Unfastened

Updates Long Overdue June 10, 2008

In January, Mario and I moved to Cinnamon Path (1406A to be exact, zip code 78704), the street name much to his chagrin. When I praise our sweet and spicy locale, he threatens to get a P.O. Box ☺ At any rate, we’re enjoying our half a duplex, with a red floor, high ceiling, and cheaper rent. We can walk to Maria’s Tacos and the Irie Bean. I’ve been potting plants in our shady yard.Politics dominates our conversations, our social life, our youtube viewing. Last night we danced to Stevie Wonder at Club DeVille, celebrating Obama’s nomination. Mario has worked hard, so hard, that a straw poll last weekend placed him as a likely delegate to the national convention in August. Wow! He’s also been working as the “netroots” technology coordinator for the Travis County Coordinated Campaign.

Not to be outshone, I’ve been working hard too. I’ve almost completed my first year at Badgerdog managing education programs that place writers in the schools. I’ve helped train teachers and organize readings, I’ve managed publications and developed budgets, I’ve served lemonade to student authors and even signed a few autographs. Now we’re gearing up to start our summer writing camps.

On a personal note, I’ve officially begun the summer of turning 40. Vive and I christened it with a trip to the Crossings: yoga, swimming, hiking, and a reiki class. I like to think of this year as my year to stop wandering in the wilderness stubbornly wrestling with god and to arrive at the promised land of self-acceptance ☺

Hope all who read this are well!

More about 40 June 7, 2008

It’s not my own age so much that’s obsessing me, but the historical era. MLK was shot the year I was born. And not long after, Nixon was elected. 40 years: it doesn’t seem a stretch to say, as a nation, we’ve been wandering. The flood, the desert, the desolate pit — choose your biblical metaphor. And now here’s a leader in Barak Obama, a man whose story is the is the story of the hero’s journey, a black man with a Muslim name. Is it too much to dream anything is possible?

Summer 2008 June 6, 2008

Our summer starts with a trip to Dallas for James and Sarah’s wedding, and with a “thumbs up” stop at the Dr. Pepper museum!

40

the land takes one step toward the moving boat
the boat slows and the dead lake from its corners calls
all at once the boy scouts and cans of soup

all at once the birch shimmer real as the sky
our thoughts have brought us lonely so far
the photo filled with primeval green

hides the way we itched and the billowing
mirrored in the water below
displaces the sails above us

speak I will tell myself when I return
after all this time say something

In a Century

~ for Nana

On Cyrpus Hill between your husband and daughter
who died too young, on a cold morning with roses from Jamaica Ave,
in a napkin found folded in your apron pocket,
a bag of Mint Milanos, a few handfuls of dirt

in an unfinished poem, a rented Impala, the blood
you watched rolling through your wrists, all the way to the ocean

in the lights of the bridge, bulbs glowing through sea shells,
silent farmhouse candles, light through the curtains that touched
and left you, the day coming in

there were roses against the mechanic’s garage, rust in the hinges,
paint-chipped concrete, plastic flowers, legs and tables folding, the folding cot,
the broom, the sidewalk’s sway,the window onto the street, the window onto the ocean, the porthole in the ocean liner,
the disappearing village, the long ago

circling, not ever looking to land, the circling of objects
with a bright pen: statue of an angel – face lifted in prayer,
butterflies etched in a block of glass, butterflies clipped
in your granddaughter’s hair

that too long ago, now wandering, adjusting picture frames,
a spill of daisies, an array of paper clips, so close in the city
where everyone came, where the ocean liner and the sidewalk meet,
where the doll in the photo meets the sequined grass

with Whitman walking, or with Joseph Cornell, with the scraps
of many, dispersed not like butterflies or bats from a bridge,
but each alone and roped at the waist

the steam train’s whistle, the turn taken too quickly out of Grand Central,
on TV the last living World War I vet,

you were sleeping in the same bed as your dying sisters, I was spreading
my limbs out like a star, you were pushing your laundry in a wired cart –
the Empire State Building still unbuilt, I was watching the colors spin

for once not mistaken – there is not enough time – through windows I’ve watched
a hundred squirrels climb a hundred branches, never miss a leap

now flushed as a child who cries after the others,
snot landing on my patent leather shoes, and you’re opening the door,
always opening the door, the barley simmers as it always simmers,
mahogany and rain, and the quiet house where we wait for it all to pass