Spoonful of Lightning Bugs

Spencer Krug Is In My Dreams

2009-02-06T16:05:00.000-08:00

Two nights ago, I dreamt that I was at this party at someone's house with some people I didn't know. Spencer Krug was there, and he was going to play a bunch of songs for us. There weren't very many people at the party, and it was a small room, so I got to meet him, and he was very nice. He was also doing a lot of cocaine, which surprised me greatly because somehow I didn't expect Spencer Krug to be a big cocaine fan. Then he announced that he would play the song Samson for us. I didn't remember that it was a Regina Spector song until I woke up. Anyway, I decided to record his performance of Samson because I didn't think any of my friends would believe me when I told them that I was at a party with Spencer Krug where he gave a private show. I was using one of those huge camcorders we had at home when I was growing up. The old kind that rest on your shoulder while you look through the lens. Spencer Krug was kind of making fun of me (in a nice way) for the gigantic camcorder, and I explained to him that I couldn't use the smaller ones because I don't have steady hands. So he was about to sit down at the piano, and he was sort of hitting on me a little, which I found very flattering, but I was prepared to tell him that I had a boyfriend should he try to ask me out. Then he sat down and began to play and sing and it was so lovely.

To Make Closer the Sound of One-Plus-One

2009-01-09T22:57:00.000-08:00

For Jeremy

I wanted you to be there too.
In the dark winter streets with the candles in the windows and the ice on the lamps and the still still still of the empty stones.

We were shooting jars of beans and crouching low against the wind and my child-fingers left cold marks on your arm.

We filled our cups of tea too full and laughed in side-long ways with drowning eyes, and I hoped it was not enough for you.

I have these muffled daguerreotypes of old dolls and little girls in long black dresses. There is a mourning pouch and a gold watch and a grandfather clock that no longer works. I told you about the ring. I don’t know how it escaped with the war-torn children.

I want to tell you of these things I know for sure,

and this bursting spot of pride,

and the ring-lines made for washing.

God, I love Spencer Krug

2008-12-18T16:52:00.000-08:00

All Fires-Swan Lake

I Am Here

2008-10-10T18:40:00.001-07:00

I am here. In France. For new postings, check out my France blog here

Monks and Hairballs and Deformed Animals. Jennifer's Visit to Salem.

2008-08-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

Jennifer came to visit me this week. I took her to a small museum located at a monastery in Mt. Angel, Oregon. I visited this museum with my parents when I was seven or eight. I saw things in that museum that remain etched in my mind:

A collection of hairballs from the stomachs of pigs.

Deformed Calf Number 1.

Deformed Calf Number 2.

We also saw real monks. They wore long black robes, and we think the two that we encountered may have taken vows of silence.

*Alex and Jess: This is where I wanted to take you during spring break when the museum was closed because of the construction on the bell tower.

Bryan Coffelt Preys on the Gullible

2008-08-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

Take a nice, hard look at that sneer. You know what it means? It means I'm gonna get you Bryan Coffelt.

The Countdown Is On

2008-08-13T02:16:00.000-07:00

I have two weeks until I leave for France for a year. I have started a blog to keep all of my lovelies updated on my experiences. Check it out at

http://lapetiteexploratrice.blogspot.com

NaPoWriMo Shame

2008-04-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

I am terribly behind. I do, however, plan to finish my thirty days worth of National Poetry Writing Month poems. I simply won't be finishing them in April.

It's been very busy.
Good things have been happening.

I will return.

NaPoWriMo - Day 3

2008-04-04T01:24:00.000-07:00

How Sarah Was Before and After

Move these feet in something like closeness.
Sarah could do this. Before she was Suzanne she was Sarah, and she remembered the softness of her grandmother’s arm.

When she was still Sarah, she let the bits of eye dust rise in the air and touch her nose before falling. Now it is this paint chip on the wall that reminds her of her brother

before that time.

I was taught this closeness of feet when we danced the horah with laced fingers.
Perhaps Zelig did this with the tall women he liked so much, while Sarah watched the lights of Paris from a taxi.

In Virginia, my silver necklace broke and we never found the coral ball.

In Virginia, a boy named Desmond liked to touch my hair.

In Virginia, bamboo grew next to the school.

Sarah and Max came to Virginia with names long gone. They brought me a red corduroy dress with black polka dots. I wore it through the summer heat.

NaPoWriMo - Day 2

2008-04-02T23:58:00.000-07:00

Old Medicine

Marjem knows.
It is harder to learn of the things to come,
of the ridges on her ovaries and the tragedy
of shoes and skin.

The first is for her.
The second, for Israёl.

Marjem knows.
She is feeding Max butter and cheese to fatten him.
She is feeding him goat’s blood to chase away the tape worm.
Store the carp in the bath tub and chop it quickly with

swift
sure
strokes.

I was a little girl in Illinois.
The other children ate onions from the ground
that they washed in bowls,

pretending

that the fertilizer wouldn't kill them.

Let's tie down the acres and move the fields to rotting.
Bundle up the Queen Anne's Lace that Marjem wore on her wedding day.
Gather up the little girl who wouldn't eat the onion plants.

Note: After the fish was cooked, Israёl would give Max its crunchy eyes to eat. A salty symbol of affection.

NaPoWriMo-DAY 1

2008-04-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

White Circles

This is the way we sweep the sinking sadness of water.
It’s hard being out of tweak
still calling you by a different name you can’t exchange
for pennies.

These fights
These fights for something other than marzipan fruit
have made me into a box actor,
have
made
me
speak lines with many mouth shapes.

Let us (you and I)
slip into the edges of the husk and curl together as mealworms might.
There is room enough for Raisla
and the breadmaker
and the midwife as well.

Take the crooked fingers and straighten the veins into
highways and landing strips.
This is the way we watch the sun spots invade our face parts.
This is the way we crawl beneath our fingernails.
This is how I throw you into the white circles of my blood.

I am High on Obama

2008-03-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

I saw Barack Obama in Eugene last night. He was amazing.

Semen Rolls

2008-03-19T17:07:00.000-07:00

I.
Use (bath) salts in the event of nakedness.
I used to be sad sad sad.
But my fat rolls are skin rolls really.
Can you not understand my words?
I said sea minerals.
Semen.
Rolls.

II.
The man said he wasn’t stylish.
Just historical.
He was wearing his father’s ring and silver belt buckle.
I wasn’t listening.
I was pretending my stryrofoam cup was filled with something besides air.
I was pretending that my name was Tallulah, and I had never left South Carolina.

III.
The plastic bear is half full of orange blossom honey.
Do you think I’m an optimist because I said half full?
I’d like to introduce myself based on things you can’t know.
Perhaps I’ll take root behind your smile.

IV.
My father tells me I frown in my sleep.
The young kids took pictures of me with my eyes slightly open.
I will mark this book with a hair stroke.
God damn the sodden wrinkles.
The wrinkling layers of snowdrifts.

V.
I believe in ghosts.
Remember Guy Tudor’s cat?
And the blue woman?
And the face of Pat’s mother?
What about Raisla and Gitla? Esther and Zelig?
Gone
Gone
Gone

Found

2008-03-06T22:46:00.000-08:00

On the ground outside of Susanne Homes

Research

2008-03-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

I am thinking about heart murmurs. I am thinking about my heart murmur. And my father’s. And my grandfather’s. I am thinking about Josephine baker. I am thinking about patterns in the birdseed. I am thinking about antique cap guns. I am thinking about what it means to be jilted. I am wondering if it’s worth going back. I am wondering if I’m pretty enough. I am thinking about Ohio and Texas. I am thinking about the things in my eyes. I am thinking about a man named Zelig. I am thinking about my mother’s wedding ring. I am thinking about fine French dining. I am thinking about the day Elena and I went swimming at Spinaker Point and we swam very far from shore and Molly had to rescue us and the seaweed felt like eels tangling around our legs. I am thinking I am wasting time. I am contemplating fleeing the country. I am wanting an easy answer. I am learning to trust my spine.

First Quarter

2008-02-27T17:11:00.000-08:00

You look for faces in the neap tide.
Is my face not enough?
Can we be more than victims?
Hollow out the insides lovely.
Bring the charcoal splinters to my feet.
The tines are sharp and ready.

There is a button in my chest that fastens shut
the rib bones.
I can feel it snug and tight and nice.
You have left your mark with the sighing things.

It is not an easy answer.
I know this now.
The inky smudges fill my eye place.
This is what you’ve done.

So You'll Know

2008-01-29T23:18:00.000-08:00

If I could, my dear,
I’d shape you like a muse and watch you shift to something else.
If you asked me, darling,
I’d call your blindman’s bluff and hang the hunted hands till dawn.
In a dream, baby,
We’d fall into our bones and play a game of cat and mouse.
Was it you, lover?
Who grinned away the trees and let my idol shine the best?
So you’ll know, sweetheart,
I’ll transplant all my half-blown tears into your blood to see them move.
If I waited, boy,
My sighs would count a thousand years into a speck of salty sea.
If I waited if
I waited
If I
Waited.

Perhaps...

2007-12-31T01:52:00.000-08:00

I met an old man who tied a string around his johnson during church services to keep from pissing himself. He wore thick glasses and short-sleeved button down shirts. His jeans made his ass bubble out behind him. I think he wanted to have sex with me. Maybe.

I met an old woman who read my palm. She told me my first marriage would end in divorce. She said I must have had a rough infancy and a spiritual upbringing. This was wrong, but I answered yes anyway so she wouldn’t be embarrassed. I read one of her short stories. It was about the Ku Klux Klan. She said it was real.

I met a boy in high school who told me I was pretty. It was winter and we would switch scarves and gloves and jackets during fifth period art history. He told me about his drug use and his dysfunctional family. Nothing else ever happened. I was too afraid then. It’s different now.

I was little once, and I ran around barefoot and made daisy chains in the rain. My mother and I used to play a game where she was my mentally retarded sister, and I was her caretaker. I would put an imaginary pill in her mouth and stroke her throat like an animal to make her swallow it. We would laugh for hours.

I write truth in pretty boxes and call it make believe. Teach me your vagabond wantings and I will bear the halogen lights and waterlogged shoes. I will buy the Goodwill pushpins. I will change my definition of love.

Something New

2007-12-16T02:25:00.001-08:00

Still Shots

Sometimes I want to hear the closed off things.
It's not enough just to know of the Do Not Enter signs and private drives.
When will it be for me?

I miss the whispered times and the nighttime tricks.
We have the same knuckles, you know.
Shit.
It always comes back to those longed-after still shots.

We clack rhythms with our teeth.
I perform Fred Astaire's tap routines in my mouth.
They rattle inside my head, along with the popping of your jaw.

Don't think about it don't think about it don't think about how it was.
I want to follow my advice.
Sort of.

Old Poem 2

2007-12-16T01:37:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago.

All Sorts of Melting

They never came.
I mean that in more ways than one.
I am reduced to drinking tea with wayward winds and tinsel twigs.
My drawer is filled with unused sugar.
The smear of chocolate is on my lips only.

We can be televangelists saving souls,
While the peaks of the city spires throb in Freudian bliss.
Let me weave a tale with my fingers.
Let me breathe the smell of piss and European cigarettes.
The sound of my heels on the pavement makes me feel like a whore.
I knew a guy who liked stilettos and very white skin.
We were never alone together.

I'm counting the pleats in my skirt in an effort to divine the future.
I'm buying super absorbent paper towels.
I don't know the difference between a heathen and a heretic.
My father has worn a Star of David around his neck for as long as I can remember.
We're still having ham on Christmas Eve.

You told me you were all sorts of melting,
As if that meant something to me.
Can you feel my heart? It beats in a doom-doom way.
Different than yours.
I'm trying not to think of your hands.
And the night we walked in the snow.
Maybe in my next life I will ask the questions much earlier,
And you won't be afraid.

Old Poem 1

2007-12-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

I wrote this in response to a poem Bryan sent me a while ago.

For ______

This is where my mirror turned to rotting.
This is where the pussy willow went through my ear holes.
This is where you hung your galoshes and peach-flavored swishers.
This is where my natural disaster struck a chord.
This is where you changed all your weeping to leopard-shaped boxes.
This is where my father spoke like an old man.
This is where I loaded my pipe with grape-colored Doppler.
This is where he kissed me.
This is where I wanted him to kiss me.
This is where our Plexiglass chain fell in bits to the earth.
I will stay.

i'm catching up with technology

2007-12-16T00:38:00.000-08:00

so

i suppose i am now a blogger