into 

a new galaxy at the helm of a shiny spaceship which I can 

use to bend time and maneuver myself up and away and 

out of here.  So I’m doing great, even better, really.  Soon,

I will, as if a witch or a  magician will make all of the 

depression disappear.  This is, if, indeed, I do get the funds 

that have been for far too long such impossible plunder. 

It is now a new Monday morning.  A morning that sits atop

what is going to be a spectacular and profound week.

mmmmmccx

Turning That Frown Into A More Spirited Squiggle

     When you have [big] changes in your life
     it really cleans out your ... rigid idea of who you are.
               —Willem Dafoe (from Wild Card with Rachel Martin)

I found these words to be a magnificently liberating 

notion.  A new way to reflect on a period in my life 

which I have up to now tended to think of as a very

negative space; one in which I dwell unnecessarily, it 

turns out.  I think Bingo!  Why on earth has this set of

unexpected circumstances been handled so pain

fully, with such tension?  Why treat it strictly as

downturn, a dramatic shift in the opposite direction

my life had traveled until that point; from a sharp-grade 

ascent until to that moment when it shifted downward, in 

the direction of, I often imagine, a rock bottom, that has

ever since descended, and into such depths that I think

so poorly about this sad and expanding portion of my life?  

Such that I rarely think it living?  What a simple shift, these

words create, leaving room for a wealth of possibilities, of 

positivities, a new and more mature way to treat that moment 

when everything changed, when signs pointing in any dire

ction were all suddenly gloomy gray arrows that sloped 

ever-downward; signposts in a swampy atmosphere that, 

now with these words, have fresh perspective.  I have con

cocted a period of momentum, rife with new ways of think

ing, turning what I had for so long thought of us ugly and 

tragic into a space of experimentation that enables

a pivotal moment of relief, of renewal, of progress and 

radical growth filled with new ideas and fantastic, 

shifting priorities.  Just like that, a tedious limbo fills 

with electric tension and sprouts a long-flowing 

fountain from which creativity and inspiration spring.

mmmmmccix

Editing Perspective

The Arc de Triomphe as seen from
the Places des Voges two afternoons
subsequent to turning forty.  Oh, no,
you can’t take that away from me.  Or

can you?  The sandbox, being the entire
plaza, can be escaped.  Somewhere simul

taneously, the photojournalist arrives to 

snap the shot (the four of us pictured w/

in the tractor tire with Mom, who somehow
has a hand on each of the four of us, more
of a steel grip, at the scruffs of our necks?
My sister’s lopsided pair of pigtails does a

kind of see-saw balancing act as a result
of the mother’s connection.  “Sit still.  Look
pretty.  I’m no feminist, but without my
graveyard shift at the toy factory, would

this tire be filled with such fine sand?”).
This feminist fantasy goes only so far,
but what a pretty black and white photo,
the five of us have never looked spiffier, four

kids in our 1970s-era hand-me-downs,
Mom somehow in one of her gingham
button-up Western shirts, circa several
years later, after she’d switched from the

factory of toys to the factory of shirts,
graveyard to swing shift, carpal tunnel
problems a smoldering spark on the horizon,
like Footloose, and the glitter-laden Roman 

candles that usher in the demise of disco.

mmmmmccviii

Some Places I’d Still Love to Go (Again)

I was just thinking, with regard to the
“Again,” of Glen Ellen, of Sonoma, to
walk Sonoma Square, and of touring the
Benziger Family Winery again.  That’d

be fun.  It always was.  As for places I’ve
never been, which are the places I was first
thinking about, there’s Spain.  Barcelona.
Especially since it turned out I enjoyed

Italy as much as I did (I was very surprised).
And I want to go to Thailand, to Cambodia;
that’s a pretty big spread.  I’d perhaps stick to 

the city in Thailand, much as I could (Bangkok,

surely?), but away from the city in Cambodia
(Angkor Wat!).  I miss Los Angeles.  But find
San Diego to be pretty boring.  I’d go back to 

South America, beyond Lima.  Uruguay, 

perhaps.  I’ve always told myself I’d love to go 

to Mexico City.  I love a place where it’s so
easy to get lost.  I’m assuming Hong Kong is
nothing like it was when I was there before,

but Tokyo, that’s a teeming city.  Or maybe
Shanghai.  I have also always wanted to go 

to Budapest.  I’d go again and again back to
Montreal.  And Vancouver.  I really could

keep going with this list.  The more I think about 

it, the places I’d love to see multiply until the list 

begins to be exhausting, thinking about all of the 

places I want to visit for the first time, or see again.

mmmmmccvii

Way to Elevate the Lowest Common Denominator

I turn the page and it’s the poem
“The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara.
Which isn’t actually that surprising since
the page I turn is in The Selected Poems
of Frank O’Hara.  And I’ve mostly been
trying not to be morbid, been trying to
maintain a positive sense of self and a
hefty sense of humor with what I’m
thinking, what I’m watching and
what I’m writing this morning.
But how not to delve into the
maudlin or the morbid, me?
Is this just today?  Is it
lately, I wonder?  Have I
been this way always?  But
my first thought is my mother
just died.  And she was a lady.  And
this gets me to thinking about my mom,
who recently passed.  I’ve yet to begin
reading the poem, have decided to save
it for a while (yes, I’ve read this one before,
why do I suddenly feel you are judging me?), but
as my eyes come up from the page, I see this
portion of a line about halfway down it, “(first 

name Linda I once heard)” – and I think that
perhaps I’ve been this way always, as I am
suddenly reveling in the fact that my mother,
who just recently passed away, was named
Linda.