Anatomy of a Dress

I am a lump of fat with a mouth near the top.
I live with the cats in a den of sleep. One brown
Mouth and a skull full of blood to share.

We stay warm until we are not. The orchids are
dropping their blooms, purple napkins
from green laps and I watch each damp refuse
wistful, knowing I could have
done better, and now it is too late. I have drawn

a tubful of tepid, bright
In a separate room where I will shift in the
White until I am scrubbed, and can believe I am really a captive
Mermaid. The cats and I can never get warm though
They are self-cleaning, like the oven. Outside,

The dog noses tender tawns, tufts of new
Grass in the sun (all yellow as I left them) while
The clock coasts over its place-makers.
Thirteen more hours to resist the bed’s undertow,
So listen to the kitchen trash rattle, the
Beautiful-day whistle of the Sunbeam on the stove.

I am speaking, a brown mouth
into an avocado receiver: a sound,
Refined, a sound, refined, a sound, refined, I
Am not 1973, I am not aqua and green, red is not
The color of my fulfillment, I do not
Know the sound of better angels, this fabric
Is post-war and in the corner
brown piles of signified accumulate,
plop.

Jonanna is going to Powell’s today. Until today, I’ve been dealing with my Pacific Northwest jealousy pretty well, but now I am a petulant child: I can’t belieeeeeeeeeeve you’re going to Powell’s WITHOUT ME! What about MY NEEDS!

found an echo of SP’s “Lesbos” in Prufrock when a lady read it on a podcast I was listening to this morning. It BLEW MY MIND.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

and

It is love you are full of. You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate
That opens to the sea
Where it drives in, white and black
then spews it back.

I love to find that poets by and large collect sparklies to feather their nest, and I love to see that sparkle in someone else’s work and go YES! THERE!

But seriously, wait a minute: what if we just froze mortgages and foreclosures while things got sorted out?

What songs are on your workout mix? Suggest some tunes to sweat to.

to Unnarrator
date Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 5:12 PM
subject Autopsy of a Love Letter, Daphne Gottlieb

By the time
you get this,
I’ll be gone
I’m leaving

so what I
suggest to you
is

forget me.

(english muffin)

Look… you’re
very mature
for your

(plum)

age but you’re
still 15 years
old and I’m

(ice water)

22.
It was fun

[The pill works]

but it was doomed

[by stopping ovulation]

from the start

[and is 95 percent effective]

(tossed greens w/ fat free)

[when swallowed]

and honestly,
you’re

(ice water)

you’re too young

[at the same time every day]

and I can’t let
myself love
you

[Caution must be taken using]

(potato chips, candy bars,
pretzels, ice cream, sugar
cookies.)

The whole
point is, I get

[other medications, or]

(Ipecac)

really sore

[during episodes of nausea or]

sometimes

[vomiting]

where you’re
concerned.

(mouthwash)

I know what I
did to you

(ice water)

[Take your pill daily]

and still

[as part of a routine]

I have always
found you

(muffin)

heart
breakingly
sweet

[when brushing your teeth]

insanely

(cookie)

sexy

[getting ready for bed]

irresistably
self analytical.

(ice water)

I could never
let myself
need you.

to farren stanley
date Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 6:17 PM
subject Re: Autopsy of a Love Letter, Daphne Gottlieb

Wow! So what do you

(pan-seared ahi)

[bulimic]

think?

PS–definitely giving this to my students next week though!

to Unnarrator
date Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 7:17 PM
subject Re: Autopsy of a Love Letter, Daphne Gottlieb

Exactly–you hit the nail on the head there– I think it’s a great tool for discussing with young/inexperienced writers/poets formal ways to create subtext in a poem and the necessity of subtext for successful execution, which is why I sent it to Dana and to J-Lev, who does not teach but who is working on a really great story about a tween who is toeing that line and thinking about taking a headlong leap into an ED. (It’s a great story–you should def read it.) But I digress!
I think this is a great lesson to young poets: Readers will not trust or maybe just appreciate the poem that says You fucked me. I had a pregnancy scare. I am obsessed with food but I feel fat so I throw it up. I feel too much when you’re around so we have to break up. By the way I may also be writing a love letter to food. (Unless its by Sharon Olds, but y’know.–actually that might be an interesting lesson plan for intermediate poets. WHY is Sharon Olds style authority appealing, but really only for Sharon Olds?)
Also a possibly excellent gateway into a discussion about UNRELIABLE NARRATORS of the archetypal, not bloggy, kinds. I mean, I dunno. I wouldn’t have thought of it as a 19 year-old. Also, as a 19 year-old, this sort of thing would have blown my mind.

XOFS

This morning the bedframe broke. Happy almost-birthday to me.

CNN on mute, Chopin’s Nocturne in E Flat, house cleaning. Everytime J-Mc comes onscreen I think of John Travolta’s opponent getting so pissed during a debate he gets a big ol’ heart attack and keels over. Just sayin’.

I’ve been drafting and re-drafting “Animus” for Centrifugal eye but have not spent substantial time at the typewriter since I’ve gotten home. I had the most incredible dream the other night that I’m going to transform into a short story: Last Days of Marilyn Monroe. Thanks to Vanity Fair for Unconscious Fodder.

It’s too quiet without Jonanna.

You know, I had a political awakening circa 2001 that ended in a fatigued resolution to never get too close to politics, like a lover who swore he’d never had a fuck as good as me and then gave me an STD a few months later. Which happened around the same time, actually. Anyway! In all the hullaballoo surrounding this Very Important Presidential Race and the Apocalypse George W. Means to Unleash on the World at Large, I seem to have forgotten my for-your-own-good avowal and now I basically stew all day, reading the news feeds and watching Rachel Maddown and Keith Olbermann andLarry King and veering wildly between states of blind rage and abject terror. I see this sentiment reiterated over and over and basically I need to just swear off politics again for a looooong time and maybe move to some godforsaken outpost of civilization ruled by village elders who consult wooden dolls in matters of state because I am not SLEEPING, people, this is not the WORLD I want to LIVE IN.

FIRST of all: a $700 BILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT is FUCKING EXTORTION.

Second, do this because it is awesome and it made me feel better: Instead of (in addition to?) us all complaining about how horrible she is (ed: BECAUSE SHE IS HORRIBLE AND MADE RAPE VICTIMS PAY FOR THEIR FORENSIC EXAMS AND HASN’T GOTTEN ANY OF HER KIDS THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL, SHUT UP ABOUT THE ROAD TO NOWHERE), let’s all make a donation to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin’s name for reminding us of the importance of protecting our rights for birth control, women’s health and reproductive choice. This is a brilliant idea for $10, or even $5.

And here’s the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name,
they’ll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in
her honor.

You’ll need to fill in the address to let Planned Parenthood know
where to send the “in Sarah Palin’s honor” card. I suggest you use the
address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS: make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of
Donate–Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular “Donate
Online”

…You know you will suffer as long
as it takes, until you uncouple
from the magnets of breath and beat,

until you shake the hive of death
for its sting, until you stare
in its eyes, wanting and unafraid,
trembling in need, the way a man’s

hand might tremble reaching
toward a cheek it has wanted
to touch for light years.

Patrick Carrington

The earth has a taste for us, in its unknowing
appetite there yet resides a hunger, incompletion
that draws all life to its dark self. What, then,
shall we say of the flesh’s own desire, distal
thumb-brush at evening? There is nothing to say,
the vowels cluster uncertain in the beautiful vase
the throat makes, fricatives corralled behind
ridge of gum and bone-splinter. Flesh and earth:
fire is an illusion, to which water is the antidote.
The day was a bright one, there seemed no need
to move about with mirrors, the usual circumspection
and indirect approach. The abundance of small life
argued some measure of clemency, likewise
the Jerseys lowing in the paddock breeze, tender
shoots of cress and sweetpea spiralling upward.
But fire is a cruel hoax: now you see it,
now you don’t, the object of your affection
cast in carbon on the hard ground which will,
in time, receive. Roadside the irises bloomed
two or three feet max above soil’s surface,
rough tongue resting lightly on each leaf, each
violet exclamation. In full sun your hand guided mine
to the wound. A small one. Water and blood,
like the nurse said: prestidigitation of the body.
We stood without shadows on asphalt at midday.
What we call patience is only fire again, compressed.
I remember: your face flushed, stray petal lodged
in the damp whorl of your dishevelled hair.

GC Waldrep