the pansy felt like sticky baby earlobes and I can't imagine it will last long next to the dusty succulents on our windowsill. but we also placed this photo of her on our altar. it occurs to me--thanks to michelle puckett--altar as my layered catholic buddhist poet family storied shadow box, a place to place small things and make large changes. to alter the shape of reality and how that shape abides and allows new/re-integrates old (bodies) spaces.
a walk up polk street, women in green short-shorts and bobbling felt antenna. apparently st. patricks day parade spill over from market street. a thousand bougie dogs chatting over organic roasts. robot chicken in the picture window where The Polk-a-Dpt used to be. 30 dollars on a tiny pie and cowgirl creamery nettle cheese. still have not given up on my original relationship to polk street. the sexual charge of the glowing computer stations in Quetzal.
those days. which strangely, amazingly, came up in conversation with Kate Robinson. i met her there to get acquainted, as part of us having been paired up for the Mills College Professional Development Program for Poets. premise being, i am the real-life example post-MFA, but really... lovely involutions of the pairing. as i am still developing a poetic profession. which is everything, making the map from the inside, instead of a separate aerial view. (thanks kate, for this schematic.) and we agreed we would probably be happy if we never published anything and she said, "when I finish something, I just want to tear it up and start again, because it is the process I am interested in" i admire that so hugely. other things discussed: amputee fetishism, fibonacci numbers, no more boring poetry, how can social realism prose hold a form, with holes.
