With Caveats

After calling the derm for results repeatedly and being told that the results weren't in, computer was down, no one was available to read the results, we'll call you back (but no one called). After suspecting the worst, I finally received a call back. The nurse's assistant (nearly everyone had broken early for the long weekend) starts out by asking me how I'm doing. (How do you think?) And after talking to me about the weather, the upcoming weekend, apologizing for not calling sooner, says she went over it with a colleague to be sure, but it looks like the bloodwork appears to be in the normal range. So now we await biopsies.

Relief. Uncertainity. Not sure if we deserve this reprieve.

Knowing that if the biopsies come back clean, I'll be looking at shorter hair, and grandparents, husband, and eleven-year-old with shaven heads, and a life without chocolate.But it will be worth it to have a child with a host of other persnickety ailments that completely swallow our health services to the point where my dental work has been postponed for two years, but hey--perhaps not eating chocolate will resolve that.

_

Still in Shock

And feeling like things make sense. Li'l A's biological father died of ALS, which is another unpreventable, incurable disease, so this feels a bit like ugly deja vu.Like resilience is futile.

There's a constant argument on in my head. Is it? No it isn't. But if it were, it could explain the grades--poor baby. How am I going to motivate a child if the doctor gives him what amounts to a death sentence. Elzabeth Edwards's wisdom about how all of us are dying. I could be dead tomorrow driving home from work.

(I almost killed the entire family on the way back from the doctor's. At least three times. My mom riding shotgun didn't notice. But dad in the back with the kids, totally noticed and didn't say anything till we got home. I also forgot to turn off the engine when we stopped at Compunet to get the bloodwork done. And I was a total harridan to the cheery, perky, young person who tried and repeatedly failed to find a place to prick him.)

Completely blown away by how supportive people I don't know very well have been. Even people whose judgement I don't trust on most issues suddenly appeared to be full of compassion and wisdom. Except for the jerk who said the good news would be that Li'l A appeared to be skinny. Which (a) Since when is skinny--skin and bone-- a positive thing? (b) Fuck you. (c) Do you not know that Indian moms never think their kids can be chubby enough?

_

I thought we were going to a regular dermatological appointment this morning, but instead got to watch as four nurses dug biopsy samples out of my skinny 11-year-old's arms. They strongly suspect Lupus. Tell me how to explain an unpreventable, incurable, chronic disease with frequent and frightening fatalities to my sweet, funny little chap. (And if you know the secret, tell me how I can stop breaking on the inside.) 

Summer Clouds

Is that dusty skin smoke?
there's no word for sea
in the midwest, speak
from necessity, not fact

No flower chalices lie
warmed like your ear
pick one bird song--
run just one for life.

What would you match?
on some deserted island
what would you catch?
Everything seems parrots

repeating repeating:
immortal new names
now costly like blood
--orange sum of sun.

_

Campaign

[I'm not particularly depressed. Not at all. In fact with parents (long visit) and kids (summer vacation) around I'm happy albeit in a sort of militaristic way (trying to rally the--suddenly doubled--dependents and get things done as close to schedule as possible). The poetry has been all pouty lately though. That I've noticed.]


Holding Folding up both
ends of our conversation:
corners, tablecloth tidy,
put away. Picnic's over.

Flag: surf and sulphur heaven
wave disease, spread pleased
so many tiny, tiny hands march
and halt in veiled fields overhead.

_

Fun with Grandparents (at three years old)

Shoe:
(Remember you still get your shoes on the wrong foot every single time, in complete refutal of the laws of probability.) Wander over to where your grandparents are hanging out, with just one shoe dangling from your finger. Nonchalantly ask your over-eager Thatha for help getting it on. After he does, and offers to help you with the other one too, say dismissively:

I don't need your help anymore, Thatha, I know which foot the other one goes on. Thanks.

Teacher:
Test the waters to see if your newly-arrived grandparents are more cooperative than your other family members about turning on the TV at your command. After your grandparents have refused to turn on the TV for you, play a few games of Connect Four, then casually suggest that you play pretend school. Claim the part of teacher before anyone else does. Then demand:

Turn on the TV now. I'm the teacher, you MUST listen to me. Do it NOW.

_ 

LOCUS

There's drumbeat of dislike
irreconcilable conversation

I'm a shapeshifter, so
I misrepresent myself.

Blue and dark as it is
shadows are darker still

I'm a shoplifter, I take home
the whole look in my head

In calm, strange indifference
an arched, architectural back

cheeks are shattered shields
hair falls: spiral as argument

_

Birth Story

A foot
is made of inches
they have two each
and measure two

there is a cunt
made of muscle
I have gained:
stretchmarks

as though children
once imprisoned
have clawed
their way through

my body thins
into elastic sticks
and can now slip
under doors

Babies begin to cry
my mind stoops again
in pain and memory.
Babies cry; I identify.

The Teacher

Sleep, Arjuna
the lines of your palm
cast shadows;
children dream of you.

War is indefensible
is honorable war
and riddled plain
on Kurukshetra

Human. You are.
suffer undisciplined
dilemma. Speak, Arjuna
in this hairy garment of skin

divine animal
O individual
rebirth .  act .
the practical

hold the world,
old and fluted
warrior (for yet
another minute)

[fragment]
__

Mothers Lie

Mothers never lie
except when they are five years old
and grandmother has told her

not to tell great-grandfather
(who thinks movies are wasteful)

that they have spent the afternoon
at the movies

Catching herself humming
(and at 60 she still hums)
 incubating the lie

in great-grandfather's room
she nurses her breath wild eyed

and announces willingly:
O Grandfather, we really

didn't at all 
go to the movies
this afternoon.

_

What She Said (1)

(inspired by the Kuruntokai)

Crossed, she is cross
lovers' arms are tigers
they race forest fires

they say, companions:
her community of accomplices
girlfriends, girl-friends, girls, friends

_

Father's (Fathers' Day)

Yesterday your ears worked just fine
today your whining hearing aid died
ancient and foreign all at once
is your silence.
Now you hold my face
between your hands

and watch my mouth
speak;
then you write
your blessings
with your lips
on my forehead

Let me hear
be your child
interpret your genes,
perform your decrees
aspire: sishya as student
spiral: suta as bard

[fragment]
_

Two Worlds Collide

One of the first things Big A did when we moved in together was get rid of the cookware I had left over from when I householded with J, my late husband. Thereafter, he convinced me to replace the car, sundry furniture, my name, and most other remnants of my previously married life. Weird, but also not weird. My mom attributes it to him being a Scorpio (possesive) and is sure the reason I empathize is because I'm a Pisces (wimp). It's a theory.

I've remained on good terms with my former in-laws though, and they've been staunch allies in most of my endeavors, and continue to call from all corners of the world on my birthday and the big Tamil festivals. MA, my sweet sister-in-law, is on a short New York visit and she wants to come spend the weekend with me.

She's coming today: a.k.a. the day Big A and I celebrate our wedding anniversary; a.k.a. awkward!


_

Child (Grades)

we tell you stories
about dreaming hard
streaming suggestions
breezes made of begging
at the doors of your mind

we have filled these teacups
with fireflies, dreams for you
each pour sits scaled precise
except for your loved figure
grinning, beginning more real

[fragment]
__
There's an unsettlingly Alanis-y irony when your spelling bee winning, "gifted," "above grade level" child who has always loved to read and reads all the time gets a D-. (In Reading no less.) 


_

Summarizing

"Love of you is mixed deep in my vitals."

OR

"I'll eat you up, I love you so!" 

_

Substance; Scale

An Arab Spring
A summer of superheroes
what now of winters

hints of itinerant
nations, their
nomadic tailwinds

Losing time soon
every day hides heroes
with a million faces.

_

Chelli (Baby Sister)

There's a bridge
the color of steam,
made of years
of shared bedrooms
between us.

They're your parents too,
she acknowledges.
i guess it's ok--
if they... want to
spend some time with you

_

(Grand)parents are here!

What we know:
That already my American spouse and kids speak 100% more Telugu.
***
What we knew:
Having weathered several other neurotic pre-parent arrival prep periods, Big A knew not to ask why I would need to give myself a facial and paint my toenails before my parents arrived. (Nevermind that they used to see me in full-on acne cream and in a previous era, diapers. Or indeed, that a few months from now, my toenail polish will be undeniably chipped.)
***
What we know now:
That the seven-seater hybrid we got in order to accommodate the six people who will live under the same roof would need to be run regularly. (It turns out that the only way to protect the earth while driving a big car is to drive it more than you want to.) So minutes before we needed to leave for the airport to pick grandparents up we needed to call AAA to jumpstart our car.
***
And YAY! They're here!!

_

Can you spot the toddler?

If you can, you're *obviously* not playing the game properly.

_

Street Fair

Crowds happen, conquer: insurgent,
choric in cheer, sucking sweetness
from sun-slicked haze.
I am astride Xenia Ave
kids in hand, hands so sweaty
their fingers slip, tickle in my grasp

Hellos + kisses fall, leave, re-echo
become a bouquet of belonging
I carry proudly down the street
I am strident;
I am mouthy, masticating,
planting gum for art.

I am completely klepto
with happiness
I'm making my own megaphone
I am become a landmark:
"I am standing
right next to the lady with two kids."

Our dinners slumber in styrofoam,
our water bottle empties to carry lassi.
Fun has been buying a foam-tipped bow
filling a plastic fish with colored sand
and the roar of laughter and trash trucks
after a thousand minivans vanish

_

End Day

And at the bottom
are hopes
spooling love
as a courtesy

say I am
say I am
history senses quiet
as the clock is spent

_

Thithi

Give back the words
give back
bring back the calls

call the hungry raven
to eat food
made for grandfather

the flicker of long ago
words echo
in my eyes

_

Insomnia

Set in the strength of your body
the embrace of my own

fled is the following of day
the moon seems possible

sleep stretches taut: six hours
still concerned for boundaries

sift these concerts of doubt,
decant questions that open: empty

_

Quit Dicking Around

I want to remember Weiner (for now he's basically dead to me) this way and this way. To remember the signage of this and this.

I'll have to stop saying "More Weiner, Less Boehner" (and mispronouncing Bay-nor to make it a satisfying but very illogical pun).

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy must progressive allies reveal them themselves to be such fuckers?

Big A, the feminist, says that some guys figure out way back in college that being feminist will earn the admiration and affection of the women around them. Hmmm; computing ;).

_

Anti Choice WTF

This "pro-life"trailer by NJ senate hopeful Kenneth del Vecchio (found via Shakespeare's Sister) is scary--like horror movie scary. According to the press release:  "The controversial premise of The Life Zone: three women have been kidnapped from abortion clinics and are being held for seven months—until they all give birth. The film, which appears to cut right down the middle, examining the topic from both sides, offers a powerful, anti-abortion climactic twist." 


I have to say that when I hear about young girls kidnapped and forced to bear their rapists' babies, the forced and solitary birth freaks me out more than anything else. As someone who once ran away from a wisdom tooth extraction because the dentist's delivery of the obligatory sermon about pain went on too graphically, the defining slogan of my pregnancies would be "no epidural, no baby." So being held prisoner and physically being forced to give birth is a way too scary--and is an ironic acknowledgement of how anti-choice fuckery merely masquerades as piety.


_

Cemetery Road

The lillies hold their buds
graves look like boxes
are actually books

were actually houses
eyes are hard
as glass looked through

this room, this city is empty
aloneness floods tunnels
I imagine only a little

_

Oprah Lives

We ended up getting new wood floors for the guest wing to help Li'l A's allergies as well as my mom's, got a bigger car (a Toyota Highlander Hybrid that seats seven and uses less gas than our old five-seater), and found Kuroji the puppy.

I dunno how or what Li'l A knows about Oprah, but he makes a good point. Sitting down to breakfast and looking forward to the day, he says: "It's like Oprah was here."

Agree.

_

New Heights

A certain person in our house is at a growth spurt, and each new inch brings her a whole new strata of discoveries. This last month has been a crucial one that put her at eye level with several tall cabinets. She keeps bringing me little boxes and trinkets that have been in exactly the same place since we moved here to exclaim how about how awesome it is and what's it for and did I know we had this awesome wonderful amazing beautiful thing?

Yes, baby.

_

The apple that fell close to its mama tree

Some of us are hippies and some of us are simply... hip.
(T-shirt via me; headband glory via Baby A.)

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.

_

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.

_

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.

_

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.

_

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.

_

Topless on Facebook (and almost Eyeless in Gaza)

Nope, not another inadvertent cleavage mishap.

These are actually pictures of my three-year-old playing on the Slip N' Slide with some of her best friends in the neighborhood and Li'l A. Our neighbor J hailed us just as we returned from Li'l A's allergy shot expedition and the kids went off nextdoors in their running shorts and tees, stripped off their tees, and proceeded to have a muddy good time.

All the other kids are boys, and Baby A is both the youngest and a girl. No one cared except a cross-country friend who called to counsel that I cover up the three-year-old's chest. I'd talk Topfreedom, except that even that's not the issue as most three-year-old girls are literally undifferentiated from most three-year-old boys chest-wise.

_

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.

Goodnight

In the return of the sea
its standstill secret treats

I ready for sleep, alone
along a landlocked deep

Remote as light, as reason
is this compass of night

Fingers that refuse to pray--
stray in sweet reggae; delicious.

_

Rain Again

The past returns
lush
folded purple

like the explosion
of a
single match

the weight
and
storm of water

on wind like feet
the feet
of small children

trees try not to cry
the
pulpy drip of rain

_

And Again

The churn and whine
of starting over
The burning bushes
sing spring

you could say
the smiling of flowers
you could say
the flowering of smiles

amidst the day's landmarks
of talk, meals, and naps
the hesitation of last year,
fruit: a mouth full of beauty

_

And After

anticipation
spools like a movie
tells what happens
next

the wind scribbles
this book jumps up
and is a flat stone
ready for skipping

my thoughts
rise like mist
your touch
is rain across me

longing storms, bursts
--a vigorous birth--
thoughtless, saving a life
= staying alive

_

References Have Been Checked

Breakfasts have been a lot more leisurely since the semester has ended. So leisurely that Li'l A has to be shepherded to school before Baby A has even dipped into her cereal or her cheesy eggs. Before she has finished telling me every single detail of last night's dreams. 

So Li'l A went off to school, and Baby A is dawdling at the kitchen table.


Baby A: I don't want milk or eggs anymore.
(Accusingly) YOU don't eat eggs or drink milk!

Me: I don't now. But when I was a kid. I drank milk all the time and ate an egg every day.

Baby A: No, you didn't!


Me: I did, actually!


Baby A: Ok. Call Ammama [grandma, my mom] let me ask her.

I initiated an international call and was duly exonerated.

_

It Will Be Warm (Till November)

Footprints dissolve in the mud

feet: fleet, sudden muddy armada

six-seven songs thicken my head

warm prayers like stars, pleated breezes

Lost: can we care about mapped lines--

those echoes happening like strewn veins 

open the bruised year, count what is sent

unpin hope--find it escape, flying like a signal

_

Beauty Binge

So Liz Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love?) has a new-ish curiosity shop.

I want to call her out on further exploiting exotic locales and people, but--almost despite myself--I am charmed by the wholesome, self-deprecating blurbs on the store's website.

(And shhh. Yes, I secretly want to wander around in that warehouse all week-end long with a fat, juicy bank account.)

_

Girl-Talk (Restroom edition)

Last Saturday was spent with cousins N and T.

And in The Boonshoft Museum restroom, Baby A and I spent a rather long time:

Part 1

Baby A: pssSSssssshhhh. (Making the start-peeing sound. She'd make a good toilet trainer!)

Me: (I oblige.)

Part 2

Baby A: I washed my hands all by myself, Mama.

Me: Cool! Yay!

Wait. (Suspiciously) How did you reach the soap? Wasn't it too high for you?

Baby A: (Agreeably) Yeah, it was!

So I just made some bubbles by bumping my hands.

Fin.


__

New Keys

If my craft is uneven
I can blame the water

For these small rehearsals
at faintly unfamiliar doors

_

Mothers' Day 2011

I was sad by the end of Mothers' Day, and I don't really know why.

It started out well enough having brunch and mimosas and karaoke fun with bestie L and her family until late in the afternoon while Big A slept off his night shift. Evening plans were to go out to the old familiar Chinese restaurant for Mother's Day dinner with all the A's and my MIL. I'd even picked out matching presents for Big A to give his mom and me. And I was all excited about !everything! until my food came.

Then my food came. And it sucked. And I remembered how ALL the veggie food at this restaurant sucks. How I HATE this restaurant. That it is MIL's favorite restaurant. Not mine. And Big A was sitting next to MIL instead of next to me (as he always does, maybe because my kids were on either side of me?). Oh. The tragedy.

How could I possibly be so petty?

On the other hand, I did pick out awesome necklaces for me and MIL (seed pearls with asymmetrical gold-leaf feathers). Instead of flowers for MIL, I picked out a decorative pot of hen and chicks at the nursery. I loved the name that seemed so apropos for Mothers' Day, the way the tight, perfect floral whorls look and the fact that she could keep it practically forever.

_

Like Bad Poets

All week
like bad poets
ALL week

people
                              people on the radio
                                                                                                    people at school
                                                      people on the TV
                                                                                                                                people on the street
people

grow their sounds
hover and misstep
mixing up

Osama
Obama

Obama 
Osama

syllables
draw near,
swallow, withdraw.

Here you go
bad poets,
Hear
some more:

Gautama,
Dalai Lama
Yo Momma's

Drama Karma

_

Child

Deepen
the civil hollows of my cheek
Write songs
between the lines on my face

_

WTF. Seriously, What?

From Shakespeare's Sister:

$45,000: The amount of money the Supreme Court has agreed, by virtue of declining to hear an appeal of the lower court's decision, that the cheerleader forced to cheer for her rapist must pay in restitution to the school district for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit against it.


_

Four haircuts (and a ray of sunshine)

I wish I'd taken a picture of our commingled hair on the floor of the local Supercuts this afternoon.

Baby A: Straight, silky, brown.
Li'l A: Tough, spiky, black.
Big A: Stubby, gray, blond.
Me: Wavy, dry, brown.

I did, however, manage to get a picture of our single ray of sunshine for the day:

 Grow, Jasmine, grow!

Searchlight

Scarred star.
So this one,
sun don't shine.

Hopes migrate
mate, we're missing
insane details here

light undulance warmth.
Alright. Why don't you
come on over to my house.

Holy
so ordinary. Come in.
All is--or will be--forgiven.

_

Happy Birthday Li'l A!

Li'l A racing-rolling across the bed. That bed.

There are moments when I'd like time to stand perfectly still. 

We gotta be starting something...

Part Two of Li'l A's birthday weekend, dinner with the grandparents. And as the kids chose to ride with the grandparents, Big A and I had a few minutes to angst.

It's recurring guilt about our lifestyle. Big A had a very sick patient and it made him feel weird about practicing medicine for money. We're not thinking of unpaid medical school debt, incomplete kids' college funds. We just want to get a smaller house. Live more ethically. Quite apropos for today--May Day.

But will it happen? Or will we go ahead and get new wood floors and furniture for the rec room as we'd planned to? 

Four Parties

Can Maya do it?

Party #1: 5:00 p.m. for my favorite two-year-old twins. Bring presents. Get in my fill of baby smells and nom nom on a few. Check.

Party #2: 6:30 p.m. get Li'l A's Birthday-sleepover started. Pizza, I-phone cupcakes, buckets of juice boxes, snacks, candy. Party games lined up. Check.

Party #3: 7:30 p.m. Bestie L's birthday. Bring prezzies. Slice cheese, serve Sangria. Say Hi's all around. Hugs goodbye. Check.

Party #4: 8:00 p.m. Get on the "party bus" for dinner and pub hopping in the Oregon district. Nope. Duh. (Have to chaperone Li'l A's sleepover as Big A leaves for work in an hour.)

Three out of four is considered good in most circles. And a warm, sunny day--a nice way to say goodbye to the rainiest April in my memory.

_

Yoga

Breath
thrown outside
bequeathed to us
peace.


swarm music
rest sharp
in the flush
of stillness

_

The Grammar of End Times

[ANOTHER SAD, CRAP DRAFT. It's very frustrating that I can't write about this without sounding like a catechism.]

Worlds are separate
suspended, discrete.
Take count, make them
account--they seldom
cohere, cannot agree.

One world expects children
making laughter, worries,
afternoon weed bouquets.
Love. Loveliness.
Sports car (import).
University tags. Online shopping.
Flowers, phone calls, food.
Need new wood floors.
Another bathroom.
Home sweet
home improvement.

In another world, a child (more ribs than years)
and a buzzard guards her, waits for her to die.
(What else to say--for this part,
lacking everything,
also lacks words.)

Sages, madmen who care,
decide that worlds do not share:
the same sentence--or any other space
the sages have died alone, and madmen
too, many by their own bourgie hands

And that young self who
starved, carved wrists--
she mutely floats in my veins--
rude. But just as any other chained
and stubborn corpse would.

_

Small

It's a small world town. Straight from work to the FedEx office to ship my green card renewal forms. The clerk glances at my address and says--Yellow Springs? She grew up in Yellow Springs. She graduated high school three years behind Big A, and yeah--she knows him. She was best friends with his baby sister.

We used to bug him a lot and make him mad, she said.

He's reformed now, I said.

Poor Li'l A, who bugged his dad by eating dinner for over an hour and heard his wrath for a solid ten minutes yesterday, would probably disagree.

_

Stop me if you've seen this before: Microaggressions

The format is a speaker's somewhat blithe, privileged comment followed by a description of how the listener interpreted it.

I particularly like the way Microaggressions--a new-ish Tumblr--acknowledges that minorities may exercise small, even unintentional, aggressions upon each others' consciousnesses--as below:

Man, outscored by a black guy.”

• Quote - Permalink

Vietnamese American male upon finding out I got a higher score than him on the Chinese I midterm. 

Having the House to Myself

Is delicious. The silence is heavenly. The kids are at school. Big A is at work. The university is still on Easter break. I'm getting work done. I'm eating chocolate. I'm eating a lot of chocolate. I microwaved some Annie Chun's for lunch.

I miss the kids. And memories--of their tiny hands, their silly requests, their crazy antics--are debilitating. Their crazy requests. Their silly antics. Their tiny requests.

When I'm not with them I worry about them. I'm with them; I worry. Somedays they're crawling all over me and I feel like I'm sitting cross-legged on a train-track holding them tight, wondering if something horrible is careening around the corner towards us.

Other days, of course, feel like I should save the world from my kids.

_

The Recent Fuse

Stories sink
numbers
are old

number
than millions
take their toll

_

The Seige of Misrata (Take 2)

(So I went back and read the original post--which I'd made for a dear student from Libya who hasn't been able to speak to her family for over a month. The whole thing felt like the equivalent of a rant. Worse, all the pronouns made it sound like the conflict was all about me. I was trying to express solidarity, but it didn't convey well. So first I took out all the pronouns. But it was still too dense and heavy, so I pared it down further. Better now, but it doesn't say everything I mean it to say.)

The Seige of Misrata (Take 2)

(For Hala M.)

The run can start

the walk has not.

Run, run, and run 

skies never change

the sky is bloody fruit 

newsprint flattens cities

flight falls like attack,

sudden desert nights.

Loud around us 

art is bursting.

Reloading. Pulse. 

Repulse. of news.


_

The Seige of Misrata

(For Hala M.)

For the run has started, the walk has not
run and run till skies never change
the small bloody fruit of the sky weighs
the city at once flatter than newsprint

count among the living
count among the alive

In fates warped and shocked by shells

racked and rocked and fucked by shells

carefully sisters endure, carry each other

one dies today, another in soon days.

flight falls like an attack

like sudden desert nights

so Hillary is a hero and so can spend lives
so destinies are lead, so her voice is silver
for reputations are assembled around our feet
for revolutions rattle in the circles at our feet

For around us art is bursting.
And pulse. repulse. of news.

_

The Day Homework Went Viral

Stuck in a dinky little library study room sans projector or internet with my ESL kids today, I proctored their exam and then wrote their home assignment up on the chalk board. That's as low-tech as teaching gets, right?

Then as they prepared to walk out of class, these awesome students proceeded to pull out their smart phones,  click pictures of the assignment on the chalk board, and forward it to their classmates.

:) !

They're going to inherit the world.

_

Of Fibs, Kids, Pee, and Me

Somedays the kids are all about fibs (about things that don't even matter) and a puddle of pee (a mere, stubborn five inches away from the potty).

Somedays, I prefer my students to my kids. (Less pee.)


_

Swept Away

I think of the journey work 

of each of these rain drops,

how the studious landings burst

on the skin like surprise kisses

waterfalls that drape every stair

and the leaves hiccuping bigger

in quick gulps, swallowing time.

For I don't cry, who would know?

This sky is now world's cage

it dissolves; is strong, is sullen,

threatens in words too primitive

to howl rainbows at them. 

Don't hide your face, my love

--in your safe, plastic landfall

there is also a middle, an end.

We'll win.

_

Selective

For these are the measures of the everyday assassin
wash hands and sanitize.
Moisturize.

Every thing in its place.
Hair. Bullets.

For you will assume news is anachrony.
For you will know anarchy is nothing.

Nothing.
Nothing is nothing.

Below, a window--
To the window.

All is quiet within.
And you are steel.

Smile.

Early Birds, not Love Birds

We're on our way to the opera, but we're listening to hip-hop non stop. Wiz Khalifa is bragging about how his checks look like phone numbers.

Big A: Kinda like you, Puppy--except your checks be looking like just the area codes.

Oooh, burn :)!

The Daughter of the Regiment was the dopiest thing I've seen. Dopey--not dope.

We ditched our passes during intermission to go try out a new tapas bar and get some Thai food. And we were home by 6:45. P.M. That won't make sense until I say our opera tickets are always for the Sunday matinee. One day we'll be seniors and we'll already be champions of the early-bird specials.

_

Sad-U R day

Ha.

We were supposed to hole up last night at a Holiday Inn a few hours from here, so we could arrive at the Miami University Traithlon registration early. (Big A was supposed to triathlete, not me.) Didn't.

We were supposed to go to the YSKP fundraiser this evening--I had the perfect dress with a keyhole neckline and tattoo tights picked out. Three different babysitters bailed on us.

It's as though today were taking lessons in deportment from Baby A, whose favorite response to everything, including suggestions of timeouts is: But I don't want to!

_

Cute! (But where are the girls?)

At the nursery school established by Usha Gehlot in the Indian town of Jhajjar, there are toys, books, brightly-painted walls, and very few little girls. "In last year's intake, of a total of 59 pupils, 43 were boys," said the headteacher, running a pen down a column in the handwritten register book.

Read the rest and weep.

_

And so it starts...

Cuts to education = cuts to the Women's Studies Program at the local state university.

Don't know what it means for the course I'm supposed to be teaching in the fall yet.

 

Budgets

Came back after a mere three hours at work to write checks to S for the weekly deep house cleaning that keeps me sane (four hours @ $20 per hour) and emergency baby sitter L (three hours @ $15 per hour--Baby A is home sick again today; Big A had to go to work).

I literally did not make enough at work today (three hours at something like $30 per hour) to warrant the expense of hiring people.

Weird.

Still: keeping our environment clean, paying an ok wage, protecting the small and vulnerable (the toddler), minding public-health via not spreading viruses at preschool, providing jobs, saving lives via sending Big A to work ;), providing higher education for the next generation via me--the dollar standoff isn't ideal, but I think it's a good use of money.

_

Back

We're back.

Earlier today at 2 a.m. and still in the environs of L.A., came the realization that I had to fly three hours back to Columbus, OH, in our super cramped coach seats, retrieve the car from long-term parking, drive an hour back to Yellow Springs, pick up kids from grandparents, prep them for school, drop them off, and then go teach two classes. This doesn't even include attending to backlogged e-mail, project completion, vacation laundry, rescuing needy dying plants, catching up with school news and notices, or planning dinner. Blah, blah, blah. Gulp.

I passed out after that, getting all the sleep I could; my head resting on folded arms on the tray table like I was praying really hard in a pew.

And then the soft pressure of Big A's head resting on my back. His HEAD not his hand. 

He's totally using me for my body.

Or totally has my back?

_

Lost

Colleagues from two listservs that constantly continue to educate have passed away.

Jessica Nathanson from the women's studies list WMST-L and Sue Darlow from the South Asian literature list (SASIALIT).

They fought the good fight with grace and intelligence.

_

Wilde Žižek

Oh, Oh, Oh.

Žižek on charitable consumerism/Cultural Capitalism now with groovy visual notetaking.

_

True

Big A and I have just dropped off the kids for an extended weekend at their grandparents. I know they’ll have fun and be looked after, and I know that we’ll have fun. Neither generational set—neither parents nor kids... nor grandparents—will miss each other too, too much in the space of three days.

My only fear is that Big A and I’ll die together and leave the kids orphans. And I’m willing to write out something that makes me sound fantastically stupid is because I’m superstitious enough to believe in the fetishistic value of speaking my fears out loud in the hope that those destinies will be foiled.

As we pull away from the driveway, I’m gazing at the window, waiting for the kids to wave goodbye one more time, but they’re already mesmerized by the glow of the television i.e. already having a great time. 

I keep looking back over my shoulder…

Big A : “Those little bastards are going to have a fantastic time, Puppy.

[Pause]

Plus, they don’t care.”

_ 

Morning Recipe

Downstairs, last night's dinner
ghosts in a sea of cinnamon tea

Quiet. Light bubbles, fills up,
curls in my cup--misty as milk

Stir in two children
(I take it sweet.)


_

Tuesday's Change

Sun is ancient
very, very brilliant
and just beginning
like crystal on a string.

Grateful is all destiny 

to be met breathlessly

sweet certitude of soul,
sweeter certitude of y'all.

I can see more now

than I ever did before.

I may be listening now--

have always known how.

_

That Kind of Relationship

First days of the season
and a thousand stories
dance untold

I listen to the rain
it tells of emptiness
in ten thousand tongues

Stings haughty
as thunderstorms,
is clear as nothing

_

Everyone Speaks

Took Li'l A to a showing of The People Speak a documentary/reading/performance based on Howard Zinn's work at The Little Art Theater.

Extreme celebrity kilowattage: Morgan Freeman, Bob Dylan, Matt Damon, Bruce Springsteen, Sean Penn, Run DMC, Don Cheadle and lots of etc., etc.

Li'l A's independent projects this year have centered on the every day life of people in different times and climes and he's been asking questions about how society and government work, so this was a perfect afternoon with him.

It made me want to go on a protest march immediately--and there are plenty of opportunities for that--what with Ohio's Heartbeat Bill and Senate Bill 5.

But also, it made me want to see my dad immediately, because I suddenly realized that Frederick Douglass looks like my dad, from the nose, eyes, chin, up to the serious horizontal furrow between his brows.

_

One Love

I went to hear the awesome Kwame Dawes at UD's Litfest yesterday, and suddenly, I'm cooking dinner for eleven. 


As my old professor and my current academic referee, he tried to make time in his two-day trip to have dinner with us--never mind that that involves my toddler who claims to be married to an elephant, because my extremely polite tween more than made up for it by claiming to remember my mentor's baritone back from when I attended Dawes's class when this child was in utero.


Memories, regrets, gossip, a bottle of rosé, and travel plans. I'd put this evening on repeat for a while if I could.


_

He gets it

"Aliens wake as early as my mom..."

(The first line of the narrative ditty Li'l A composed with his friends to accompany their viewing of the trailer to Skyline last week. So stuck in my head! Now that I've written it, I'm not entirely sure if that line is meant as a compliment--or a complaint.)

"Amma, if I get all A's on my report card this year, will you become a U.S. citizen?"

(Li'l A after witnessing the over-prepped folder of documents I--an alien resident--took to the DMV this morning. He gets a little mutinous when border/airport/transport security quiz me a little too ardently. And I don't think he's forgiven me for reneging on the promise I made Big A in 2008 about applying for U.S. citizenship if Obama were elected.)

_

Surprise Package

Enthusiastic
at the end
of March
is this snow
landing as plastic
and separate

as styrofoam pellets

strewn through
our disbelief
in sheafs
as though grit
from a package
damaged in transit.

Didn't we order Spring?
-

Object blaming

People--or at least my own family--know me as the type to have crushes on older professors. Perhaps one of the unintended consequences of this is that I probably give off dangerously high levels of "I crush on professors" pheromones? Is this why older professors like me?

May be?

Am I blaming myself too much?

Not enough?

The thing is, when an older elderly colleague can't seem to stop stroking my back for a good 20 seconds longer than is collegial, I feel like the dirty one for wondering if it's inappropriate.

And because I find it difficult to draw attention to their inappropriate attention and because I didn't say anything, it then makes them think it's ok to give me photocopies of Mary Mackey's "The Kamasutra of Kindness" poems. Not that there is anything particularly objectionable about the poems themselves. My feeling--that both the poet and my personal donor of these poems are guilty of coasting on referential (orientalist) titillation--are just feelings.

_

Just two girls and an inter-species conversation

Baby A toddles in as I'm prepping for class.

NuNu: My very own husband is making tea for me.

Me: Um. 

Me: Um. What?!?

NuNu: My very own husband. He is waiting for me to finish teaching. He's in my very own house across the street [bedroom across the hallway] with all our animal children.

Me: He sounds nice.

NuNu: He is. He's much nicer than yours. He is an elephant. Your husband is not an elephant. You like elephants, right?

_

Cop... out

It's still cold. But not as cold. There are snowdrops and crocuses and early daffodils all over. The green arrows that will turn into ditches full of tiger lillies are already bolting out of the cold earth in front of the house as a signpost of spring. Boing, boing, boing.

I feel so hopeful.

In any other season, after being pulled over by the sheriff for doing 75 in a 55 zone, I would never have hoped to get away with just a warning. But as I sat there waiting for the cop to come back with my docs, I just knew he wasn't going to give me a ticket. It's spring, suckas. Boing it.


_

Later...

This afternoon, I left my sleeping children and slipped out behind the house.

Through the woods, past the pond, and I am at the nursing home where several women in the community sing every other week to the elderly residents, voices rising and milling like tides. I join them, after more than a year away, and find that the simple melodies wind their way back to me. And I notice that there are several new residents.

One woman is perfect in lipstick, pearls, and shiny ballet flats. She sings along, holds court. I didn't realize she was in a wheelchair until the very end when she asked the ex drummer sitting next to her if he would like to push her. Being the slow-wit that I am, I offered to push her and she laughed and said, "No dearie" and shuffled off by herself.

Like my mom, I don't think I'll ever stop loving jewelery and soft, shiny, fancy clothes. But although I never played with dolls much while I was growing up, I think I might become the woman who had a doll in her lap. The doll was large enough to reach all the way up to the woman's collar bone, sitting snuggled against her human perch, being posed, having her hands clapped, and being told to listen up.

I may already kind of miss my children. Especially my children in their compacter--and more portable--forms.

_

Snap

Once upon a time, earlier today, I taught my family to play Snap. Except in my version, which I remembered from my childhood books, you had to both yell Snap! and grab the cards before the other players did.

It's very grabby. It made me think that all the English children who'd played it in the 1800s were being groomed for something.


_

Radio 2: Become as Before, He Says

Become as before.
Poor prisoner
of his own war.

Unsteady companion
to my winter-again
hands and feet.

It flashes clear
in the jeering
fogged light

This "later."
That Yemeni dictator,
this Ohio weather

Like estranged boyfriends
who keep on promising
(dismissing) change

_

Aim

These are fresh green fires
that burn so badly
that loop--black

Then their furious circlings
are ideas: the this or that
no this / or this

Mornings, I conduct
baroque curlicues.
I fuck it all at night.

_

Balance

Turned in final grades for a course. (Wincing at the number of students who failed.)

Wrote and then rewrote a CASA report. (Recommending the exact opposite of what I had recommended 12 hours earlier--before the domestic violence happened.)

Endured faculty observation of my class. (Cringing when a student asked me when the grades--so horribly delayed-- would be available.)

I'm so relieved I got all of these done in the last 16 hours. (Knowing I really need to be doing so much more.)

_