post-engagement picture

August 23, 2008

 

San Diego, California— Torrey Pines State Beach

<3

Mitch and I plan to get married next summer. We haven’t set a date yet, but we will soon!

do you really want to know?

Locked Doors

Locked Doors
by Anne Sexton
For the angels who inhabit this town,
although their shape constantly changes,
each night we leave some cold potatoes
and a bowl of milk on the windowsill.
Usually they inhabit heaven where,
by the way, no tears are allowed.

They push the moon around like
a boiled yam.
The Milky Way is their hen
with her many children.
When it is night the cows lie down
but the moon, that big bull,
stands up.

However, there is a locked room up there
with an iron door that can’t be opened.
It has all your bad dreams in it
It is hell.
Some say the devil locks the door
from the inside.
Some say the angels lock it from
the outside.
The people inside have no water
and are never allowed to touch.
They crack like macadam.
They are mute
They do not cry help
except inside
where their hearts are covered with grubs.

I would like to unlock that door,
turn the rusty key
and hold each fallen one in my arms
but I cannot, I cannot.
I can only sit here on earth
at my place at the table.

Come out, come out whereever you are

Melancholy
by Baron Wormser

Weakness—the pale succumbing to loneliness,
Refusing to admit anyone else, indulging
The blue perquisites of adolescence
Long past their sensible deliquescence.

He knew it but went on drinking and regretting,
Not calling his friends and regretting,
Making scenes over nothing and regretting.
It helped to make him despise himself,

Which was, he sensed, what he wanted. He was
Then, in his oblique way, at ease to wander
The city’s brazen or quiet streets, conjuring
Random lives and how the slim arc
Of emotion was pulverized. Back home, he put
On some Monk, lay down, half-cried.

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

You must allow yourself to feel. Emotions should not be sequestered. They should not be sitting in a flavor-seal tin can, waiting to be brewed. They should not be sitting high on a bookshelf, hiding the title. They should not be sitting in a empty cupboard, dusty. They should not be sitting in a cardboard shoe box with the remnants of unused shoelaces. They should not be sitting in a wooden pipe waiting to be smoked. They should not be sitting. They should not be hiding.

Billowing Habit

Square Dancing with Sister Robert Claire
by Michael Cleary
First week of junior high, Kel wised off to her
same as he’d done to the one all year before.
I can still see it. Her so short, the uppercut put
all her weight under the whack of her pudgy fist
against the V of his chin. Kel arching a back-dive, landing
legs up, desks dominoing halfway up the row.
Sweet Jesus, she was tough, but bless her the first one
who liked boys best and didn’t carry a grudge.

But she sure as hell wasn’t one of the almost pretty nuns
you could almost imagine out there in the world.
Picture pie-faced Lou from Abbott and Costello,
lumpy-looking in any duds but now add a thick black
floor-length habit with dozens of folds, hidden pockets.
Around her waist rosary beads big as marbles
dangling to where knees would be.
Hair, ears, and neck under a stiff white wimple,
she waddled the aisles like a wooly toad.

One week she dragged us into the gym
and the alien world of square dancing—and girls.
Shedding blazers, ties, and shoes, we were cornered.
In sweat socks and knee socks, we shuffled like prisoners,
allemande left and dosido stranger than dominus vobiscum.
Robert Claire stood on a chair trying to clap rhythm
into our dumb feet, sometimes leaping down, landing
light as a blackbird. She’d skip and twirl among us
arm over arm until her habit billowed like a gown,
face aglow, God’s clumsy children urged toward lessons
of possibility and romance she brought from a life before.
Reluctantly, we learned to move together, touch, let go.

Pages

EMPTY PAGES NO LONGER YOUNG

 

f-i-n-g-e-r-s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g

I have voices in my head that relive the past. I have voices in my head that pull open my file cabinent of thought. I have voices in my head that demand I replay portions of my past, wishing I said things I wish I said, and I have voices in my head that

MAKE UP DIFFERENT ENDINGS. This… is why I am able to continue.

Florence Sand Dunes, where I once dropped my camera

There are angels written in sand grooves, clouds, angels written in leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would you join me, or shout, “Bring on the angels, the bright waterfall of angels tour?”

 

 

I am supposed to write.

I need crayons. I have them. I need markers. I have them. They sit in empty coffee cans. They are waiting to be used. Use me, Periwinkle screams. Use me, Marigold screams. No! Use me, Gray screams. I will use all of you, I will bide my time, my dear ones, I will not only use you, but I will live through you. Blank pages will no longer be lonely. I will break every rule in the English language. I will use run-ons; semi-colons where they are not needed, dollar sign$ in there, heart my i’s, sign my name, make it rhyme,

and maybe I will see wings. Small, but feeble, but wings. Am I growing feathers?, she asks. I think I’ve always had feathers. I just preen myself a lot, float lazily on a river of thought, and every once in a while I take flight. I sit ontops of posts, buzzing telephone wires, lighthouses that face the angry sea, and I think about the poison in the air.

I cannot breathe. My mind races. I cannot sleep. My mind races. I have conversations in my head. I re-live, relive circumstances that cannot be changed. I relive reality and say things I wish I said. I wallow in a puddle of regret. Then, and just then, I snap out of it and realize I need to live in the present. I will take care of what I will say. I will choose my words wisely. Those that run stumble fast. I know, I’ve been there.

I am supposed to write.

A shade of Blue

Blue. That’s it. Blue.

When asked what I sound like… he said, “You’re Blue.”

“Blue?” I ask. I wonder. I pause and think. Blue?

“Yes, Blue. We all speak Blue. Some of us speak Dark Blue. Some of us speak Light Blue. Some of us speak Royal Blue. Some of us speak Midnight Blue. Some of us speak Baby Blue. But we all are still Blue. You speak Blue. It may not be the same shade of Blue that everyone else is accustomed to, yet it is still Blue.”

“Ah, I speak Blue,” I spoke.