I’m excited to share with you my new prose poem, “Repeat,” is up at Silver Birch Press, a selection for their When I Hear That Song series.
Category: Poetry
Secret
I think about it sometimes
when I am driving.
I think about crashing
in reverse. The smell of metal
scraping against a concrete wall
in a basement parking lot.
I think about the lie I told my parents:
And the other lie I never told them.
I think about truth
when I am driving and what
might have happened to the secret
had I kept it.
Announcing a new column on District Lit
I’m giddy with excitement to let you know my first feature column went up on District Lit yesterday. “My Time, Your Place” is an ongoing exploration of the boundaries between reality and dream, time and timelessness, place and wandering. (The title is borrowed in part from the Yehuda Amichai poem, “In My Time, In Your Place.”)
I hope you check it out from time to time, and share with your friends if the writing moves you to do so.
As a tribute to Amichai, whose poetry inspires me in so many ways, here is the poem the title references.
One true thing
A thing
grew inside me once.
This was during a time I can’t return to.
Not that I want to return
except on days I do want to
in order to observe the thing growing
with a wholeness I grew inside me in the time
since.
They said this outfit was 3D
I had the dream again last night in which it’s you and me and him and her at a dinner party and the lighting is for grownups, but for some reason there are children in the room. I made meringues for the children for dessert. They came out fluffy and perfect and I wanted them to stay that way – the meringues – except, inevitably they deflated. “No matter,” my husband said in the dream. “They’re still sweet.”
The dinner party is awkward even though the lighting is good. Like the last time I dreamed us at an awkward dinner party, the lighting is mostly by candle with a touch of track over a brick mantle and the scene is set for adults, which is to say there are things nearby that may be broken.
She is in black as she always is. As for me, I picked out something new to wear just before arriving. I tried it on for my husband in the store, invited him into the dressing room. “The tag said the outfit was 3D,” I told him, but only when I take my glasses off am I able to see the shapes moving in the mirror.
The call for submissions to end all submission
I am a sucker for signs. I see evidence for action in unusual places: on the bumper sticker that says “I miss you!,” on the tractor trailer in front of me on the highway, or in that dream in which cats have snuck into my hotel room and eaten up all the free pastries left on a tray by the door, or when Nina Simone sings “For Myself” at the same time an article on the Self written by Maria Popova pops up in my feed.
This week, old houses keep popping up, too — mine and others’. In poems I haven’t written yet, but also in my waking life.
* * *
Clue #1: After my middle son finished Key to the Treasure the other day, I was certain he was going to choose Clues in the Woods because choosing Haunted House would be very unlike him — he, like I am, is scared to be scared, especially before bed.
But he chose Haunted House, and after checking in with him to make sure this was the one he wanted to read next, we began.
Clue #2: The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: “Leonard had grown up in an Arts & Crafts house whose previous owner had been murdered in the front hall. The grisly history of 133 Linden Street had kept the house on the market for years.”
Clue #3: This article from December about memory and mentally mapping our homes — it showed up at the top of my Twitter feed today. More than the study results, I was struck by the dollhouse image used to illustrate the story. Dollhouses have a way of being so inviting and so terrifying at the same time. Like old hotels. Like Stephen King. I felt this way before I read The Dollhouse Murders and long before I saw The Shining.
Clue #4 is a secret. I won’t tell it, but no matter.
* * *
I am going to enter the contest to win a bed and breakfast in Maine.
I haven’t figured out yet how to explain to Janice in 200 words why it feels as though I am already the winner.
This makes me sound like a narcissist and I want to sound like a dreamer. Or at least like someone who lives her life one foot atop one pole and one foot atop the other.
I want to explain to Janice that the word Maine is blue and that I love that northern state because I spent four summers at overnight camp there, three of which I spent in love and that this is a good thing, not a thing that makes me crazy, but makes me the type of person who other people — guests — will be happy to see in the morning. And anyway, my husband will be the one cooking breakfast and serving pancakes in the shapes of native birds. Once he served our dinner guests sweet potato pancakes with a dollop of wasabi sour cream that was as delicate as a meringue. I will be the one who organizes the books in the library each night. (There will be vintage National Geographic magazines and perhaps a set of Encyclopedia Brittannica, too.) I will be the one who changes the sheets. I will keep the ghosts appeased. I will invite them to have tea in the garden so they don’t frighten the guests.
* * *
I had a dollhouse once. It was this one. Not this exact one, but its doppelganger.
* * *
I still love miniatures.
I love it that my husband sneaks into the bathroom before bed to set up clever scenes with the Playmobil my daughter left behind after her bath, with the purpose of surprising me when I happen upon them before brushing my teeth.
I especially love the miniature toilet and the European style hand shower: Bathroom appliances were never furnished with the dollhouses I played with as a child.
Which brings me back to the dream of the cats eating pastries in my hotel room.
I had been in the bathroom when they snuck in. They took advantage of my uniquely human need to relieve myself in privacy.
I was angry at first, but I couldn’t blame them. After all, I had left the front door open.
Free
If I collected pretty purple waves of light every time I said the word “free,” perhaps I’d be the kind of free i really want to be. not gluten free, not nut free, not sugar free, fat free, or buy one get one free, not
Groupon free, but really free. Worry free is close, but not close enough. My desire is the kind of free at least three meters away from a hyphen. mine must be at a certain distance from a noun in order to avoid possible cross-contamination. mine, I’d tell the chef, burns easily, so keep it in a cool, dry place like the yellow bowl high atop the counter where little hands covered in Play-doh can’t reach it.
It’s sad, really, how we’ve corrupted free, compounded it, like mad scientists preparing the liquid version for the old man who can no longer swallow pills. It used to be so pretty: wide orange all-caps. Now free is a deflated nude, the letters warped like old records left too many years in the back storage room of my parents’ basement. I wish I had the key
to free her.
Writer’s block
I wrote a poem
I wrote a poem
I want to shout it but I won’t
I wrote a poem.
*
I wrote a poem
A simple poem
I ache to cry but hold it back
I wrote a poem.
*
I wrote a poem
Just a poem
It’s not my best, but it’s not half bad
I wrote a poem.
*
I wrote a poem
Thank God, a poem
Was almost sure the well’d dried up
But I wrote a poem.
*
It’s just a poem
I know, a poem
but I dare believe, it’s cleared the way
for another poem.
The clucking sound your tongue makes
Mindfulness is the clucking sound your tongue makes as you’re almost jogging along the paved road that surrounds your community — the view ahead is of the silken skim of the reservoir and the breeze is balanced with the rays of sun peeking in and out from scattered clouds — and you realize that you are alone and that your body today feels whole and that your mind is working in a way that makes you like yourself and you’re laughing for the fourth time remembering that scene in Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank and this right now is the life you mean when you say, “I want to live.”
The clucking sound, though, is what awareness sounds like; what stumbling over impermanence sounds like — Because suddenly you remember the last time you said you wanted to live was that time last week with the tingles in your left arm and you cringe because your phone is not in your right pocket and you might be missing the call from school, the call that will certainly ripple the silken skim but without you attending it because your mind now is working in the way that makes you hate yourself and you’re not laughing anymore, in fact, you’ve forgotten Nathan Englander and nothing is funny.
The clucking sound, though, is what awareness sounds like; what stumbling over impermanence sounds like — Because suddenly you realize that impermanence is a most glorious word, the one you’ve been seeking your whole life, the one to describe peace on Earth, peace enough for me. Impermanence is the name of that curved line between yin and yang. It has a name!
Impermanence is the clucking sound marking in between; marking eternal ending and eternal beginning. It’s a spot. It’s a poof. It’s a landing pad where I straddle my legs and press my feet down and wait.
The Immigrant Mother Goes to the Movies
There are days
(like today)
when emails from teachers
with names beginning with
Aleph or Ayin or Chet
or long-winded reminders
via Google group
from neighbors whose
fresh-baked challah
I truly do enjoy
or the main menu
of the University’s
Babylonian student information station
all make me want to
gouge out my eyes
with aluminum skewers
left over from
last weekend’s “al Ha’Esh”
or eat Whoppers in front
of the movie Clue —
either of the three versions
released in December 1985.
Basically,
I need my information
spoonfed, please, from
the Confection Stand.
I want each request and update
to melt in my mouth like
candy did once
like Tim Curry
in 1985 before
Rocky Horror Picture Show
before heads went missing
before someone said to me,
No one moved to Israel
because it’s easy.
There are days
(not today) when
I am proud that science
has proven that my brain
works better now that it
needs to decipher whether
my daughter requested
dag or dog for dinner.
But today
I just want to suck it all
through a straw.
Approaching Autumn
“How do you call ‘stav” in English, again, mommy?” he asks, as we make our way up the hill.
“Fall,” the bigger one says quickly.
“Or Autumn,” I say.
“Autumn,” he repeats. “Right.”
“Autumn is the fancier version,” says the bigger one.
“Yes, there’s something delicate about the word, Autumn,” I say.
Also, something composed and at ease, I think, and an ache passes through me. I decide to share it.
“You know,” I say, “sometimes you use the word ‘autumn’ when describing a time of your life. As in, ‘the autumn of her life.’ Spring is the beginning. Summer, the season of joy and play. Then Autumn. I think I might be approaching Autumn.”
“No, mom,” says the bigger one. “You’re still in Summer.”
“Really?” I ask. And I mean it.
Tell me, I want to say to him. Tell me how I’m still in Summer.
And he does, without my asking.
“You’re still healthy. You’re still young.” His brother nods.
I don’t correct them. Not out loud. I yearn to, though. To warn them. To make them see.
“You’re definitely not in Autumn yet,” he continues. “Autumn is like 50. At least 50.”
Later, we see an old man cautiously taking on a series of stone steps. He approaches each rise from the right, first with the rubber bottom of his cane; then lifting one leg; then the second.
As we pass this man on the stairs — we going down — I understand that if asked, this man might place me at the crossroads where Spring meets Summer. And I could see how he could see me there. How he’d laugh at me if I asked him “which season,” and respond with something like “youth is wasted on the young.”
My young one looks at me and says in a whisper, “That man is in Winter.” And then louder asks, “What season am I, mommy?”
I look at him and I laugh.
Hidden Pictures
Hidden Pictures
At Jennifer’s First Birthday, 1975
In this big picture, find the locket, the John Lennon spectacles, blue eyeshadow, bangs trimmed straight, August, yellow #5, a red balloon (not to be confused with The Red Balloon), a tray wiped clean, a downward glance, an elephant, love, another elephant, motherhood, hints of a Bubbi in a baby’s breath, a candle blown, “she looks like you Mom,” uncertainty, a glassy iris, love, the end of an exhale, one year, 26, 11 in between days, a hidden picture, gingham.
In this big picture, find
* * * * **
Happy birthday, Mom.
Hidden Pictures is a trademark of Highlights Kids magazine.
and yadda yadda, an aliyah blog 