old poems,

new poems,

poems i forgot to write.

poems i left behind,

poems i brought with me.

the only ones i care about now

are the ones about you.

musings on the sun

christina perneta, noor hindi, vincent van gogh, jeanette winterson, zinaida vysota docenko, anne sexton, olga kos, khalil gibran

Comme des Garçons Poem T-Shirt (2001) Designed By: Junya Watanabe

Reginald Dwayne Betts, from Felon: Poems; "Behind Yellow Tape"

[Text ID: All the stories I keep to myself tell how / violence broke & made me,]

Czesław Miłosz, from “Yellow Bicycle.”

my dear, my perfect darling my love, my one and only my yellow tulip. i have picked up a small case, watson.

what is it?

i’m buying you some diphylleia. something trivial, nothing to interest you. i’ll be going out to look at some flowers.

what for, holmes?

i hold you in my deepest mauve carnations. i believe i will find some clues there.

why haven’t i heard of this case?

it doesn’t exist i am lying i am making you a a mulberry i didn’t think it would interest you, watson.

hmm. well, you must tell me about it later.

i cannot you would hate me i cannot bear that a daffodil. of course.

what particularly about flowers?

shit shit shit shit a purple hyacinth. flower language.

hmm.

he knows he knows he cannot know how would he clovenlip toadflax. mm. i will see you.

don’t be late for dinner.

I don't submit many poems for publication, but I am truly delighted that this old piece found a home in a beautiful volume of Prairie Schooner. I wrote this in April 2016, when I was re-emerging from the most deadening period of my life. As much as this poem, on the surface, is about heartbreak, it is much more about the gift of opening myself once again to communion with others and communion with the mystery of our fragile, interconnected world. The person I wrote this for took me by the hand and--with gentleness and understanding--helped me put aside weariness and remember that the world was a place that could still surprise me with a beauty that surpasses explanation, that cannot be neatly explained and shut away. Though it's been years since we have spoken, I am forever grateful for him.

And, as spring quickens in New York City, I am grateful once more to reflect on all I would have missed if I had not made it through the gauntlet of 2015. I would never have met my cat (and love of my life) Willa who wakes me each morning by wildly purring, head butting me like a baby goat, and nibbling my cheeks and nose because she’s just so happy to see me; hiked on Orcas Island with Michael and found a surprise lake which we named Lake Ineffable (because no name was beautiful enough for it) where we stripped off our clothes and swam and embraced each other, blissfully alone and dazed by superfluous beauty; found out that George Washington National Forest may have more fireflies than anywhere in the world; grown into my vocation as a social worker and been blessed to sit in communion with my clients for eight years; built a beautiful relationship with my parents based on mutual respect, affinity, and humor; seen my friends’ babies discover the world; slept beneath a meteor shower sky on a NYC beach in the arms of a man I was suddenly and entirely falling in love with; discovered Eric Rohmer; discovered Wim Wenders;  moved to Laramie, Wyoming where everything looks like the abandoned set of a Western film where the paint has flaked off but he extras are still wandering around despondently; moved to Montana where I remembered that I am part of the whole, not just a body in passing; woke in Missoula to the cold air seeping through my window—still half in a dream of Oregon in October—and stirred, deliciously alert beside the boy I loved, craning toward his sleepy, freckled back, to clutch him closer, the brisk quickening of fall making my body a new thing—wild and tender and alive; swam naked in the ocean; had the chance to work with my best friends and fall even more in love with the people they are based off the kindness they showed our clients; had my best friends, in turn, respect and love me more based of what they saw me showing clients; sat by a lake at night and felt an earthquake swell like a heartbeat beneath my body; drove from Missoula to Washington, Ryan’s van weaving through a forest fire zone until we reached the pure, amnesiac sweep of the Pacific; discovered Simone Weil; been, not only forgiven, but embraced by the person I most wronged after six years of estrangement; made up a silly-serious shared mythology with Steven about a vulture God named Hamm who watches over us with a severe equanimity; backpacked through Olympic National Park with Michael and seen and been seen by the strange shaggy haired deer and rabbits who looked at us without fear; discovered Agnes Martin; read poetry with my sage & strange Mara; discovered Olivier Messiaen; discovered Mary Ruefle; discovered Ana Mendieta; realized that I like the color yellow; moved to New York City; discovered Carol Rama; learned how to enjoy dancing to music other than punk rock; seen a moose in the wild; spent a summer in that yellow shotgun house with the overgrown yard and the porch overlooking the river where we made dinner each night listening to recordings of bird calls; experienced the delights of solitary sunbathing on Brooklyn roofs; encountered places named Hellgate, Bitterroot, and Rattlesnake; recited The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock at 3 AM, wading in the waters of the Long Island Sound; realized I am capable of keeping houseplants alive; heard the thrumming ecstasy of the grouse's wings; learned the name of those clustered, mustard-colored flowers that grow on the Oregon coast; grew grateful for beauty again, remembering the world is not a place I can neatly explain, cannot fold in linen and shut in a drawer; and, most of all, remembered the daily ways we concede—plainly, without theatrics—to live.

Today I am thankful for those who love me and those who allow me to love them.

sally wen mao mad honey symposium: "yellow fever"

kofi

there is weight

in the space between goodbye

and the other side of the doorway

it hangs dark gray and memories

and bicolored wood floors

chairs facing each other

windows that don't lead outside

there is a string

tying us together

pulling me closer and pulling me under

i stumble over my feet

i stumble over our past that makes sense

and the blank

future

there is nothing i can make with this

there is so much i have built around this

feeling

that only belongs to me

a palace with an empty throne

sandcastles swept away by the sea

stairways lead to rooms on fire

and keep out signs mean anything but

and streetlamp pictures are taken

as if you would see them

and poems are written the same

and i want

to build a moment

in a parking lot at night

i want something to remember

i want a vestige of flight

i want wings so i can burn them

i want smoke so i can blow it away

i want something to hold onto

i want to forget my own name

i want wings so i can burn them

and i need you so you can burn me

musings on sunflowers  

Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh /  DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW, Noor Hindi    

˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗    

My homescreen is everything 💗

Love’s Greeting (c. 1861) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), oil on panel, 57 x 61 cm, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

It's embarrassing sometimes, when the wanting shows. How I need someone's hands on mine. How I just want a soft voice to call me out of sleep, somebody to drink coffee with while the sun wakes up. I'm so good at being alone until I remember what it's like to be loved and then I'm aching all over again, then I'm calling you up in the middle of the day and asking for something impossible [ couldn't you come over ? ]. Couldn't you pretend like I'm not altogether too much, just for this one afternoon ?

A.Y. [there is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires.]

here's a little poem i wrote about my best friend for my silly little collection