Light, at Thirty-Two, by Michael Blumenthal

It is the first thing God speaks of
when we meet Him, in the good book
of Genesis. And now, I think
I see it all in terms of light:

How, the other day at dusk
on Ossabaw Island, the marsh grass
was the color of the most beautiful hair
I had ever seen, or how—years ago
in the early-dawn light of Montrose Park—
I saw the most ravishing woman
in the world, only to find, hours later
over drinks in a dark bar, that it
wasn't she who was ravishing,
but the light: how it filtered
through the leaves of the magnolia
onto her cheeks, how it turned
her cotton dress to silk, her walk
to a tour-jeté.

And I understood, finally,
what my friend John meant,
twenty years ago, when he said: Love
is keeping the lights on. And I understood
why Matisse and Bonnard and Gauguin
and Cézanne all followed the light:
Because they knew all lovers are equal
in the dark, that light defines beauty
the way longing defines desire, that
everything depends on how light falls
on a seashell, a mouth ... a broken bottle.

And now, I'd like to learn
to follow light wherever it leads me,
never again to say to a woman, YOU
are beautiful, but rather to whisper:
Darling, the way light fell on your hair
This morning when we woke—God,
It was beautiful. Because, if the light is right,
Then the day and the body and the faint pleasures
Waiting at the window ... they too are right.
All things lovely there. As the first poet wrote,
in his first book of poems: Let there be light.

And there is.

Always Unsuitable, by Marge Piercy

She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck.

They were grinning politely and evenly at me.

Unsuitable they smirked. It is true

I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts

too big for the silhouette. She knew

at once that we had sex, lots of it

as if I had strolled into her dining room

in a dirty negligee smelling gamy

smelling fishy and sporting a strawberry

on my neck. I could never charm

the mothers, although the fathers ogled

me. I was exactly what mothers had warned

their songs against. I was quicksand

I was trouble in the afternoon. I was

the alley cat you don't bring home.

I was the dirty book you don't leave out

for your mother to see. I was the center-

fold you masturbate with then discard.

Where I came from, the nights I had wandered

and survived, scared them, and where

I would go they never imagined.

Ah, what you wanted for your sons

were little ladies hatched from the eggs

of pearls like pink and silver lizards

cool, well behaved and impervious

to desire and weather alike. Mostly

that's who they married and left.

Oh, mamas, I would have been your friend.

I would have cooked for you and held you.

I might have rattled the windows

of your sorry marriages, but I would

have loved you better than you know

how to love yourselves, bitter sisters.

Summer Conclusions, Alexandra Ustach

Because I like the hue of his purple shirt

and how it pops against his tanned skin

Because of this slight breeze amongst all the humidity

Because of the wild flowers in the tin pail

Because of the green

Because of flannel on reasonable summer days

Because of wealthy side streets with pretty doors

The Victims, by Sharon Olds

When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and

took it, in silence, all those years and then

kicked you out, suddenly, and her

kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we

grinned inside, the way people grinned when

Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South

Lawn for the last time. We were tickled

to think of your office taken away,

your secretaries taken away,

your lunches with three double bourbons,

your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your

suits back, too, those dark

carcasses hung in your closet, and the black

noses of your shoes with their large pores?

She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it

until we pricked with her for your

annihilation, Father. Now I

pass the bums in doorways, the white

slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their

suits of compressed silt, the stained

flippers of their hands, the underwater

fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the

lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and

took it from them in silence until they had

given it all away and had nothing

left but this.

Facing the Same Thing in New Ways

Months later, in a senseless series of gunfire questions
The boy inquired about me seeing my mother dead.
I darted my eyes at his mother,
Blushing in horror, bombarded, waiting for her to tell him to just shut up,
To stop asking such awful questions, shut up!
I wanted to scream, but we had to be kind about the Autism and we understood,
But why didn’t she take him away?
To stop making me think about my mother’s damn bones.

He confronted me with that bag of bones, as if it were there staring back at me,
Just a plastic bag, and dust, and the few last pieces of bone.
Oh, the difference between the painted face and the dress
Versus the bag and bone
Once my mother? Pulled out to be spilled out?
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Alexandra Ustach

Upon First Meeting You

I’ll tell you right now

that the problem is it’s all autobiographical.

It’s never not, meaning always is.

The lingering past dictates my present day—

My everyday,

my can’t-get-a-cab-whenever-I-need-one-day

my-two-job-two-class-everyday

my-apathetic-want-to-feel-happy-day

my-can’t-feel-aroused-day

my-feel-nothing-about-everything-day.

Clinging to the longing for childhood, still,

my father with his attempt to comfort

states with all his emotional wisdom,

“When you’re a kid it’s easier to not have these

adult feelings of loneliness,”

but I can’t help but wonder when I didn’t feel like this.

When I was five?

Six came too soon and so did

their divorce and at fifteen, her death.

The life and death I can’t get over

may never get over

but hopefully one day the death.

See, even now I’ve let it

climb into this poem.

Uncontrollably me,

The life I wish to emulate and yet be

nothing like.

And upon first meeting you,

if we were to come face-to-face,

I’d never tell you, be polite,

keep it to myself until you ask,

Well what about your mother?

And I usually tell the truth,

but sometimes play along as if

She is still here.

Alexandra Ustach

Orphan Absence , by Vasko Popa

You didn't have a real father

The day you first saw the world within you

Your mother was not at home

It was a mistake you were born

Built like an empty gorge

You smell of absence

Alone you gave birth to yourself

You fidget with rags on fire

Break your heads one after the other

Jump in and out of your mouths

To give youth back to your old mistake

Bend down naked if you can

Down to my last letter

And follow its track

It seems to me my little orphans

That it leads

Into some sort of presence

part of "Heaven's Ring"

Translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry 196-197

Under a Certain Little Star by Wisława Szymborska

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.

I apologize to necessity just in case I'm mistaken.

Let happiness be not angry that I take it as my own.

Let the dead not remember they scarcely smolder in my memory.

I apologize to time for the muchness of the world overlooked per second.

I apologize to old love for regarding the new as the first.

Forgive me, far-off wars, for bringing flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

I apologize to those who cry out of the depths for the minuet-record.

I apologize to people at railway stations for sleeping at five in the morning.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing now and again.

Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing up with a spoonful of water.

And you, O falcon, the same these many years, in that same cage,

forever staring motionless at that self-same spot,

absolve me, even though you are but a stuffed bird.

I apologize to the cut-down tree for the table's four legs.

I apologize to big questions for small answers.

O Truth, do not pay me too much heed.

O Solemnity, be magnanimous unto me.

Endure, mystery of existence, that I pluck out the threads of your train.

Accuse me not, O soul, of possessing you but seldom.

I apologize to everything that I cannot be everywhere.

I apologize to everyone that I cannot be every man and woman.

I know that as long as I live nothing can justify me,

because I myself am an obstacle to myself.

Take it not amiss, O speech, that I borrow weighty words,

and later try hard to make them seem light.

Translated from the Polish by Magnus J. Krynski and Robert A. Maguire

from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry pages 141-142

A Few Things I Like

-L'Aroma Cafe's Fresh Red Iced Tea (Newbury Street). Worth Tasting :)

-Jewelry by Boston artist Adriana Unarreal (sold at Looc boutique), just discovered her pieces and they are amazing!

-Hazelnut Iced Coffees from Breaking New Grounds (if you're ever in Durham or Portsmouth NH)... haven't had a cup better 

-the Italian language, which I'd love to speak more of, but have retained only a bit

-French films and fashion

-The Sartorialist blog

-Interview Magazine

-My guy's music<3 

-Wearing my mother's old jewelry

-Moccasins

-Poetry (especially that of Natasha Tretheway, Qwo-Li Driskill, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Marge Piercy, David Berman, etc)

-Photography Books (especially Richard Avedon's work)

-Story People (cards and artwork)

-Chunky rings from David Yurman

-Pinky Otto dresses (Newbury Street)

-Westerly Beach (RI) and all of it's memories

-Painting, less skill and more expression. I mostly enjoy making cards with my watercolors

"I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong... but now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex." 

-Anne Lammott, Bird by Bird On Life& Writing