From "Visitor" by Brenda Shaughnessy

I was

hoping to sit with you in a tree house in a

nightgown in a real way.

"Believe, Believe" by Bob Kaufman

Believe in this. Young apple seeds,

In blue skies, radiating young breast,

Not in blue-suited insects,

Infesting society’s garments.

 

Believe in the swinging sounds of jazz,

Tearing the night into intricate shreds,

Putting it back together again,

In cool logical patterns,

Not in the sick controllers,

Who created only the Bomb.

 

Let the voices of dead poets

Ring louder in your ears

Than the screechings mouthed

In mildewed editorials.

Listen to the music of centuries,

Rising above the mushroom time.

From "At Last the New Arriving" by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

What a prize

you are. What a lucky sack of stars.

How long should a poem be

There will be cobbler.


I was so vulnerable. I was a sitting duck.


And so it is finally revealed on the global stage: so much of what we chalk up to just the way things are is deliberately and maliciously manufactured



On the garage door, above a large white heart: The only way out is through 



Does not doing make you buzz with electricity, or does it feel tinged with avoidance or depression? Pay attention.



He washed the purple bowl for me.



Take note of the tug inside--that's part of who you really are.



Food for thought. Check plus.

It's fiddle time

Who's the sugar nerd now



I have been missing Y terribly of late, the onset sudden and breathtaking. He touches me and I imagine his hands


Where once I would have relished the enthusiasm of the boy with the dog who wanted to play with my dog, today I tripped over myself trying to keep space between us. It was no use--my dog stole his dog's ball, and before I could kick it back he'd run to my feet, hand outstretched. This is the time I find myself in, when I am afraid of a child playing in an open field by the river because I have asthma and an autoimmune disorder and I do not know what, if anything, he's carrying. Nor do I know what, if anything, I am carrying; nor do I know, anymore--I who have made it my mission to make sure every child I encounter is safe in my presence, as I was not safe in the presence of so many adults before me--if it is safe for children to be around me



Maybe I'm not missing Y. Maybe I'm nostalgic, instead, for innocence, for the uncertainty of taking off my clothes or nodding my head to classic rock or drawing on a diner's placemat or seizing a truck's stick shift and not knowing what would happen next. Maybe I'm nostalgic for falling in love, which is so much easier than loving someone.




I have always been annoyed by writing that uses letters in place of a person's name.

I kept trying to get to the part where men explain Fiona Apple to her



Last night I saw my girlfriends' faces for the first time in oh-so-long, smiling and blowing kisses through a phone screen. It was more heartening than I'd expected. Tonight we will FaceTime with an old friend while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. We will munch on big glass bowls of popcorn, us high up in the Rocky Mountains and him in the middle of Austin, hands reaching back into the bowl simultaneously, but never touching. It is both a heartbreaking and heartwarming state of affairs



I keep a list of the items we would like to purchase the next time he ventures to a grocery store, as many weeks as possible after the last visit. He goes each time--stepping into the shower the moment he returns--because I have asthma and an autoimmune disorder. I don't know if it's right. I am grateful. I do not know how long I can accept it. It's humbling and uncomfortable. It begins with vinegar

From "Of History and Hope" by Miller Williams

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

"Goodbye to Tolerance" by Denise Levertov

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,   

your loaves grow moldy,   

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving   

behind you the cherished   

worms of your dispassion,   

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,   

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? ... then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle   

for joy ...