the dire wolf

there's nothing to say now except
i'm not sure
i'm not sure
well
you know
maybe
do you



let's talk about concrete let's talk about chicken wire let's talk about fences brick walls fistfuls of leaves wrought iron stairwells wooden bed frames your face-- your hands-- a pink cylindrical container of salt

tonight we sing play guitar i have everything i've wanted sitting around me don't i just like on monday driving to the woods i saw a great blue heron standing in the creek i saw a menonite woman hauling a wheelbarrow we waved at each other, smiled just like that young woman in the grey hoodie smiled at me as i passed her on the sidewalk today in the rain, and i thought to myself that was a real smile that was a privilege you don't see those very often

but i mean when you do.




i have been so sad for the past few days inexplicable except that i am in mourning, the cat knows it he curls up with me every time i sit down and purrs, my head knows it aching, aching, and my body so tired, the rain knows it falling from the sky. but my god how the beets and the broccoli and the lettuce and the kale have grown.



oh also tonight walking back to the apartment a woman sat on a chair outside the bar another woman with a camera said watch this they had it streaming live on the tv inside the bar meanwhile two men stirred ice into a five-gallon bucket of water, cold, and then after a short speech and some name calling (for the children) they poured it over the sitting woman's head

it was 50 degrees outside i offered her a towel from inside the apartment she said nah i only live a block away and i'm heading home now i guess the cold doesn't sting as much when it's for a good cause

cloud cover

The clouds are so bright.
I guess the moon must be bright.
But where is the moon?

get the fish

lean-back on bricks cameras watching wait-lying through my teeth he does
i-don't-know-what inside with the smoke with the lungs with the burning
he will shower, afterward, and we will not speak


i eat steak drink merlot who the fuck do i think i am remember when you could see up my skirt on the deck in sunshine i make a joke about female ejaculate it kills with the feline demographic

meanwhile i am eating vegan marshmallows lying on the couch wilson is on his back on the rug playing with mr. fish he shoves the tail into his wide-open mouth and kicks his back legs into the stuffed animal's face






the grateful dead today we walked from bar to bar watched the champions league final on the big tv in the back room i drank whiskey gingers and vodka shots i was the only woman in the room after that other woman left three-quarters of the way through the game i talked to the guy i saw watching the arsenal game on the treadmill at the gym a few weeks ago it's possible he thought i was weird it went to extra time then everything fell apart

in the game i mean. then we walked around the park it was nice out when i got back to the apartment it was nearly 8 o'clock

o'clock

o'clock




we laid out blankets and bundled up under the stars around 10 last night we were settled in for the long haul we had vodka and even more blankets and some cool astronomy app that's the first thing to really make me want a smartphone although i couldn't look at the screen for long because why the fuck would i look at that when there's a sky full of stars right above my face anyway it was beautiful and i saw two planets-- jupiter, mars-- and supposedly saturn was on the other side of the house then jupiter disappeared below the treeline then the clouds rolled in and we didn't see any more stars for the rest of the night but here's the thing before (Wilson you know i love cuddling as much as the next cat but right now i'm trying to write and your little body standing on my stomach is blocking the screen) before the cloud cover rolled over the entire sky like a tipped-over gray paint bucket we saw three bright-shooting stars although i thought to myself really they're not shooting so much as falling

Pennsylvania painted sign

Woodsplitter for rent.
Perennials for sale.
Asparagus

Luciferin, by Dean Young

 

 

"They won't attack us here in the Indian graveyard."

I love that moment. And I love the moment

when I climb into your warm you-smelling

bed-dent after you've risen. And sunflowers,

once a whole field and I almost crashed,

the next year all pumpkins! Crop rotation,

I love you. Dividing words between syl-

lables! Dachshunds! What am I but the inter-

section of these loves? I spend 35 dollars on a CD

of some guy with 15 different guitars in his shack

with lots of tape delays and loops, a good buy!

Mexican animal crackers! But only to be identified

by what you love is a malformation just as

embryonic chickens grow very strange in zero

gravity. I hate those experiments on animals,

varnished bats, blinded rabbits, cows

with windows in their flanks but obviously

I'm fascinated. Perhaps it was my early exposure

to Frankenstein. I love Frankenstein! Arrgh,

he replies to everything, fire particularly

sets him off, something the villagers quickly

pick up. Fucking villagers. All their shouting's

making conversation impossible and now

there's grit in my lettuce which I hate

but kinda like in clams as one bespeaks

poor hygiene and the other the sea.

I hate what we're doing to the sea,

dragging huge chains across the bottom,

bleaching reefs. Either you're a rubber/

gasoline salesman or like me, you'd like

to duct tape the vice president's mouth

to the exhaust pipe of an SUV and I hate

feeling like that. I would rather concentrate

on the rapidity of your ideograms, how

only a biochemical or two keeps me

from becoming the world's biggest lightning bug.

 

 

 

 

*Biography here

you're not even good enough to be in creation*

cartilage kneeblankets stairwell tapestries

white-scraped larynx mutilates pustulerot

don't believe me i'll show you



don't believe me    i'll show you


i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm wainscoting i'm an inexpensive way to upgrade your living space i'm old world charm i'm the warmth of wood i'm only trouble is only trouble is only trouble is

slide from walls slip-mucus through fence-posts cry-whisper goodbye moose and better luck next time and it was nice knowing you and please don't hate me and I hope your hooves feel better and i understand if you do


vodka shots, bigger than expected. grilled chicken on a salad. dear drunk librarian. wet-white tissues in a dimly lit room. dry your eyes honey dry your eyes honey dry.your.eyes

the waitress is coming.

 you have to wash your body.

fuck you.



who papier-mached the bathroom. who is walking holding hands. pinch wet cheeks it will be less obvious. let him be mean you can take it. please and listen and i know you and me too.

cry me a creekbed. drinking orange juice again with the lid on. carotid deeper, carotid deeper, carotid-fuck your sandwiches. brown paper bags.



i saw a baby rabbit. i walked over the bridge. i wanted to stop but i was tired. the sun was setting. my feet hurt. i was thinking too much. the cross-legged statue and the big white rocks were gone. yesterday i pulled into a gas station beside a crushed yellow bird.



*Freaks and Geeks

get wasted don't think about it

things have been getting a bit stale around these parts let's crank up the volume let's pour three shots of rum into a mason jar and toss it back before dinner let's grill chicken asparagus pineapple red bell peppers keep drinking soup cookie this is how the world turns

she pounds through the door near tears that man with his pants down turned toward her advanced toward her she ran i say listen you are not leaving this house again without me by your side i will walk you to that restaurant i don't give a fuck i'll kick him right in his balls. she says her mom is always hounding her for walking alone at night i say listen it is fucking bullshit that anyone would expect you to stay home at night because you are a woman don't you ever apologize for being outside

with that i am thinking about all those late nights early mornings by myself walking the ten long blocks from the metro station to my room in that group house all the times i was followed all the times i was told to stay inside past 9. say what you want i'm not sorry say what you want it's not my fault. it's not my fault. it's not my fault, right Staceyann?

soft and sweet

part of me thinks it's unacceptable to write when i am quite clear that i have nothing of substance to say at the moment while another part of me thinks you should write-sing-express all the time whatever song or substance is in you at the moment sing it out.

in addition to that it's also that i feel good here, simultaneously safe and exposed, and challenged, and connected

my god in the aeroplane over the sea fucking slays me, here have my heart-lungs-stomach neutral, milk, hotel, pulling them out of me

i shower before and after the cat bats at the curtain i have accepted this: i may never have privacy in the bathroom again. i mean he even tries to leap onto my shoulders while i'm sitting on the toilet peeing

yes i pee and i taught so many teenagers that girls even poop, too that summer in the woods-- the looks on their faces when we showed them the trowel! i think my proudest moment as an educator is seeing girls grow unashamed of pooping.

it is good to remember who i am where i have been who i've spent my time with it reminds me that entropy is a relatively new development in my life. clean your antique rifles heave civil war cannonballs into the underground basement what fitting objects for a pacifist to hoard.

at any rate there are window boxes on the porch three of them i will fill them with flowers color spilling over the wooden stairs.

the bees have started a new swarm about 30 feet from the original hive. they worship the new queen, buzzing bodies pressed tight together around a tree branch and the queen pulsing with power. i am only steps from them before i realize it's not just a thick tree branch, that it is moving, that there are thousands of bees pressed tight together around their queen and i am not her.

soup cookie

what does that upside-down peace sign flag mean him standing on the corner serious by the grocery store i roll by under flower trees and wonder.

i was going to write more from folly but instead i just was there, and it was good, sun hot on shoulders drunk hand over mouth in the back room. nephew tossed wet sand on his hat and crawled straight for the waves.

after 14 hours in the car my back aching i stooped nonetheless to cat waiting anxious at the door in the dark hasn't left my side since. i kiss the top of his little orange head and he purrs.

i'm in a real pickle now i know what i want don't know if i'm wanted back now is the time i suppose to be brave. do you hear me?


a man was so angry at me he demanded i ship him that old gifted blond-wood guitar across two states or else hurt me but he also taught me to be honest and for that i am grateful. at the same time i do not know how to respond to social media requests.

how cool was that bike ride hands clasped and windswept the world was greenblurrysunset-lipsredskytreegreenfields-holdingonblinkingatthe-widegreenopen

listen up pandora if i wanted to hear blackbird by the beatles i would have selected "depression remix". as it stands i asked you for radiohead not that i enjoy listening to a random mix of mildly related songs by mostly mediocre artists but the stereo is currently in the kitchen and i lost all my music from my old computer and here i am lying on this couch singing to wilson

STEP RIGHT UP LADIES AND GENTLEMEN FOR THE LOW LOW PRICE OF ENTRY TO MEMORY LANE

!

let's see you taught me i need to protect my own self you that good kissing matters you that i prefer not to be a vessel for the wrong person's melancholia you so many things mostly beauty and also gentleness and also that love can last forever you that i have power at my fingertips you that great minds can intellectualize themselves out of loving you that love is real even when it is temporary you how to be honest that being loved is not the same as loving you to be tough to not expect small favors you how to love someone when they're having sex with someone else in the next room how not to push too hard you how to have sex for fun you that when a man jokes about how capable he is of raping me while lying on a bed with me with my shirt off it is okay that i never called him back yes even though he bought me flowers you that brotherly love can be just as powerful as the romantic stuff you i am not sure yet maybe to never abandon my relationship to my self oh and also to get drunk sometimes and dance



well that was uncomfortable and i apologize.


i'm warning you right now give me a few lines of space to get cheesy but come on i left my garden untended for just five days and weeds grew up all over the fuckin place and how can anyone not point out the metaphor? be triewe, that is all there is. be triewe.



also be curious, soup cookie, right this way

folly, part one

yes that white egret standing alone in the clear-cut marsh on the side of the highway destroyed me, i mean really broke my heart in the definitive sense of the term, but for now i want to focus on the fact that we all really need to get out more. i mean i had nearly forgotten there's a whole world outside of where and how i live, and simultaneously as the white egret stands alone in the clear-cut marsh on the side of the highway, a lot of beautiful things still exist there.

who knows if it's true but apparently there's a word, ubuntu, that means "I am what I am because of who we all are".


over the past few days i have observed myself on several occasions using the term whack, as in, that is whack, in addition to the phrase that is mad bullshit. i have found that these phrases apply to a diversity of circumstances and am completely fine with this linguistic development.

today i walked out over the atlantic ocean on a 1,054-foot-long pier in south carolina and when i pressed up to the rail between crowds of fishermen, one of whom flashed me such a beautiful smile, i looked down and saw a stingray and several fat, pink jellyfish in the water. i mean wow.

after walking around downtown and then across the beach, barefoot and into the cold water and over sharp-pointed shells, my brother and i poured ourselves tall glasses of vodka and sat on the porch trading stories about dating. i should really get drunk with my brother more often.

then my nephew arrived and hot damn he is crawling now, cruising around the beach rental, and he can pull himself up and walk a little as long as he has something to hold onto. later at night before his parents gave him his bath he hung upside down in his dad's arms and i turned my head upside down to make faces beside his and he smiled and tugged my hair and then stuck his fingers up my nostrils and into my mouth. i didn't even care that earlier his hands had been smeared all over the floor and the porch outside and the hands of the little girl who gave him a flower on the sidewalk, and i think this is probably what everyone is referring to when they talk about love.