rarlington

My friend Aubri, who was once a student but who now has become a classmate and even teacher (we have exchanged all of the old titles for new, better-fitting ones), wrote this wonderful poem that she presented at the Creative Writing Colloquium yesterday and also workshopped in Kathy’s class, tentatively titled “I hate the I,” which rather inspired the first line of the second stanza that I’ve sketched out here; also, I decided to use the lower-case “i,” which I never do, you know.

This is just something I scribbled out while waking up just now. I have to go to the DMV to renew my car registration this morning. Then: a long day’s journey into night when I can return to my fluffy little nest of pillows.

i’m thinking about
walter pater;
all art
aspires to music;

i aspire this i
to just
lie down
in the grass
in the cool grass

& allow
that
to
just be
enough
for us

***

(I guess that’s all the “i” I’ve got in me just now.)

This will be quite the week!

Research paper presentations at Stockton! Creative Writing Colloquium! Sigma Kappa Delta Induction/Lunch! Board of Trustees meeting! Poetry Day at O.C. High School! Student Government banquet! Kathy Graber reading at the Noyes on Saturday!

One more “something” about my Western PA relatives; this one was written back in September, I think. I think it was for something 826 Valencia was doing; I believe the story had to be 82.6 words long. Is this; does that include the title, too? Oh well.

I wish the content of this wasn’t true: but it is.

Janet Calls Her Mother-in-Law

Margy, it’s me. I need you to take the kids next week. Well, cancel the church retreat. Because I’m having surgery done. What does it matter what for? For your information, my doctor says if I ever wanna have sex again, my bladder, it needs to go in a sling. Margy,  you still there? Yes. I mean, I may be sixty fucking years old, but I just lost twenty pounds. That puts me within seventy-five pounds of my goal weight, so. Hello? Mar––?

It’s Earth Day.

And raining.

But I am listening to the Tom Waits I picked up yesterday for Record Store Day. And throwing stuff away. And other “stuff,” which should include grading research papers. But isn’t; or hasn’t yet.

Last night, I talked to my friend Gerri on the phone, and she said, “The French Lieutenant’s Woman is on PBS in fifteen minutes,” and I thought, Well, there is my evening suddenly decided.

On the way home from breakfast this morning, I passed a dead bird on the sidewalk. It reminded me of that scene from another movie Meryl Streep was in, though she wasn’t present for the Bird Funeral:

What falls below was written for Kathy’s class, and was meant to be a prose poem, though you can judge: another something about Western Pennsylvania. (I’m still thinking about it all from yesterday; and wondering how it will all come together.)

And The Stillers Are Playin

Mum sez of brudder Joey’s new girlfriend, “Lord, dat woman makes my arse tard.” I ast mum wah she means but she juss goes back ter churnin butter. “J’ew mean she’s abeast?” I axst, but mum sez not to be so nebby all the time, Ethel May. She tells me ter gowan aht an pick beans fer supper. Ridge Road ahn a’summer mornin and dere’s not ah sahnd; yunz wouldn’t even know we’re less than twenny minutes drive ta tahn. We havin’t been dahntahn since Chrissmas, yinz know. They gotta cathedral a’learnin at the cawidge dere. Susan sez she wants werk et Kaufmann’s after skewl. Et Kaufmann’s or et TWA as a sterrdess. The raht to the airport is juss up ere so the planes pass overus all day an I getter thinkin about what it must be like ter ride in wanna dem and if I’ll ever n’at. Susan sez she will, course; course Susan will. Susan’s priddy like an actress wichiz the same as a sterrdess, innit? Susan lays in the house all day sayin she fells sickn’ tard. Well Ize sickn’ tard. My udder sitter Margy’s married now an livin juss up da h’l; I can see her puttin out der worsh. She waves dahn. I make like ter wave. I see mum gowin aht ter da coop; juss fetched the eggs earlier fer breffis. Dad et his eggs an bacon, black coffee; then tookiz lunch pail an wen off ter da mine. Or the beer garten. I getter conjagatin agin bout Joey’s new girl; wonderin if she already rillizes he’s a drunken jaggoff. Mum comes out with wanna the chickens now. She tells me to fetch some melk fer lunch. If I’d a’ad my druthers, I’d a’axst fer galumkis fer later, which I’ve’ad a hankerin for, but I don’t trouble mum now that she’s setter mind ahn dat chicken. Mum’s gotternough ta wurry bout.

I wutch her twist the chicken’s neck like a pop bawdle cap.

That’s when: I start to member.

I have a lot of “stuff” to do this weekend. Like, most of today will likely be consumed with school work. But the conference yesterday was lovely. My own workshop went well, I thought. I retained all of the audience members in a session devoted to success/retention in online classes (win!). I can be quite––how do you say?––charming at times, I think.

I drove up to Edison with Effie. I was going to title these poetic notes “Driving with Effie,” but I think––I’ve been thinking for awhile about wanting to write about my Western Pennsylvania relatives. I think maybe Effie and I will start this summer. We’ll call it Appalachia or…

Et in Appalachia
[The names will all have to eventually be changed.]

Margy calls to say
Tim is still w/ Dawn,
who takes his paycheck every
week but never pays the bills.
They’re repossessing my truck,
says Tim. Dawn tells him:
it’s time for you to go,
Tim; Dawn & Tim &
Dawn’s five children
plus one child’s child +
baby-daddy all crammed
into one tumescent trailer,
beating. “Can I speak to
your mom?” Margy asks
one of the kids, the ten-year
old & he answers her, I think
she’s around the corner with her

head up her ass. At the doctor’s office,
Dawn tries to convince the nine-
year old to go inside for his appointment,
but he runs around the block, yelling,
I’m not fucking going inside!

Meanwhile, across town,
Uncle Joey’s new Cupcake phones,
whispering to Margy because
Joe’s asleep at four o’ clock
in the afternoon. Cupcake & Joe
wake at 2 A.M. everyday; drive
an hour to the casino southwest of
Pittsburgh for the free breakfast:
everyday they do this.

Once, I remember, the summer
before I left for London, driving w/ Effie
out to Western PA. We went
to the Andy Warhol Museum & then
met Joe and Aunt Tony (this was
Pre-Cupcake) at their house; Uncle Joe,
drinking beer and telling me to invest
all of my money in guns.

I went to bed that night
dreaming of silkscreened guns,
a variegated militia of saturated
pink, orange, yellow. It is like
the proliferation of kinship, this:

Off to a conference today! I hope to make it back to O.C. in time to hear my friend Carol Plum-Ucci speak at the library in town at 5 P.M. Fingers-crossed for no traffic.

[Here is something of a poem-something. I wanted the structure to feel like a root system somehow. Maybe I should take out the stanza breaks?]

Two trees
sharing
the same
root system

Taken up
root in
the house
drain

Loving
the trees
together
but also

This house
where I
have lived
alone for

so long.
The trees
hold tight
and strangle

each other.
Birds in
those trees,
singing.

On Monday, Patrick mentioned that to some extent he has his brother in mind when he’s writing. Kathy said that it is beneficial to have that: an ideal reader.

Maybe that is why we do it (write): to find just one someone who will understand us and make it (us) seem worthwhile. Maybe that is what makes it all worth it. My playwriting professor at NYU once said that we write because we feel inadequate in real life, and so send out the writing into the world as surrogate: the poem as proxy.

Although: I mentioned to one of my own creative writing students yesterday that sometimes we have to write even when we think that no one is listening or believing in us; that Henry Miller once said that he writes to make them believe. Is this a case of the writer keeping the ideal reader hostage until Stockholm syndrome sets in?

You Are My Ideal Reader
So I will put down
these words for you.

Four students
on a bench outside
the theater smoking

The art teacher
in her apron
pushes a cart;

stops a moment
to smile at me
before we separate

The boy beneath
his bodhi tree
listening to music:

Girl drops her coat
and his thoughts
fall with her.

I put down these
words for you so that
you will know.

(Or should the last line read: so that / I will be known. ––?)

Today, after Stockton, I’m meeting Effie for late-lunch/dinner (Moe’s and Chillaxin’, she says) and then we’re going to the Open House at the college. I need to remember to have lit mags available to distribute. This week is so hectic. Yesterday, I could barely leave the Starbucks: because I knew that to leave meant to go back out into the hectic-ness; to rejoin the world. I crave detachment. And P.G. Wodehouse novels.

Tomorrow, I must prepare a presentation for a conference on Friday. And then Friday I’ll be presenting a workshop on best practices in online education. I just want to be offline, in the shade, but outside. Will you/who will come outside and sit in the shade with me? Can we sit there forever? I have a blanket in the back of my car so we don’t get grass stains on our trousers. I have a fridge full of Fresca; I’ll pack it in the cooler. It should last us awhile, at least. At least until they come looking for us. Then we’ll have to make the choice: to pack up the blanket; or to run.

And I miss my sister.

Rachel

I’m sorry about
when we were little &
I tried to throw you out
in the garbage when mommy
brought you home; When

she showed me the staple-scar &
said, “Now you have a sister,
Binky.” I didn’t like you much then.
It was supposed to be
just me & mommy
against the world.

Now I think: we are like twin selves,
but I came three years first to make sure
everything would be safe for you.

(And maybe it wasn’t;
so maybe that’s why.)

You say, “You should say
this meditation because
it is all about the lessons to
learn when you are transitioning
into the next stage of life.”

I write lesson plans, little head,
but I have not learned these.
You write it down for me,
complete with pronunciation.

I can’t pronounce these
words anymore. I
don’t want words
anymore.

Remember––we imagined
that we had a brother, Carlos,
(was he older? younger?)
who had run away.

Do you think it’s he-Carlos
who has
what we have been
searching for, little sister?
That he took it with him
when he left: like stealing
our inheritance.

Now we have to go
find him: bring him back.
And if he will not,
then I suppose we must.

I also have to write to my friend Jane, who sent me a lovely e-mail this week. Jane and I met when we were both teaching at that high school in North Jersey: when we were young, Jane, remember? –– and didn’t really know what we were doing. When we were constantly improvising and wanting just to run away all the time. I still sort of feel like that. Or maybe I’ve just gotten better at it all. But I’ve started running again (this is not a metaphor). But only half-heartedly when I am in the mood.

Jane sends me links to Coachella acts to listen to. She is always looking out for me, Jane is.

She wrote: “I love the way you punctuate. There’s such freedom in the spaces.” (Is this a metaphor, Jane?) It was such a lovely line in itself. Yes, we used to write lesson plans together, Jane. There was an art in that, too; just another unappreciated craft that will never sell on Etsy.

Anyway, Jane; until I get a chance to write you back properly…

[Here starts the poem, if it is that.]

Patrick Phillips is coming to campus tonight. A long day’s Monday into night precedes Patrick, including class at Stockton & a doctor’s appointment back in Linwood (“L-dubs”).

I have to find time to write my friend Kim back; Kim, whose weekly e-mail has been keeping me sane since March.

For now, Kim, if you read this (though I know you don’t entirely condone blogging, which loses a certain essential intimacy), I’m still thinking about your previous message from the weekend.

(And here, too, some pictures from the parade this weekend. Somehow, in a poem about creation and destruction, these feel appropriate.)

My Friend Kim
writes that
in those pre-Christian
times, in order for something
to be created,
something else
had to die/be destroyed

For something to be
built, something torn
down; Tear it all down.
Over and over, is
what you write

as I drink my tea
civilization
Turns into bruised/
intractable abscesses;
crumbling into
a cuppa; I shake
my head, yes.

A time, when all
partnerships would be
annulled

to start again
like that. Escape in
books & bodies and
(in Kundera’s words)
laughter & forgetting.

Each day
we will create
a new world,
and then––
allowing it
to go/be gone
in the morning and
not to regret; find strength
in that nothing remaining.

(Except I want you to
hold my hand while it
all goes, Kim.)

Is this the beginning of the end times? (Doo dah; doo dah.)

Care Bears in lifeboats drift past.

Alone, a man dressed as a fractured prune, dances & twirls.

Behold, Kali in all of her destructive fury!

Then, all of it, will go to the dogs.

I Am Not A Poet, But Come With Me Anyway

Let us live
above the law office
where there is
a view of the
Catholic church

We will watch them
mass from
my bed, and

Take communion
of coffee and
shortbread

Would it be
too rich
for you? would
you say, it hurts
to be this close.

Come
with me, anyway.
Even though
I am
not a poet.

On Saturday, my sister & I make a pilgrimage to the bead store.

Homemade mala; yes, I have hairy arms. Come with me, even though my arms are hairy.