I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
Watermelon is what we would mouth on stage when we wanted to make it look like we were talking, its
vowels and consonants conveniently aligned
just so:
Creating the illusion of babble. Muted. An artifice
of conversation.
Watermelon, watermelon.
Watermelon? Watermelonwatermelon!
The tongue curls, the lips purse. Oh?
Watermelon.
When it gets green like this in all honesty I hardly know
what to do with myself.
I’ll wander to the 88 bus stop
like a drunkard
scattering footprints like rose petals, running my fingers
along your chainlink fence.
I am envisioning diving into your perennials.
I am laying face-down in your lawn.
I’d like to throw
my face
into the divine leafy bosom of your shrubbery
and go “tthhhppppptttth!”
And to celebrate the transition from poetry month into bicycle riding month (I’m all about commemorative periods of time lately?), here’s a poem that branched off an instant message exchange earlier this morning. For Angie, who was having the kind of day that caused her to ask “What Am I For, What Is I.”
You Are For Hula Hooping
And For Experimenting With New Cameras, the
glossy boxes full of shaped glass that arrived in your mailbox today, carefully cushioned in packaged air you are for
Your Garden,
a chainlink fenced in square which, before you was weeds, wildflowers, dry
dirt and now look just look! you are for
Water Fountains In Parks
Credit Ratings and The Machines Who Keep Track Of Your Credit Ratings,
Supermarkets and The Machines Who Keep Track Of Supermarkets
Honeydew Melons and Unskinned Rabbits and That Goat Cheese
Which Traveled By Plane, Train Automobile All The Way From France
Just For You
To Spread It On A Cracker, Today
You Are For
Quitting Jobs Sometimes, Oversleeping Sometimes, Forgetting To
Feed The Fish Sometimes
You Are For Traffic Signs and the way they’d point us —
Left, right, up, down, the mandala of
the rotary late night last summer
When I’d forgotten how to ride a bicycle
but you adjusted my helmet
and we went out the door.
My stepmom sent me a copy of Eireann Lorsung’s Music For Landing Planes By last month, and I finally got around to reading it. The book is organized by quotations giving a general theme, and I got distinctly more into some sections than others — so, more on that later. But this is by far my favorite piece in the book. (Okay, actually that was “In The Wide World”, but this format is more html-friendly, and it was the first one I loved, anyway.)
Knitting
When are you coming back to stand in front of the window?
(I heard you whistling last night. Cars pass me by all day,waves circling the enormous globe.)
So much is left out, I’m knitting a pattern withoutstitches, without needles, only long fingerbones
to carry yarn. There was something buriedthe night I left Eau Claire for good, and I never knew
how it would grow. Now your childhood friendsare my students, I walk past houses you lived in
without my knowledge and your scent trailsfrom abandoned bakeries. Whole warehouses
have been invented to catalogue want like this.I go on knitting night and day because I don’t know
any other thing. All unknits by darknessinto twine birds use piece by piece. What secret
name can I tell you? What adventure are you on tonight?There is forgetting in the density of raw new wool,
yarn shop one block from your apartment,the cheap scarf — you don’t value things
because you never make them. Moon over the whitening worldsharpens spindle, windowframe. The sash
is pulled, seam is set: without material, there is no map.
I’ve been trying to discern lately what makes a lovable poem to me, versus what actively irks me. I think the latter is mostly about ego. I have written your bad poetry, I think, and it took me five minutes with a Thesaurus. I don’t like thinking about those careless times. I know my tricks, and I hate to see you using them. Like most prejudices, apparently, it involves accusing you of being just like me.
Lovable, though, I don’t know. Your poem is something I’ll read in the middle of a fight. I will sneak it into malls and bus stops and it will make these places seem lovely, significant, normal, thank god.
If your whole life is shit, at least you can have a decent watch on.
Something weighty, something made of
nice things, beautiful things, which united together create a
single thing, that
say, if you had children, at some point
would be such a decent thing
they couldn’t help but want to
inherit, this thing:
The unblinking smooth,
crystal face.
Soft wheat-in-sunlight gold
karats.
And with a matte finish that says
This watch-wearer’s no magpie, no show-off, no all
you’ve ever wanted
was this:
Something well-made.