2.27.15

Leonard Nimoy passed today, at 83. His cultural contributions are undeniable, but I was surprised to hear he was also a writer and performer of spoken word and poetry, in addition to involvement in photography, music, directing, and other performance-related but non-acting roles. (Just go read his wikipedia entry, there is so much I didn't know. He could speak Yiddish! Two autobiographies! What a talented man)



Here is his poetry page, with examples. Perhaps not what I would pick off the shelf to read ordinarily, but we can read it for his memory.



Chambers Street



I got the stick. Who’s got the ball
The tar is hot and sticky.

Buck, buck against the wall
Go yell for Joe and Dicky

Hey kids, get away from the car.

Mary’s white comin’ out the door
Communion at St. Joe’s

Pick the dice up off the floor
Tell ‘em chinky shows

Here comes a pair of penguins
They’ll rap your knuckles hard

You wanna try and duke it out
Let’s go down by the yard

Charlie’s river’s dirty now
Can’t swim there. Out of luck.

First is the pole, the car is third
Get chips from the iceman’s truck

Hey kids, get away from the car!

Run and hide from the crazy guy
Dressed in robe of black

Tied with rope, shouting loud
What’s sitting in his sack ?

We never finished summer then
It sort of slipped away.

The worry on the young one’s mind
Was what are we gonna play?

Hey kids. Get away from the car !!

Of course this reminds me of a Trek episode, A Piece of the Action. "A flivver, sir"

2.26.15

So, Wordsworth. I keep seeing his name and asking, what are you words worth? It's not a contest, but all the subsequent clauses will be related to things we've already talked about, i.e. 'why write'. So, no talk of value. 

Wordsworth was English, and was heralded with helping to begin the Romantic age of literature with lyrical ballads. He was married four times, and is notable for being the only English poet laureate to compose no "official" works. 

While I don't find him particularly interesting, Romanticism does hold a bit of interest as a stepping stone in the path of English-language poetry's development. Wikipedia considers the Romantic movement to be a counterweight to the ideals of the Enlightenment in the mid-late 18th century. (an aside: I like this quote "Inevitably, the characterization of a broad range of contemporaneous poets and poetry under the single unifying name can be viewed more as an exercise in historical compartmentalization than an attempt to capture the essence of the actual ‘movement’"). More from Wiki:

Poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing consciously poetic language in an effort to use more colloquial language. Wordsworth himself in the Preface to his and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” though in the same sentence he goes on to clarify this statement by asserting that nonetheless any poem of value must still be composed by a man “possessed of more than usual organic sensibility [who has] also thought long and deeply;” he also emphasizes the importance of the use of meter in poetry (which he views as one of the key features that differentiates poetry from prose). Although many people stress the notion of spontaneity in Romantic poetry, the movement was still greatly concerned with the pain of composition, of translating these emotive responses into poetic form. Indeed, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another prominent Romantic poet and critic in his On Poesy or Art sees art as “the mediatress between, and reconciler of nature and man”. Such an attitude reflects what might be called the dominant theme of Romantic poetry: the filtering of natural emotion through the human mind in order to create art, coupled with an awareness of the duality created by such a process.

So here is the piece I chose, yes it is long. The length gives it a chance to open up more than some of the shorter pieces. They never really dug in, to me. 



Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey

Five years have past; five summers, with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.—Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

The day is come when I again repose

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,

Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see

These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines

Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,

Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke

Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!

With some uncertain notice, as might seem

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,

Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire

The Hermit sits alone.

                                              These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind

With tranquil restoration:—feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man's life,

His little, nameless, unremembered, acts

Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,

To them I may have owed another gift,

Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,—

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

                                                        If this

Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—

In darkness and amid the many shapes

Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir

Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,

Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—

How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,

O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods,

         How often has my spirit turned to thee!

   And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years. And so I dare to hope,

Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first

I came among these hills; when like a roe

I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides

Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,

Wherever nature led: more like a man

Flying from something that he dreads, than one

Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days

And their glad animal movements all gone by)

To me was all in all.—I cannot paint

What then I was. The sounding cataract

Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Their colours and their forms, were then to me

An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,

By thought supplied, not any interest

Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this

Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts

Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,

Abundant recompense. For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognise

In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

                                            Nor perchance,

If I were not thus taught, should I the more

Suffer my genial spirits to decay:

For thou art with me here upon the banks

Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,

My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch

The language of my former heart, and read

My former pleasures in the shooting lights

Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while

May I behold in thee what I was once,

My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,

Knowing that Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,

Through all the years of this our life, to lead

From joy to joy: for she can so inform

The mind that is within us, so impress

With quietness and beauty, and so feed

With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,

Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all

The dreary intercourse of daily life,

Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb

Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold

Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain-winds be free

To blow against thee: and, in after years,

When these wild ecstasies shall be matured

Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind

Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,

Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,

If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—

If I should be where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams

Of past existence—wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream

We stood together; and that I, so long

A worshipper of Nature, hither came

Unwearied in that service: rather say

With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,

That after many wanderings, many years

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,

And this green pastoral landscape, were to me

More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

2.22.15

The final Jeopardy question (answer, really) from Friday was: "On completing the "deathbed" edition of his great work, he wrote 'L. Of G. complete at last, after 33 years of hacking at it'" The response was Whitman, for his Leaves of Grass.

I always love it when they have poetry categories on Jeopardy, even though I rarely remember the authors/titles (can sometimes recite the lines though, what's with that, my brain?)

I also love it when things are serendipitous. This beautiful poem came to my email the day before or so, Darkening, then Brightening by Kim Addonizio. 

The sky keeps lying to the farmhouse,
lining up its heavy clouds
above the blue table umbrella,
then launching them over the river.
And the day feels hopeless
until it notices a few trees
dropping delicately their white petals
on the grass beside the birdhouse
perched on its wooden post,
the blinking fledglings stuffed inside
like clothes in a tiny suitcase. At first
you wandered lonely through the yard
and it was no help knowing Wordsworth
felt the same, but then Whitman
comforted you a little, and you saw
the grass as uncut hair, yearning
for the product to make it shine.
Now you lie on the couch beneath the skylight,
the sky starting to come clean,
mixing its cocktail of sadness and dazzle,
a deluge and then a digging out
and then enough time for one more
dance or kiss before it starts again,
darkening, then brightening.
You listen to the tall wooden clock
in the kitchen: its pendulum clicks
back and forth all day, and it chimes
with a pure sound, every hour on the hour,
though it always mistakes the hour.



Something about "L. of G. " that makes it beautiful (one of many things) is the relationship of the earth to the body, which this poem echoes. I'm not sure which Wordsworth work this would best relate to, perhaps that will be my homework.

Some

fasd

2.19.15

There are some new literary resources popping up in my radar lately. One is Moss, an in-depth essay journal. It is focused on pieces inspired by or somehow relating to the Pacific Northwest, and they pay their contributors, isn't that lovely. This is an interesting review of the publication, since I haven't really poked my head into it yet, you can get a taste. (I did read the interview with Reed about Cantwell, and have queued up the Hills around Centralia by Robert Cantwell for a read).


On the other end of the spectrum, there is Spartan, a minimalist (and also smaller) prose source. Where Moss encourages essays of 1.800 words or more, Spartan would like their submissions to be less than 2k words. I read All Monsters Welcome by Jenny Hayes. Nice transitions in that one.


Another is the James Franco Review, a poetry and prose journal born out of the desire to see underrepresented or less-visible work get recognized. Regarding their mission and name:

"We want the story, poem, or essay you wrote that you believe in the most, or that hasn’t found the right home. We aren’t looking for work that imitates James Franco’s work or satirizes—writers need not be so cruel. Think of this as the open door where who you are, where you studied, and where you’ve been published doesn’t matter. If the guest editor likes your piece, they’ll take it, and if they don’t like it, remember that it’s subjective and keep writing."

I read the poems by Chelsey Weber Smith, part selected because I went to high school with someone of that name. It would be cool if it were the same person. (Good lord, it totally is. How cool is that) My favorite was One day someone important will say this is not a poem. 


Pacifica  is another journal with a Northwest focus. It features prose, poetry, and art. I thought this, from their description page, was particularly pretty:

"The Pacific presents us with the ability to rewrite who we are again and again, to begin anew every day we wake, to forgive who we were. Contrary to popular belief, the frontier is not closed: we remake the boundaries each day and with each act of ourselves. We expand and contract like tides; we cannot border ourselves with hand-me-down myth because we are new, borderless, the creators of our own order. When we sat down to create this magazine it was these qualities we had in mind. We did not simply want to bring a new literary magazine to the Northwest, we wanted to loose the remaking these waters permit into magazine form"

Being local, I ought to check out their physical presence, which is a release party coming up next week. It is nice when you get an online presence, physical hard copy of a journal, plus an opportunity to hear work performed and connect with artists. Do browse the page, I liked Ghost Story by Kalya Rae Candrilli. 

I look forward to reading more from these outfits.

2.18.15

I would love to be this optimistic. Here's a pretty thing for you.



Ode to the Unbroken World, Which Is Coming

Thomas Lux



It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churches
and saloons are filled with decent humans.
A mother wants to feed her daughter,
fathers to buy their children things that break.
People laugh, all over the world, people laugh.
We were born to laugh, and we know how to be sad;
we dislike injustice and cancer,
and are not unaware of our terrible errors.
A man wants to love his wife.
His wife wants him to carry something.
We’re capable of empathy, and intense moments of joy.
Sure, some of us are venal, but not most.
There’s always a punchbowl, somewhere,
in which floats a…
Life’s a bullet, that fast, and the sweeter for it.
It’s the same everywhere: Slovenia, India,
Pakistan, Suriname—people like to pray,
or they don’t,
or they like to fill a blue plastic pool
in the back yard with a hose
and watch their children splash.
Or sit in cafes, or at table with family.
And if a long train of cattle cars passes
along West Ridge
it’s only the cattle from East Ridge going to the abattoir.
The unbroken world is coming,
(it must be coming!), I heard a choir,
there were clouds, there was dust,
I heard it in the streets, I heard it
announced by loudhailers
mounted on trucks.

2.17.15

Have actual words in the works at the moment, but as usual I have my breath stolen away by Philip Levine and have to share:



Our Valley



We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.


You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.


You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

2.12.15

Some mid-week words for you, apropos of nothing:

2-9-15

Already there are cherry blossoms,

(some thaw!)

and the vapor hangs expectantly

in the valleys.

I imagine you would notice,

as beauty is stronger than fear,

and that you would point it out

to others,

some alive, and some dead.

But you would point

anyway, and blow smoke

rings with the monsters in your pocket.

They are not dead, but smaller,

with wrinkled bodies that bid

us to see the worst of us

in their image.

But that’s too easy.

Instead we will seek ourselves

in the air that hangs above the earth.

2.11.15

So I was driving in the car today, not listening to anything (gasp! Silence! who does that?) but I can never shut my mind up, and this bubbled to the top:

"I'm walking down the line/
that divides me somewhere in my mind/
on the border line/
of the edge and where I walk alone/

read between the lines/
what's fucked up and everything's alright"

-Green Day, from Boulevard of Broken Dreams

and it occurs to me that often as poets, we want to communicate something (about us, maybe) but don't want to say it explicitly. We could say something explicitly, and often do, but there is often something to be gained from subtlety, suggestion, and artifice. Something could be said explicitly, and you often hear that in rock music, a la Geddy Lee:

"He's got a problem with his poisons/
but you know he'll find a cure/
he's cleaning up his systems/
to keep his nature pure"

(from New World Man)

or you could say something explicitly and have it come out prose, like Mark Haddon's novel character Christopher:

"I said that wasn't clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn't clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like a universe expanding, or who committed a murder".

-from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

So what is my point here? While poetry can do all of the things shown in these other forms, but it also can do more. By putting straightforward words in a different syntax, physical space on the page, or order in a series (not to mention all the other devices), it can tell us more. Some of this is the reflection of the reader, some is merely asking a little extra of the audience. (Maybe this is why so many people dislike reading poetry, because it requires effort)

Maybe I'm projecting a little, but would it be so much to ask for a person to look a little harder into an individual, or spend a little more time thinking about their words or interactions on a regular basis? I'm not suggesting you compose your emails in terza rima, but wouldn't you enjoy spending a little time in reflection of the things around you, and in more than 140 characters?

I guess my homework is to find examples of boldness v subtlety and explicit vs implicit messages.

2.10.15

Let's play contrast (or not).



Horses

Michael McGriff



Because when I saw a horse
cross a river
separating two countries
and named it Ghost Rubble
it said No my name is 1935
because it also spoke in tongues
as it crossed the black tongue
of the water
because it still arcs through me
with its zodiac
of shrapnel-bright stars
because the river’s teeth
still gnash
against its flank
and its eyes
still have the luster
of black china
glowing black-bright
in the glass hutch of memory
because a horse’s skull
is a ditch of wildflowers
because a horse’s skull
is a box of numbers
a slop bucket
resting upside down
under barn eaves
wind in an empty stockyard
orange clay that breaks
shovel handles with a shrug
because a horse is the underwriter
of all motion
because a horse is the first
and last item
on every list
of every season
and because that night the air
smelled green as copper
and lath dust
and that night as it scrambled
up the bank and stamped past me
it said Unlike you
I am the source of all echoes.






The dandelions in the moment and then

CJ Evans


It is. And needles don’t fall;
cones don’t fall. The soil keeps

holding the grass seed and the dune
sand beneath is still torn by thirsty,

wooden hands. By bedrock
is where will be my tenoned pine.

And the grass seeds don’t split,
their shoots don’t spill. The clouds

remain, widely. That locked closet
inside will never have its tumblers

turned. Honestly, all I had
was the only lie—that I could be

the one who evades. Sparrows
don’t fall, no owl falls. Left behind

are her thin hands, a box full
of ribbons, a bolt, a knife.

Photographs with anybody’s faces.
Hungry letters, angry letters about

a time and people and love that is
not. No image holds its meaning

within itself. Not one dandelion fell.
Please. Something did happen here.




Two ways to look at a moment, or, I relate to people who see into their dreams/waking spaces moving around them.

2.4.15

More vortices, perhaps:



The Second Coming


    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

2.3.15

I am reading (although it is more like I have been reading it for months) Age of Empire by Eric Hobsbawn, which is an excellent treatment of the sweeping social and political changes in the "long 19th century". Mainly treating industry and politics, it nonetheless has room for the changes in art, music, literature, and cinema. Although it is taking me forever to read, I did used to be a good student and talk of a specific style of art, Vorticism (no, spell check, not eroticism), perked up my ears.

According to the indomitable wiki: "Vorticism was a short-lived modernist movement in British art and poetry of the early 20th century. It was partly inspired by Cubism. The movement was announced in 1914 in the first issue of BLAST, which contained its manifesto and the movement's rejection of landscape and nudes in favor of a geometric style tending towards abstraction. Ultimately, it was their witnessing of unfolding human disaster in World War I that "drained these artists of their Vorticist zeal". Vorticism was based in London but was international in make-up and ambition."

Unfortunately, Vorticism and BLAST were killed off by the advent of war, which literally killed some of its contributors. Ezra Pound, who named the style, called it "the point of maximum energy". That quote is taken from this article by Bob Duggan, (very well-written) who says "What Pound seemed to be saying was that the art of this Vorticist movement captured an energy swirling all around them in the world in such a way that it became ordered and intensified. The vortex created by these artists took the blur of early 20th century life and froze it in paintings and sculptures for the edification and education of humanity."

I remember really liking the Vorticists, so here are some examples of the style, from T. S. Eliot's Four Quarters:



III (from Burnt Norton) 

Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Dessication of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its metalled ways
Of time past and time future.

V (from East Coker)

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Final thought from Vorticist Wyndham Lewis: "You think at once of a whirlpool. At the heart of the whirlpool is a great silent place where all the energy is concentrated, and there at the point of concentration is the Vorticist.”

2.2.15

Before the Airport, Sushi  by Tomas Q. Morin

The old man sitting out front
on the empty patio eating
fried chicken or something or other,
bought up the block probably, and not
from the house of sushi
we were entering,
didn’t inspire confidence exactly,
but when you returned
from the wall of fame to our table
with your chopsticks
in the box you decorated
how many years ago I forget,
and told me regulars from way back
need never use the disposable ones
wrapped in paper like straws
that are not smooth
like yours that looked polished
and like they were cut from a yew,
unlike my conjoined sticks
that were little more than gargantuan
toothpicks for some race of giants
that I had only to separate
with one clean snap
and prove were fool proof,
only the engineer who had retired
on the patent for the design of my chopsticks
never met a fool such as I
and so the operation was a failure
except for your laughter,
an unexpected development
for which I would have botched the next set
on purpose, and the next
only our seaweed salad had arrived
and it was time for me, a lifelong worshipper
of the miniature shovel and pitchfork
to stumble across a tiny plate
with my Chinese finger crutches,
only I didn’t and before I knew it
my hand was Fred Astaire on stilts
and the seaweed salad was gone,
followed by half the maki,
and there was only the one pink piece
that separated from the crunchy roe
and its rice wheel that I spit out
because it felt like a tongue
and tasted of death,
which makes perfect sense
because it was dead,
and had our meal ended there,
I would now be celebrating
the virtues of keeping an open mind
to new food, instead of how
life can surprise us so much, one day
I’m not eating maple syrup on a steak
or cheese by the block like everyone
who’s never been to Vermont
would expect, rather sushi
and mastering chopsticks and looking up
to see a golden braid of hair
I had never noticed was golden
unraveling against your shoulder
so slowly that it looks alive
so much that for a moment
there are suddenly three of us
at the table: me, you, and your braid
that you don’t seem to care
is losing what only a few minutes
before I would have called a battle
with gravity, except now I understand
the pull of the earth
isn’t always harsh and impatient,
that it can be gentle, can nudge
a twist of hair loose
and in so doing, slow down time
and that song about goodbyes
and the heavy wrap of winter
that fills the sky of every airport town
in late summer, slow that music
down just enough to make a soul
with two left feet like my own
jump up and dance.