Joan's Journal

Today's poem:

The Other Woman

as I picture her
she has no basil
no cumin
no sun-hardened hyssop
nor sage around her eyes

she never catnips
but laughs comfrey
tansy with a primula smile

as I think of her
she's angelica
foxglove and jasmine
somewhat peppermint
not letting you see
all her saffron at once

one day I’ll meet her
that rue woman
that wild indigo teasel
somewhere neutral
free of woodruff and of dropwort
some summer savory

she's the nose
set to lavender
eye full of sesame
ear ringing rosemary

she's wind
through wild thyme

--Twyla M. Hansen

*

I was taken with the need to do an Orphan Black rewatch and there's so much I forgot! Tatiana Maslany is so good, which you all knew, and the supporting cast is *chef's kiss*. It makes very few missteps, and watching in marathon fashion means even storylines I disliked originally (CASTOR) work much better. It's on Netflix, so if you are in the mood and don't mind the grossout body horror, it's a good watch.

And this poem seemed fitting:

This Poem Will Get Me On Some Kind of Watchlist
by Jessie Lochrie

I'm dancing at a nightclub
when someone behind me
places a hand on my shoulder.
I assume it's a friend until
the hand slides down my chest.

Boiling with gin and rage
I grab his wrist, whip around,
and punch him in the jaw.
It doesn't land well—
I've never hit anyone before—
so I punch him in the gut,
just for good measure.

I look at him doubled over and spit
Never do that to a woman again,
and then I run. My friends laugh in the cab:
You punched a guy!
but I sit silent and burning.

In Crown Heights, in Union Square,
in South Williamsburg: men leer and
whistle and smack their lips.
I ignore them, or flip them off,
or tell them I'm married.

When they purr que guapa
I yell callate and they all laugh.
I can't tell if they're laughing at me
for being a white girl speaking bad
Spanish, or at the idea that anything
I say might actually shut them up.

In my impotent rage I dream of a world
where I am not public property. I would
start wars for my right to walk down a street
unafraid, a thousand wars for a single day
in which my body belongs to me alone.
An army raised against each cat call. A bullet
for every man who ever told me to smile.

***

Today's poem:

Great Things Have Happened

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, "Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time." But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn't mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I'm sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

"Is that all?" I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you've never visited
before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

--Alden Nowlan

*

Happy Easter if you celebrate! Happy Sunday if not.

Here is today's poem:

Sunflower Astronaut
by Charlie Espinosa

[commence imbibition]

I begin my log in the seed capsule. There is little to report.
I am dormant. I am alone. I am drifting through the void.
Sometimes, I wonder what lies beyond the vacuum-sealed walls.
Sometimes, I swear I hear a very faint, very beautiful, song.

I have landed. Surface: moist. Atmosphere: favorable. Competition: unknown.
I discard the shriveled seed coat. Every cell in my body pulses with life.
Enzymes fly like meteorites and I emerge, gasping from my pod.

[commence germination]

There is no need to waste time with instructions.
I open my endosperm sack and gorge on the stored feast of sugar.
Invigorated, my radicle, that intrepid probe, plunges into the depths.
For the first time I taste, no absorb, the rich minerals of the new world.

My cotyledons unfurl like two green sails into the light.
Ah, sweet solar wind, filling my chlorophyll with galactic energy.
Gradually, I establish myself here, growing up and down, in light and dark.

[commence vegetative growth]

Forgive me. I have not been carefully logging my progress.
The divisions, they simply became too numerous to catalogue.
Besides, I was in a kind of trance, conducting the photo-symphony–
Keeping my glucose stocks fat and multiplying my meristems.

The important point is that I am tall with a well-defined stalk and enviable leaves.
There are other sunflowers too, and a rather impudent beast who is fond of digging.
All in all, I have adapted well. I am happy. Though I don’t care for the beast.

[commence ripening]

For months I have studied the sun. My head of bracts tracked its arc like an antenna.
Now I am a sun, with a yellow crown and a hot core of disk florets and pollen.
I, too, emit signals to orbiting bodies who come and go with fertile stardust.
Was this my mission, to set into motion a new solar system?

I merge with another star. My head sags under the weight of our fruits.
The inflorescence fades. The wind scatters my wilted petals over the floor.
It has become difficult to know where I end and where this planet begins.

[commence decomposition]

The digging beast beheaded me and made off with my seeds.
The sparrows peck at what’s left. Somehow, I don’t seem to mind.
Each day, a little darker, a little colder, siphons me away.

I said before I began alone, but now I remember something else:
Being a seed among other seeds encircled in a halo of yellow rays.

*

I made gyoza! #mygyoza They might not look that great but they are delicious!

*

I made my appointment to return my old modem and router for 2:15 pm today before I decided to take today off, because 2:15 put it right in the middle of my lunch hour. However, having taken the day off, 2:15 became the worst possible time to do it. But it's done! Not without a slight misadventure. I put the address in for a Lyft and doublechecked the confirmation text and was like, okay, 74-10 Austin Street. But when we arrived at 74-10 Austin Street, it was a residential building. And I'm like, I know it's just up the block there and the guy is like, but this is the address you requested. So I get out and start walking and I'm like, I know it's here, I've been here before, where the fuck is it??? So I recheck my phone and the address is...71-40. I would have sworn on a stack of bibles everything said 74-10, but it did not. Brain, why are you like this???

Anyway, the equipment return was quick and smooth, and Shake Shack was 2 doors down, so I had Shake Shack for lunch and it was all good.

Here's today's poem:

Five passages between uncertain territories

1
The wind has got trapped in the chimney;
its plaintive howls crash, slash and rumble
all the way to the backbone and back again.
Walrus angels ride their ancient motorbikes
on the Wall of Death.

2
I burrow deep into heretic soil, lie quietly
close to roots and corms, listen to the sounds
of critters in the field, beasties by the roadside:
their adventure songs of rescue, revelation,
revival and sunrise.

3
Because you travel the undiscovered country,
carrying the black flag, mallet and stake,
I offer you heartware – I stay tuned in all right;
but you know I don't trust you any farther
than to the rim of the map.

4
I lost my little mittens and my hands are cold.
All around, purple pearls and snailshells lie
scattered like random pebbles; I pick them up
gingerly, clovefully. I count them three times,
then once more for luck.

5
Cloaked in furs and feathers I shall sojourn
in abandoned observatories, hurdy-gurdy
power stations, mills by mystic lakesides,
stitching tales of hope and hardship, breaking
every bone in the book.

--Jane Røken

***