have children is the best I could tell myself.

five years ago a teacher made us write to ourselves about what we were most thankful for. He promised to send them out once we were around 22 years old.

I got my letter today. I did forget what I wrote. At the bottom of the form letter I told myself,
"Please write more, Kristin. It makes you happy. Don't be afraid of being ordinary in life. Have children. -Suzanne Jones" Don't know what to think of it now. After a night a board games with a friend's family, I rush home to read this letter. I had hoped for pages and pages of who sat behind me and who I wanted to be and what my favorite animal was. I wanted to know just how much I loved my boyfriend. How much I knew in French. The current story I was thinking about.

Didn't get any of those. But! I did send myself a dollar. And my "b"s were that stupid Russian "b" back then. And I was thankful for emotion. Have children?

Zodiac Darius Re-Mix: Virgo

hemlines reversed, quick tongues lined with a reverberating mind:
terse respect for growing mime-ful of dissenting degrees of distress
and helping his hands would only result in being undone, undone,
over and over sarcasm-sand dunes and I fall into ridiculing his rhumes:
"I have a cough due to cold, girl! Will you talk to my mom for me?"
your sincerity reeks, plainly; and my shrill & garrish yelps when the
television starts on about yarrow and dreaming and daisy-beading
will certainly keep you in a more John Locke than a Franklin mood
and even if I sit a stadium away, we both know that just won't do.

manifest destiny #3: pairing of worlds

the "whoa" from holding
father in the artist room:
must capture all this

I Confess

A Chef’s Cooking Confession

Let it be known that I am a professional chef. I still make minor mistakes every once in a while, but nothing to write home about.

However, back in my college days, before I became serious about becoming a chef, I had quite a few cooking adventures that I’m not eager to confess openly.

I went to college in Texas, which is known for its intense summer heat. One summer it was so bad that the air conditioner broke in the apartment I was sharing with a friend, and since we were poor college kids, we couldn’t do much about it.

Another friend was hosting a birthday party for her boyfriend, who happened to be a really good friend of mine. She asked everyone to bring some food for the party so that she didn’t have to make a lot. Being the budding cook that I was, I decided to be ambitious and make a pork tenderloin and a side dish.

I called her the night before to complain about the 100-degree heat and make sure she was still alright with me bringing a pork tenderloin. “Of course,” she said. “You know that’s going to be the only meat at the party, right?”

Uh, what about everyone else bringing a dish to pass? I guess she had assumed I meant I’d make this for everyone (10-15 people) rather than as one option among other meat dishes. The meat that I had would feed about four people, if that.

Being the macho man that I was, I said it would be fine. Then I hung up the phone and panicked. It was 11pm, so everything was closed. Besides, I was tired from working all day and the heat was oppressive.

Thankfully, I managed to dig out a large package of chicken breasts from the freezer. (I know, sounds a bit more sophisticated than most college guys, but I was into cooking, what do you expect? I thought it might impress a girl at some point.).

I poured myself a drink and cranked up the radio while getting all of my ingredients prepared. I was feeling confident and convinced that this would be no big deal.

I spiced the pork and popped in in the 400-degree oven while the chicken was defrosting in the microwave. I was also cooking a bunch of vegetable on the stove for the side dish. Multi-tasking is obviously the easiest way to get things done, right?

Somehow the alarm went off for the pork right when the vegetables were done and the microwave was beeping for the chicken. I didn’t really plan ahead – I shoved the vegetables on a back burner and pulled the pork out of the oven with a towel. (Even I didn’t own oven mitts).

Since the air conditioner wasn’t on, the fire alarm went off, which added to my stress of wanting to get everything done. I quickly pulled the chicken out of the microwave, but in realizing I had no counter space, I decided to move the pan with the pork on it.

Somehow I thought it would be ok to pick up a 400-degree pan with my bare hand. In an instant I felt sheer pain, dropped the chicken on the floor and stared at my hand, now covered in blisters. I nearly threw up.

Who knows what might have happened had my roommate not walked in a few minutes later to hear the fire alarm still buzzing and see me lying on the floor in a dizzy, tired stupor clutching my hand.

Well, I didn’t go to the party. I think my roommate called and said I was sick. They must have ordered pizza, because my dish certainly didn’t make it to the party.

Moral of the story: Don’t cook when you’re in a hurry, or you’re incredibly tired, or in 100-degree heat. You might get second degree burns on your hands and ruin your hopes of impressing girls at a party with your cooking.

-Joseph Morris

Joseph Morris has been a professional chef for over 20 years. He also owns the site http://www.culinaryartscollege.org a Culinary Arts College for students interested in getting a degree in culinary arts.

Dudes and dolls, go to his site!

Nicotine Dream #5: That Got Me Over

It was a wild one.

Everyone got stuck on trains. For days and my ex-boyfriend's was ahead of ours, my peers', and we were starving so we put all of our rotten food in my "Playschool" compartment. Everyone on my train was my age. The train after ours was one year younger and I kept wondering about those on the two years after. Our train was a bright color. Probably purple. And so all of the rotting food in my train spot was to lure any rats that might be around so we could catch them and kill them.

I think we were only stuck on that moving train for two days but I am sure we would have eaten the rat raw. But I was so upset that I had to be the rotting one so I went to the train ahead with the one-year-older folk. Brinni helped me jump the gap. She said sweetly, "the moving ground is moving out of the way so you can jump." That got me over. And my ex-boyfriend was there looking so sullen and I felt awful. So I jumped off. Braved the fall.

And then everyone was let go. We went back to school, all thankful for soda machines and the feeling of the ground below us. Directly below us.

I went straight to Tate's class. Joe was there bitching. Complaining about the class and the work he has to do. And I waited my turn to show Tate I got my work done even though everyone, even he I think, went through that tragedy. And Tate was so frustrated with Joe that he yelled:

GO HOME, LOVE YOUR LOVED ONES

did you learn nothing from this at all?

What is this but a distraction from what you really must be doing?

I ran out, even left my notebook behind and went straight to everyone I loved. Not many were home but I found Mario and we hugged like there was a Great Flood and we both survived it.

__

Who would put all the people in the world on trains?

Avoidance #3: "Umpteenth"

hold out as long as you can (tighten shoulder blades)

occupy your fingers//keeps the periods coming.

...we must perpetuate the ellipses. I fear that at the pause

I will drop. "rationale" without. policeman flashlight

trunk rumble = can't stoic any

longer

(sunrise, light more) (obscure less) I can't be caught

in front of you that way...without an excuse. to simply say "no"

"no, because." "Just because." "Because it is right."

Time: Set the Bones. Crack in place, you do care.

in a hammock because I don't like the pressure

of earth pushing up at me. Putting me on the spot.

"I just don't have a good feeling about it."

Manifest Destiny #2

1. starlet back on the stage,

couldn't help but perform a

monologue she heard last night.

2. KINETIC (mostly.) A door still warm from being closed--

FLUST open (completely: BUMP against steel trailer wall, blips forward,

like a car rear ending on an uphill curb, parking on it--parallel, at least trying.)

"What was that?" the red haired one asked.

Blonde puts ungloved hand on hip. She always used the wrong word when narrators described her actions. She indolably says, "that's art, Henna."

STALE huffs, pause on the cot, arms sore from hours of unpredicted spotlight FOLLOWS.

Thinking on her toes (Blonde took out the third act to SPEW

everything Henna told her over

too many tall pints of capsizing beers.) HURT,

she spoke towards her reassuring gaze,

of the family she once had.

"Mae, what if the family was here?"

"They'd never know I was talking about them. It's heartbreak every one goes through."

"Like how every one has eaten an orange," BITTER.

"Look, you didn't say, 'baby, please don't use this for inspired monologues.'"

"Baby? I'd never--whatever.

I told you everything. Everything. Because I thought it was understood that I was speaking with trust."

Blonde leans against tin wall with the cut-out window that overlooked

a big ole tent COLLAPSE--many half-costumed circus folk GRIMACE.

...

Henna continues, "What if I got on the mic and told every one about Marsh." BELOVED.

"It is the past," SHARP.

"It is the past."

STORM, "Nothing means--"

anything to you.

OUT.

Avoidance #2: Car Man

When I was 8 I threw pebbles at a car with Amanda outside my red-doored house and the car

stopped. Started backing up. Amanda didn't know I threw pebbles and

I bolted right back into the house. She didn't know to follow me right away.

"HEY! WHERE YOU GOING?!"

I didn't answer her with anything more than the front red door slamming behind me.

She could have been ran over by a peeved motoritarian. I thought it'd be funny to throw rocks.

Avoidance #1: Morgan Spurloch

"Kristin, tell Alex who you met!"

"Spurloff--what? Yes, oh. Hmm. Do you know Fastfood Nation?"

"Huh-uh," Alex says.

"Supersize me?"

"Nope."

What.

"Oh, well, okay. He is a documentarian who changed the entire world and you need to internet more because this guy is the reason middle class children are a little less unhealthy."

I didn't say that. But mostly, yes, that is how I introduced this:

"I met Spurloch with my documentary class and after our Q & A session we shook his hand. The three guys in front of me all said, 'thank you, nice to meet you' and the only girl in the class, me, said, 'thank you. You are a rising star.' Spurloch just said, 'oh...kay.' And I'm pretty sure my professor who I am entirely afraid of heard me.

I walked out quickly, didn't make eye contact with anyone and waited at the top of the stairs for Kevin who I begged to come even though he was sick. I couldn't walk into Spurloch's greatest lecture ever told alone."

This post is dedicated to Kevin V. Garfoot for without whom I would have died.

Manifest Destiny #1

P: Can we spend lunch making out?
K: Sure, what state are you in?
P: MD.
K: Okay. Open your mouth towards the West. I'll stick my tongue out towards the East."

upboating

I will continue to treat every single one with great disavowal

chased with affection as tough as whale meat

and never again will they go sailing.

I really don't mean to be vague

We are taught since grade school

(social learning theory ) that if you

like someone you must hurt them, cause

them to doubt, doubt, doubt if they will

ever get a song written about them.

And then there is that day where being sweet

is sweet and being mean is mean and when did that

switch happen? I've fallen behind I believe

but believe me! this fishing thing is not exciting to me either.

"rubbing my bald spots"

Floating on weary nights

Surfing past neon bars and

O

b Street

e Lights.

l

i

s

k

They shroud the

City

Like some night

I might.

But that's not today

And I hope like that it stays.

I was born into this Chili-Pot

Culture, which means

I was born

Two years

too late.

So, Bar Keep!, I says,

Gimme a three-in-one,

Straight.

I've had too many rocks in my shoes

To have them sitting in my drinks.

But Nope. Not tonight, Pal.

I'm sorry your sorrows just ain't that great...

Its nothing against you,

You was just born

Two years

Too

late.

-Mario ViraLOBOS, II

how many eighth notes will it take to get to the core of just how much sleep I'm willing to miss?

1. Awake.
2. Damnit, I was having such a nice dream to. What time is it? 4 A.M., you kiddin’ me? I put up with enough of this bullshit at work, I don’t need it here.
3. Shit.
4. Who’s making that noise? They need to shut up, I swear to god.
5. Wait.
6. Is that music? Singing?
7. Bullshit.
8. Wait.
9. …
10. It’s not bad actually. Maybe something I could go to sleep to.
11. Shit I know this song too! Grandma used to sing it to me when I had a bad day. I never knew what she was saying though, that respirator wasn’t too kind to her. Come to think of it, neither was I. Too many Darth Vader jokes.
12. Music! This is not music. Music is mental filler for commuters between work and home. This is the creation of a muse or a… a… an angel. This is incredible.
13. I can almost see her. Maybe if I open the window more…
14. You are beautiful! Your beauty could make the morning come early!
15. Woman, you created a new emotion.
16. An emotion that is not logged in the books.
17. An emotion that not even a 1950’s broadcaster could emulate.
18. What are you? Did I even awake?
19. I need to say something.
20. I try not to make a habit of asking angels for favors, but those halos are too inviting.
21. I need to say something.
22. 4 A.M is no longer a time, it’s a state of mind.
23. I need to say something.
24. Yes. I can’t explain what she is stirring in me, but I have to try.
25. She needs to know.
26. It’s 4 A.M.
27. I need to say.
28. She needs to know.
29. Alright woman, I hope you hear me, but more importantly, I hope you know…
30. …
31. …
32. “HEY WOMAN…shut the fuck up! It’s 4 in the fuckin’ A.M. and I need some sleep damnit! I get enough of this shit at work and I don’t need it here….shit…”
33. …
34. I sigh.
35. She cries.
36. I lay down.
37. She’s now away.
38. She needed to know.
39. Finally, some fucking sleep.

-post by someone I forgot to ask if they wanted to be anonymous or what

HE/SHE/WE

Let's call this city a "HE"
and this HE holds a trident to my throat
(but it's quite invisible. So, I seem
to be chin-high.)

and I came from a "SHE"
and this SHE really just pushed down on my shoulders
I would mostly knock back at those hands
-- to be wound so taut.

Here I am twinkly: there I was eating pie.
And everywhere made me wonder what would marry me
not sure if I prefer the cold glow or a subtle pull of the hearts.

Those quickenings whisper, "go to where the people say to their mothers:
this girl, if you ever met her, would show you that she had more love in her
than even labrador puppies."

two things in this life: death and friendship

1. I saw these four friends, enveloping each other

(mostly like a people paper chain is full of individuals
but those individuals don't have their own hands so you don't
ever, ever know where to cut them apart
if you wanted to cut them apart
you'd probably do that down the middle
but why would you want to?)

in a pew for three individuals and when that pastor
up front who read annie sexton poetry like the world
was going to rear end into another planet
and this collision would eliminate the spoken word forever:
he spoke about friendship being a spiritual discipline
and how one lifelong friend is much,
two is many
and three is nearly impossible.

My first thought was,
when will this forged group of loved ones split up?
I hoped not soon.
Then I hoped never: I wished they would continue to be
kind to each other. To eliminate sarcasm,
want,
jealousy,
and false smiles.

And I think the ideal death would include everyone I loved
laughing at my fits, sweet tooth, and heavy assertions
about the TRUTHS of the WORLD
and their collective last words would be:
"duh."
"You can tell us you think we are stupid asses."
"Because we have seen you with spaghetti all about your breast."
"And sometimes it sucks that you're so even tempered."
"Just fucking tell us already."

A shark would shred my abdomen and I would smile.
Probably would not have enough time to point out their flaws
but ain't no big thing
because I have friends and they have me.

2. I hear this buddy of mine say something behind me.
Nothing too clear or too profound
but still just enough to make me "hmm"
and I want to scream: tip over the bolted down theater seats and say!
I DON'T WANT TO OWN YOU OR ANYTHING OR HOLD
YOU BACK FROM LIKE SUCCESS Y'KNOW
I just simply want to occupy the space around you from time to time
so I don't have to miss a single thing you say.
And I want to be the person that knows if you've spent many moments
mulling that phrase over in your head
and knowing when it just came out, your filter on sabbatical.

Because that's intimacy to nod your head to.

You've Got Ten Words to Play Off of

Sit back, relax, and drive. drive until all that's left is the Horizon and music in your ears. Keep a small reminder of the things you are leaving behind. All memories, amiable or otherwise, become reduced to a mere fraction the further you drive. Flip on the air and witness the chemistry that occurs between cold sweat and palpable disdain. No time for books that play on words you learned in middle school, this is the Road. This Road doesn't care about your concoctions of verbs and nouns and how "pretty it sounds." This Road doesn't end. Your troubles, however far away, is just a number behind you.

-Kevin Vaughn

And don't stop counting.

Nicotine Dream #4: Stress dreaming.

I don't know if it is the instant elimination of tobacco from my life or the stress of feeling like I'm "running the show" with "too little of a cast" or "poor delegating skills", but the past few nights I've been sleep-cleaning my room. I wake up to clothing, borrowed books, and pens pushed up against my wall.

And I am wearing different pajamas (actually, different underwear, but it is the internet and that is not something you mention). And I find that I texted twitter at 3:40AM:

"Comic books are so much easier is what I woke up to myself mumbling after I'm pretty sure I asked a bigger woman to play chris farley for me in my action adventure."

all exotic animals killed, captured and eaten.

Schools were shut down and deputies and sheriffs and mallcops were stationed on hwy 70 to shoot down black bears and raptors. and this guy had 500,000 of unaccounted for dollars. well, I think it all has been logged and explaing. I hope the kids stayed inside; I hope they didn't make videos of 360s or jumprope climb-up then fall alllllll the way down stunts or whatever kids do. I hope they stayed in and didn't get mauled by an anaconda/leopard tag team of viscious, hungry self-preservation.

And, I hope they did their homework.

"It's always the animals that suffer."

I heard a lady say, "it's just something like that would put us on the map."

placehold

i can't find my phone, i am listening to ben's fall album and idrank three cups of coffee and one beer and i have got so much done in just twenty minutes i have no idea what to do with myself. and i really just want to text you that i remembered something you said i wish i had been less busy or "stranded" in my mind to respond the way i want to right now

and i am crying. i wish every one in my life a calmer, more aware me

so they really understand right when it happens that i am listening.

instead, i sit back from time to time and relive everything to its own ends. i wonder if i can fix this double spacing. but, please know, that how fast i may seem there are moments where there is nothing but me replaying everything you said like you're fucking churchill or lombardi

and don't get nervous because with time memories become more graceful. i will always ignore every "um" or "i don't know" you put in to placehold your wisdoms.

One last thing: I had a dream once that it was up to me to teach one person (just one) sign language and i forgot because i was conducting a choir of toads. And sign language became like latin, only for the "cooler than you" people to learn. i dropped the ball and woke up feeling like maybe instead of doing theater and painting while in high school i should have been running track and feeding the poor.

but you win some and you ruin some.

underwhelmed men

it is evening and I haven't touched that fountain since when we tried

to dance that night (but it was more like you jostling me out of place like a kernel of corn

no! a tooth about to prance out of the still orbit it HATED to be in--a readership

of white, wet little men underwhelmed by how loose they feel when kissing)

in preparation for lovemaking.

To Ben

i am a soggy piece of air, Ben. and i could see it right in your eye,

just one of them, that you knew. But all of these cassiopeias and pin pods and

boleyn girls and whisper junkies and silver dollar peddlers

that i have to get done (y'know, but really don't)

they took our weekend away.

and you had to leave to see me, this supposed cherry blossom tree

to be not what she says she is--so much means so much less to me.

Kinetic energy to fill the space. I started liking Coca Cola! I HATE colas, Ben.

Ben, I don't care how much I swear anymore. I don't look through books about

cenitpedes anymore. I started saying I am afraid of spiders without thinking

because I've always said i was afraid of them but I don't think I am anymore?

At least I don't question if I am anymore. Man, when did I stop liking ice cream

when did that pretentious phrase I always say stop making sense?:

"A day without ice cream is a day without living" or someshit.

Can I have a do over and this time around can you sleep with your head to my feet

instead of me cleaning?

Buddies.

It is fun being in the same decade with you.

-Franklin Roosevelt, in a letter to Winston Churchill

Think about this. Get back to me.

Ope.

this is something i did for class. it is about worldwidedirt.com's real cool new book.

Ope. Won't upload. Damn. Well, made a slideshow of the book launch for SeanWilliamson's "A Wild Introduction."

IT WAS SO COOL AND I ACTUALLY READ MORE THAN A PAGE OF IT.

Will read the rest and get back to you.

"Laying like sardines after writing, editing, and lulling Mario to sleep by reading A Wild Introduction."

I was writing about thabout thoughts. and i thought then of you, cold wash cycle. maybe it is bygone and that's okay too. disregard this in such a cas

I had a dream I had a dream

And you were just like you

And he was wearing a tie and a skinny shirt and he was terrible as he is

And she was half-heartedly exuberant

as she is

and I ran back to the van thinking my blue volleyball sweatshirt to be ridiculable

as i do

you were wearing a white dress and standing in the yard of a corner house

holding a brown briefcase

I do not know if flowers surrounded you or if it is an illusion that follows you

I passed you and said something slight,

Unfitting for the sight of you is heroin every time

You said then,

You’re mean,

the way you would

I love the thought of you regardless what from or for

I had a dream my brother had died

and I was recalling the phone call from my mother

I asked Chelsea in the morning if she’d heard me crying in my sleep

I was wearing the shoes I’d bought the night before.

the name of the tarnished gangster on the arches underneath was covered by tape.

Entirely aware that if caught I would by law belong to fates unfathomable,

I peeled away the tape and let my hair down

One candle burning upon the television table

No television

A television

watching the news watching the news my brother is dead? watching the news

And the muddy sky creeping around the drapes.

This is the romance of cigars

The intercourse of smoke and air

The immensity of silence

The passing of time

The bastard cigarette

A vein of running water

a slab of cement, any slab

A girl

greasy glowing hair sliding over her shoulder

Small soft breasts bright and bare

Most men dead and far away

wet dirt packed between the pearls around her neck

And the moon

Almost completely undisturbed

blue light blue grass

blue water blue

eyes

And all of these things unspoken

now nothing left pure or unbroken an obsession with things unreal.

and a blue volleyball sweatshirt

dropped by a kid

A Dope

A Grand Canyon!

ANY CANYON!

ANGRY!! SCRI!!!BBLING!!!!!

FEROCI!!!OUS PENC!!!IL BRAKING!!!!!!!!!!!

-used lamb's ear

-Billy Yakner

consonants

my hand's writing is sandy with
residual doubt
and the mornings are fine, resembling
times i had with others
i try to imitate
and the spotlight never seems to stay still enough--
never rests at the right spot--
and my judgment is blurred

when it's time to decide
if we are pot bound
or about to experience
root rot

you will see me soon
and if not soon, sooner
so that
i can let you know
there will be no later.
your precious,
precious soul
just could not fill
in the empties
with the correct vowels
despite

all of your consonants.

Tel Aviv

i have had diarrhea lately

a lot, man,

and maybe it feels best because i got a lot to get out

and quick

holding in too many maybes

i really don't know how to lay down

and say:

girl, make it

write it down

be true

do what you must do

and do,

it is up to you.

and me

to just HEY!!!!!!!

sit down

stop waiting

and weighing really

because

these people take you to scenes

that may look better in day

but are just as mirthful at midnight

after catching up and then taking

and telling jokes

jokes told retold refurbished for

someone whose heard it twice, thrice before

in a radio flyer

with two pugs, one without an eye

the other barking untold

never told.

miscrote.

miscrote.

I love you like Tel Aviv's memory

before Tel Aviv was ever a city.

Just a dream.

things to write down

I've got a list going of memories that I want to put down. Fleshed out and maybe relevant to people other than me.

I don't actually have the list going until now:

there was this time my sister wrestled with a ladder and fell into the corner because she wanted to hurt me. Sometimes she would punch my from the bottom bunk--her only defense. And I'd always make her turn off the light because I am a lazy fuck. She would always, like the ending credits of CSI, say something stirring or (silly) hurtful right before she did it, though.

Benjamin Ryan Kane and I found a couch in an alley after fleeing Weirdo's and we sat. It may have been soggy and we heard a harpie from up above. I would later ask my brother what he thought it was by doing my best to imitate it and he said, "ah, man, it's a raccoon, dude." And I believed him. Benny asked me something like "do you always want to live in the city?" but he said it in the most profound way. I am sure I wrote it down in my notebook. Or maybe I can ask him? Something about "living without wood"? He said, it would have been nice to live with you.

My mother and I spent one Christmas break watching the entirety (leave Sookie's wedding) of Gilmore Girls. My mom reads my blog so I shouldn't say stuff like: it made me realize that you can have any type of relationship you want if you try for it. And before that I really did not try to have one with my own mom.

Professor talking now...get back to listening.

9-15-11.

singing moon, sometimes the hunter's moon

mine is seconds away he texted me i will be there soon

knowledge is power in the hastened gift homestead of truth

but jostling loudly in the back seat is a radio that caught

only a station or two and they only spoke in roman anyway

so sometimes we seat ourselves-

and sometimes we show someone else

a new park or place where willows frame a harvest moon reflecting

off a lake and know that if it weren't for them

or a reason to go back we would not have seen half

(even a fourth!) of what we have (and in just two weeks)

lemon law

i have dreams of limbless best friends

of lucky men who taste like lemons but not lemons

well, maybe lemons. but only the ones on Coronas

if lemons are all the Lima people have left

and only lemons if I haven't tasted them yet.

!!!

The WEEK before I have my first LEMON!

L-E-M-O-N! a citron. A fantasy of citrus, I could only

hope it is as good as the sticky pop the bank teller

handed out. I can only HOPE this lemon, this lemon

this lemon is the favorite. Strawberries, buh bye. Fuck

them. I am about to have a lemon. MY lemon.

I have never had one. I assume they must taste free.

Not acidic. I am not saying this lucky man is acidic.

What I am saying, I think, is I keep having dreams of things

that speak loudly--louder than I have ever spoken,

even over the chickadees and screamcore ten years ago--

about the people in my life and how when I am awake

all I seem to do is bounce from toothache to

licking tomato paste from the can, hoping & counting the

odd of cutting my tongue

but, really, what is all this about palominos, backless chef outfits,

and hands scaling up my spine? And the L-E-
M-O-N-S?! These goddam lemons I have never once tasted.

Lemon, lemon. Something about 60 minutes and the 1970's Pinto

and lemons and maybe my Parents shoulda traded theirs in. And spritz it

on apples in a school room corner aquarium full of dixie-cupped tomato plants.

He probably doesn't taste anything close to a lemon.

-Suzanne Jones, Ides of September Challenge

Tune & Gin

Wait! I have got my own Fibonacci sequence--I don't answer to Pascal's anything

and I sure as hell do not have the time to quantify using this scientific notation!

Inside of me, laying on rugs that please, please me from somewhere much cooler than

Serbia and more skilled than Kashmir. Man, this feels amazing. I tend a fire in the middle

of the room and I did not have to walk more than a stride for tinder. Or a lighter. And!

It is one of those long BIC ones that my mom gets to lights candles during the winter &

I am too cheap to buy myself. Those lighters. I have these guilded lists, juniper wreaths,

royalty rhyming deep inside me but

you've got to shake me with your tundra grasp, crass; gossip over my seething recklessness

whispers about my percentage of adherence: peeling at the dry corners of my eyes

and skin and on the outsides of my craddling arms that can never quite sustain my sore

sapplings enough.

experimenter effects: breakfast in bed

there are some up so high-hello then after a moment

of sobriety, cancelled TV show, accidentally burned a

hole in your passenger seat then goodbye- then those

few that hold you even higher. You must pretend to cry

when they move to Idahiowa for Jesus and you say: baby,

you are my greatest night. But we all know that he was

just to crunch summertime leaves with and peel pajamas

off of your bum, swelter in a comforted twin sized bed.

Hope your giggling at 4AM hain't waking little sister just

a wall away. Maybe you'll prove it soon, girl. Maybe you'll

be okay: guiltless: free: kissing all day & spending the early

evenings cooking for you--then two--and then you'll feel like

three.

from my aunt upon reading a letter I sent to her.

You are a GREAT letter writer!! I truely enjoyed your letter and will keep it forever to read and read again! Yes, I will go on any adventure with you, and bring my dimples free of charge! I am so proud of you and ALL of your acomplishments! I cannot wait for your first novel to be published! I will buy a gazillion copies and give them away for free to the masses just to share the beauty of your words!
I think we are more alike than I ever realized! I L-O-V-E to travel (anywhere new is on my list) and make up stories. Unlike you, I never had the nerve to write down my imaginative ramblings. Probably from fear of rejection. Instead, I entertain Steve with my spun yarn. He thinks I am crazy as a result, but secretly I think he can't wait until the next story I have to tell him!! It's love :)
Finally, I just have to comment on your closing of "Come with?". That brought the biggest smile to my face! People down here don't say that and when I first moved here and would say that they would either laugh at me or ask what I meant by it. It was so nice to get a slice of "home" just with that saying. Thank you! You are precious and mean the world to more people than you realize! Enjoy your studies and all the memories surrounding them. I am with you always!



(I love these encouragements.)

Subterranean. Chapter 1.

My valley town has trees. And lampposts. And other things that are so tall, you feel most peculiarly small, like a toddler trying to reach the kitchen counter. Majesty is the town's canopy--wrought with copper sconces above banks who hold everyone's assets. But the kids bring it back down by a whole codex of symbols sprayed behind tiendas and pizza parlors named after towers. If the trains could get down through the mountains into the town the kids would color inside their boxcar's lines. Paint curls from the Welcome signs and the Lion's Club crest sways from the one nail left to hold it in place. It acts as the town's greeter, I suppose. Waving at every minivan that pushes past the sign.

The speed limit is ridiculously slow, but the townspeople know no cops are on duty most of every day. It's okay, because the people are decently conscientious. They swerve away from pot holes and avoid driving by schools around when the kids are let out.

The young people buy National Geographics and decide to travel so they can get some ethnic fabrics and to get some colored yarn to wrap their hair in. There is a lake-pond mid-city where haphazard teenage love affairs are written into poems after they skinny dip in secret. The lampposts don't dare to reach out there.

This place, it was a fine place to forget and quite easy to forget. My parents have a house that isn't beige but is the beige of blues, a slate color of the winter sky that peeks through about when the middle-schoolers are let out. It blends in. Even the garden, which my parents spent the entirety and beyond of their mortgage payments to perfect, blends in without an inch of deviation from the neighbors, either side. My dog is the only thing that keeps our home from being immaculate. I used him as a pillow growing up, not caring so much about the grunts he gave. I would come home to rest my head on his thumping breast.

And, it is of this town that the gods get to choose.

here is the thing:

it is slightly said that to come about
a lovely beingness, we must
change our nature
to be not a nold but a new one.
Nature is the sacred realm
a new nature is a sweet realm
But will it be sacred
We are a very messy spect
though everything isnature, we are hardly sweet.
is that sacred?
We are just so messy is all.

-Benjamin Kane

cheap is not free

with the Internet, those that
can't read good
have to climb up the rocky side
and wait their turns maybe 6 or 7 times longer
but, hey, at least they were let into the nat'l park,
if you know what I mean

and then there are the proselytes given much fodder for spooning--

and soon we will be packaging up the cosmos into
upper east side condominiums,
townhouses with red stones, and then
for them the studios that reek of the next door neighbor's smoke & thai curry dishes.
the connections will be poor (maybe up to three bars?)
and the heat will not stop escaping from the cracked windows. the stars
and space of space will be hard
to see from beyond the smog.

free access to most things

A Series of Lies: dandelying

I am turning your hands
when really I should be folding these eggs
and in between my fingers I
feel hopeless disgust

& then bedtime.

and it must feel, in my dreams,
like a hunt sent out
against my legs

because mostly I feel my joints
ache when you are around
not when I spend my days
in dandelion fields tirelessly escaping
the idea that your face

is not quite right.

HATERS ARE GOING TO HATE PRICES ARE GOING TO BE CHECKED>WHY NOT THE JOY OF ONESELF.

i said “did yu enjoy urself?” and she said,

“yeah, i don’t see why I shouldn’t, yu always gotta enjoy urself”

breathed a sigh of reknowing, reknowing it, the joy of it,

the fact we are here, the face that there are no other facts than that we

are here. cue old town flavors and substance loving comrades. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SEX AND COME IN FROM THE BACK> THE COFFEESHOW>LITTLE HYPHEN OF

adjectivity. mostly the rural sense comes from the beauty

but the town of Bethany hopes to eliminate a physicality at all

just a ghost in the shell of ineluctable modality

(of the visible). invisible Joyce sits at a table,

molding it like he molds a text,

illuminating brains around with convoluted misdirected

psychotic breakfast breaks, i type the word s,

he hisses like a snake, we know the end

is only a soliloquy, but he still plays it off like

THERES MORE TO SAY.

-Bethany V. Price

never trust a tree

"...like the way people's voices sound after getting up early in the morning, something faintly wistful and hoarse and eager in it, ready for a new day." -from Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac.

-----

baby, I been brewed
to the bone, can't breathe on through
my calendar's dates & dues

but I must ask you
would you mind holding the phone
for a quick moment of two?
(my boss called me while I was stuck in between two boulders
twice.
and later that week I explained why my voice was cracking
and I seemed to want to end the call so soon
and she asked, why would you answer?

and I guess my reason was, "because it was you.")
----

K: Is this safe?
M: Yes.
K: Mike, is this safe for me?
M: We...will catch you.

___

Orangutan pine
resting in the melted snow
painting with vine
;;;;;;;;;;;
short nap on the boulders
hydrate with the dirty snow, biting every
few minutes on granules.

animal parcels

my heaven is smashing tapes that are going to be thrown away anyway--

" ," Bethany sent.
and all I can imagine is how
a life with just a music box sounds.
it sends me reeling down the side of the
curvature of the earth, 3 thousand horse power
down a five mile street and not enough in her pantry to eat
spins and twists and helpful back pains and I'm primed to laugh again.

baby, I see my falcon with the snowstorm
practicing her pirouettes and pulling, by proxy,
at the ebbing parcels
of bone marrow inside of me
favor & heart break,
flying,
flapping beside me (a heart as
big as all outdoors)

tornadoes 2010

last summer kara, sam, rondon, and i went all the way to new glarus to join a volleyball game with too many guys and two salty girls. we only knew kevin. We should have stayed in the church or some place when the tornado hit. But, we drove back. Windows down.

dumb but fun. i had my iPod with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon on it and because I drove like a crazy person there, Sam was chosen to drive us back. Through the storm. And it was so strong it pushed the car sideways. It felt like our wheels and road were playing a game of tug'o'war. I texted my mom that we were lying low and staying outside of the tornado's way.

And we could see funnel clouds on either side of us. Sam, silent. Rondon smoking his entire pack of cigarettes. Kara panicking in the passenger seat. And me, gleefully hanging out the window hoping to never forget the feeling of being our Dorothy.

momma's coming over to exchange the dresser for the vanity

Am I supposed to make myself scarce or hang around when your mother comes over? Because you say from time to time that your body aches by how you miss her (and I don't want to get in the way of that quality time, man) but maybe you want her to better get to know the crazy person you live with? Because I am sure what she has heard about me must not be terribly reassuring for a mother. And if I hung around there is an 80% chance that she may like me and then trust me more. Not that she has reasons to distrust me?

But, dude, should I go to the library and run interweb-errands or stick around and bleach the sink and read a science fiction novel and make nice chit-chatting sounds with her?

Because I am inclined to hide and find a dark corner to journal about making the wrong decisions all the time.

My brother and I stayed up most of all night last night texting each other on how obtuse we are because when we care, we care and it becomes intense in how we focus on those and the thats that we do care about. And all else falls away, as they say.

So, damn, can you spell it out for me? Hold my hand a little? Because I am so very willing to make an ass of myself for you.

A Series of Lies: Dieting

I told myself, I can make it one week. What do I go without for seven days normally? A lot. I am sure I haven't had pizza for a while. So, I decided to go raw vegan for a week. S'gonna be nothing!

The second night at 3AM I made myself a frosting sandwich.

A Series of Lies: CBS Evening News

When I was in kindergarden I invited my friend Danny Taylor to come over to my house and play. We made a fort out of these colored cardboard bricks, lifting them with this cool robot arm grabber toy, a recreational version of the device that elderly use to fetch things from high shelves. Danny grabbed the air with the robot arm and said something like, "I'm gonna grab your booby." Regardless of not knowing what that meant, I thought it was hysterical. I thought it was so funny that I repeated it to my mother that night. She was like, "Where did you hear that word?" I knew it was a naughty word from her tone and I didn't want to get my new friend Danny in dutch so I thought quick. "On TV," I said. "Really?" my mom said. "What TV show?" I thought again, this time not quite as quickly or as nimbly. "Dan Rather said it," I said. I don't remember what happened next. She probably sent me to my room for a few minutes before I broke out and watched television with her. All these years I've still been too embarrassed to ask Danny Taylor what a booby is.

-Parker Winship

the word- a dictation of girls' night.

why are there three toilet paper rolls on the floor?
uh, huh.
want a fish soul, it's time to call it a day. it's time to take
the mood away
it's time to wind up the mood away

take off your make up
real love never happens
but how can we
say real
unknown til we
experience
unpredictable
10am?

maybe,

smoky eye make up
get free drinks from
lance
i think
the word "love"
has been made
soft

we don't truly mean
what we mean


we don't fully comprehend what that word
means


we overuse it

we receive it
and feel betrayed

it ain't the real word.

I will be the tree he will climb someday

I am the tree he is going to climb someday
until then I will imagine the tiny nymphs by
nymphs that I bleach straight down the drain
of my mother's kitchen sink and I will plant
a many-fruit tree.

Every year I'll graft on a new species, the one
sweeter than the next. Or maybe I will stick
to all types of apples? The matter isn't the
flavor, though. It is the preoccupation of
my need to grow something. I don't very much
feel like waiting until he gets back from the
frozen himalayan polyandrous society where he
kissed the goat herding, pink breasted asian
princess who remained celibate for as long as
he desired.

And I will meet a Greg or a Stanley who will
build a great, multi-purpose, plastic, wooden,
and steel ladder that he will climb up and his
sweat glands will inspire my tears, crying for
the sake of crying because I haven't cried all
year and it is overdue. And that Greg or Stanley
or Stu will pluck those just ripened fruits and
he will take far too much time mincing those fruits
and tossing them into a salad in a blown-glass bowl
but I won't eat.

And after hours of taking my hand and singing to me
that he needs me and that my woeful complacency must
sincerely mean he isn't worth me. In fact, he isn't
worth anything. And I will assure him, babe, that that
truly isn't it. He is a champion. A javelin that children
will aspire to be from age three. A modern firefighter in
a suit of armour. From then on I will cut open my own
avocados and he will lay in bed with books that read like
insipid coffee. I will tell him I want his children and
we both know it's a lie.

But this lie is our lie. It is my lie and it is a better lie
than continuing to orgasm over the idea of my knots and branches
cold to his touch, calloused by the salt water and moments--
sundials worn out over the time he has been gone. I suppose
I can thank Penelope, my sister in this stagnancy. Without her
I am sure I would have forgotten what the difference was between
cold and warm wash.

Where is she?

going on about maybe her gonads and his pets and
her dad's panic attacks over speaker phone is all right,
but with every open container in the back of her brother's
beamer covered with broken pistachio nuts scarred Carmen, i bet.

I am sure she took an advanced placement government class
as a senior in her rural high school where tony merriman winked
at her in the hall after fourth period for at least a week or two.
She learned how to wax her eyebrows with Lacey from across the
street one weekend and in another she shared a bottle of bottom
shelf gin with tony's older brother who just got his last paycheck
from nolan's grocery store.

and she would go on to root for a team at the university she chose
over the next state's, maybe michigan's, best private college.
face painted red and walked dogs to pay for spring break with
a couple of socialists and a few poets but no nobody really stopped
her at any where but right after class to ask her a question, really,
about how she was doing. so maybe she got up and did things like
run the streets and possibly choose alleyways over well-lit boulevards
because the danger tickled something more hidden than her g-spot.

but she could never marry for money so she worked her ass off and
took those business trips nobody else took because they had kids and
great pyrenees to think about. she saw algiers and met quiet men from
bali and she sat

at this pier, alone, in Seattle.

She realized she really had nothing to give or to take--not one breath has
she stolen from another human being except for once. Once she took
Jay Hesse's robin's egg blue crayon and he did not know what to do with himself.
It took him at least five seconds to decide between screaming for Ms. Little's
help or to negotiate calmly for his ocean back. He was drawing the back of
his Antarctic habitat and needed desperately for the soft, subtle blue's support.

And he screamed. Carmen sat back in her plastic, kindergarten classroom chair
and held darkly onto that crayon like she had the power to evaporate an entire
sea. Jay roared and the whole classroom paused. Suspended. Caused to simply
witness because of one simple grab and hold by one simple, taciturn girl.

And nobody asked, "how in the world was Carmen San Diego?" So she will settle
for at least a while, in the girl's bathroom, for "where in the world is that girl
who made Little Hesse's crayon box one less?"