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

Gus at Sixteen

When we are seven and he is four,
Gus drowns himself every day. "I'm thinking,"
he says, and the lifeguards learn
to disregard the screams. Gus floats

face-down in the shallow end,
with his hair like corn silk, hair that
goes green in pool water. His sister and I
do handstands beside the corpse.

Time passes. Us girls get out of the pool
to unwrinkle our fingers: suddenly
we've gone through puberty. Tonight in some lake somewhere
a dreamy Gus is lost in thought.
His poor new girlfriend is screaming.



photo: "Emmett Darling" by Sally Mann

The Death of Pan

A divine voice hailed him across the salt water, "Thamus, are you there? When you reach Palodes, take care to proclaim that the great god Pan is dead."

This is, of course,
ridiculous. Show me a grave.
Show me a meadow
in the damp nights of June
that does not flatten
under the backs of laughing lovers.
Look you here, in the whorls
of my beard, and tell me
I am dead. Lift your head.
Breathe in deep.
The grass you smell
has not been trampled
by Christians, sir:
that music is not
of the chapel.





painting: Pan and Psyche by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Cross Those Digits, Kids.

On the recommendation of the program director I just submitted my application to Skidmore's Summer Writers Institute. If accepted to the master class, I'll spend two weeks this summer studying poetry--one week with Deborah Digges, and one with Robert Pinsky.

Let me say that again.

Robert. Pinsky.



Wish me luck.

photograph by flickr user martian_hemoglobin_x

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

The Apartment by the Train Tracks

In summer, when every single thing
sticks to every other thing,
we lie heavy on threadbare bedclothes.

Through the loose window screen, the first note
of a beautiful breeze carries on it
an iron lullaby, a sleepy, solid embrace.

And behind it, stuck to the back window
of the rearmost car, the fallen leaf,
fall's first casualty.



photograph by flickr user Praveen

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

Ghost Day

Today, August 15, is the Festival of Ghosts in China. Families burn incense and prepare elaborate meals, leaving empty seats at the table for their ancestors. Paper boats and lanterns are dropped in the water and set on fire, that they may illuminate the waterways for the lonely souls at sea and bring them safely home.

You can read more about Ghost Day here.



photograph by Vincent Chung

The Fourth of July

for everyone who writes

Today, to me, you are Fitzgerald,
and I know I've just got Gatsby on the brain but you,
you, my love, and your swirling clouds of the Hamptons--
there is none who can match you.

That glowing shape in my chest inflates
with your unwitting touch, you
could not know just how bare my shores lie
when your high tides have gone.

So much is wrong, here, everywhere,
at the bottom of the coffee cup, at the top
of the apartment building--but the aloe
of your voice will cool the burns of even the sun
today.



photograph by Todd Atteberry