Din

minds waiting on tables
dinner on minds, in air

your hands are fish
your mouth is water

your belly pregnant
with fancy flames

tender are vegetables
lost in becoming language

steam stretches branches,
falls thick and everywhere

my voice finds its legs
and children, dinner is here
_

Our Hiatus

Made mad by memories
I said to you: go
you went

I wish you to come
but wait
And all the stares stay

__

This Yellow Springs Life

I thought the highlight of today would be my date at the opera this afternoon with Big A, but as it turned out, it wasn't.

Big A's colleague had two spare tickets to Ira Glass on tour and they were ours for the taking. And we took 'em. And yes, it was awesome to listen to and see Ira Glass, but that wasn't the highlight either.

Saturday morning line up for me and the kids while Big A sleeps off his night shift involves the Farmers' Market, getting to choose their free book at Dark Star, spending a couple of dollars--via birthday gift cert--at Mr. Fubs, and trying to get home to listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me and This American Life over lunch.

As it turns out the opera and Ira were across the street from each other, but I wanted to go with Li'l A. So the highlight was to have Big A let me enjoy the second half of the star gala at the opera by myself while he braved the wilds of the midwest to retrieve the Ira Glass tickets so I could dash home, change out of opera togs, grab some of the pizza that had been delivered, and go back downtown with Li'l A in tow.


_

If It Were my Home

One of my new favorite activities with Li'l A is one reprised from my childhood. I recently copped a free-standing globe from the local Goodwill. It's hopelessly outdated (which explains why I was able to buy it for $ 4.99) but it's a lot of fun to quote a place and have Li'l A scramble to find it. To give him clues and watch him piece it together. To see him figure out that the revolutions of this Arab Spring are connected in the most tangible and environmental way possible--through land.

I can't wait to share the new If It Were My Home feature with him: You can compare your present life with postulated facts and conditions of your life if you had been born in some other country.

_

Car Parable

Driving home.

Baby A: Mama did you know Dada had another car? But one day, when he was sleeping, a thief came and took it away.
[Sudden quiet. The air vibrates with strong, unsaid emotions.]

Me: Did it make you sad, NuNu?

Baby A: No. [Deep breaths.]
It makes me SO angry! If I ever see that thief... [Growling.]

_

The thing about sunshine

The thing about sunshine is not only that I end up smiling at strangers all the time from sheer happiness. Even when I'm just squinting at the sun, the way I bare my teeth makes people think I'm smiling at them, so they smile back.

Net aggregate of smiles: impressive.

Limited Female Body Update, May 2011

Good News: "In an unusual move, Yale University publicly announced that it's finally disciplined Delta Kappa Epsilon, the frat that chanted, "No means yes! Yes means anal!" on campus in October."


Good News: "Media gets somethings right in covering the arrest of IMF head."


Bad News: Bernard-Henri Lévy "one of France's most famed philosophers, a journalist, and a bestselling writer" is, also, a crappy rape apologist. He defended Roman Polanski and now he's speaking up for Dominique Strauss Kahn. 


Naturally, this kind of disregard for women's bodies starts long before Strauss-Kahn walks out of his bathroom naked and proceeds to rape his immigrant, working-class, muslim--so profoundly othered--victim/nemesis. I see it beginning in the early--and lifelong--marking, othering, and targeting of female bodies. I see it in Skechers selling "toning shoes" to kids girls (apparently only female children need to tone) as young as seven. Petition here.