swirl of anonymity

2008-05-20T15:40:00.005-04:00

Here we are. Things are better than I could dream them to be. He tells me every day how much he loves me, that I am his everything, his world, his best friend. I can't wait to marry him and start a family together.

This was taken at my brother's wedding. I was a bride's maid. It was phenomenal, so much fun, and very romantic. Both my brother and Rosemarie looked amazing. The ceremony was beautiful (and I cried, of course), the food was amazing, the drinks were great, and the reception was a blast. Tom (who doesn't dance) slow-danced to "Purple Rain" by Prince and "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. My brother and Rose's song was Etta James' "At Last"; my mom and brother danced to "Through the Years"; and Rose and her dad danced to "Because You Loved Me" by Celine Dion.

I gave a heartfelt speech and didn't cry or get nervous during it. I introduced Tom to everyone and they all (especially the bridal party, who had met him at the paint-ball bachelor/ette party) loved him. I would live it over again if I could. All that's left now are my gorgeous fake nails, my manicured toenails, my hairless arms (I had them waxed), 3 fake lashes on my right eye, and one fake lash on my left eye.

When the stars have all gone out, you'll still be burning so bright

2008-05-13T13:28:00.002-04:00

I am happy, and entirely in love, mind, body, and soul, with a man who is entirely in love with me. I've known him for three years or so, and we dated last summer but I broke up with him because he treated me badly. After about 8 months of my avoiding his calls, he's changed his life around and had been missing me sorely all along. Now we are together again and he is a completely different person. We want to get married.

I am writing my last college paper ever today, and after that, I graduate. My brother's wedding is on Sunday. My parents leave May 22nd, and come back June 4th, and Tom is going to shack up at my house with me until then, having fun and hiking and going for walks and stuff.

My graduation party is June 8th. I was nominated for Phi Beta Kappa but I don't know if I will receive the honor because my grades this semester probably aren't as good as they've been throughout college.

Basically, things couldn't be better.

2007-07-31T10:43:00.000-04:00

The traffic was a series of stutters and coughs. I could not translate the lines and sweeping metal. I reached out for your callused hand, but you had gone ahead and were not turning back. Your name in my mouth, its repetition, was not enough to make you turn back for me. You were the back of a black suit, topped with a head of black hair, and your legs were very long. Their speed intimidated.

brand new.

2007-05-31T14:27:00.000-04:00

Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face, the kind you'd find on someone that could save. If they don't put me away, it’ll be a miracle. Do you believe you're missing out? That everything good is happening somewhere else. With nobody in your bed, the night's hard to get through.

And I will die all alone. And when I arrive, I won’t know anyone.

Jesus Christ, I’m alone again. So what did you do those three days you were dead? 'Cause this problem is gonna last more than the weekend.

Jesus Christ, I’m not scared to die. I’m a little bit scared of what comes after. Do I get the gold chariot or do I float through the ceiling?

Or do I divide and pull apart? 'Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark. This ship went down in sight of land and at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands?

I know you're coming in the night like a thief, but I’ve had some time alone to hone my lying technique. I know you think that I’m someone you can trust but I’m scared I’ll get scared and I swear I’ll try to never give up. So do you think that we could work out a sign, so I’ll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try?

I know you'll come for the people like me, but we all got wood and nails. We turn, turn out hate in factories. We all got wood and nails. We turn, turn out hate in factories. We all got wood and nails, and we sleep inside of this machine.

meh.

2007-05-01T16:10:00.000-04:00

i post a lot of shitty prose and poetry in here not because i don't want to share, but because i'm afraid of having the "better" stuff i've written stolen. yes, i'm that full of myself.

i want to do something drastic. like run away, or get another tattoo. i will probably just end up dying and cutting my hair... that sounds like such a good idea right now.

i applied for a summer internship through Montclair Editors and Writers, but no one has contacted me yet. it would be really great if i could get a job with a publishing company because, for one thing, i would enjoy it, and for another, my parents would stop nagging me. their suggestions are always so uninventive too. "why don't you work at starbucks? why don't you apply at whole foods? you know, barnes and noble is hiring." ew... i don't want to work for minimum wage for the most evil corporations of america. the ones that have commodified everything that i love! (good coffee, weird health/ethnic food, and literature/music/movies?)

i'm such a brat.

i have an 8-page paper due tomorrow and i haven't started it yet. haven't even really read any of the books that it is on. i've realized that i haven't had to work so hard this semester of college. despite the fact that the classes i am in are 300-level courses, each one really only requires me to write maybe two papers, and take two exams. i put all the work off till the very last minute, thus putting forth the least possible amount of effort... and i still manage to get an A.

the english major at rutgers is insubstantial in my opinion. there aren't enough course offerings in creative writing, and the major itself is not demanding enough.

i'm gonna try to write my paper now though.

a line that always comes to my mind.

2007-04-22T13:15:00.001-04:00

All the bridges in the world won't save you.

waiting for the hint of a spark.

2007-04-20T18:25:00.000-04:00

this is no longer our secret. it is
the pebble caught under our skins,
the scar tissues just thickening,
the rusted nails that dug too deep
and left their marks irrevocably.

i want to hold your hands and tell you
'love, you've taught me what love is;
and love, it is you.' but love, all that i can do
is take your hands and show you the most
delicate parts of myself:
the soft lips and the flimsy wrists
i guard to myself most of my days
but now ask that you not touch this place
with the fire of your hands
and your skin's hot wax.

i want to lace my fingers into yours
and say, 'love,
you've showed me what it is to love
and it is to love only you,'
but love, all that i can do
is tell you i don't need you anymore today
than i did yesterday, and anymore
than i ever will. you cradled the weight
of my words in your arms
for far too long and then you dropped them
heavily, clumsily at my feet.

apologies mean too much to me.

this is no mercy prize,
no purple heart is pinned
in glory to your chest.
you look up at me
with fear in your eyes
and a strange gratitude,
and i haven't figured out why yet

2007-04-16T14:45:00.001-04:00

I built this house with concrete stone,
mortar and brick,
steel veins and glass eyes,
and planks of wood the color of flesh.

I built this house with callused hands,
aging bones and the ache of joints
that throbbed into me a will, or a need
to continue to build in spite of myself.

I built this house with blood and sweat,
ash, branches, and rotten leaves.
Into the cracks of the floor I poured
great, horrific pools of ink
that separated and formed again
to shapes like letters that told their own stories
in words I've yet to decipher.

one thing i hate.

2007-04-04T20:28:00.001-04:00

sitting in a smokey room not drunk enough
to be numb to the punch i feel in my gut
when one of my friends says,
"do you know what it is to love someone so much it hurts?"
and mine is the only face
in a crowd of faces
that does not nod in agreement.

on aimlessly driving in new brunswick

2007-04-04T20:17:00.000-04:00

the road does not stretch far enough
and if it does, i do not want to know.
i resist the something in me
that's pushing me out, outward to some vague east
or south. i do not know.
i never can drive far enough
and if i do, not far enough to escape
the thing that's pulling me back
to the center,
home, a place that i leave
over and over, now and again,
in hopes that my leaving will somehow
make you miss me, even a little,
but you never do, and i never really leave,
and the distance can never
undo how stupid and close to you i feel.

we are all in the gutter...

2007-03-17T16:00:00.000-04:00

In autumn, I followed you through the wooded grove a few blocks from my childhood home. I watched you as you knelt in the leaves to rinse your hands in that brownish greyish stream. We climbed over the rotting trunks of fallen trees, their branches haphazard as capillaries. We tore through yards of thorny brush and emerged almost bleeding. Our hands still smooth, still clean.

At times we were shoeless. At times we were scared, because it was dark and we had no flashlights. At times you had ventured too far ahead and were silent when I called your name.

At times my heart pounded with the growing fear that the whole world was one big forest that I would, for all of my life, follow you through. But it was worth it, to be lost and following you. Take me again. Show me your hands. I will still follow you.

"all of our mistakes - innumerable as stars"

2007-03-14T03:11:00.000-04:00

i'm exausted and i really feel like writing. it's good to write really early in the morning when you are almost incoherent.

i feel happy. i feel like everything is just the way it is, and the way it is is just good enough.

symbolic interactionism

2007-03-08T03:26:00.000-05:00

i haven't written in here in a while

partly because i was too lazy to make myself a google email address in order to experience the "new blogger!" which is actually exactly the same as the old blogger!

i don't feel like saying anything profound or insightful. life is fucking dull as hell, it's monotonous, and tedious, and exausting, but it is also really good and i love it because i'm alive and in it and all that junk.

and next week is spring break, and i'm just looking forward to being able to do what i want to do, when i want to do it (i.e. go to the gym for 2 hours a day, 7 days a week, get my literal gluteus maximus back into the shape it was in a month ago, read some books that aren't school books, sleep, go to diners, see my best friends, cook!, go to the city).

my mom left for italy today, and will be gone till next sunday. my dad leaves for arizona friday and will be gone till next saturday. :-)

blah

2006-06-05T23:48:00.000-04:00

Haven't written in here in a while. Can't say much of anything is new in my life...I haven't been writing much poetry/prose lately, and I can't seem to bring myself to. When I try, I end up with 20 lines of mediocre rambling...It'll pass though. My life has been really up and down I guess. I think I need to be more productive right now in order to feel better about the down stuff...No one reads this...I'll write something of value later.

because i am vain on occasion

2006-05-12T03:57:00.000-04:00

(I write better than I photograph. It's untitled - something along the lines of "from the private journals of the lost businessman"...it's a first draft - Hope is a real town in Jersey)

Hope is a town full of gaps.
I am alien amongst its blank space. The sight of what seems to be a barn
leaves me breathless. I squint my eyes.

Hope is a town full of open fields. Last May,
my research proved them obsolete. I'll lose my job if news gets to Congress. Meantime,
I philosophise a cow's cry. Does it know that its moans are misprinted?

Hope is a town without smokestacks. Their cancer does not
bark its breath into night. I can't even hear
their coughs echoing. I rush to find a phone booth and tell my mother.

Around midnight, I am alarmed to see
a gray-bearded man in pajamas stand
on his stoop, open-mouthed with his head tilted back. I approach him with caution.

“Sir?” I impart. “Excuse me, sir? Is everything OK?”
His gray eyes are glossy. Their shine unsettles me. He merely lifts his hand to the level of his chest
and points upwards. Lost, I look.

It is black, I tell you. The sky. It is black. It is really black. I cannot describe.
There are stars. Littering. I cannot live to count.
“Deja vu” – beside me, the poor, crazy man murmurs. I frown at the sound of his senility.

good news.

2006-04-06T14:32:00.000-04:00

I've been awarded the following prizes for poetry:

The Academy of American Poets 2006 Poetry Prize

The Edna B. Herzberg Award

The Evelyn Hamilton Award

The Julia Carley Prize

This is absolutely amazing and unbelievable.

i am the lightning

2006-04-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

cover-up.

in a day,
we make love
four or five times.
in the dark and in the light.
we watch each other's eyes.

it isn't love. it isn't love.
i love making love to you.

in order of appearance.

i'm cast the female lead.
you read your script like poetry
and steal my lines from me.
in a day we rehearse
nine or ten times.

i need the practice in my life.
to make it right. to make this right.

dream sequence.

the curtains barely move in the humidity.
your body's lonely next to me.
i'm sweating through polluted sleep.
in a night, i stand up to leave
not nearly enough times.

you do not open up your eyes.
they aren't mine.

they aren't mine.

2006-03-26T20:09:00.000-05:00

Snagged a boyfriend. Yep.

Honestly,

2006-03-23T20:28:00.000-05:00

I keep terrible secrets.

2006-03-19T17:20:00.000-05:00

I wonder where the days went that I'm trying to get back to. Dissolved into photographs, report cards, and old blankets. The potpourri I call childhood, the feeling of it sometimes returning.

More and more lately I am who I want to be. Where I want to be.
The moments seem almost too perfect, and fragile. And.

There is also the relief of discovering that there is still love left in my heart. Heart, whatever that is. Love, whatever that is. However unspent the love may be, however tightly I keep my lips closed for fear of letting it out - it is still there, and I find comfort in that. Then comfort for the sake of comfort itself. Then, a surreal sort of pain, for keeping something so beautiful dormant. For using discretion with my own feelings. Like nooses for butterflies.

I always daydream. At night I leave the left side of the bed free.

2006-03-17T11:53:00.000-05:00

the most intimate moments of our lives are silent and full of thought. they do not involve touch, hot sighs, fervent fingertips. they are of friends in empty, late-night restaurants drawing one another and reading poetry. to have my features studied for art's sake. to feel more beautiful than any lovemaking has made me feel, to be cared for more than a thousand breathy "i love you"s could say.

Run on.

2006-03-13T12:14:00.000-05:00

early morning sweat startles me from the driftwood i would call "sleep" if i ever got used to the way it dissolves like the thundercloud cream that puffs in the coffee like deserts i drink to keep eyes open emails i get from ex-boyfriends like headaches i can't scrub when i'm comatose in the tub i can't sit in long enough for steam to rise a drug into my head drenched in luke-warm new jersey air of a crooked park bench on an evergreen lawn trimmed unreal poetry i can't write about happy children as white as my knuckles when palms bleed the screams from my mother become my own pleas at age 50 when men that have left me are picketfence tallies in notebooks blank as the men that have loved me are recurrent dreams in the driftwood i'll tell myself is somehow sleep

let's try this again.

2006-03-04T20:23:00.000-05:00

Belmar '52

In this one,
you are standing on the beach with your sisters. Five

ruby-lipped brunettes
too young to think of storms.

Link your arms. Dig your feet
into sand that sinks.

Fight the sound of raging winds
that barrel in off the Atlantic.

Laugh your throats dry.
Give The Ocean Hell.

The sea-weed strewn about your ankles:
it is silk, not slime.

Too young for storms. In this one,

Glide your wrinkled hand, nail-polish chipped and pink,
across the faces years wore down.

Say their names. Feel pearls roll smooth in your mouth.
Think not of death.

Of the solitude
of white plaster walls. Echoes down the hall

from an invalid - Hear them not.
Scream your throat dry.

Give the ocean hell.
You are too young for calm seas,

for the splatter crash dance undulating fire
of sunsets that smolder to lavendar and cream.

Keep your back to the sea. In this one vulnerable day

that wanes and sucks
its ocean down -

cold water down
the bathtub's drain,

and when you bathe, the sponge that moves
itself on you - not soap:

Sea-Foam. Don't close your eyes.
The hands that lift you to your bed are not hands at all.

They are schools of fish.
Shame that burns your cheeks red,

brings navy to your sunken eyes
isn't shame at all.

It is sunburn and soft bruise. In this one,

you were too young. You are too young for storms.
Feel splinters from a coral reef.

Touch salt that stings your skin
and laugh through the sensation.

Give The Ocean Hell.

angst

2006-02-12T21:55:00.000-05:00

At night I dream of poetry
and people I’ve not met.
By morning I forget
the words and the eyes;
etched charcoal in
parchment faces.

I kissed verse into your powdery lips
where you keep the secrets
of all kisses, all reckoning.

You are the curve of a horizon and a Pillar of Parthenon;
you are chipped teeth and barbed wire,
baby’s breath cackling at Birkenau.

We are the sinners.
I, delirious, noxious I,
with my hands on your back
prod for a spine. Wire nerves
bring your theatre, reaking to life
It is a ballet. A crusty burlesque.
I strum a rhythm on your pelvis.
Your clavicle I breathe
broken oaths across:
broken condoms behind bowling
alleys and brains
overflowing with dopamine.
Wring your hands.

My brother saw God
in a pastry. The LSD never
wore off. Wag your tongue.

I keep no secrets. I clamor through streets
a jangle of bones, the roar of my heavy engine heart
the trace of railroad skin and rusty nails; I am
your naked bitch
warmed by bottles and strange men
without remorse or last names.

I kissed bleach into your filthy mouth
where you keep all the filth
of all the mouths you meet.

In me there was no spark
and no fire blazing endlessly.
Not a single branch smoldered. In me
there was no tree, and in me
there was no bearded man,
dumbfounded, ignorant to chemistry and lost
among the subtle hum of Jethro’s sheep.
I dream

of all the somewheres
cummings never travelled.
I bring Yeats my marrow-bones
and stitch the tumult of word with love.
Bees swarm me in Plath’s kingdom;
I drown each tulip
in venom and fury.

2006-01-27T23:52:00.000-05:00

Everything's not fine.