we are cutting Olivia's claws, getting ready for the holiday season, which we hate--everything past Halloween has always been terrifying--by making ourselves into blunt objects in hopes that we are at least snuggly outside when we feel prickly inside. I must confess we are considering All Saints Day as one of our new favorite days; did you know there is a patron saint for apple orchards? Is there a patron saint for calling in sick to Christmas?
Octubre 2005 Archives
and these are the people who indulge me by carrying on... they keep saying "ooooooo", but Martin only likes the candy, Jen just likes the costumes, and Joel could do without any of it.
I love the whole thing. There is a point in the evening when the kids begin to tuck their heads inside pillow cases to check the loot but they don't stop walking, so they run into their parents... tonight there were lots of parents. I saw a dad dressed as Daisy Duck tying a Power Ranger's tennis shoe, and several sets came out walking dogs with wings. One of the trickiest aspects of this holiday is that it isn't anything too exciting that any of this is happening--everyone is expected to participate and yet, if you don't that is all right too. It is as if the whole country is staying out on the porches to throw candy at wierdos without worrying about whether anyone else is playing along.
A Halloween Poem:
Pirate, pirate, Darth Vader, Power Ranger, Dragon.
Pirate, little witch, Tigger, Tigger, polka dot clown.
Spiderman, Superman, Cat.
Angel, Hellboy, princess, princess, firefighter.
I wish I could thank you properly:
Dear trick or treater,
I feel the plastic wet with sweat against your face and commend you for your commitment to candy.
Thank you for your wildest dreams, and wilting legs flopping down the sidewalk.
Your friend,
Abigail
I was found out to be a kinesthetic learner; it was my disregard for driving directions that gave me away. The disappointment surfaces when my outstanding ability to feel my way through things intersects with my shocking disability in operating as if living like this isn't making me insane.
Fall is all changes landing all around, like glitter flecks blowing and then resting. I get a little lost in the spin of everything sometimes.
So I called Boo, who is organizing things again, and here is the resulting poem:
I have a lot of shit
I've got to get rid of it.
there is a word we use for children: shy.
does that mean won't talk? or just won't tell? or hope you won't look at me or hope you won't be listening or cries easily...
or wakes with a start? We don't often use the word for grown ups; we say withdrawn, anti social, quiet, busy, holding back.
and then the light changes and autumn is here and when you search for the sounds to make a word they are already hiding behind the mouth.
um... hum and you can close your mouth and still say the word properly.
so it isn't so difficult to try; welcome to my favorite season.
we arrived at Brenda's book party just as Lynn (Hejinian? it was hard to tell, she had a pair of big brown glasses on) was asking some very difficult questions and I thought of some of you defending theses.
and yet the answers came easily to B.
She said it took six months just to order them and still she thinks of them as marbled, that you can read them in any order. She said each line stands alone (which you will appreciate more when you see how much black and white is on each page.)
When she was done answering all the questions Bob told everyone that we ought to rearrange ourselves so that more people could hear better which was my cue to stand up and step over some very annoying people who thought they had to laugh out loud at every one of B's poetry jokes. And then I realized only natural thing for me to do was sit down under the table with the veggie platters. This is what it is to be a very small poet: you sit under the table among the clearance books and laugh silently, to yourself.
She said the seamstress is knitting together the clouds, a seamstress: a maker against war. A maker against the war, as if, well, a certain other maker is otherwise occupied. (no real pun intended.)
I should tell you that B memorized the 23rd psalm as a child but rewrote it more recently-it is on page 14 and right before she read it she said "The Bible needs a little rewriting as an epic." I congratulated myself for not taking offense when she insists each time I talk to her that I need my MFA, if only so I can rewrite my poems. she wears a cross and a Figa on one chain around her neck, she said the Figa "is kind of a fuck you to the devil."
But the favorite poem today, before I go stand in a long line for Communion Sundaes intinction, is the poem called "White Fir Description" because I usually hate white fir trees but I have heard God's forgiveness is for everyone.
