Fakes is fakes

Something I’m struggling with right now.

So much, so much

Queer wing-ed

Angela Simione, untitled (sisters 6)

It hurts me.

Doors, abandon

I’ve been neglectful, and I’m sorry. It’s a busy month for me writing and otherwise, but I will be gradually picking it all back up again.

Easter at Christmas

This moved me:

As does everything from Joseph Young.

Publishing Genius is offering a couple of promotions for his book, Easter Rabbit. For the next five pre-orders, they’ll send out Matthew Simmons’s book, A Jello Horse, which I haven’t read, but sounds pretty good. It might be too late for this, I don’t know. I don’t even know if I ordered in time or not.

The other deal is a dare. They dare you to read all 3K words of Easter Rabbit in one sitting, and if you can do it, you get your money back. That’s it. Just do it, tell them you did it, plus 50 words of what you thought of it all (which they’ll post on their site) and you get your money back. They think you can’t do it, because, according to publisher Adam Robinson, “It’s too long, even though it’s so short.”

I believe him, but I’m a sucker for a dare. So we’ll see.

cover art by Christine Sajecki

I want to drive the Zamboni

Don Tremain

Maybe crying

Sam Taylor-Wood

Maybe crying is childish but in a good way.

Maybe crying isn’t everything.

If you were standing next to someone who was visibly upset, maybe crying?

Maybe crying after orgasm is a result of pain or of hurt feelings.

Other times I dream that, after a few drinks, we find ourselves in the sauna at YMCA talking about the old times, laughing, maybe crying.

i understand maybe crying for an oscar or a grammy, but a kids choice award?

Maybe crying is an exception.

On the other hand, maybe crying is a functionless byproduct of increased autonomic activity in distressed individuals.

Pay Raises — Maybe Crying To The Mayor Will Get Results From City.

Maybe crying is something you should try more often.

I was rubbing her back and it seems like she was sad and maybe crying, I’m not sure.

You’re thinking: Maybe crying’s not such a bad idea…. Whoa. Hold it right there.

Not shrieking, necessarily, but maybe crying and acting cranky.

BRAND: And maybe crying a little bit on the outside.

If you aren’t going to die, at least make a palace of it

I imagine myself in socks sliding lengths of marble hallways, and finally gathered up sleeping at the end of the last.

Two of my favorite things

Ulrike S. Hardberck "Urlaub (III)"

Swimming and storms. Swimming in the rain is a sublime experience.

I had another post

I spent a lot of time on it. It was terrible, so I thought, fuck it.

It’s gone now. This is better.

No violet eyes

          to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

–Ellen Bass

I tried to blend in with a car today

Waiting for it to be unlocked. According to Charles Darwin and natural selection, a few tens of thousands of years, and I might have made it. Well, not me, my descendants, maybe, but, anyway.

Breaking my heart, shrinking my head

Listening to Miniature Tigers today:

Fainted ironic librarian

I dreamed I fainted, which woke me up. Now I can’t decide if dreaming you’re fainting is ironic or serendipitous.  I’m pretty sure the waking up part is ironic.

I got two books of poetry by Rebecca Loudon in the mail. I won’t review them when I’m finished, because I already know that they are wonderful.

I feel a child should follow and stick with their first instincts. Mine was to become a librarian. I am a frustrated librarian.

Awake as the moon

Christine Lim Simpson

The sprinkler outside my window sounds like a spitting cat.

Chalk supply

Gabe Kirchheimer

I don’t know where this is, who erases it, if it has to be done daily, or  if there’s even a blackboard big enough for all of my fears. But I like the existence of it all– the sign, the board, the man in the cowboy hat and skirt and his pink-trimmed bike; the photograph. I am grateful.

Mammatus clouds

I had never heard of these before. They look like cotton balls, or the backs of shaggy llamas.

Be reassured

Souther Salazar

Achy

I am so achy

waiting for the world to come back to me

or for me to come back to the world

No one to tell these stories to

only others’ stories to tell

No way of telling where

or how

these things will always ever end up

excerpt from FOR ORTS
by Ander Monson

I think of sex & of Godzilla with the wake of detritus that trails behind
his fiery gaze—millions of extension cords, telephone line & fiber (think
cereal, think sincere & serial addictions; repeat) optic cable (so hot,
that Godzilla, that I can dial him up, that I can give into
his new sex games, that big-ass monster Yes). I am so tight
I cannot speak. This yes this rash of it this gush. Reply, then rinse.
Repeat. I think of cream & a monster foot set down on it & thus
it is in me. I am this print fossilized in Nivea. I wait to be filled in
with whatever comes next. I hope it looks like love.

Make me new

My heart is an erratic, unbeautiful thing.

Something about jellyfish

I just like this.

Ben Grace

No excuses.

No joy

There is no joy in hesitancy between us. It doesn’t matter to me if you feel as if you would like to suck the juices of my heart like a tangerine. But if you want to suck the juices of my heart like a tangerine, that matters. Because I care about what you want more than I care about how you feel.

Jacob Collins

I tried to learn the accordion once

Ellen van Deelen

I still love zydeco.

God can be funny

Things to do on a plinth

I would French braid my hair on a plinth.

I would eat a bologna sandwich on a plinth. No, egg salad, because I just remembered,
I’m a vegetarian now.

I would perfect my Humphrey Bogart impression on a plinth.

I would race turtles on a plinth.

I would invent the super-anivated penambulator on a plinth. You will know it when you see it.

I will love the plinth. The plinth will admire my body.

I would lie on my back on a plinth, hands down on the concrete.

Spit marbles into the sky.

Trust someone.

Umbrella window

View from life

I am I am I own

I am a beautiful flower

Hermann Forsterling

I am an ostrich

Keith Carter

I own the ostrich

Escape

Bryan Shutmaat

Legs twisted in fitted sheets. Body/breath heavy on me. Get away so far away.

She fights for her life

Oren Lavie

Where did you come from?

And where the fuck am I?

Heavy is the crown

A woman’s hair is her crowning glory, my grandmother always said.

Chema Madoz

She also once told me she felt like she was drowning. We had been washing dishes together in silence, her hands wrist-deep in suds.  I placed the plate I’d been drying in the rack and leaned over the sink on tiptoe to look out the window at the star-speckled sky. Searched for the Milky Way, scanned for the moon.

Someday I will be the practical one

and all this string I’ve been collecting will be put to good use.

I barely know you

but I think I’ve learned enough.

The goddam regrets

The Title of this Poem Is Really Long.  It Is: I Am Often Horrified by the Words that Come Out of My Mouth

I should always wear a t-shirt
that says
Oh,
My God,
I Am So
Sorry

Gold star

I slept last night, and made no major mistakes yesterday.  So, gold star for me.

Today is the day we celebrate our freedom by making Jello Poke Cake.  Below is a recipe, adapted for patriotism.

Patriotic Poke Cake

White cake — that’s it, just a white cake. Any old white cake. Being, a cake that’s white.
Another white cake— see above.
1 large box of Strawberry Jello [tm] — Make sure it’s large.
I large box of blue jello — make sure it’s blue.
4 cups water
Vanilla pudding
Milk
Cool Whip

Make a white cake, according to the directions on the box. Because, I guess, that’s the only way to make a white cake. Then, make another one.
While the cake is still hot, poke holes in it with the handle of a wooden spoon (no other utensil will work for these holes, do NOT fool around!)
Do it again with the other one.
Dissolve Jello in 2 cups boiling water (each), and pour over cake. Leave no part of the cake uncovered. The cake should no longer be white at the end of this procedure.
Pour red jello over one cake, and blue over the other.
Let the cake cool while you make vanilla pudding. Somehow.
There’s probably a box or something, like with the cake.
Maybe you’ll need more pudding. Another box or something.

Okay, here’s the best part– get ready–

COVER THE ENTIRE CAKE WITH PUDDING
COVER THE OTHER ENTIRE CAKE WITH PUDDING

Stack cakes on top of each other.

And the second best part:

COVER IT ALL WITH COOL WHIP.

Et voila.

I got this from Julia Child.

A post

I have nothing compelling to post–
nor even anything especially mundane.

the UPS man today smelled like shampoo.
my car is making a funny noise, and I realize I’m
way behind on changing the oil. I kind of like the sound.

I got my read some words in the mail, and I did. I read every damn
one of them. it was good.

I’m not sure where to go from here.

Ambien

–scares the shit out of me.

Butterless

There is no longer butter inside these boxes:

I find that misleading.

People I wish I could be more like

Julia Child
Thomas Jefferson
Socrates
Halle Berry
Albert Camus
American Maid
Mr. T
Hypatia

Tangents too often ambiguous.

Not really*

Things to Do Before 120

Learn to read palms.
Write a sequel to the Bible.
Make the perfect banana pudding.
Solve for pie. Anything. Solve
anything for pie.
Run Canadians across the border.
See Brooklyn Heights.
Have sex for money just once when
I’m not broke.
Get a good night’s sleep.

–Cami Park (me)

*I have already been to Brooklyn Heights

Evolution of Jellyfish

Winstons

Once we got the hang of it, we
breathed circles around each other.

Skipped foreheads off
rocks, chewed
embers.

Jellyfish,
left to their own
devices, developed spines, got
religion, eschewed
risk

made Gods of sticks.

–Cami Park (me)

originally published in tinfoildresses

Twisted utensils

There was a guy in Dodgeville who would twist old forks and spoons into different things, like key holders, windchimes, napkin rings, stuff like that. They were pretty, and he was proud of his work. I bought a keychain that I used for awhile, but it kind of bugged me. Spoons and forks have already reached their fullest potential. I thought it must suck for silver, or stainless steel, or whatever, to know its truest purpose, and then be torqued into a completely different, vain, petty object. My keychain sits in a dish on the dresser, wishing for soup.

Hat to Bed

I had an ex who liked to wear an old wool cap to bed. He said he it kept him warm at night. He was also sensitive about his thinning hair, and I wonder if he secretly had some superstition about wool hats and the prevention of premature baldness. Anyway, I wouldn’t let him wear the hat to bed– I said I felt weird lying next to R.P. McMurphy. Now I wonder if I was petty, or shallow. Or both. I can’t decide.