February 14, Columbia Heights

Photo: "Wrapped for Sale" by Garry Knight

There is always someone
     yelling
just outside the Metro station.
Today, no different, but what
this man is protesting
    or exalting
I can't tell from here.

It's two syllables, 
the yelling man's chant,
shouted 
    over and over. 

I stop at the crosswalk, ducking
the upward-flap rustle of pigeons.

The light changes; the cars slow.
Yes. I hear it now.

RO-SES, the yelling man yells.
RO-SES. ROSES.

Save (Me From) the Whales

Goodness gracious me. My essay about confronting my whale phobia—remember that one?—is finally in print. And oh, look...it's the cover story!

The folks at Open Minds Quarterly are lovely, and I highly encourage sending them your money in exchange for copies of the magazine.

Read more here.

Well, It's Not Poetry, But It Is a Thing, Written Down

Remember the blue whale on the ceiling? I went back. A miniature version of the article I wrote about that visit was published this weekend in the Washington Post. You can read it on page 9 of the magazine, or online here. With luck, I can publish the full-length article soon, too.

Blessed From Head to Toe (Finally, Some News!)

I'll be reading my poetry in the Tiber Creek Cabaret at the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Sidney Harman Hall on September 3. Tickets go on sale July 1. Click here for more information.

Hope to see you there.


"Light Crown" by Kelly Vivanco

Minor Arcana

Commuter tips her head to drop
the wide hood of her raincoat.

This morning, after the storm,
each shrub's a sacrament.

Rows of emerald goblets brim
with silver offerings.

The bare-browed queen of cups
pauses by the laurel, trails

a loving fingertip
through bowls of cool, wet light.




photograph by Edward Weston

Tuesday

Walking past the preschool
before Tuesday begins,
movement in the window.
The class rabbit (fat, white,
smug as a magician) has
escaped his cage. He sits,
preening on the play table,
watching the city sun rise.



photograph by Milena Agnieszka

The Alchemist

rehearses picking the runes--
E; B; F sharp--in
sorcerous order. He coughs
in the room.
He dials the number.
The world rolls like a wave.

In a valley of lead skyscrapers
her telephone rings.
With winter-heavy hands
she lifts it to a cold ear.
He takes a breath--

Her skin goes pink.
Her sky goes gold.





photograph by the incredible Alison Scarpulla

The Commuter's Ablution

Sane women do not fantasize
about stepping
--bloused, pearl-studded--
into the plaza fountain
in December.

Sane women, she explains to herself
once safely past the water,
Sane women go in naked.







art: "The Fish Gatherer" by Aron Wiesenfeld.

Commuter Lessons

My first week in the city
I learned to dress, check
the mirror, then undress, don
coat over camisole, lest
in the crosswalk trot
to the Metro stop
I bathe myself in sweat.
High heels and blouse go
in the canvas tote.
Sneakers go on the feet.

Week two was a city-face seminar.
Here I am, direct from New England,
where for an hour each morning
and one every night I watched the road,
peering for deer, defensive,
alert and observing.
Do that here and you'll get stabbed,
if you aren't arrested first.
Keep your eyes to yourself, girl.
Look hard at those sneakers.

Just this morning I learned the secret
of the reflector-jacketed man
who offers newspapers
at the top of the granite M stairs.
He is not a paperman.
He is the prop master,
equipping savvier commuters
with something not-sneakers
to stare at.

Virtue

Two weeks before the move
You look hard at every cup,
Each one of your threadbare towels.
You envision sitting down on a rug far away
And pulling these things from a box.

Then you imagine a monastic existence,
A rug with no boxes. You've left
The cracked cups at the dump,
A bag of nice sweaters at Goodwill.
In the empty room you are proud
of the nothing you have. Then

In your mind the new doorbell rings.
Your neighbor has come
To introduce herself,
And she brought you yellow flowers,
In a cup she made herself.


photograph by Catherine Jamieson

A Complete List of My Regrets (So Far)

1. Brad—
Lenox? Linden?
Lennon?—
definitely him.

2. And two months ago,
when I had the chance,
not stepping over
the ankle-high fence
to take your hand
and stand with you,
laughing, under the biggest willow
on Saint Stephen's Green.



photograph by Esther Moliné

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly


they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,


dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch
and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause,

only the silent confirmation

that they are this notable thing,


this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,


even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;



I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard, I want



to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.




-Mary Oliver

photograph by Jipps

My Mother Encounters Celebrities and I Misunderstand

I.

One winter before I was born
my mother stepped into an elevator.
The silent brass doors slid
together too quickly and she toppled,
landing face-first

in Baryshnikov's striped mink coat.
She told me this when I was six
and leaping, a blizzard of tulle
and breathlessness around
her rocking chair. As I remember it,

I say now, He was rude to you.
Did Baryshnikov really push you?


Short, she says, looking over
the Sunday Style section. I didn't say rude.
I said short.




photograph by Chuck Domitrovich

The Birds of Hyde Park

Chicago's winter is nine months long.
Wind fit to hollow
the cheeks of sweet children spins,
screaming, down each vacated street.
And screaming, too, from the dips
of the satellite dishes,
the birds of Hyde Park come home to roost.
Each nest is a mess of yesterday's vines,
each bird uncanny in a jungle
of cold wire. Argentina
is thirty worlds away.
From the topmost floor
of the busiest building you
can just see them landing,
great feathered limes in a bowl
of smoke and slate.





photograph by flickr user Justabird (Angie)
more about the Chicago's feral parakeets here

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

from Not So, Not So

I cannot walk an inch
without trying to walk to God.
I cannot move a finger
without trying to touch God.

Perhaps it is this way:
He is in the graves of the horses.
He is in the swarm, the frenzy of the bees,
He is in the tailor mending my pantsuit.
He is in Boston, raised up by the skyscrapers.
He is in the bird, that shameless flyer.
He is in the potter who makes clay into a kiss.

Heaven replies:
Not so! Not so!

I say thus and thus
and heaven smashes my words.



by Anne Sexton
photograph by flickr user whose name I have sadly misplaced. If this is your image please leave a comment.

Preface à 'Mystères de la main,' or, The Inventor's Daughter

after Adrien Adolphe Desbarolles (1801-1886)

She held Hyde Park
in the palm of her hand;
She offered London to me--
Gold lashes lined two forest pools
that would have drowned me outright,
had she offered those
as well.






Glove Map of London (1851) by George Shove
Inspired by Persephone's shove

The Glorious Weekend

We walked across the Charles in the prickling rain,
three grocery bags, one umbrella
between us. Two bottles of wine stuck
to my t-shirt through
their soaked paper bag. You showed me
the Smoots, the lines
of this city and swore
you were not making it up.



photograph by Back Bay's Tom
you can read more about Smoots here

Catching Up with An Ex Over Coffee

Tell me, he says, about one time
you've been drunk. He doesn't say,
I dare you. He doesn't say, don't lie.
He doesn't say, how much do you think
you've really changed? I set my jaw
against the blows. In Brooklyn, once,
I say. My TA's apartment.
Across the too-small table I know
the gears are turning.
I don't say, After you, of course.
I say that it was February. Post-
theatre, back through the carving night
to his cold rooms. I say he showed me
cyanotypes, the skeletons of flowers,
pictures from Poland I'd already seen.
I say he brought out pepper vodka, that
his lanky frame had got a taste for it, but I,
tiny I, sputtered as his roommate laughed.
I tell how the dim bathroom
was slanted when I got there, how
the cold water sizzled on my flushed cheeks.
I do not say, I would have slept on the floor
but he did not have blankets enough. I do not say,
The next morning he talked to me
like a stranger. I say
he left me in Central Park,
an angel in the snow, beneath the 6am silence
of Jeanne-Claude and Christo's spectacle.
I say it was just breathtaking.



pinhole photograph by Tom Karlo

Through Windows, Early Darkness

The train crawls toward the city.
Nothing has ever been maddening slow
as this swerving car, yet the toy houses smear
like a jellied lens. Each lighted window
demands my intrusion. On the top floor
of a building like the one
where you used to live, a young woman sits
at the table, jars of spices spread before her
like chess pieces. Her dark hair
sweeps the dried-basil bishops. Her tears drop
on the tablecloth. The train
lurches on, passes over an unlit road
where just one car is traveling.



image by flickr user magnasoma

Waiting, Grand Central Ceiling

Aries, clamber from the sky.
My cold soil aches to break with
A stamp of your hoof, a toss
Of your horns. Frost is strong; your
Star-fur thicker. Dig until
The hole can hold you, love: rest
In the nest of my body.




photograph by Arvin Rolly Antipolo