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  I can’t help but get the beeline

  I mean feeling that Beyoncé tamps herself

  down

  around Jay to not overwhelm the world

  with her ocean I opened

  my mouth and dust plumed out

  years before the petrichor

  I smelled it miles away I just knew

  it I just knew I would also

  PRO-GUN RUSSIAN BOTS FLOOD TWITTER AFTER MASS SHOOTING

  flood

  Bags from the bodega in the canopy of cum

  trees A webbing

  from heaven

  in another town I don’t set

  down

  I don’t call

  home.

  Susan Cain says, “In our culture, snails are not considered valiant animals—we are constantly exhorting people to ‘come out of their shells’—but there’s a lot to be said for taking your home with you wherever you go.”

  Track 15: “Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone” by the Temptations. When yr stories about a person come secondhand. Companion song to “Missing” by Everything But The Girl, both focused on the one who left. I mean I guess papa was resilient in the sense that home was wherever he went, just without his family. The kid’s inheritance after papa died? Alone.

  Oh, the markets in Mexico are amazing Blue is fluid

  and compassionate

  The sky so blue with clouds close and puffy like a child’s drawing

  Here in Guadalajara the market is three stories. We buy smoked

  salmon, limes, and tortillas for a few pesos and it feeds

  us on the road for several days

  The market

  in Acapulco. Here we find strawberry cake

  tamales and deep-fried rice

  tacos sprinkled with sugar. We sleep

  on the beach one night and wake up to find the sand

  covered with rat

  prints

  We’re told they live in the palm

  trees and come out at night

  to scavenge crumbs on the beach. Food stands

  everywhere. My first street

  taco was in Santa Ana, in the Sonoran

  Desert

  Flour tortilla and beef

  Cut up fruit, mostly mangoes and papayas,

  watermelon or pineapple, sprinkled with chili

  powder and fresh lime

  Mmm, pineapple. My favorite breakfast.

  Tamales, tortas, empanadas, fresh helados Vendors line

  the bus and train stations selling through windows Oaxaca,

  food

  food

  food

  Papas fritas tacos Scrambled eggs in chili

  sauce with beans and cheese Tamales wrapped in banana

  leaves, close to the coast the blue gleaming

  coast Frothy hot chocolate Dark

  mole Crispy roasted grasshoppers in the zócalo in Oaxaca

  City. Michoacán the creamy emerald The pyramid

  at Pátzcuaro lake Morelia, colonial city, this wonderful

  family—you see we

  were so tired and broke

  and hungry

  They gave us money for the bus, sent us

  on our way with love. A woman on the crowded

  bus, sleeping child wrapped

  in her brilliant rebozo

  On the road to Acapulco we catch

  a ride with a truck

  driver. We stop at a ramada by the side

  of the road to eat

  The ladies try to teach me to make corn

  tortillas. We laugh so much, the dough, sticking to my hands

  never makes it to the comal. Tepic and Nayarit

  and the river,

  bathing finally.

  Laughing as the crowd gathers on the bridge to watch

  Loco Americanos

  Fresh zest

  after our long walk and the long ride hitchhiking We gather

  our things from the riverbank and move on,

  waving at the crowd. Buenos suerte! They yell

  and wave back. Laughing. Waves lapping Crash A crush

  of bedrock

  to resist the crush of time

  I’m trying over these last years to fiddle-faddle

  my thoughts into the salad spinner for you son

  [in three voices, like a braid: Chelsea Thicket]

  American holly, Ilex opaca; EYE-lex oh-PA-cah

  Emerald Sentinel red cedar, Juniperus virginiana; joo-NIP-er-us ver-jin-ee-AY-nuh

  winter hazel, Corylopsis spicata; kor-i-LOP-sis spi-KAH-ta

  What’s this town called?

  I’m not asking you

  I’m asking them:

  The Ohlone. Costanoan, Muwekma. Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot. Shawnee. Lenni-Lenape. Tocobaga, Mocoso, Pohoy, Uzita. Lumbee, Piscataway, Nacotchtank. Multnomah. Anishinaabe. Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi.

  Dear reader,

  I can’t stand

  in front of the audience

  in Columbus, Ohio, without wondering

  how that last person felt leaving

  the ancestral

  homeland

  for the Indian

  territory

  and You did this to me

  What is the difference between being alone and being

  lonely?

  Alone

  is a physical

  feeling, literal proximity

  Just not being around other bodies

  Lonely

  is a desire, the urge

  for a companion or sympathetic compatibility

  Something on the other side

  of the country. Something shivering

  or like

  feeling incomplete, right?

  (But there are so many people inside me.)

  The Earth Similarity Index (ESI) is a number calculated from an exoplanet’s radius, density, surface temperature, and escape velocity. It ranges from 0 to 1, and any planet above a score of .8 could be considered “Earth-like.” So we find an exo-planet Luyten b. All these classifications telling us how its orbit is hospitable for liquid water, that it likely has a comfortable range of surface temperatures. Potentially a rocky world, around a quiet star not regularly sending out solar flares. Then it turns out his favorite book on OkCupid is Atlas Shrugged. Can’t do it sorry Next planet.

  We’re halfway through three thoroughly dirty martinis that he’s paying for because he’s a lawyer and is like “oh you’re just a writer, I’ve got this” like I’m a hobby, which I suppose writing is for people who don’t do it very well but I digress I’m doing my wet eyes when he takes a look at me like he’s seeing me for the first time and confesses, “my partner and I are looking for a third,” which he’d carefully not mentioned before and it’s like ok girl next planet.

  The Gaia hypothesis offers that climate change and the rise of civilizations are intimately linked, that life has a necessary impact on its environment. That on any planet, anywhere, at any time, “civilization” will always cause an Anthropocene. There will always come a reckoning. Termite ridden ships of planets sinking to the bottom of the rocky sea of the galaxies.

  Let’s consult the oracle

  shall we? Webster’s Dictionary defines

  a fart as an intransitive verb meaning to expel intestinal gas from the anus, often vulgar. From the Middle English ferten, farten; akin to Old High German (not unlike the dude I blew at the abandoned park in Prenzlauer Berg) Ferzan, to break wind. Old Norse freta, Greek perdesthai, Sanskrit pardate, he breaks wind. First known use: 13th century.

  I’m pardating all over

  this Virgin America Metro

  North Port Authority What can I say

  there’s something about a man 6'6 and over

  that makes me want to confess my guts

  out all the feelings normally lock-

  and-car-keyed in the boot

  of my body, like some kind of common lover

  It’s deeply whatever I eat

 
another banana w/bullseye eyes trained on the thighs

  of his face

  by which I mean his eyes Nursery Web Spiders

  Pisaura mirabilis

  in southern Europe grow in the summer,

  hibernate in winter, reach adulthood in spring,

  reproduce and then die

  ORLANDO POLICE TESTING AMAZON’S REAL-TIME FACIAL RECOGNITION

  in the fall During mating the male presents some nummy nums

  to the female before committing thanatosis,

  aka “playing possum,” to avoid being eaten

  during sex I was like, wouldn’t she just eat him anyway?

  But apparently most predators only want live prey

  (PS: remember when Martin called Cole “Thicky Ricardo”?)

  Some things you prefer to do

  alone

  like shit. Some things you prefer

  to be appreciated

  Like a fart

  I mean wit Accidentally

  typo’d “author” to “authot” so guess I’m an au-thot now

  Track 16: “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams. No comment.

  This is going to sound like an inelegant

  complaint but I’ve grown road weary khaki thin

  sleeveless hooded t-shirt city made of strangers

  Strange woodgrain shapes in the shadowy penis

  of the city night Everyone

  I see these days

  is someone I’ve known for 20 minutes

  which frankly isn’t enough

  time

  to take off the strings, to stop tap

  dancing along a joke

  or an anecdote

  Honestly what do you expect? I’m not saying yr broken but I’m saying you’ve fragmented The compartments you’ve created to hold the different parts of yourself leave you fully jigsaw’d YES the standard of the ancestors is high, but they take their cue from you Imagine a yellow light around you This is a light of your making The ancestors have gifted your hands with the contours of words bursting from your finger ends It sounds Dr. John says, putting down his notebook to buzz in the next appointment, like you don’t trust yourself

  Shark in the sea

  an approximation

  Effigy

  a series of gels Chris Kraus crisscrossing Kriss

  Kross’ll make you jump, jump Palimpsest

  style until

  a version

  of my color stands

  in line behind you at the Boston

  Market in the college town

  at the bookstore

  in the city

  where the only other thing I’ve seen is the airport and the backseat and the backhand of waiting to red eye check-in on zero sleep

  See, this all sounds like an inelegant

  complaint, “inelegant,”

  which itself is a stubby snout

  of a word. The bombs in Austin

  and Flint water

  keeps

  comin

  I had just crept into a warm robe, from the memory of a warm bath in the warm NDN casino hotel room on an unseasonably cold day, splayed on the still-made light lavender-grey queen, just me and the tine of a personal cheese pie and a Vinho Verde robotically clicking thru late night cable TV pundit comedians and reality housewives when Wilkes facetimes me and it’s so jarring I immediately reject and text her “wtf FACEtime? are u actively trying to torpedo this frondship?” “Ask Siri where’s hell, and go there” she shoots back a smooth 12 minutes later. “That was a tote bag dial” and even so, I’m freaking delighted out of my gourd. I got it, the life I wanted. Leapfrogging gig to gig not worried if I’m gonna make rent—a profesh yarn-spinner. I just wish

  my friends cd be here.

  My mom is the one who got me into The Cranberries in the first place, which makes me very cool. We converted our garage into an art studio where she’d turn paintings and sculptures into sound installations to the tune of “Hollywood” off To the Faithful Departed or “How” off Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We. It’s no wonder she loved all these songs about love and breakups and like refugees and the ozone layer but then again the acorn doesn’t fall too far from the oak tree

  Cranberries, of the subgenus Oxy-CO-ccus of the genus Vax-IN-ium, in North America probably refers to Vaccinium mac-ro-CAR-pon. The day I read about Dolores O’Riordan’s death the songs all come back like a bullet the songs I haven’t listened to since my parents split up and my mom would lock herself in the studio blaring the songs so loud you can’t think of anything else and I’d crumple in the frame, cheek flush

  against the other side of her closed door

  [in three voices, like a braid: Meadow Walk]

  purple moor grass, Molinia caerulea; mo-LEE-nee-uh cuh-ROO-lee-uh

  Korean feather-reed grass, Calamagrostis brachytricha; cally-ma-GROSS-tuss brack-ee-TRY-ka

  bright yellow fernleaf yarrow, Achillea filipendulina; ack-uh-LEE-uh fill-uh-pen-doo-LINE-uh

  Listening to a podcast on malnutrition

  at the Whole Foods

  hashtag late stage capitalism

  [in three voices, like a braid: Flyover]

  bigleaf magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla; magnolia macro-FYE-luh

  umbrella magnolia, Magnolia tripetala; magnolia try-PET-ah-luh

  sweetbay magnolia, Magnolia virginiana; magnolia vur-jin-ee-AY-nuh

  “Ben Affleck’s Massive Back Tattoo Mocked”

  lol, good one CNN. Who cares about the “president’s” unconstitutional shenanigans and the NDAs and the NRAs? We’re talking Ben Affleck’s back

  IS ***** GIVING AUTHORITARIANISM A BAD NAME?

  Track 17: “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young. Focus on the part where he sings about dreaming the night away. Imparting the listener to come closer. I have something I want to say, the throat clearing of tradition. Is everyone under the impression that this is a romantic song? It’s such a perennial wedding jam but isn’t it about remembering someone who died or at least broke up with you? “I loved you with all my heart”?

  I’m on one of those Twitter

  chains (brace yourself for some annoying,

  thoroughly modern love-in-the-time-of-apps bullcrap)

  something like “Describe Yourself in an Album Cover,”

  someone tags me and ten

  people

  and Leo

  which is the first time I’ve seen his

  screenname since before we broke

  up and there’s something like a thrill

  that also feels arthritic

  and like nostalgia

  like a creepy nostalgia

  the way a harpsichord sounds

  but also like a safety of loving someone without condition

  until the condition comes

  by which I mean DEEPLY CONFUSING

  Track 18: “Crazy” by Seal. Now this song is bombast. But it’s true. You have to try. You’re not getting a thing by cooping up yr actions, Teebs. Word to the thighs. Also is this or is this not about an elder doing drugs for the first time asking for a friend

  but then Leo likes my

  response and a few other of my tweets

  and then we’re watching each other’s Instagram stories

  again and he winds up in my DMs

  making one of his dumb puns

  about that really popular gay

  movie and then we’re lobbing

  them back and forth almost like a sports metaphor

  if I didn’t find sports metaphors so disgusting

  and it’s friendly

  but not flirty

  not suggestive

  but suggesting something

  new

  in a way that makes me think of the possibilities of jagged spring

  [in three voices, like a braid: Wildflower Field & Radial Plantings]

  prairie sage, Salvia azurea;

  tall tickseed, Coreopsis tripteris;

  willowl
eaf sunflower, Helianthus salicifolius

  I guess this is a dirge

  to the future I thought we could have

  Not all plants were meant to grow together

  in the same microclimate. Some things grow apart instead.

  Heat is a vital broker between separate things. Yes, don’t let it burn. But also, don’t let it fade.

  Recognize attraction without pathologizing each other: We tried. Everything. Both of us, hard. I’m on the other side of another closed door but I know what the room looks like and I don’t need to be in there. The train stopped running. Interstate trucking, global air travel, containerized shipping left the hanging train hanging

  Track 19: “Up the Ladder to the Roof” by The Supremes. This must have stuck in Diana’s craw bc this got famous after she left but I digress. The wonder of being closer to the sky. The heavens. You don’t actually see them that much better being higher tbh I mean if that’s the conceit I would say get out of the city to see heaven much better but that’s too wordy I guess. Shut off the light to see the lights.

  And even there, to have engines of appetites in a city in a state in a nation in a world in a solar system in a galaxy in a universe where the only constant is change—body roll with the punches and the punchlines and the I can’t stand the rains. Yes, our High Line stopped running, but it didn’t go away

  We bust

  the olives before shaving meat sleeves

  from its pit. I can feel the chili seeds

  from the backseat

  of the maroon Honda in Santa Fe 25 years ago.

  The ubiquity of garlic

  breath.

  I’m obsessed with softening, the going in between.

  Dear Leo I mean dear reader

  sigh

  I still indulge wisps of the thought process

  that leads me to cut in front of him in line

  in my cow skull mind Bratty flirt getting him rock

  hard w/even the slightest denim swipe against his zip fly

  “Fuck,” he’d say, growling into my neck.

  In the park not far from where we first met, in the seats by the popsicle stand. Blackberry ones were the best. Mango, second to the best. Coconut was trash. “I think you want to be with someone, so clearly so deep. It just doesn’t feel like you want to be with me.” Leo looked up at me full Eeyore face. “I been thinkin the same thing.”

  You’re a shade

  You mince the length of the sidewalk with me,

  sit where I sit, on the sectional

  or on the jet plane

  and someday you peel from me like a rind