This weekend I invited friends over to my apartment. Three married couples, one engaged couple, a dating couple, and one half of another dating couple, the woman of which was out of state. And then there was me.
It was funny, and also I wonder when this happened, exactly. My friends are grownups.
I am a grownup?
This weekend I spent an afternoon making a lemon meringue pie and snickerdoodles (from scratch)and another evening altering a sundress I picked up in a thrift store a while back. Baking and sewing. I am a grownup?
o how odd.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Pep Boys
Well.
I've been reading lots of Billy Collins lately.
On the basis of that, here is an apology to anyone who reads this (come to think of it, this also goes out to Billy): the reading is prompting effusions of terrible poetry to come out of me.
more than I've written since--pause for document folder check--last November. None of which I actually posted here, I don't think.
anyway. That's what this blog is for now, a repository for somewhat terrible free verse.
On that note, here's more!
----
Was it inordinately pretentious of me
to sit today in the Pep Boys waiting room,
reading Billy Collins while my oil was being changed?
Wearing aviator sunglasses, and a spring skirt?
I took the sunglasses off when I got inside. Does that
even a little, expiate the bringing of poetry to the auto-shop?
Because there was a quiet rattle of guilt in the back of my mind
like the background noise of the small flickering television
(playing the afternoon soaps and Bonnie Hunt’s talk show)
as I sat and read Nine Horses against the dramatic revelations
(from the soaps) and mechanized clangs and whirs (from the garage).
Yet, too, there was the way in which what I read—
the plainness of the words, the precision of the images—
meshed without a visible seam with the movements of the men behind the half-glass wall, with the up-and-down of two-ton trucks on humming hydraulic hoists.
How I knew the poetry and they knew the cars. How the elements of each were perhaps not so different
From what my initial embarrassment painted them to be.
Yet when the man who took my order poked his head around
and told me that my car was ready, and asked me how my book was,
I couldn’t help sliding it out of sight, and standing up so quickly that I tripped a little,
leaving the waiting room.
I've been reading lots of Billy Collins lately.
On the basis of that, here is an apology to anyone who reads this (come to think of it, this also goes out to Billy): the reading is prompting effusions of terrible poetry to come out of me.
more than I've written since--pause for document folder check--last November. None of which I actually posted here, I don't think.
anyway. That's what this blog is for now, a repository for somewhat terrible free verse.
On that note, here's more!
----
Was it inordinately pretentious of me
to sit today in the Pep Boys waiting room,
reading Billy Collins while my oil was being changed?
Wearing aviator sunglasses, and a spring skirt?
I took the sunglasses off when I got inside. Does that
even a little, expiate the bringing of poetry to the auto-shop?
Because there was a quiet rattle of guilt in the back of my mind
like the background noise of the small flickering television
(playing the afternoon soaps and Bonnie Hunt’s talk show)
as I sat and read Nine Horses against the dramatic revelations
(from the soaps) and mechanized clangs and whirs (from the garage).
Yet, too, there was the way in which what I read—
the plainness of the words, the precision of the images—
meshed without a visible seam with the movements of the men behind the half-glass wall, with the up-and-down of two-ton trucks on humming hydraulic hoists.
How I knew the poetry and they knew the cars. How the elements of each were perhaps not so different
From what my initial embarrassment painted them to be.
Yet when the man who took my order poked his head around
and told me that my car was ready, and asked me how my book was,
I couldn’t help sliding it out of sight, and standing up so quickly that I tripped a little,
leaving the waiting room.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Once up, on a Time
Once up on a Time, one must take care to balance well
Times are slippery things.
Once, up on a Time, I tilted oh-so-slightly
and found myself hanging upside-down
where nothing looked as it ought.
Gravity takes everything, even Times
(though they spiral down slow, if "down" is where they go
indeed), no matter where the balance lies.
But even if it's all the same (it isn't)
it's best to be careful. There was once a place,
up on a Time,
where, they say, just so, you could see forever
and not break your neck. Once. Still? I am unsure.
And it's not so easy, you know,
to get back up on a Time
that has once spun by.
Times are slippery things.
Once, up on a Time, I tilted oh-so-slightly
and found myself hanging upside-down
where nothing looked as it ought.
Gravity takes everything, even Times
(though they spiral down slow, if "down" is where they go
indeed), no matter where the balance lies.
But even if it's all the same (it isn't)
it's best to be careful. There was once a place,
up on a Time,
where, they say, just so, you could see forever
and not break your neck. Once. Still? I am unsure.
And it's not so easy, you know,
to get back up on a Time
that has once spun by.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt
the moon fell tonight
behind the apartment buildings on 81st and Yale,
coasting down smooth at 40 mph,
as I drove down the hill from Harvard.
before the impact that I did not see
it slid behind the tall shadows
that make the hill on Yale higher
maybe, than the moon anticipated.
I thought maybe I'd stop to see
if it would get up again
(it was robust, but looked
a little jaundiced)
but that green arrow steered me imperiously North
and I didn't look back.
If the moon
did not manage to hit the brakes,
if it did not follow my lead, and turn,
I didn't want to see the aftermath:
the lopsided luminous globe bursting on earth
cosmic corpse bleeding
all over those swanky cars and balconies
up at the Vintage,
less devastating than the thought
that it would never race me down the hill again.
Pulling into my own driveway, not a quarter mile from the hill
but less elevated,
I heard no sirens, no disturbances,
leading me to believe that the moon made it okay.
Next time I will take that hill more slowly,
give the moon time
to ease behind the cover of buildings
and crouch there, safe,
until another night.
behind the apartment buildings on 81st and Yale,
coasting down smooth at 40 mph,
as I drove down the hill from Harvard.
before the impact that I did not see
it slid behind the tall shadows
that make the hill on Yale higher
maybe, than the moon anticipated.
I thought maybe I'd stop to see
if it would get up again
(it was robust, but looked
a little jaundiced)
but that green arrow steered me imperiously North
and I didn't look back.
If the moon
did not manage to hit the brakes,
if it did not follow my lead, and turn,
I didn't want to see the aftermath:
the lopsided luminous globe bursting on earth
cosmic corpse bleeding
all over those swanky cars and balconies
up at the Vintage,
less devastating than the thought
that it would never race me down the hill again.
Pulling into my own driveway, not a quarter mile from the hill
but less elevated,
I heard no sirens, no disturbances,
leading me to believe that the moon made it okay.
Next time I will take that hill more slowly,
give the moon time
to ease behind the cover of buildings
and crouch there, safe,
until another night.
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