Flow

Amma, my mom, teases me about living in a village because her family has been city folk for over three generations. (Her grandfathers--her actual, biological grandfather and his younger brother--ran away from their new stepmother to make their fortunes as diamond merchants and to write poetry in Madras. Childhood memories of visits to any jeweler in the city is replete with Amma's oh-so-casual mention of the Jalagam name resulting in a flurry of special treatment.)

But on a day like today when Big A and I needed to talk through stuff, I'm glad I live in this village and across from Glen Helen. Talking about how we spend our free time and what social commitments I make on our collective behalf--which we really needed to do--is so much easier when I'm concentrating on how to navigate stepping stones across a waterlogged creek rather than on how to word watertight demands.

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The Graduate (Li'l A)

Li'l A is off to conquer middle school! Also seen: ribbons on hardware won for being all round awesome (blue) and for being on the student council (white).

Super Short Summary: Li'l A sat in the first row with his best friend DD; Baby A delighted in being able to nab two pieces of cake; Big A scoffed at the idea of a graduation ceremony for elementary school, but came anyway; I'm sure he secretly wished he hadn't because I cried about four million times.

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Lifestyle

(Memorial Day)
This planet now pills
every star's still sequins
entrails of every flight
bark asylum, loss--
show tasseled claws

Shredding underworlds
serve cold, stale smoke +
streetlight-plastered night.
There's sensing I will die
in driving, airports, absence.

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AN(T)IMUS

Now that everyone's
looking, let's say it:
Ants know nothing
they travel illegibly

you're a windmill
fielding vacuums
while they prowl
decompositional

splicing suburbia,
picnics; where
I like when you lie
(above me, hovering)

love scissored restless
wake up happy wake up
margins of repeated dying
sun our un-tempered hope.

________________
Note: Not so much a poem about Memorial Day festivities as the memory of Big A's complaints about being "over-scheduled" although he attended just one of yesterday's three planned events. (The kids and I went to all three. Ha.) We'll have to find some way to accommodate my need for variety and his need for quiet.

Home Theater

Just dropped the kids off at the grandparents, who are bravely taking them to see the local production of 42nd Street.

Before they left, both brats had accused me of cruelty... to their toys.

I put Baby A's plastic dragon in the sink, and she cried through my explanation that having dropped him in dog poop, we owed him a bath. "But you just don't understand," she spluttered, "he can't swim; you're dying [killing] him."

Li'l A's accusation was a little more sophisticated. I'd arbitrarily taken the skeleton animal he won at the fair and given it to Baby A because she was whiiiiiiining to see it. "You're like a slave master," he smirked, "you took my baby and gave it someone else."

Your actors have been:

Eating People is Wrong

I have absolutely nothing against Gwyneth Paltrow--Shakespeare in Love may have even been my favorite movie for a while (because really, how many movies are made for Eng. Litt. people?!).

But this month, when my subscription (thanks, friend L!) showed up, I knew I couldn't leave it out on the kitchen table the way I usually do with Bon Appetit's gorgeous food porn. This month, Gwyneth Paltrow is on the cover.

Not saying Gwyneth isn't gorgeous, just saying I don't want to eat her face. I'm sure she too would encourage that sentiment.

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Back on Air

And these prayers are to myself
these dreams are drunk alone

subtract addresses from needs
and add goodbyes to arrivals

I lived in music once
I talked once like air

fears were small rooms
thoughts huge and cirrus

Just now all type is white
on paper black with desire

some words part my lips, crawl
out, dazed as new butterflies.

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