# 89.5

When someone dies

you forget about them

or you don't. Either way 

it's like carrying a bale 

of river-weeds across 

a small patch of sun. 

Everything is like that. Or it's not. 

Or it's like an impending kiss. 

Soft and wet and not yet here

or past. When you come in the back 

door I'm petting the shoe 

with intensity and care. 

I thought it was relative 

to something else. I thought 

you'd be home later.

Meets

Ok:

Alina, Mollie and Ben meet Wednesday the 4th @ 4?

and

All of us, next Tues. the 10th @ 4 or 8 (I have a LIT meeting at 630, which I really want you guys to come to)

How does that work?

Doods...

I won't be able to get to any of the new posts until next week. Maybe you guys could bring them to our next group? Whenever it might be.

The Good Old Days

Frank was sitting on a bench, the newspaper spread out across his lap. Warren walked over and asked, "Hey, did you miss your train?"

Frank lifted his eyes momentarily from the paper. "No." "Oh," said Warren, "so you weren't trying to make the 10:57?" Frank adjusted his glasses, pushing them up with his index finger. "No," he said. "Are you sure?" Warren asked, "I could swear you always take the 10:57."

Frank folded the paper neatly beside him. "No," he said again, "I didn't miss my train." He brushed his hand over the lapel of his dark tweed coat. "I live here and have always lived here. Did you know this land was once teeming with creatures so monstrous when they walked it felt as if the world were collapsing on itself?"

"You don't say," said Warren. "There were no birds," Frank continued, "only leathery beasts the size of airplanes that could swoop down and snatch you up with their claws if you weren't paying attention. It was a frightening place to be alive."

The two men sat in silence for what seemed like ages. Finally, Warren spoke. "Well, thank goodness it's all evolved since then." He patted Frank on the back and stood up. "Take it easy, buddy. I hope you make your train."

Warren walked away but Frank barely noticed. "Those were the days," he said, shaking his head. "Now they're gone forever."

After A Week Of Sand

Everything is sort of boring
if you look at it one way
and impossibly exciting
if you look at it another.
You can lie on a bed in Bratislava
and weep gently into the curled sheets
when you remember
you’re stuck here
even if you’re not stuck,
and you are not.
Atoms are swirling in your eyelids.
Make atoms into another word like swan children,
if you need to, and that’s what’s attacking your world
in a peaceful hypnotic way.

A flame is more like water than we know.
If you watch it you’ll see what I mean.

Most of the time we just need each other. So here,
I picked up your sunglasses off the subway floor.
One of the lenses popped out when it fell
and is lying next to my shoe.
I give it back to you, stranger!
And what do you do you mildly thank me
when I say "maybe you can fix it”
and we walk on and I’m not sure
is what just happened remarkable or not.





let's meet again. -mollye.

Details Of A Life Exotically Outraged At Itself

Ah! Life! Who are you kidding? Everytime I think I’ll remember you a thing happens right then that distracts me and makes me emote. I can’t get all your jokes and colors. Who do you think loves you more than me? It’s March. In another country people are picking bananas. The banana trees are ripe in St. Lucia. Ask anyone! Stacks of yellow scaled cylinders are slender and curved for picking. The workers (you, me, whoever) tie blue bags around the fruit waists (stems) to keep out winter bugs. I have a feeling from what the island tour guide said

bananas should mean everything to us.

In the end will you forgive me like Thornton Wilder forgives for not knowing you right? Wilder forgave people in his plays. It’s one of the reasons he wrote plays (for forgiveness). It’s also why his staircases enchant theatre-goers. So many hands slide down them and eventually slide back up. He rarely killed someone he didn't love. He said poets and saints notice you, life, but not always. He didn’t say it. One of his characters said it for him.

newest. let me know. i'm back. in ny, tomorrow. xo, moll.

My Seafaring Ways

1.
There's an ocean waiting to be swum in.
Picture yourself bobbing atop foam and froth.
Zoom out further. What do you see?
Spiderwebs, labyrinths, constellations.

2.
The gods loom too heavily on the horizon.
How can we escape them?
All one can do is devour
ash berries and pray
for some kind of transcendence.

3.
Hold my hand. If you wish to take it.
Struggle through the oncoming fog
for it heralds a magnificent storm.
But stick around, the calm afterward
will be well worth the price of admission.


I wrote this poem in July and forgot about it. Do you think it's salvageable? G

Until a Green Flash Consumes My Raft and I

I can see myself on a long walk
in the middle of the night.
I can see myself growing tired.
I can see myself sitting down
by the roadside and pushing out
a baby and wrapping it in my blue
T-shirt. I can see myself
writing this poem,
which at this moment
contains my hand
scratching the head of its owner
a little unsure of what happens next.
Unstrap my nomad mask.
Pulse of the labyrinth's cerulean
heart. If I throw the baby
into the sky the sky
won't accept it.
But if I drop the baby
into the sea the sea
will absorb it.
I can see myself approach the waves.
Solemn blue eye in my heart.
I can see myself set the baby out.
I can see myself boarding the baby.
I am going to let it take me
as far as it can

How You Are Feeling

A screen glowing in the moving window makes me odd
and together with distant vectors,
the highway trying to act calm.

My mind’s over there on the grassy patched water
I’m pushing it over there as best I can.
I find that peacefulness is more beautiful
than any voice saying, “so…”
How dare I be writing
in the vanilla black pages of your book of love!
But there isn’t any paper in my arms.

My blood is thinning too it’s graduating
cylinders and uncontrollable lights!
Filling to the glittering numbered dashes, I think my
enthusiasm will last until a workman’s tool
locates my exotic lostness precisely through the rib.
Will you follow me
everywhere from now on?
Why aren’t these rented goats enough?
I’m not in the moon for anyone. And anyway
isn’t it great we don’t have any real predators!
Who cares about ever.
This is a burning boring telephone
I don’t care what it takes to touch you
I’ve got to tell you whatever it is
and quick









new one off the hot page let me know before I go what to do with it. moll

This Morning You Gave Birth To Yourself

There's a real thin fire blurring up some clear ghosts far away.
That’s real life and it’s happening
everywhere, especially Australia.
Is my friend ok? His potato hair and his long arms in the sun.
Are yours? And what about Beijing and its mountains
as breakable and malnourished as ours.
That pleasure pain thing, that’s a killer.
But don't let it get you!
Even your warm evening shower—are you in a tub or
a waterfall, it doesn’t matter
you have to step out don’t you

Necklace and Horn

Sometimes I am sitting in a beautiful hotel room thinking how beautiful it is.
And sometimes I'm not. Those are two exactly different moments for me.
I know you can't come into the room because you are driving a cab.
I like to think I understand your evening hair against the driver's seat
and the snow-blur that happens as the wipers pass over the glass into wings.
If you came into the room this is important.
You would change the entire scene. You make noise and have a family.
You are stranger than me. You would not find this room beautiful.
You would say
Why are you sitting in the deep hole?
What I'm saying is that the curtains are not silk and there are no chocolate coupons
on the pillows placed by a delicate maid. I don't want there to be maids.
I would rather this all appeared and disappeared
like the tossed cigarette ends crushed loose in your tire thumbprints.
That's what I'm thinking in the hotel room when a couple enters. I don't know them.
I think they are beautiful. There is nothing I can do about how spectacular they are
and how cruel they are to each other, how out of place I feel and am surrounded by.
Their fragrant arguing hurts my lungs.
I said fragrant because they smell like each other (earth and basement).
When they fight I am on the bed thinking and then they notice me and say come on
get out of here, we're fighting, and I go.
Do you see how uneven this is?
When you go into a shop and you enjoy it onehundredpercent of the workers hate you
for coming in and eyeing them and messing their morning pyramids and cake displays
with your hands.
When you come into a store you think it's there
for you to touch but it isn't. Nothing is here for you.
Someone put it here
someone untouchably attractive and tired.
The interior of your warm cab and the cracked brown seats are
exactly what I wanted and what
today so lovingly pushed into my arms

Cufflinks

We’re in this once! and unlike animals
have repercussions. I’m walking out
on the city street (faster
busier upside-down)
and could explode
like everyone else
from coffee and ideas.
Don’t you want to sleep with someone who explodes?
Here’s something I’ve always noticed:
instability is very attractive.
How many times have we picked a person
to run the world we don’t understand
and studying the sky ball for a few seconds
we get how it is microscopic
what we fight our wars on.
You are not always going to feel
the way horses breathe into your hands
to smell you. There are no pianos
in the pyramids and no TV On The Radio
even though I’m pretty both are
close to puking rain.
Why do we laugh when we fall?
What kind of mechanism is this?
Our parents miss us being small and poison.
My sister and I enjoy ignoring ourselves
and thinking about each other instead.
I think this is beautiful.
When you call someone
and don’t know what to say
you have so much to say
I think this is beautiful.
You could say it's my favorite word.

A Narrative

At long last he came to the moat,
but the shifty-eyed child under the pagoda
caused his lordship to doubt the oracle's predictions
and he clutched the tattered manuscript tighter to his chest.

Meanwhile, in the grotto, the baker's daughter in an embrace
with the dashing young haberdasher, makes the fateful discovery
that his birthmark is on the wrong cheek
and the townsfolk are never to hear from her again.

By the Canterbury Inn, the mob gathered
calling out for blood and retribution
only to be greeted by an empty carriage and its contents:
a bouquet of withered rose petals and a monacle.

On the following Sunday,
having directed the servants to draw a bath,
Mr. X_______ soaks in his late uncle's tub,
and tears up the gold-sealed envelope unread.

But despite the widow's dire warning
no message had come from the asylum
and they hugged each other, breathing a sigh of relief
only to be interrupted by a sound coming from behind the cellar door.

Indeed, after they had found the remains of his vestments in the shrubbery
it now became apparent that something had happened
to the young curate and there was nothing left for them to do
but wait until sundown to make the grim announcement.

At the rooster's crow, however, the apothecary and his assistant
finally finished burying the evidence and they celebrated
with a snifter of port each only for the apothecary to too late
notice his speech slurring a little too much a little too soon.

That noon the thirteen guests gathered around the table
and eagerly awaited the tycoon's further instructions
only for the timid young typesetter to notice a card upon her chair
which read: Goodbye, my compatriots. Don't look up.

*

Here's a new piece. It was great to see you all on Tuesday. Now let's poesy! G

Do They Make Tools To Prevent This Feeling?

If I were space I would be a lot floating over you
and your driveway up the hill no one's act of violence supersedes my own
ride home screaming through traffic, an asthma cough away from where I left you. I have feeling! It is morning! I believe too quickly day again

Is it normal to let it go by? To move around so much like this?

For your hair to thicken and muscles more or less to tense?
Some people believe in physics. I know for sure I have always seen miracles. Green leaves my grass-level window surprised. You mean, it's really Tuesday? Still a summer month inside my mouth? I don't know the exits.
I am not a vein.








-tell me, mm.

1927!

This is the year I took a roundtrip vacation, ending where I had once begun and beginning in a state of exasperation only a fizzy drink could cure. Where had I gone? This matter is of no importance to my main point: the series of bangs in the atmosphere (indeed they sound like bombs) is constant, especially during sleep when I, alone, tucked into a quilt-comforted bed, shiver with delight for the prospect of morning. This activity lasts between the hours of 2-5, respectively. And what should be said of this? Either: trees in Wyoming make me restless/ please bring me a glass of water/ what cloth to wrap around your pole. Figuratively speaking, it is the ringing phone that keeps beige horses from dragging me into sleep.

New Version

Instructions


Take this eyeball.

It is small and round and wet because

it came from my head.

Take it as far as you can.

Protect it from birds,

especially falcons. They are the worst.

Do not give it to bearded men in fallout shelters

or women who live on junks.

Do not leave it in a mountainous region where clouds grope the sky.

Do not place it on a throne made of toothpicks.

It hates all thrones.

When you have carried it far enough,

give it to the next person you see.

Or bury it in a pile of leaves.

Or smash it on a rock.

Newer Version

White Flowers


I asked her to kiss me and she did.

I wanted to impress her with my kissing ability

and so placed my hand on her cheek.

It scared me, but I touched it gently.

My eyes were shut, as is the common practice

amongst people of my kind.

As is the common practice amongst people of my kind

my mind began to wander.

I began to think of the namelessness

given to the act of a deer

spooked by his shadow on the rime.

I thought about Papa who died half-naked

with a mouthful of mushroom soup.

I thought of the universe expanding

in its bowl and of the binary code

we shot into the sky

with huge blinking lasers.

I thought of the word isotope.

Isotope, I thought to myself,

although I may have spoke it aloud.

Years passed between end of this kiss

and the beginning of the next. Several things occurred

that demanded immediate attention.

so memory is insular

I just sort of got that memory is insular and inward
and if you push out you get into space and that’s usually scary and cold
and more silent than anyone,
even bats, can imagine.
I’ve also been wondering why animals don’t get sick that often
or why there aren’t really skinny elephants. I don’t know why I think about this
but can you really picture a herd of very skinny elephants
pummeling through the jungle after your
heart, they are so desperate?I think (yes, I do) that animals have a better system than France
at problem management. For instance, what am I doing right now?
I have to exert energy, creativity, and syllables to tell you. Isn’t that crazy!
A zebra only has to look into another’s zebra’s eyes to know
what it wants or why it is not interested in touching
its striped body anymore.
I am only just now going more outward with things.
What I mean is before now I was concerned with re-painting
the hill in my backyard and my assorted days.
But now I see that the universe is pretty
and caustic and wrong sometimes.
instead of painting over it
I want to go into it
and that might mean I’m a special person
but no one is sure.

When No One Is Anywhere Near You

If I
okay here I go
If I
am lying in my bed
about to sleep
rolling through sheets and past lives
is that serious? I mean
just that and I mean more
like What If This Is Last Night?
What are the other girls
shutting their hairy eyes
(and the boys,
not next to them)
?

What are the murderers up to tonight?
That’s what I want to know.
They are fixing themselves a hot snack
and sweating I’m sure about debts.
They are next door
and through more doors!
and that’s ok.
I should sulk more.

That's what I said to a friend
last night over tea.
I really should. When I’m at the edge
of my edge and tears are painting
down my face and (or)
I’m almost asleep
should I hesitate closing all the way?

There’s that frozen tree I tried to draw
and the coins in my pocket I felt!
Here are the Czech archways again!
And English horses tied to ropes!
It’s not exactly fear….
It’s not exactly fear!
As I picture myself not quite anywhere.

I’m slicing open a fish for dessert
seeing that its scales sort of pile
on the inside too (I prefer living
fish you know)
but really this is serious
tiny thoughts frost over
and even if you reheat them
never come back the same.

Off Any Island, It Is January

A chunk of wing
in everyone’s shoes.
All is as it should be where it's tropical.
I slip my mouth around
the mango’s thickish tongue,
her western saddle
perfumed butter and hair.
It is all over my mouth
the yellow smell
and her undone purse!
I am almost completely through
to the kayak bone when
a fly lands on the surface!
One time! Forever!
Jupiter & earth!
I swish her away (the fly)
because I need that part.
When I drop her in the water
(the mango)
her armless body falls
just like someone
she will make a cloud
on the ocean floor.
Isn’t that fair?
I for an instant (not the fly)
decide the seeds!

The Ship of Kazoo

Out of the sea the serenade began: two banjos molded into one,
four drumsticks tapped the water as if punching a gong.
When thermostats agree, do you brush off your purple garb?
The blood on the deck was a book that needed to be collated.
As if the sprinters fell flat and broke their noses in unison.
In your latest book you are standing on a dirt road wearing
shoes so dear to me. And now your toes are melting ice caps.
Do you have tea on western days when the wind forgets to waltz?
The sea soaked the underside of the boat with shards of glass and dew.
When you cry do you feel as parched as a nun on St. Martins day?
Your eyes were olives and you were a big cheese head.
I was going to eat you. But then you saw the darling view:
the geese were knitting a sweater for you, fine zoologist,
for you embarked on a journey without an encyclopedia.
When I fell into your arms, the billboards collapsed into guest bedrooms.
The day was a sweet farmer, walking home after feeding the goats,
and wondering if the potatoes ate his pillow.

Another Long Liner...

Blue Pulse

I was too wound up to sleep. On my way home I had found a sign that said
beer & wine for everyone. I think it was a bumpersticker. I was going through some
some shit. I was having an existential crisis about grad school, which is really a small
sort of thing I wouldn't want to burden you with. I didn't have any delusions about
the sign. I'd stopped being delusional about anything months back after being electrocuted
for an audience of pre-meds. It was something I'd volunteered for. It was a volunteer
electrocution, if you can believe that. It wasn't to cure me of anything or anything
like that, but they promised me money, which is a kind of cure, or at least I think so.
I was wide awake and clutching the sign to my chest. Let's say you are writing
a letter to a large bureaucratic office, the Office of Something & Something.
Let's say the lines of the letter keep being too long for the page you are writing on.
No matter what you do to your handwriting or how big a piece of paper you use,
the lines are still too long to fit on the page. This is exactly the feeling I had that night
with the sign, the feeling I'd hoped to rid myself of by being electrocuted, that I am having,
now. The lines, too long to fit on the page.

Prague

Thank you all for being so awesome. Sorry for being MIA!!!

I will start posting like crazy. Watch out.

An Ogre in New York

I am the fog that chokes the air,
The bat that's tangled in your hair.
I hide beneath your bed at night.
I am the rife, my friends, the rife.

Don't look directly at my orbit.
You'll end up in the obit.
Fie! Fie! You cry in disgust.
Come dive with me into the lust.

I roam the subways with the rats.
Chomp on tossed away ladies' flats.
Oscar the Grouch's got nothing on me.
My mind is a dumpster. It is bawdy.

Sift through me, sift sift.
See anything you like? Take the risk.
I am made from pretzels, ticket stubs,
I Heart NY shirts, pizza, subs.

Leap into the neon lights flood.
I am odd.
Be swept away by beer, Disco fries, soda.
Fill up on your poetry quota.

Ogre's delight - I heart it downtown!
Get lost here and be not found.
Hot dog carts and waft of fried onions.
With me you're bound to get sweet bunions.

Stay with me a little while longer.
Your ho-hum days will never be somber.
I'm the Coney candy rotting your teeth.
The salt in your sandwiched pastrami & corned beef.

No Title Yet... Suggestions?

My father's spectacles were huge. They got in the way of everything. It was
embarrassing. As a child he would walk with me to the grocer. No one
passing on the street would look at us. That's how I learned about the heartrending
kindness of strangers. I couldn't bear to think about it. I would spend nights blindfolded,
walking through our family's pigeon coop, caressing the feathers of cooing birds.
When I turned fifteen, in the midst of the inferno called puberty, I left home.
I had the feeling, that love, electric yellow love, was my one and only destiny. I stowed
myself away on a boat called the Corona for no other reason than its name.
I slept for many days and nights, how many I could not tell, I was below deck.
I had procured a book on botany from my father's library, which I spent most of my time
pouring over. Wherever the good ship Corona landed, I was sure I'd have to know
what a calyx was, and how to speak elegantly on the topic of pollination. Love is simple,
I thought to myself each night before I fell to sleep. It seemed like months before
we finally struck land. With a soft thud, the Corona ended its journey, and I,
unbeknownst to its hardy crew, crept away into the night. Our port of call
had a familiar feeling. Empty, darkened shops, a few oil drums blazing in the night.
But all harbors feel like other harbors, I thought as I walked up a long winding road
to a house with a narrow, red door. I slipped my hand behind the lantern
and removed the skeleton key. My palms were sweaty. I could barely maneuver the key.
The door opened, revealing the interior of my home. Silhouetted in the doorway
was my father, mustache twitching, spectacles flashing in the flickering light.