28

Having opened the door we sat down at the table
The light dim in the evening and my eyes dying out as later came sooner
And soon became late at night
Studying face after face I realized carefully
And then quickly-
That every pupil was dark and frightening enough to fall into.

The next day, meeting with a mirror, I rubbed my eyes
And almost tipped into my own.

On Bernini's David (27)

Lips licked slick and the sun glaring down I squint up,
(First, gripping a smooth and heavy stone in one hand)
And everything happens in instants
I am breathing hard as I run toward a dark mass, shadowy, backlit by brilliance,
Shedding cumbersome armor, dropping a back, losing my sandals,
My body tenses as I skid to a stop before the giant,
I crease my brow, load the sling,
And aim

26 (Or, This Is How I Felt Today)

For a week I yawned
And the next I opened my eyes, millimeter after next into one full blink
Almost completely still, I rubbed one eye over the course of a day
My index finger sliding to my tear duct like a snail drying up
(Voiceless and dusty, headache fermenting in my stagnant skull)
After a year my toes touched the floor
Another month and my feet
And I stood, an ancient tree, weathered, still rising from the ground.

25

Here is a stupid poem I wrote in English on Friday. We had to pick a concept and then the person next to us gave an object. I couldn't think of anything, so I wrote "Love" in droopy cursive letters. Then I got the word paperclip. What? Anyway. Here's what I came up with.

We keep turning curbs together
And we talk and we sit around and we don't talk
And I find you at my front door some of the time
But love is just a paperclip
Short, small, shallow
Malleable,
Nothing new, or unique
Then again, bright, again, then purposeful.
And nonetheless keeping us together.

I'm going to write three more poems right now, and then something in honor of National Blog About Book on Tape Worm Month (NoBloBoTWMo?).

Okay, I never update my blog.

I got a bit burnt out, and I owe you people four poems for the end of February. Hold me to it. 

24

And here you may notice, at the end of the day
That three cups of very hot chocolate,
A good and true friend,
And the end of a project
Will solve everything.

23

Then there was that time in the spring
When I was riding my bike down 5th
(At that point I still didn't recognize anything)
I was riding as fast as I could pedal
Feeling foreign, feeling new
And realizing what seemed at the time
The most important realization I would ever make:
(Being human, being incomplete,
Being young and lost, by virtue of being young.
Being confused, being in love,
Being eighteen and riding a bicycle)

That I am not yet what I am meant to be.

These were the most joyous words I knew.
(I whispered them to the stranger streets)
That I will never be in life what I am meant to be
That all I can do is add miles and years.

22

There are things I shouldn't have told to people
Things I didn't know were inarticulate
And best left that way
Until I put them crudely into words
And lost their meaning completely

On Flying

Flying at night is best.
Look down at all those burning dots
And all the darkness between them-
And maybe it's all floating on a deep, deep body of water
And the lamp-lined streets
Trailing out like warped fingers
Are bridges from house to garden to city to highway
Or maybe each bright car is a gondolier on fire
Later if you're lucky
Notice there are festivals spread out on every island
They have lit all their torches, rejoicing
Some, blinking lanterns, sending signals of joy
To all the neighboring tribes.

Here in the air the flight attendant demonstrates the use of an emergency mask.
Overhead reading lights click on
Or maybe it's only Sudoku puzzles and algebra homework
iPods glowing with Tetris and album covers
And some catastrophe shouting, breaking windows, exploding and burning
On the bluish screen glaring forward and to the right
Then again, to the right, soldiers with angry faces.

It's harder to believe it of these blocked-out cities.
Sitting flat in grids on some plateau I can't see.
Each light is just a repetition of the last and of the next
Row of dots square on graph paper.
And then swallowed by cloud cover.
Maybe further away a silvery row of lights
Pointing out a caravan of sailors.

No.
We are lost inside of a cloud, because some announcement comes on about turbulence.
And every passenger wonders not-so-secretly (looking around wide-eyed and maybe
Clutching the armrests with each lurch)
Wonders

(WAIT!)

"Oh God, is this how I die?"

Maren's Lullaby

Here's the lullaby, as finished as it can be for now. I got Madelyn and Melissa to sing on it, and I think putting this together was pretty neat to do as sisters. Madelyn is the lowest voice and Melissa is the inordinately high one. They made up their own harmonies. My favorite part of this song is about a minute in, when some cool harmonies come in and there are a few soaring notes in all the parts. Anyway, the song is the second track on this music player. Happy listening!

Nineteen is a song.

Seeing Maren

When Dad called me in I walked over in the soft light,
And kneeling next to a crib I know I laid in
Peeked through at her for the first time
Sometimes there aren't enough words
The tiniest yawn I've ever seen
(Between quick, sweet breaths)
Coming from this perfect face and nose
And blinked-shut eyes
Her head the size of a fist
And fist the size of a thumb
Her fingernails drips of barely opaque paint
On the ends of blushing curled fingers
She blinked for an instant
The dark globes of her eyes
Maybe having registered a stranger
And then closed.
I crouched before her, transfixed.
There was nothing else.

Flights

The last time was about a year ago,
Watching the tiny lights of my newest hometown
Blinking closer as we landed,
Six months previous I was hunched over writing a poem
While the plane turned out over the sea and then in again at LAX.
And year before that on the Fourth of July
I was walking through Heathrow
Listening to the drawling accents of the women behind me
And I wondered aloud why we were going back to America.

A VERY corny poem about an adventure I had one time.

I walked away and crumpled in my car

The night the ides of March struck sharp and true

I drove home- the familiar roads, I barely knew

A block away, I slowed to wonder who you are

So why in Paris? Why, at seventeen,

Did I find you, miraculously there,

Know you so well, that from the topmost stair

I called you, and you turned- what did it mean?

Did it mean Fate rules Paris, or the Louvre?

Did it mean I should find the things I miss?

Or God set us in clockwork- maybe this

Is blasphemy- or maybe this is proof

Of graciousness- some grain of hope in love

For seventeen, that day has been enough.

Sometimes it was late
And I was walking outside still seventeen
Into the backyard of the house I grew up in
I would lie in the hammock, looking up
Finding the only constellations I knew
Sometimes humming to myself
Sometimes talking at the sky
Sometimes it was late and I slipped out the back door
And then through the fence and onto the stretch of grass between our houses
And if the sprinklers were on, I was there anyway
Lying in the middle of the belt of green
And waiting for a star to fall
Tracing the paths of planes flying in
And watching satellites drip carefully across the sky

14. Read aloud with a little irony.

Welcome to your first car accident.
You are nineteen.
It is Valentine's Day.
You are delivering Valentines,
driving in the town where you will someday attend university.
You are nineteen and wearing a pink shirt and heels.
You turn a corner in the dark,
Muttering something to yourself,
When another car's lights jump past you,
And the turn sharpens, and you lose control for an instant
With a scrape like a knife on burnt toast
You take the mirror clean off of the car next to you


In shock you pull your car backwards
Into what isn't even a parking space
In shock you climb out to assess the damage
You pick up the dismembered mirror, feet away on the asphalt
You lay it carefully on the windshield
Searching for a piece of paper in your car, all you can find are Valentines, love notes
And so flipping one over, you scribble a note of apology
Black ink running from a found pen
Your name, your telephone number


You drive home half-astonished
And your brother mutters things about fixing the car
Looking at it thoughtfully.
You are nineteen.
Your parents were just beginning to trust you.
You hand your brother the Valentine you made for him
And he leaves with the car.

13

I was drifting to sleep in my bed
When I realized I'd rather be dead
Than miss writing tonight
So I flipped on the light
And wrote this lame limerick instead.

Twelve.

I fell in love with a human sigh
For his quiet voice and his tired eye
Though soon I lost the thrill
Yet I thought of him still
For the wind in the night whispered just like his cry.

This is what Freshman year was like.

I walked fourteen into Geography embarrassed enough
(Wearing the same tan sweater I just put on-
Today, in my sophomore year at university.)
“That’s a good color on you, Emily,” said Mr. Areu,
who always addressed me by name.
“Bet you’ve got your eye on some boy.”
A pause.
“He’s probably a senior.”
And with a chuckle to himself, he turned away as I
slid red-faced and bleary-eyed into my plastic chair.

10

The other night I was walking
Letting the cold air numb my fingers and face
Listening for the rustling of stubborn leaves frozen to trees
The apples brown and shriveled, topped with snow
The other night I was walking with my hands crammed in my pockets
The tips of my ears frozen
And I breathed into my palms
And rubbed all the heat I could muster into the thin cartilage of my nose and ears
Passing a streetlamp, I noticed my hands
And a cut, stretching across two of my right fingers,
(Ring and middle)
That I did not remember.
This has happened before.
                     And then I start wondering, imagining this:
An acquaintance
                     A stranger holding a penknife,
Looking for something to say
                     edges around a corner,
Will notice hands and say
                      Spying elbows, knees, fingertips, ankles,
How did that happen?
                      Scraping and scratching knuckles and skin.
This is the first time I have ever noticed my hand, or it’s two-fingered cut.
                      I blame a thorny bush or the sharp corner of a table or a cement ledge.
I don’t know, I respond. And I do not.
                      But from behind a tree I pass every day
I imagine the scene in my mind’s eye.
                      The knife darts out to gnaw a line across my fingers.

                      Oblivious to the hand and knife,
                      I feel hardly anything, and what I feel I assume is a jutting branch.
And later I notice and I watch the red edges smart, wondering where it came from.
It’s something to look at.