humming in the brightness

in the greenhouse
tyler and i measure and mix
seedling soil in the following proportions

three buckets coir
two buckets sand
three buckets compost

to the sound of snow sliding down the slant-roof (corrugated)and thudding to wet ground

_______

like baking
the mixing of dry ingredients
before adding the wet
(pile of seedling mix on the table
where i stand on a crate for better leverage
drizzling glassfuls of water
and punching out cells of soil
from the soil-blocker
(like this:
)

and again, it goes back to the rhythm
and how this body was built to workand how it feels right to be here
at this point of unfurling

_______

you are finally kindof here i say to spring
while walking on the melt between buildings
body humming in the brightness

_______

robins
someone wrote on today’s calendar square
to mark the return of these birds

_______

framed by over-the-sink window:
emory, snow prancing
in his brown/black/white dog costume
pre-sunset goldpink light
tangling in his tow-head hair
_______

rolling out dough (for quiche)
to this song
while the carrot-beet shreds
marinate in their dressing
_______

he reminds me of the kid in ‘where the wild things are‘
i say about emory
who is dancing around the kitchen
at dinner

_______

healing cat
snore/murmuring in sleep
sprawled on pinkwhite blanket
gold/white of her chest/belly exposed

we carry the land and the land carries us

in the dream
i was leading a weekend-long meeting
for a group of 10
who came in from all over
they were corporate business people
having a corporate business meeting
in the dream, my shawlblanket is too bulky
and drapes so far over my shorts (ratty and tattered
and most certainly too short for these circumstances)
and my hair is too greasy
and i am trying to get the chairs
in order as they arrive – starched and sharp
_______

we talk about the trauma of immigration
(her mother’s manic depression
my grandma’s bi-polarism
[i realize these two are the same
though we use different language
perhaps a metaphor for
the sameness and differences
in our family stories])

and how both her grandmas died
within three years of landing in the u.s.
(egypt was getting rid of its jews
and they finally got the letter in the mail
imposing a two week deadline)

and how the land and the people (losing them/leaving them)
are part of this trauma
(how we carry the land and the land carries us
how we carry parts of other people and how they carry parts of us
so that when the cleaving comes
it leaves those who leave unwhole)

and how her parents discovered other egyptian jews in new york
who, despite their not knowing each other before, came from the same neighborhoods
therefore had walked the same streets
had shopped the same stores
carried the same light of seasons and the same remnants of sounds
which was a kind of coming home
(the food they would make for days
and then invite each other over)

i read ‘the jungle’
for the way it exposed the meat industry
but came away with an immigrant story
i had never understood until then i say
for a country of immigrants she says
there aren’t a lot of immigrant books, films

_______

lifting rounds of trunk onto the tractor-powered splitter
we synchronize our efforts on the count of three
(some of them must weigh 100 pounds)

the satisfaction of a clean break and the
hilarity of the logs that refuse to be split
and the wrestling of fibers that ensues

under a sun whose thin light
is veiled by winter sky

_______

tyler’s applesauce granola
in the shiniest nesting ramiken
(that good froze-face feeling of
being outside for so long that
talking and eating are at first difficult
until the thaw)

_______

wherein i read a claudia rankine poem
and remember why
writing has ever and will ever (and will always) matter

_______

with sticks we whip the fruit trees
on dragon-sky day
it’s called wassailing
our way of saying good morning trees,
time to make the fruit!
trish on drum
mica on ukelele
emory on recorder
me on tambourine

 

 

gone fishin

another little disappearance:

heading to columbia, missouri for the true/false film fest
shall return in a week.

though you should have been here tonight
to see all of sandhill in fishnets and mustaches
in honor of trish’s 33rd
it was a fine, fine sight
especially while doing 8 minute abs
and especially, after that, while playing poker – a little bit of which was in spanish
life is good
and should be celebrated in ridiculous ways more often.

before her sadness

i’ve broken the promise to myself. (about turning on the computer after dark. it’s 11pm.)

there are things to say about today
(like shredding carrots and slicing squash to the sounds of
a tribe called red, santigold, kishi bashi and solange
like granola the cat walking back down the road from the dead
so far that she is eating medicine
like a field trip to zimms with emory in the back seat
and standing at his side as he counts his change at the register
red cheeked and shy
like the snow mica sees from upstairs karma
that i don’t really curse, but something like it
like cooking a meal, every component of which tastes good to me
which rarely happens)
but i feel like i’m dead-ending in this detailing
(the way i show up to it, grumbling, draggy-footed, thinking no, there is nothing remarkable to note – even though it’s far from the truth)

and there is nothing in the news about water. (or, there is too much)
is it a good practice i find myself asking myself a lot these days
is it any good if i show up to it grumbling?
have i become a factory? like ca conrad talks about?

in the process of distracting myself from the task at hand, i open the family photos my aunt scanned in and put on discs for us this christmas. most of the photos come without stories attached (as in: most of them i am seeing for the first time in my life. these photos lived in a box at grandma’s (janina’s), but we didn’t bring them out because if we did, she would get lost in the sadness.

so i thought about writing to the people in the photos. or whatever comes up (directly or indirectly) in response to or in conversation with these photos.

i looked at photos of the oldest brother and thought that’s the one that turned mean (stories of underwater dunkings).

i looked at photos of the youngest brother and thought that’s the one (sweet/tender) that died of a drug overdose. he’s the one who i thought sometimes looked something like jesus in the other photos of him i have seen before. those photos lived in a different place – my mom’s album, so i could look whenever i wanted without the risk of pitching someone into a pit of sad.

what struck me the most was the smile on janina’s face in the older ones. never seen her face so soft and light. never seen her smile melt her own hardness like that. what also struck me was how different jozef (my grandpa) looked over time. mostly because i didn’t know him over time (died from complications of lou gehrig’s disease when i was five. strong heart the nurse said. and it was. the machines said so.) and because i didn’t know him over time, he looks like a new self in each photo.

the first two photos are from the old country (poland/germany). jozef and janina met in a nazi work camp. (this is the part of the story i always wonder is it necessary to tell?) they eventually left on a boat figuring the promise of the unknown was better than the dust and brokenness of the known. they came in through ellis island. my mom’s name is there. on the american immigrant wall of honor. (next to jozef and janina’s and hendrik’s and kazimiera’s).

i want to know that janina. (the one below on the left). even though i assume this is post-workcamp, it’s still before her sadness calcified.

in the bottom photo, i am alive, but out of the frame.

spinning and flailing

wherein the first issue of the sandhill newspaper
is written and drawn by emory and me and
goes to press in upstairs karma
before delivery to the whitehouse kitchen across the street

underwater scenes on the games page
of a jet-pack shark
and sunken treasure from a skeleton flagshipplus a guess-which-neighbor feature

_______

the turkey vultures aren’t back yet rachel says
while i had just begun to wonder
where they’ve been
they head south because here their carrion is frozen

_______
on our walk east
we consider what our 19year old selves
would think of our current selves if they met
and on our walk west
we talk about our love and/or disdain
for our seventh grade selves
and what got us there

what was it that made things so bad (that you spent time thinking about ways to kill yourself) she asks
as we follow the up/down rollings of gravel hills
in golden light
i think it was because she was scared of the world
and all i wanted was to connect with it
all i wanted was to be told that there was more out there
than i could even begin to imagine
i wanted to be encouraged
i wanted to be asked what i wanted
_______

the knife album on in the kitchen
while the almost-sunset sun
flashes a final silvergold dazzle
through the curtain in the doorway
so that when emory dances around on the other side of it
we see his kid-with-wild-hair-shadow
cast onto it
spinning and flailing

memorize the map

i have vague recollections i say
of zams (the cat)
joining me on the fold-out in my dreamsleep

_______

harper’s kentucky drawl
plus grits, greens and eggs (plus carrot cake scraps) for breakfast
accompanied by blackberry sage black tea
sandhill sweetness (in the form of honey) stirred in
_______

corinne lays down in the driveway in protest
as we are about to leave
black jacket black jeans speckled white
with salt/sand specks

_______

what will you do on your drive back steph asks
sing to myself i say
any part of any song whose words i can remember
the radio doesn’t work

_______

V of geese
pointing east
over i-27
against a bray/blue/purple/white layer-sky

_______

left elbow exposed
through a double layer of ragged holes
(wool sweater and long underwear under that)
a space where the cool sneaks in

_______

wherein granola, what we thought was the dying cat,
eats food for the first time in days
and seems to be breathing easier
and can make her way up the stairs without stumbling

_______

i memorized the map i say
about the two and a half hour drive
which is the first time i’ve driven a car alone
a considerable distance
since 1995

_______

mica and i up on slater’s hill
with our headlamps on ‘red light’
deciphering constellations
in the moonless night
(amongst the things we discover
is orion shooting/aiming for taurus
with his flexed bow)

 

 

ice-melt ice

a perfect day corinne says long distance
tapping some maple trees
a sunny country drive
then shaking some ass at your good friends dance party
later i tell her i’m glad she called
because it would have been too easy to not go
_______

joe tractoring
with emory, tyler and i on the wagon attached
piled with plastic buckets/jugs
tied together with nylon rope
as we rumble out to the maple grove

_______

what the tapping consists of:
placing buckets and
drilling into the trunks
at a slight upward angle
and hammering the taps (attached to tubes
which we dangle into buckets placed at the base of the trees)

_______

sun so hot we say we are overdressed
in our coveralls
_______

corinne and i loop around the blocks
while mia the foxy dog with possibly arthritic paws
(which makes her look extra prancy)
struts out ahead of us
shoulda brought my yak trax i say
as we navigate the ice-melt-ice
(water by day, ice by evening)
though the time is compact
it doesn’t take long
for us to go deep

_______

something resurrected on that dance floor
a sort of ridiculous hot spirit
in fence nets and
ladies man tshirt
(it’s the arrow that makes it i say
you know, just in case you were confused,
the arrow helps you know that the shirt is talking about me)

_______

how we throw our bodies about the room
and the music that makes us want to do so
and how we get stupid and silly
and laugh and love every minute of it
happy 34th, teed
this ass-shaking ridiculousness is for you