Give us this day our daily produce

Smiling at all the fruit and veg in my office today. 

I didn't accept the tomatoes 

'cos we have lots of them fruiting at home.

The apple is my favorite

it makes me feel like a real teacher.

_

Amanda, Michelle, Gina

They're saying the man who kept the three girls imprisoned in Cleveland committed suicide. I wonder if after being imprisoned himself, he realized what a horrible thing he'd done and offed himself out of remorse.

Far away from everything related, even I have nightmares about the whole thing. In one, I was crouched on the floor at the grocery store for something on a low shelf and overheard someone calculating aloud how big a cage to contain me would have to be.

If the nightmares ever subside, I'll get to smile at my friend J Castro's disgusted FB update when the news broke: "After years of being asked if I was related to Fidel, now this."

Yes; I was in Cleveland over the weekend. No; I had nothing to do with it.

God.

_

Dancing the Night Away

Kavitha-Neil's Wedding/

Last party of the summer vacation

Weekend with Grandparents Portrait (2)

With Maama-Thatha

Horseshoe Park, Cleveland

Weekend with Grandparents Portrait (1)

 Martinez Family Picnic
Salt River Park, Shepherd

Perspective

These two--together all day

playing, arguing in whispers, 

feeding, walking the puppy,

assembling their own lunches, 

making time for me to work 

in my corner of the room.

Sometimes, I take pictures on my phone.

(But they all face the same way.)

SO Big!

The "Babies" are getting taller...

Kid's got flair...

Contrast my timid wave to her flourish :)

Gone Fishing...

_

Almost Home (Heathrow)

Was able to get this photo for the kids 

and so I guess one could say 

it wasn't a complete waste of a trip.

_

Tag

It's been ages since I actually lived here. 

Yet although I'm here on a visit myself,

I walk past people on Broad Street and

catch myself thinking--"Those tourists!"

Hot and Cold

I could title this picture, "Oh, England!"

Or: "Old Advisor, New Advisor"

Can I ask for some moderation?

I'd forgo the mixer.

_

(I need a) Smile

At blogged about this a long time ago.

He titled it Paul Simon Enjoys Subs:

(In case you can't read it, it says:

"The words of the prophets are written on the Subway (sic) walls."

So meta.)

Self Doubt

This city is old, has high expectations. 

It all feels just as overwhelming and 

impossible as it did ten years ago. 

Still... I can bump into more people 

I (used to) know here 

than in the city where 

I actually live now.

_

Anyone's Son

Anyone's Son
by Tara Skurtu

--for the family of Trayvon Martin

This poem wants to write itself backwards.
Wishes it were born memory instead, skipping

time like a record needle stuck on the line
of your last second. You sit up. Brush not blood,

but dirt from your chest. You sit up. You're in bed.
Bad dream. Back to sleep. You sit up. Rise and shine.

Good morning. This is the poem of a people united
in the uniform of your last day. Pockets full

of candy, hooded sweatshirt, sweet tea. This poem
wants to stand its ground, silence force

with simple words, pray you alive, anyone's
son—tall boy, eye-smile, walk on home.

_

Train

He's just a little taller and faster than I am. 

It's kind of perfect for interval training.

I walk fast and then have to run to catch up...

Repeat for six miles through the fields.

About Justice

From Angry Black Bitch, a poetic, impassioned, and Homi Bhabha-like meditation on "rage face" and privilege.

Which brings me back to Rage Face with that shotgun…and his outrage over the very thought of someone taking his gun…and the thousands upon thousands of folks who think he did a great thing because they share his outrage.
His outrage that someone may take his gun.
May take someone’s son.
Could take his gun.
Could take someone’s son.
Are thinking about taking his gun.
Are thinking about taking someone’s son.
In a country where some can load a shotgun two blocks from the Capitol without comment while others get shot for the crime of walking home after buying snacks.

_

O.K. Camp

A couple of weeks ago, the kids were finally at the eco-camps they'd been talking about for about two months. It was kind of a big deal/special year since it was going to be the last year At (14) could go before he aged out and the first time Nu (5) would be old enough to go.

They had a nice beginning to the week, bumping into each other in the cafe, being assigned as buddies (completely randomly, per Nu ;), and then midweek this happened.

On Thursday, deputies, law enforcement officers and a K-9 unit from several area agencies searched the park, the Glen Helen Education Center on State Route 343 and neighboring areas, sheriff’s Maj. Eric Spicer said. The 1,000-acre nature preserve is an entity of the college, located adjacent to the campus.The gunman was spotted near the Outdoor Education Center at Glen Helen at about 11:30 a.m. According to a witness there, the man approached a dorm and when a counselor asked him to leave, the man displayed a gun.“He more or less implied and made a menacing statement to them,” Spicer said. 

It turns out now that the college-aged counsellor had made the whole thing up. And everyone's angry because it was horrifying and also what a waste of tax-payer resource$, etc, etc.

I'm mostly okay with it. Because unlike the nightmares I've had since Newtown, this one case--this one very special case involving my very own children--seemed to have ended well: there was a gunman around the kids; no one got hurt. If we can't prevent men with guns showing up at kids' schools and camps, this should be the way it always ends.

Or the gunmen can be totally imaginary--I'm okay with that too; I could sleep through that.

_

Individual

Oftentimes,
there are four of us
each one abandoned
in this small, hot town

And usually,
the night is so thick
I automatically begin
waving words in the air

Shuffling them
sorting, pantomiming
their sad, wandering odds
until they fall away, decay...

-

Sunrise

The twentieth goose is lucky
lit against the velvet moss
that cushions under-river
from summer's rain of light

*

The meticulous discipline
of my rising heartbeat
nuzzles bright and attentive,
guides dust and goslings

*

To a paraphrase of the sun
one day, ruined, diurnal--
winging an elegy for those
who die without signature


_

Ain't Nothing but a Bee Sting

Have you ever filled a rubber glove with liquid until it distended to a point where it kinda looked like a cow's udder?

Like this:

Okay, then. 

That's how my right hand looks now, only patchier and purpley-er. I've been stung by bees before, so I don't know why my body's over reacting this time. I started taking ibuprofen this morning after being assured by Big A that no one would think I was being a wuss about pain and that it would actually help with the inflammation.

And then, in the middle of conversation that encompassed my puffy hand and the corn puffs I was eating in bed, he called me "Puffy" instead of "Puppy." Oi.

_

Déjà vu / Rétrospective

I remember sitting in an undergraduate poetry class, not really paying attention, wondering if my acceptance and scholarship letters would come that day, watching the treetops rearing and bucking into the wind and thinking my happiness would be as elemental as theirs.

Of course, there's this:

Coloniality continues, in fact, whenever bright young men and women from all over the world decide to cap off their educations by going on pilgrimage to pinnacles of Western civilization; when they dedicate themselves to the Western canon and walk in the shadows of gothic cathedrals and imperial facades, and learn that this is the good life. 

It continues whenever anyone anywhere in the world walks down a street and sees a billboard on the modern cathedral that is a shopping mall, and sees in that conjunction of power, wealth, and beauty an image of desire. In other words, it happens these days not by the strength of arms or the power of states, but by the captivation of the eyes, the training of the taste, by unwritten rules of thumb – that we all learn everywhere, without even knowing it. Coloniality is far from over: it is all over. It is perhaps the most powerful set of forces in the modern world.

-- 

Skeevy

the personal pronoun
as product name
my, I, you


_

One month ago...

Tongues out!

Old Mess

At hasn't stopped laughing at me yet. 

He said I could stop the computer from taking pictures if I taped something to the camera lens. 

I used clear tape.

_

Snapshots

A wheeling wave
the kids are drenched
swallowing hot, sweaty prayers

Rick teaches them trees
Son of a...? (beech)
We chuckle and shake our heads

At night amidst snores
we count as silence,
diagnose the radiating bloom of calm

__

Scout 1

this puppy is a god

kind and calm

only love

waits for our return

then happy riots

__

Points of the Day

My arms reach across the city
the season of flying
the body travels

Water is a ghost, is everywhere
says the cloud always distant
or dying tragically

The puppy's sighs in the dark
like restless, sweaty prayers
hypnotized and alive

_

The fitness bandwagon...

_

When you're a star, the wars never end (something like that)

Three light sabers...

Attention: V A C A T I O N!

99 Problems... but

Big A is a great feminist partner. He understands my compulsion to make terms as neutral as possible, especially around the children.

One of my early conversations with him (with most people, probably--I'm annoying like that) is the use of terms like "wife" and "husband" and the gendered expectations they set up. How to be a good wife engenders very different responses (usually) from how to be a good husband.  I prefer the idea of being a good partner, a good spouse.

I think it says so much about Big A that he took the irritating (because somewhat infantilizing, dismissive) slogan "Happy wife; happy life" and fixed it. We say, "Happy spouse; happy house."

All this is to establish that Big A was not going to use the word "bitch" in front of the kids at dinner (or ever) when he started off riffing on the Ice-T/Jay-Z line. I wonder what he was going to say. Because this is what happened:

Big A: I got 99 problems, but...
Nu: (Interjecting) That's a lot!
Stares at her family as they collapse in laughter.
Fin.

__

Bob Fletcher Dies at 101; Helped Japanese-Americans (NYT Obit)

How can I not assume that you lived a great life if you die when your numbers need to be counted in three digits and the word "helped" is used to describe you.

Love and gratitude, Mr. Fletcher.


_

Disentanglement

Pompeii, Bombay

It doesn’t matter.

Words once chosen

are places --

I have to go

I can hear all the days coming

and kindnesses to make me cry:

certainties, pinpricks

leprous as promises,

as remembering why

Life is short, redundant, an antidote

From every place: unfold borders,

escape. I know. I know that

loss slows, quickens,

and goes

_

Fanfare

The mouth’s empty cave

Platonic, muscled with truth

Where worry about tickets,

arguments, agreements, tokens

the children are singing anyway

the birds are singing anyway

worlds and words twist just so

the pollen drops careless as scabs

the calm hugs from everyone

their pity spectacular and partial as

discontent dished up at supermarkets

common as sunshine now--and weeping

_

Tales

I've been gone.
Sorry.
These days turn
churn and hurry.

Mornings burn
through fog
stumbling out to pee
(Scout, not me)

Breakfast is just
Cheerios, eggs, vitamin pills
and still takes two kids a total of 80+ minutes to eat
the puppy hoovers everything that's dropped
but eats nothing from his untouched bowl
I give him treats so he can keep growing

I know I'm an irresponsible "dog caregiver."
(It doesn't help anything that I've taken to referring to myself as "mama.")

I steal glimpses of the city as I drop the kids off
I wear my work clothes as a harness
so I'll get to work
(and leave the puppy in his little gated room for at least a few hours)

all alone :/.
And it's not really a room,
just the entryway,
but it's bright and airy,
and nicer than a crate.

And every time I get home he's quiet and fast asleep
but skooched as close
as he can to the gate
and the latch where my hand lingered last* (pictorial footnote below)

He doesn't like his leash and is constantly trying to bite through it
so he mostly runs around without one
so when we're outside I'm doing a lot of puppy carrying
--away from the mellow (bigger) dogs across the street
(who are the enemy--at least according to our young whippersnapper)
and also, he likes to run into the river.
We need a fence to keep him safe
and more cash to make that happen.

I thought Scout was going to sleep by himself at night
so I could get some time when I wasn't being constantly adored me time
yet he ends up in our bedroom every night
because he just sleeps better that way
(otherwise, he feels abandoned?
or may be he's afraid of the dark?)

TL; DR: The puppy's kind of taking over my life

_


* pictorial footnote

I took this picture through the front door

--and perhaps that explains the beautifully surreal reflection on the closet door.

On the third day of puppy...

There was a lot of this

and this

and this

and then antibiotics for bronchitis from the Pet E.R.

(Where embarrassingly for both of us, a student who hadn't turned in her draft of the term paper yet works on the weekends--it felt like weird professor stalkery--Where *is* your paper? *When* will you turn in in?)
_

For Amma

Mother, my diameter
I am yours, your radius.

Gambling into leaf too early
the crocuses are betrayed
frayed on drifts of winter,
sleet, and no daisies
at our feet

All weekend long,

Toronto's lonely songs

their Omni and just me

the same Hindi movies

this time I see alone

Bound to you. Only you.
But found by everyone.

_

Resurrection

With the weather steadying in the 50s, kids seemed to materialize right out of the ground. 

Like zombies except less menacing and so much nicer!

_

Spring Smiles

Two smiles in one frame...

I used to take it for granted, but it's become rarer with teen-and-tween 'tude. 

_

This is how...

I need to put this out there, to counteract Diaz's somewhat simpering performance on The Colbert Report this week, and remember that he's a MacArthur my kind of genius.

(From Diaz's Twitter feed in November 2012

http://twitter.com/JunotDiazDaily/status/268774844273934336)

_

High

The memory of a plane
crawling before flight
the tires tearing grief
a captured sigh of air

the first possibilities
of the night-mare are
gold-tipped at dusk
needy as a pilgrimage

I follow legs of furniture
to the crotches of trees
light bleeding from clouds
coming down, bringing it all down


___

Perhaps it is true. Yesterday, a student blamed his dream--of a gray mold that crawled up his toothbrush--on the Gabriel Garcia Marquez we've been reading in class...

_

So Sari

Unusually for me, I turned up to work in a sari. ( A special sari that my Chelli gave me back in May last year!)

 I took an accidental selfie while I was documenting student PowerPoints, and so I even have proof.

Thanks for the sari, Chells!!

_

Puppy Love

I have Scout the puppy on the brain.

All day, conversations about the SCOTUS decision on marriage equality sounded like "Scout's decision." (Scout is a big advocate of unconditional and unrestrained love.)

Also, I realized today that a few weeks ago I posted a link to an article on Scott Prouty, the Romney 47% videographer (awesome transcript at Shakespeare's Sister), and referred to him as SCOUT Prouty. (I hope Scott won't mind--he shouldn't; Scout doesn't hate anyone, especially people who work hard--you should see how hard he wags his stubby little tail in the video.)

The thing is, we don't even get to meet Scout for two more weeks. (At likes to point out that I have a major case of Internet-fueled love for my surrogate-birthed puppy baby.)

Pictures!

Scout doing his best impression of a potato (at two weeks):

And such a serious fellow today (six weeks):

_

Meanwhile, over on FB...

What can happen when you have one kid on the cusp of high school and the other in kindergarten...
Atul: I need to finish my PowerPoint.
NuNu: I can power point! (pokes him hard)

Like ·  · Promote · Share

• Jake Freeman, Lu J. Rollins, Sarathy Jayakumar and 68 others like this.

If I have to be in the office on a Sunday...

I'm glad I get to giggle at the incongruity of a plant wearing my favorite Horace Mann quote:

Misspeak

Stew
a head
of cabbage garbage
in-certitude
curtained disdain.

Yellow is gold
is lemons
yellow is pages
is journalism
is cold Englishman's lyric

she says
planes, and trains
--not kind to my migraines
it rhymes, write the poem
I say

elastic-electric
forced
forged faked
shudderin' end
ex-tension
_

READ. THIS.

So You're Tired of Hearing About Rape Culture (A Rant)

It starts:

Someone asked me today, “What is ‘rape culture’ anyway? I’m tired of hearing about it.”

Yeah, I hear ya. I’m tired of talking about it. But I’m going to keep talking about it because people like you keep asking that question.

_

Daylight Savings

Clocks: imperiously rude
Hands gesturing for attention
Somehow continuously staring
Yet yawning emptily before you're even done

Any sun soaks you in warm syrupy attention
while nudging you towards the door
tells you she is yours real until
bruises become nightfall

Winds open. It's a hoax.
They close like a bridle.


_

That's a Ten (Ten!)

By Kevin Moore over at Mooretown.

_

Snatch Dispatches

Big A and I went to see a student production of The Vagina Monologues this weekend. It was an amazing production with student-scripted passages and made even better because we were sitting with  two of my work friends who were seeing it for the first time.

What happened: Big A and friends were talking about how they'd read excerpts of The Vagina Monologues before but hadn't really caught the show.

What I dreamed that night: That Big A was telling my friends that he'd read "snatches"of The Vagina Monologues before.

I nearly peed myself from laughing.

_

Vignette

Invisibility
Stands at the street corner
begging from indifference

Lightness
is her weight bearing
down the breath in my chest

_

Mine to Change (Cha-ching)

Nu likes to belt out Metric's Breathing Underwater,  warbling away, all five years old and angsty, substituting her own words at will--including making "mine to change" into "Cha-Ching." Yes, we think she's enormously cute.

So we're good on finding funny kids, but we're having some difficulty with homes. For some reason, we're having difficulty reconciling ourselves to the loss of our old kitchen (up, above) and assimilating to our new current one (down, below--it gets us so down).

_

The Cure

This backbend is the future
tight wire of dreams
warm like dance
step, tip-toe

*
your toenail could tear it,
from some other room
a cough, a prayer
renounces

*
your breath
goes to my brain
your back is turned.
(But arched closer to me.)

_

A Reminder

Little Red Riding Hood visits the office to say it's the weekend and I should take a break.

(So I played the part of the mother, the grandmother, and the wolf-grandmother.)

Little Red Riding Hood wants to replace her comforter with the fuzzy scrap of red blanket she found while we unpacked. It's too small, I say. Perhaps you could use it under your comforter?

She says: Well, that wouldn't work for me.

Not so little...


_

The team that got me to work yesterday...

(One of them did not want me to leave.)

Scout

In order to further test my sanity, we're considering on a waitlist for a puppy.  S/he will be named "Scout." (More n. than v. That is to say, more To Kill a Mockingbird than scouting.)

We're already playacting all the silly stuff that Scout will do and panting down the phone pretending to be Scout. No prizes for guessing who the silly beings truly are.

Zadie Smith reverberates in my brain:

It should be noted that an equally dangerous joy, for many people, is the dog or the cat, relationships with animals being in some sense intensified by guaranteed finitude. You hope to leave this world before your child. You are quite certain your dog will leave before you do. Joy is such a human madness.

_

Tender Obsession

(Tame Impala: Feels Like We Only Go Backwards)
_

Fullness

The day begins
hard, snow-palsied
I contain multitudes
on a to-do list

I get to the office
crank the door
and call my mother
talking to myself

Like the oceans
At 8:30
Regretfulness.
Full of regret.

_

Eulogy

Conscience of the streets
assembled newsheets
stacked against sky

this morning's miracle
blazing tree, burning bush
a touch of frost, a trick of sun.

Before that I stand at the table
some things in my hand
somehow in Chicago

the children call me to them
give me hugs, cheer me up
I apologize to Shirley Chambers

Sorry. So sorry. Sorry.

_

Commit

Like pilgrims
supine, weeping

clothes are planted
like stations

And also like
excuses and bruises

The saddest story
ends again and again

_

Get This (Don't Get That)

It bugs me when people claim that vaccines are controversial or a conspiracy--so it was particularly pleasant to listen to Garrison Keillor sonorously intone Adam Possner's poem as I was taking the kids to school. My favorite moment was when I was trying to explain what Possner meant by the "non-stick headstone" to the 13-year-old, and he was all, "It's Ok, mom--I get it." I gave him a noogie instead of the kiss I wanted to give him.

Myth Dispelled

by Adam Possner

The flu vaccine cannot
give you the flu, I tell him.
It's dead virus, there's
nothing alive about it.
It can't make you sick.
That's a myth.
But if we bury it in
the grassy knoll
of your shoulder,
an inch under the stratum
corneum, as sanctioned by
your signature
in a white-coated ceremony
presided over by
my medical assistant
and then mark the grave
with a temporary
non-stick headstone,
the trivalent spirit
of that vaccine
has a 70 to 90 percent
chance of warding off
the Evil One,
and that's the God's
honest truth.

Power

Squirmy Nu and her dad jockeying for position on the couch:



A: Stay still. You have to listen to me, don't you know I'm the boss?

Nu: YOU stay still. Don't you know that I'm the princess?

_

So... This is Embarrassing

A isn't supposed to drive because of his shattered wrist, and he's out of work while we figure out if he'll recover, but he had to sit in on med student admission interviews nevertheless, so I was driving him to Saginaw. We almost made it to the hospital (after being pulled over once for speeding--but no ticket) when he noticed that I was trying hard to catch my breath but wasn't able to and I noticed that I was getting light headed, nauseous, and headachy in the process.

So A hopped into the driver's seat and we got to the hospital where the interviews were--except A and the kids ended up accompanying me to the E.R. Where it was discovered (just as I had insisted all along), that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I got handed an official diagnosis of acute anxiety and prescription for Xanax--making me the most embarrassingly 1950's cliche of a doctor's wife ever.

Yet--it was scary. And comes at a time when we can least afford additional medical bills. And once I started crying--progressing quite rapidly to sobbing and then wailing--it was impossible to stop even as I was ashamed of myself and trying to stop so the kids needn't see me so completely lose control.

It's been a tough six months or so--two new jobs, all four of us at new schools, and moving to a different state where the skies are frequently grey, not to mention all the other doofus antics we've been up to. But more than the every day stressors, I can't explain how consumed I've been by the Newtown shootings and the New Delhi rape. Every time the kids aren't around, this is what I end up talking to A or friends about. And I took this international by calling my sister at work and my mom first thing in the morning to worry even about things as quotidian as taking my kids to school. And I know it's unhealthy--in the sense that it isn't good for me. But not being able to stop thinking about eleven bullets in a five-year-old's body or wondering how someone can be raped so violently that it requires that their small intestines be surgically removed is probably mentally unhygienic as well.

And that's just where I am.

_

The Book Kids of Mumbai

This made me nostalgic although it is about Mumbai and not Chennai, and although it is about pirated books and not books on resale, and although it is about children on the street rather than quite literate adults. It reminded me of my friends and fellow English grad students Kamal and Christine with whom I spent many hours competitively buying second-hand books from the pavement book sellers of Pycroft Street. And I'm thinking also of the many street sellers (I wonder if the guy at Luz corner still sells) who would take a pescribed book list and rattle off all the titles they did or didn't have.

As the lights turn red at the Haji Ali traffic intersection in Mumbai, the boy slouching against the railings quickly straightens up. Yakub Sheikh is just 12 years old, but he knows he has only 45 seconds to make some money. Holding aloft his wares, he dashes toward a black BMW and in his cracking preteen voice addresses the woman inside: “ ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’?”.... (Don’t tell E. L. James, but the woman in the BMW bought the entire “Fifty Shades” trilogy for the equivalent of $10.) 


_

Bright Futures

I love how brightly dressed the women members of the 113th U.S. Congress are! 

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

And the unprecedented, we-the-people diversity is simply lovely.

From the NYT: As the 113th Congress opens, the Senate and the House are starting to look a little bit more like the people they represent.  The new Congress includes a record number of women (101 across both chambers, counting three nonvoting members), as well as various firsts for the numbers of Latinos and Asians as well as Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. 

_ 

I'm Lost

Today the kids went back to school; it was hard.

It started out being hard because they'd gotten used to 10 a.m. starts and hour-long breakfasts and today was about waking up at 6:30 and getting out of the door by 7:30.

And then I walked Nu to her kindergarten locker and kept saying goodbye and not leaving. I started getting shaky and teary and then it dawned on me that this was their first day back at school since the Newtown massacre. I'd kept the kids from school for three days after that Friday, and then it was Winter break. It "helped" that A had just shattered his wrist and we were ferrying him to assorted surgeries.

Intellectually I knew that this was exceedingly maudlin and irrational and that my kids enjoy (and need!) school. And it was extremely embarrassing. But I'd look around at the crowd of goofy kindergartners milling about at waist-level and the harried, smiling teachers trying to appreciate the kids running up to them en masse to tell her all about their new sweater/hat/toy/lunchbox and kind of lose my sense of proportion.

Finally I ended up calling A who talked me down--first gently, then mockingly--and got me home.


****
In other news, we just started watching Lost. We're only about a decade or so late to that party.

_

New Year

Carry the ashes and ice
that is this body

This token
Beckons? Beacons?

I don't know



Yet here you are

January 1

explosive
all the radiance and charm

of a fat baby



Make me return
to the scrolling of life

from this snow-cast hide
to the Forsythia hinge

to the spiral hymn of sun


_