my black infinity

I do not regret any of the 30+ acorns which fell from the tree I used to park my car under in Atlanta, or the pock-marks they left in the paint. Nor do I regret the smear Luke left when he permanently rubbed "wash me" into its dirt-covered hood. Like a friend you have both battled with and gone to battle for, these scars only make me love it more.

atlanta visit

No longer the need for showy signs of affection, I've accepted that I am married to it, bodily. Like aged love, it was enough to sit for a while together. The familiarity of the trees, the coldness and the moisture. The absence and quiet of winter. A few more months and the cicadas will fill it again with their love song.

my apartment is a den of illness. my relationship to this singular room changes by the day. before it was quite rosy. a sanctuary in fact. now it is yellowed by its feverish occupant. this is like the difference between a stream which is flowing and one which is blocked.

today I long for atlanta. things don't seem so far away there. roads traversed many times become shortened by familiarity.

from the North country

My husband's birthday is tomorrow.
I had a husband. He used to sing to me. I don't understand time. I don't understand time or love. But tomorrow I hope the sun shines in Atlanta or wherever he may be.

birdhouses

The electrical wires in this city crackle. The way a microphone might or speakers in a car which are blown out. I haven’t been here so long yet that I don’t pause to look up. I wait for them to fall on my head. Like twigs I expect them to snap. I’ve already been brought to trial. I sent a head-shot and a photo in my bathing suit ahead of me. It was enough. 

Everyone wants to know how I am. Only I can see the lines in my knuckles. Like dried earth. Andy Goldsworthy's garden of red leaves slide down my legs a cunt of thorns.

All girls draw their bodies as trees. And get tattoos of roses. There’s a birdhouse in the back yard I left unfilled. There is nothing here to eat.

concentric circles

It's only been a month, but the Atlanta I knew no longer exists. It is having a gas crisis and I'm paying a dollar fifty three at the pump. The people I love there are still moving in concentric circles. Are meeting on purpose and by accident in any number of places. Are battling six foot cockroaches under the deck and drinking beer. They're looking out at the city from the patio of the Standard and trying to get comfortable in those unreasonably high metal chairs. I know it would be easier and healthier for me to put these aside. Live in the present. But the smells and sounds of that city are with me. As you are with me. And it's not so easy.

our last meal. my words still echo in our stairwell.

You ask me why I chose the things I did. Somehow every time I try to close my hand it's forced open down upon itself and straight through again. The point is I have no idea. You. And I. Are always at it's mercy. At my heart's whim. With no way to forgive it. There's nothing to forgive. 

letters

Azar means scarlet in Farsi. Though I've studied Farsi I didn't know that until I looked it up just now. I had drinks at The Standard with Paul this evening. You can see the capital from there and Azar, which I guess is a liquor store. Z is a seldom-used letter in the English alphabet. I can imagine the proprietor of Azar having trouble purchasing the neon Z required for his sign. Perhaps they don't bother to make Zs. Perhaps Zs are more expensive. In any case, it's clear that the Z in this sign is really a horizontal N. I contemplated that this evening while feeling mildly impressed with myself for having noticed.

P.

the story of a girl silhouetted by lamplight and mist. smoke swirling from her lit cigarette. a blotted scrap of paper she holds up to the light (trying to decipher its code). she thinks it means nothing and is right.

old entry which somehow feels relevant today

I prefer the smell of chai to the man sitting in front of me. This is an immediate preference. I'm drinking a chai and the man in front of me reeks of patchouli, hair gel and salty food - food that would give me indigestion were I to eat it. I have indigestion anyway. And my body doesn't fold like it used to. I like the familiarity of buttons. This too is immediate. Right now I prefer the word button to zipper. Tomorrow I might fancy a different word, Salat perhaps, in Farsi or something else I saw while sitting idly and somewhat displaced in a book store. I'm tired now so I don't mind lingering on tastes. My body doesn't fold like it used to. A bend at the hip or waist creates an uncomfortable bubble of flesh-not-muscle. If you were to fold me in half you'd find it impossible to create a single crease. It would instead be a succession of three or four. 

A man in a jeep (on his way to me, wondering if I'm mad at him for being late) doesn't walk like others. He lopes. He'll be loping his way here in a few minutes. Maybe relationships themselves are nothing but this. Not what is said, not what's done and undone by time, stepped in or out of, but the timing of the entrance itself - into my life and then into this book store. Relationships carry their own unique rhythms and pauses, starts and stops.  I am drawn to and repelled constantly by romantic love. How infuriating always winning and losing each other to time and circumstance. One day you might find me searching endlessly for those red, beaded earrings I swore I left atop the dresser (to the right of my grandfather's picture and to the left of my hairbrush, also tangled and floating, strand by strand in time). You might commit yourself to writing your name on boxes, annotating carefully their contents only to later refill them with something different. The permanent marker marks remain, everything else changed.

If I were a pie, divided.

I've gotten soft. My mind is soft, my belly is soft, my writing is soft. Jelly soft, not babyskin soft. Contentment will do that to a person if they're not careful. Contentment and allowing oneself to age too long too comfortably. Because along with this softness, has also come its reverse. Certain beliefs, certain ways of thinking have begun to calcify in my mind. I still enjoy the unknown, but I've never been this afraid of losing myself to it. At the same time, as though the nature of everything is to always be in complete contradiction to itself, it's clear that the impossibility of my getting lost (in Atlanta) has made it almost a certainty.

Persephone

I've always enjoyed pomegranates. perhaps I'm just drawn to disaster. to inevitability. everybody leaves if they get the chance. I wonder who and where I will be leaving from or returning to next fall. a new season has come to Atlanta, as surprising as ever. I've begun knitting. it's easy to appreciate bead-work and lace in Spring. the dogwoods have come alive so many other blossoming trees.

I was sitting on the front porch, sock monkey flannel pajamas, watching the storm roll in. I've always lived close to a highway or railroad. trains are sentimental (who doesn't enjoy the passing of a train?), but no one ever told me I would grow to love the sound of the highway. a poor-man's substitute for living by the beach.

there's a tornardo in the city and I'm easily swept away. I don't understand love. a night in Chicago. so much time to have passed. this was in 2005, a week before my marriage. I was there for a conference. I think I told you about it, the one where I was massively impressive?

my sister met us at our hotel. we had dinner at the navy pier. the ferris wheel climbed its great height. none of us could deny its beauty. the city spread before us and (I shit you not) fireworks went off as we reached its apex. lake michigan. the fairground swings. I suggest leaving your shoes behind. round and round bare feet and buildings spinning. I've never written about it. I have to say it was one of my happier moments.

and of course the blues bar we ended up at. I was a hoochie-cootchie woman. these past months I've had a crash course in embarrassment. bit of a light weight. but that night was absolute abandon. I may never be myself again. that night I was beautiful for sure.

does it ever mean as much to others as it does to you? I think not, but I digress.

grown up before your eyes a city

a black and white photo of Ponce takes its place

elsewhere or if not trees my ficus will come with me.

some ties just will not tie (before we leave)

a paper rose twisted, smelling of lavender, coming undone.

the day I carried it home on my lap. atlanta

a self-portrait. your reds, yellows and browns

dream in turquoise hoping. everything will happen

Dancing at the Righteous Room

Somewhere it is written, people are supposed to be sad when something breaks. If you accept this without question, you're missing out. There is some utility and joy to be found, even in broken things, if one is only open to it. Loss is a poor excuse for sadness, and an even poorer excuse for lack of creativity and imagination.

This is how, despite our great loss, we found ourselves dancing to the Smiths in an almost-empty bar in the middle of the day. How appropriate, how phoenix-like, how poetic - our voices rising in unison to the chorus, "why do I give valuable time to people who don't care if I live or die."

Together we can stamp out world hunger, trigger events that will eventually lead to world peace, tip the scales of unhappiness in the universe and replace thousands of haters with lovers. Together we can do all this. You and I. Cannot be replaced, dear. Not with sadness.

Left

there was this one time. yes, we were in the mountains. that old antebellum bed and breakfast with the two great oaks out front. it was damp the evening we drove in. and cold. I could see your breath and you could see mine. we brought up your cd player. mississippi john hurt in the low-light. candy man. stepping on each-other's feet. we woke that morning. two mugs of coffee settled into rocking chairs. drops of water on the tin roof. looking out, we sensed a rightness. in everything. accepted what it offered. the left hand of the future not yet having pointed us away.

the thirteenth

I have a token in my pocket worth three mints or three packets of hi-c in the psychiatric ward of Grady Hospital. Five days ago that building was just part of the skyline to me. Atlanta keeps offering up new views. I'll only thank it for the privilege if it keeps my friend off the streets.

I've always believed, stubbornly, that my love could change things - that it's strong enough, pure enough. I must be either extremely naive, egotistical, or weak.

shutters on the fifth floor

Out the window a man sits on the roof of a tall building in downtown Atlanta. He smokes a cigarette, fidgets, stands up, puts his hands in his pockets, sits back down again. A MARTA train slides past in the distance. Grady Hospital. Clouds in the sky. He looks around.

What does the heart see?
What does it tell itself?

It paces. Shifts its weight, listlessly, from one foot to the other. Believes itself alone.

It doesn't seem right that the world should go on.

My fingernails continue to grow.
Books, t-shirts, CDs are settling into
different shelves, oblivious.
To them it was a move like any other.

When disaster strikes
(the eruption of Mount Vesuvius)
it doesn’t seem right that the world go on-

the expression on the face of our hearts should remain
unchanged from the moment it happened,
our hands still busy with the washing of the day.

bitch

I kept the door open last night while I worked on my art project. I caught the attention of a stray when I first came in. I, on the balcony, she on the ground. We considered each other. It's always been fascinating to me how animals know to look you in the eye. After inching herself closer, she finally came to my door. I gave her scraps of chicken. She ate and dozed in the doorway. I've felt a connection to strays. The black bitch of Mason Avenue, her used-up tits hanging grotesquely. The skinny dog I left on the shores of Valdivia. And this cat. We have an understanding - them and me. I know how not to scare them, myself being fearful.

how to disappear completely

What the heat has to teach my body - its broken water mains and stagnant pools - with enough heat you could dry up either of these. With fire.

Thanks to a recent lack of air conditioning, I've begun to come to terms with my sweat. I would rhapsodize about why sweat is beautiful; how it's one out of thousands of ways the oceans we contain manifests itself, how we sweat in the midst of pain, of joyfulness, of lust,

but I'm mostly interested in its application to problems. When we say we have to "work out" a problem, we usually mean we're going to think it through. Perhaps some solutions literally require working out - work that is evident only as it appears in beads on the upper lip or forehead.

With this thought in mind, I enjoin myself and others to begin again the hardest work. (I don't have to tell you what it is because you know.)

A humble offering of our water and salt to the fire of recognition, maybe the god of us water-creatures will notice and take pity.