the most badass and kind family i have ever met and the land they are fighting to defend

dear readers,

i am ecuador-bound. for three weeks.

this will be my longest break from the detail collector. (i’m going to attempt to keep up the practice analog-style. how or when these details will get sifted into the digital world, i am unsure of.)

during this digital absence, i can only hope you’ll be out there collecting your own details.

x and o from under the same sky,

F

a link to a little bit about the struggle against the oil companies invading the ecuadorian amazon.
and an image for feasting:

(vilacabamba, ecuador)

heroes in the seaweed

blades shaving ruts into too-soft ice
we skate it anyway
long as we can
stan holding aurelia’s hand holding my hand holding emory’s as he
whips us around
and cracks it
_______

fueled on blueberry chocolate
dinner comes together like this:
roots roasting on top rack (sweet potatoes, butternut squash, beets, potatoes)
while crackers bake on the bottom racks
chimichurri foodprocessed first
carrot butter foodprocessed second
with a swish-of-water rinse in between
and the part in that nina simone cover of suzanne
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
which always makes me want to do something like cry
even though i heard the song at least once a week for a while
it never lost its punch
and i love that i can’t quite really tell what it is that makes me feel that way about that part of the song
but i think it is a little bit about how her voice lifts
the rest of the song up and over an impossible hill
on the word heroes
(and when i hear that word in her voice
i imagine the heroes
as streetliving and typically overlooked/unsung)

_______

a snowstorm so instant
that the play-by-play goes like this:
first, i am ringing the dinner bell
then i walk in the dark to the coop to shut the chickens in for the night (windy, but nothing else)
then, as i walk back to the house, all of a sudden the open air has been replaced
by wet flakes whipping down
(not quite hail, but not quite snow either)

_______

have you ever had a crush on a literary character
stan asks at dinner

_______

what the water gives / what the water takes :

Cars are seen on top of each after being hit by flood waters in Manado. At least 13 people were killed when overnight flash floods and landslides hit Indonesia’s Sulawesi island. – bbc, day in photos

Kei Nishikori of Japan holds an ice pack to his face during a men’s singles match against Dusan Lajovic of Serbia at the Australian Open 2014 tennis tournament in Melbourne. Organizers have been slammed for forcing players to play in searing temperatures. – voice of america, day in photos

Condensation droplets are seen on a window in Irsee, Germany. – voice of america, day in photos

A Hindu devotee takes a ritual shower before he starts his pilgrimage to the sacred Batu Caves Temple during Thaipusam festival outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thousands of Hindus participate in the annual thanksgiving festival in which devotees subject themselves to painful rituals in a demonstration of faith and penance held in honor of Lord Subramaniam. – voice of america, day in photos

 

 

drenched in sky

we talk about the toppled walnut
and how the small-mill people a few towns over
will still leave a tree in their yard
because isn’t it just beautiful?
(while this might sound like it’s coming off as sarcasm
it’s not)
_______

depressing the power-pedal
under my right foot as
hot pink stitches zig and zag

_______
i swear i saw the lioness in this sky
(and felt myself burst alive underneath it):

_______

not sure what
but something about that moon
moving beyond the barelimb branches
and its silver spill
waterfalling over the tops of our heads
our shoulders
down our backs
we come in for dinner
drenched in skyblessing

_______

table cloth draped
and silverware wrapped in cloth napkins
emory’s handwriting
on the paper-scrap menu
_______

an attempt to lounge
on the unloungeable brokeback couch/futon
while calling out uno,
reversing the circle
draw-twoing
and skipping turns

_______

i lay my voice down
like a body
across wire
strung between here and there

_______

from the churning of the water world:

Residents use an improvised cable car to reach relief goods on the other side of rampaging river after a non-stop downpour flooded New Bataan town, Compostela province, southern Philippines, Jan. 14, 2014. – voice of america, day in photos

everything else is just wind

maybe with the manatees and osprey
with a champagne toast lifted to the sunset
i send a glimmering too
across the water
_______

and everything else is just wind
how it lifts ceiling tiles
which aren’t even really tiles
just pink foam covering a thing that used to be a vent
how it sweeps up the road
with a fury
louder than a train car
(gusts at 26 mph)
how it is a presence
full and everywhere
how it turns a place i have become so accustomed to
into a new beast
(as if someone you are almost always used to seeing in a certain uniform
changes their clothes and because of that
you almost don’t recognize them)

_______

i don’t remember the details
but the broadcast was about a toxic spill
and thousands of people unable to drink the water
and a CEO or some other representative
sipping bottled water at a press conference
(in this case
i don’t even think the details matter
we’ve seen this before)

_______

how i almost forget to close the coop
and when i do remember
the sky is already so dark
i panic thinking possums

mistaking the deathsqueal

in the dream
they overcharged me for an underwhelming play
and starbird and i lost each other upon entering the dark and complicated theater
of adjacent balconies and
scattered sections
where halfway through the show i found myself waking
from an accidental curling into sleep
with the stranger next to me
(stranger who seemed like someone i knew
stranger who curled back)
_______

pumpkin dutch baby (for a farewell morning)
puffing up golden at 350 degrees
before receiving sprinkles of
sugar and lemon juice
_______

emory mistakes the deathsqueal
of a rabbit (in a dog’s mouth)
for chicken squawks of distress

_______

at least three different sounds of wind
i say from the treehouse perch
1. the kind that’s high above us
2. the kind that moves through the branches
3. the kind that hits our ears

_______

one cup of rice
four cups of water
chopped and swirled on low in the blender
before adding cinnamon
vanilla
and splash of milk
for horchata to accompany
two-pan chilequiles

_______

it makes me feel like fuck you
and thank you/i’m honored
all at the same time i tell mica at the kitchen sink
regarding runner-up status
_______
at 61 degrees
we fling open the windows that aren’t winter-sealed
a mix of marvel and unease
considering last week’s subzero degrees

_______

how putting the chickens in for the night
is a little bit about the chickens
and a lot about the walk between the coop and wherever i am coming from
just after dusk
and tonight, it’s like this:
a smooth and even coating of quiet
(sometimes, moving through quiet spaces kicks up the dust of noise
a swirling of sound
but not tonight amongst this snowmelt and slick-ice
not tonight under streaks of sky
backlit by moon
tonight this balmy air cannot be rattled)

thaw

_______

followed by a lionel richie after-dinner playlist

in the glittering

if i die tomorrow (which is to say: i most likely won’t but this death thing has been happening a lot recently-and sometime i too will cross the bridge between worlds on some day that will be considered some today’s tomorrow)

1.
burn this body.
(after whoever wants to sit with it has sat with it.)
(fire can be a violent crackling force
but most of the time, i just want to push myself up against the heat and marvel at the sweat it brings)

burn this body and sift the ashes into as many little matchboxes as it takes.
give the matchboxes away to anyone who has felt a connection to me in some way in some place over the past 38 years
include a little instruction sheet with the tiny matchbox that says
keep these ashes for as long as you desire
but promise that one day you’ll take them with you to some place that is so magical/amazing/unbelievable that it makes you cry
and empty them there
burn this body (and thank it for me, for being such a kind house)

tell the smoke i’ll see you again soon
then go climb neahkahnie mountain
and see me there
in the light that the ocean throws back
that is so shining
you must squint to see
(sea + sun = the original sequin)

go scramble up the creek
in coyote canyon
of the anza borrego desert
with care in your step
knowing that rattlers and scorpions
could be curled or cradled anywhere under all that rock
climb with me
in that space where caution coincides with your own wildnerness spilling
the way it does when there is no sign of another human or machine for miles
(moon rising over the ridge
coyote howl spiraling around camp
clear cold water
rushing over your feet as wade up the creekbed to reach the stand of sycamore trees)

go to the washougal
the clack-a-lacka-mas river
and jump with me
into the cold so cold it almost hurts but more like just makes your blood feel pulsing and
your spirit feel throbbing and alive

go to the unfurling ferns
the soft moss
the fir trunks-so-wide-you-can’t-fit-your-arms-around-them of the pacific northwest forests
meet me
in the cool wet air that hangs there

go to the trainbridge
where county line road meets county road 49
and the trains pull the wind with them
as they hurtle underneath you
with a force that sometimes feels like fucking
grip the rickety railing at my side
while the momentum only rust and spraypainted steel can gather
clatters in your feet

go anyplace you can climb tall
and when you reach the top of that tallness
you can look out and in the looking out, you feel that feeling that is like a punch to the gut
but in a good way
feel me
in that reeling

get yourself under a sky full of stars
and recognize the glittering

go someplace you’ve never been
and when you find the first bit of familiarity
that is me saying haaaaay
(perhaps this place will be ireland
so you can scatter a part of the body that was once my voicehouse/spirit-house
where kate is scattered)

2.
do something with all these words
(the trunk of notebooks and letters in a new berlin basement basement
the crates of notebooks and letters in a san diego garage
the giga/mega/kilobytes in a computer whose hard drive is named workhorse
the 1,476 posts posted over the past four and a half  years)
something that is anything but someone else / some company making money off them

and promise you’ll feel a sliced kind of firey
if somehow my death makes all these words famous or even semi-famous
which is a thing the world likes to do
with poets in the u.s. and sometimes other places too

promise you won’t let my absence re-render your memory/knowledge of me
though it will change the shape of other things

3.
write me a letter now and then
bury it in the flowerbed
burn it at the next beachfire
fold it into a boat and send it along on a river
send it along
in whatever way you trust your words to reach me
and when you hear the wind moving through the trees
and feel it tucking itself around where your body meets the rest of the world
that is me writing back

4.
know that if i died in a car accident
i was pissed to be taken
in the metal of a machine
but if i was killed as sustenance by/for some other creature
(perhaps a bear – which most likely will not be the case because,
let’s face it, even though i love camping
i rarely encounter bears in the kind of camping i do)
i was probably frightened
but mostly honored

5.
don’t tell me how many people did or didn’t show up
because that is not the point
though i’ve been fixated on it
for a long long time
(because that showing up
is a kind of final telling
of a story
whose construction of an ending
is out of my hands)

6.
do something on my birthday
that tells me you remember

7.
when i say do something with all that writing
i might mean burn it
but i might also mean
send it to some archive that cares
if you can find one
so years from now
someone i’ve never met
can press their fingertips to the shapes of letters i wrote
and find something there
or, at least find themselves looking

8.
pour water to the ground
while thinking about how we are all made of water
say my name outloud
steady
while everyone else says
libation

shrouded but shining

sun salutationing
to a staircase
8something a.m.

_______

i’ve never had an i.v. i say
looking out the long window
as snowglobe-style flakes drift down
considering  of my sister’s story
(pneumonia for her fifth birthday
such a small spine to be tapped)

_______

in the kitchen
for the broken-wristed
round things can be a problem
which is why i help slice
the tops and bottoms off the onions
after chopping the seed-scraped squash

_______

just when you thought tasty buns couldn’t get any better i say
in reference to yesterday’s dinner buns
topped with tonight’s parsely/olive oil/garlic/salt spread
_______

for trish
(for joe
for emory)
yolo, dude.
or
dude, yolo.
(both are complete sentences
and both have the right amount of letters to be knuckle tattoos
and while it is kindof about this ridiculous acronym
it is mostly about the things that make us laugh
and how good it feels to laugh together)
_______

half-arc snow walk
under shrouded but shining moon
booted feet stepping along the ridges dug in
by tractor tire tread
_______

the variety names found on the
flower pages of seed catalogs
(a literary dessert) :
triangle flashback
tall candytuft mix
rose bonbon double click
helen mount johnny jump up
lemon gem
brocade mix
blueberry glow
fluffy ruffles
helena mix sneezeweed
pale blue seeker
lemon queen o.g.
sightseeing mix veronica
amazing neon series
echo blue
pincushion formula
super elfin series F1
_______

from the water world:

Ian Berry paddles a canoe along his driveway after the River Thames flooded in Chertsey. Another band of heavy rain is due to hit parts of the UK on Wednesday, bringing a further risk of flooding in the coming days. – bbc, day in photos

the thirst of winter

flecks of sky pink
as the sun comes up
shining orange through bare-branched trees

jumna once said something about
that first light light
how something happens chemically/ionically
when it hits one’s irises
so she would go to places
where she could receive that light
eyes to the horizon as the sun came up

_______

corn cakes browning
on cast iron skillet
over a front flame
on a six-burner stove

_______

stan in coveralls clambering back and forth with tools
crawling under the house
to fix the busted pipe

_______

wizard the grayblack (and a little bit of brown) tabby
lapping at a bucket of water
for at least 10 if not 15 minutes straight
this is the thirst of winter

_______

seed catalogs splayed on living room table
while i flip through
the broccolis
the brussels sprouts
the edamame
the cabbages (including the cone-shaped one
that was my favorite s0-sweet and light enough to eat raw
from the susie’s booth at the sunday san diego farmer’s market)
taking notes and making charts
on scrap paper

_______

strange garments
stephen calls mica’s puffy pants
that’d make a great band name i offer
while all of us dine on dee and hassan’s almond cookies
_______

that’s some frankenstein shit i say
spitting pinkgray toothpaste into the bathroom sink
while mica and i brush
(her stapled-up forearm re-wrapped and braced)
_______

kicking chunks across the moonlit road
snow sounds different at zero degrees
(almost like pieces of styrofoam tossed against each other)