I stood like a marble statue, reverential and composed when that Amish horse and buggy came within inches of me. The driver, passengers, and even the horse glided past me unfazed, as if floating on air. Now, moments later, and alone on this rural road, there’s an even greater serenity in me. My mood mirrors the tranquil violet-blue sky darkening overhead.
Renata stares at the electric knifefish and eel exhibit at the New Orleans Aquarium. She thinks that if she knew there would be passion in heaven and that heaven existed, the whole thing would be easier to bear. Marital dissatisfaction, she suspects, is one of the great underlying reasons for belief in an afterlife.
She grips four-year-old Noah’s hand so he can’t wander away again. Noah is quick and curious, like she was as a child, and because he is like her, she already hurts for him.
The flutes of those
who live
with,
not just in,
nature,
mimic windsong.
Even accidental noise
blown by untrained lips
echoes the haunting, ethereal
whistle of wind
through limbs and grass, crops and structures.
something settles. Next week’s
oatmeal eases into simmer,
the wide slow mouths of the first
few bubbles no longer startle
and pop as the surface smooths,
heaves with the humility
of normal mornings. It’s a chore—
the boil, filtering through
what I know, what is new.
Propped on three pillows, another
under my knees, I am following
Natalie Goldberg as she travels
to Japan and France, sits zazen
with her students, through walking
meditation, writing longhand
in a café, always in a spiral notebook
with a pen that lets me write fast…
the time for grieving ends
grief does not
so I unfurl what is no longer and smooth out the
wrinkles
my soul loosens and leans in to the unwanted hereafter
the before murmurs just beyond my hearing
my heart skips in a dissonant rhythm
comfort strikes a truce with disquiet
compensation blankets
barrier the solitude
cold air :: we are aware
that skin is unsuitable ::
we are a perfection :: the mass
of an ego returns
#DIV/0! :: and we understand
we are not portioned ::
it was the way you stood in the dark kitchen long after
the oven had already cooled, slurping
just out of date yogurt but also because the first
time we talked, you listened, swaying me gently
in constant commas shifting slightly
(while everyone else played poker for crisps)…
My new thing is to look up the final scores
of baseball games before I decide whether
or not to watch the highlights because
who wants to follow a game you know
your team is going to lose anyway.
This is not a statement about my age; it’s not
even about having the luxury to piss away all
the idle time I have left. It’s about recognizing…
Kamal Singh Deo was born into an aristocratic family but had lost the bulk of his inheritance gambling in the seedy poker dens behind New Market in Calcutta. His day began with Jhontu, his butler, cooking a lavish breakfast consisting of an Irish coffee, a freshly squeezed orange juice, a masala omelette, two slices of buttered sourdough and oodles of crispy bacon.
After breakfast, Kamal would take a long, hot bath and dress in one of his many hand-tailored Brooks Brothers suits. He would then set off to work in an off-white, vintage Mercedes Benz and looked much like a British sahib whilst smoking tobacco from a wooden pipe sitting in the back seat of the chauffeur-driven car.
On the 15th of August, 2040, with the summary order papers issued by the Cemetery Reclamation and Transformation Committee, and two empty tin coffee containers stuffed in his backpack (two, because the directions had not indicated what type or size container to bring for the ashes), forty-two-year-old Greg Sawicki approached the corner of Clark and Irving Park and the entrance to Graceland Cemetery, final resting place of some of Chicago’s most famous politicians, mob bosses, architects, painters and writers.
I do not want Azúcar to die.
The ambulance backs into the yard behind the three-story apartment building in East New York. It’s night. The swirling blue and red lights pound my eyeballs. NYPD officers march around the backyard with bright flashlights. Broken glass and trash appear and disappear under the searching beams. The swirling lights make me dizzy.
I do not want Azúcar to die.
Whenever it rained, my grandma always used to say, “If there is enough blue in the sky to stitch a pair of britches, it is going to get sunny again.” As a child I didn’t know what that meant.
I looked up into the sky and cried. How much blue is needed to make britches, I asked myself. Heck…I wasn’t even sure what britches were. They are pants right? Jeans? Or do those old school cotton pants count too? In any case, I didn’t understand. How was I to know when the good times were going to roll again, if I didn’t know how to stitch?
Jessie woke up from a dead slumber and reached for the alarm clock — 10:30. She would be late for class again. She sat up and looked at the empty space beside her in the queen-sized bed. She lay back, relieved to be alone. Before she could gather her thoughts about anything, the pungent smell of hashish invaded her nostrils.
She rolled over and buried her head in the pillow. The idea of going into the kitchen sickened her. Eating breakfast shrouded by another cloud of smoke revolted her. The idea of a conversation with Gary was even less appetizing.
I read somewhere nature doesn’t matter
to city dwellers—not so, did you know
flowers appeared 140 million years ago
Tulips out-valued gold in some places
Orchids draw their nutrients from thin air
and flowers, they really do have powers—
My mother insisted she left the necklace by accident. In a rush, while packing. She left it sitting on the dresser in her hotel room and it must have still been sitting there when she left. She must have been in such a hurry to leave, so fearful of missing her flight, that she forgot to put it back on, that it remained in India while she returned to the United States.
“I thought I was going to miss my flight,” she told us, breathless, as we all sat around my parents’ kitchen table. It was late May, one month before her death.
Once, in an angular concrete hotel in Antibes,
you stood before the black curtain
with the massive sunlight on the other side
and a heartbeat in your chest.
You reached up, then dropped your hands.
You tapped your hands on your naked hips.
You reached up again and pulled the curtains wide.
IN a still, dark room smelling of disinfectant that stung his nose, the dazed, terrified boy lay silently crying. He was on his back atop a thin mattress, in a bed or trolley, his wrists and ankles secured with straps so tight he could barely move. His mouth was taped shut. He knew nothing about where he was or how he had gotten here. The last thing he recalled, the last normal thing, was going to the market with his father to buy grapes. After that, father and son walked to an apartment not far from the market to visit a man the boy did not know. They had tea and sweet biscuits, a treat for the child, who did not see his father often. He felt sleepy after drinking his tea. And then the boy awakened here, alone.
It is often
easier to write
the landscape
without the pollution
of people.
This hillside
was once
wild with color
It was lonely having
An anorexic mother
Who was often more concerned
About fitness and image
Then tending to the ache of my feelings
She exercised all the time, and ate light
She strove to be light,
And perhaps thought as her daughter,
I shouldn’t have such heavy feelings
I read somewhere there’s an
orchid whose flower is shaped
like the female of a long dead
species of bee.
Big, bitter fruits that no-one eats,
drop to the ground and rot
I almost fold your laundry, the numb air
of garments settling, the last breadth of the dryer,
call to me to care for your hot things
Marie Condo says to ask the clothes
how they should be folded
to listen to the fabric, go with the seams
I’m driving through a fog.
Home to public school, I
travel up and down hills,
the 45-mile-stretch
like an obstacle course
to test resolve.
I need this cloudy patch,
not as a puffy mattress,
but as an iron shield
I thought of you this afternoon,
laughing with your entire body
slightly curling over as you let
yourself lay bare its expression
of unconfined happiness. You were
intoxicated with life despite not having
much.