Wow.

This is the November issue of mental_floss magazine. Inside is a fun adaptation of my jellybean story. That I wrote.

On the newsstand.

And that's amazing.

More News!

Hooray! Another in National Geographic Daily News! Hooray!

"Birds do it. Bees do it. But genetically modified fruit flies just aren't in the mood."

Read the whole article here.

Approach

He is loose-fingered, cautious,
unbreathing yet. To him she is
a butterfly, only just
touched down.

But he is neither the collector
nor the net: to her he is
the full flower her tired feet
have found.







illustration by Martin Johnson Heade

The Grasshopper in Winter

The grasshopper on the ground is dead--
not by boot, or hooting bird,
or by sultry spider--
but dead
as the grass, passed away,
and the hop that ceased.

His armor is accounted for,
though curled in the afterlife
into some aquatic thing.
The hop is gone,
but perhaps in that small beyond,
he swims.




art: "The Warrior in Winter," by Julia Jeffrey

Meeting Salvador

galagalagalagalagalagalagala
At first I thought
it was cicadas calling my name.
The song rose and fell neatly
with the rest of the summer's ruckus.

galagalagalagalagalagalagala--
Not cicadas. The sound sped ceaselessly
from a second-story window.
From my plastic perch in the garden
I saw the pacing shadow
of the shy noisemaker.

He wrung his hands, released
the moan, which, escaping, crashed
and beat its fists against
the hot fence of my name:
Gala. Gala. Gala.






"Salvador Dali's love for Gala, a woman 10 years older than he and the wife of his friend Paul Eluard, exploded when they met; he realized numerous extravagancies to capture her attention, such as waxing his armpit and dying it blue, applying goat excrement to his skin and wearing a red geranium on his head. His emotion was such that, every time he tried to talk to her, he suffered uncontrollable laughing attacks."

At Summer's End

The cricket in the lavender
doesn't ever seem to sleep.

All night he chatters, and next morning
he's still got plenty to say. I don't know

how long crickets live, but surely
last night was at least one year of his life.

What could be so interesting,
so complicated that it takes

a whole year to tell?
I sit in the crabgrass. I've got time.






photograph by Molly Wizenberg

Noctuidae

I. Flame Shoulder

Summer has rolled over
to the damp sheets of August.
The girl with the flame shoulder
starts over, as she must.



II. Heart and Dart

Then one right after another,
he dropped them in the stream:
the flame girl's heart, his broken dart,
and two swift-sinking dreams.



III. True Lover's Knot

In winter, water all is dark
And dreams sleep, muddy, caught;
her bed is cold, his fingers numb
in stiff true lover's knots.




photograph by André Felipe de Medeiros

The Axis

White moths have crept through the cracks
in the window screens and now they trace
dizzy spirals over my snowdrift comforter. Up
to the lights in the high ceiling, down again,
dazed, disoriented, more in love than ever
with what they believe is the moon.




photograph by Paul Tyler

May 20th: There is One Moth

There is one moth in plain brown robes
who beats against the window.
From the darkness where it flutters,
my home must look like heaven.
And will I close the shades
and learn to ignore this small sorrow;
or shall my eyes stay, pious too,
fast on the heartless pane?




photograph by Nikki Fowers

Carwash in Allergy Season

You feel like a young elephant,
or an actor inside a great puppet.
Perfect bubbles slide like ice
as the grimy man waves
with the sprayer. "Neutral, sweetheart.

"Foot off the brake." Today
everything is like the first time.
You are still, in a body of water.
You are in a body, still in a body
of water, and still your eyes
are dry. You let go the wheel.

Pollen, insects, the ghosts
of the winter, all go melting
to the drain and you glide over.




photograph by Kevin Dooley

The First Night of Open Windows: A Census

One lazy-looking spider, possibly
the same one I tossed out the back door
this morning. Two ladybugs.
The fist-sized moth with wings
like the Constitution. He was confounded
when I shut off the kitchen lights.
The refrigerator
would like to be counted.

And then there is me, outlined in light
at the mouth of the closet, hand
to my face in the search
for the right nightshirt
for a night such as this.

Somewhere outside,
a frog calls his children.




photograph by Joanna Blusiewicz

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.

The Moth

Every pothole was a puddle on the day that she came, and rain
soaked the porch until it groaned. The screen door was a perfect grid
of shivering beads. It was her face
that I saw first, the alien moon-mask of curious calm.
Legs followed, a plump fuzzy body,
slender wings that twined like toes
on the dripping door handle. I brought her in.

In the midday rain the kitchen
was cabin-dark, and I thrilled to small feathers
on my wrist. I don't know
how long I sat like that, begging my skin
to remember this touching, this being alive.
I set her on the counter by the toaster
and watched her over my book, this marvel
of somehow staying with me.

Eight days we conferred together,
me with toast or a crossword,
she not eating, staring still. One sunny afternoon
the breeze was kind, kissed the dandelions
not unlike her crooked feet. The field guide was thick
but I found her there:

Actias luna, family Saturniiae.
Life expectancy: 7 days. Outside, the sunshine
laughed at my shock. I crossed the kitchen,
blew on the fragile jade wings, watched the furred phantom skate,
empty as a paper boat, toward the sink.


photograph by Chris Wright

Two Deaths

The dead moth’s eyes see only silver mist.
Her body is a tiny paper heart in my hand,
A valentine in white fur and sickly green silk.
She curls on the dashboard of my Honda,
The one real thing I have touched today.
Motor oil singed one spot.
Her arms bend to grasp but nothing fills
Her stiff embrace. I have no glass casket
Worthy of these cold wings, and she stays
Overnight in the car.

Where the bedroom wall meets the ceiling a fly flails wildly.
Sometimes in silence, more often with the buzz I only hear
When the lights are off.
I do not see the spider who will stun him,
The siren who will suck his black life out into thin air.
I hope she is nearby, that this inelegant,
Crude death is not for a host long-gone,
But the sheer nests near the ceiling have been
Empty for some time, their contents fading
All for nothing.


photograph by flickr user pinkpoppy

Night in the Garden

There are monsters in the garden,
gnawing tomatoes into pulpy lace,
pea pods into twigs. Their pincers
arc, little crescents in the light
of the harvest moon.

The earwigs shy
from the divine fire of my flashlight.
They cling to the stakes as I shake them down
like walnuts.

At the fence I slow my sword of judgment.
The ripe sunflowers hold the day's heat still,
and snug in the heart of the widest lion face,
the bumblebee hums in his sleep.

The night is suddenly so loud, alive
with cries for love and hunger.
The flashlight clicks off beneath my heavy thumb.
I back slowly from the nursery.






photograph by Cassandra Barney

P. terribilis

"Fuck you," she snarls, in the lemon yellow
of her darling back. "Fuck you, lady. By the time
I get through with you you gonna wish you had
never been born. Ask that snake over there. He knows."

She sits still as my heavy fingers fumble
on the shutter, a flat silver button
as big as her head.
A slow blink.

"Fuck you, Mami. I told you, don't
touch me, but do you listen?" She addresses
the canopy at large, the sick-smelling pitcher plant,
the butterfly the size of a textbook
that is watching me with interest.
I do not speak Spanish. I do not
speak frog and somehow she knows this,
yet she does not stir as, like the gilded rings
of the Pope, I kiss her
again and again.



photograph from Golden Poison Frog Wikipedia entry

...please excuse my language. There's no polite translation for that protective coloration.

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

The Arrival of the Bee Box
I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a midget
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.

The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.

I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!

I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.

I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.

They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.

The box is only temporary.

-Sylvia Plath


photograph by Chris Lopez

Anima del Paradiso

I.
As the thick clouds slid
A cold blanket on the sun
You came, dear ones, with
Little feet that tickled like
Sunshine on my skin.

II.
You ate the small green evils
That fed on my sick heart, and
Spread your love across
Its damp cage.

III.
I will make this place
Heaven’s garden for you,
My angels, and fill
It with the sweetest flowers
I can find.