My Grandma Really Wants to Cut Up Some Fruit For You

Just now, I'm watching my husband carefully add some raisins to his oatmeal. He has two bowls lined up on the counter and is emulating the style of the cooks on TV: everything he needs to make breakfast (carton of milk, currants, raisins) taken out of their homes and neatly lined up like little soldiers reporting for duty. He inquires if I want raisins in my oatmeal, or currants, or both.

It brought back a vivid memory of my grandmother who used to put out every cereal box we had on the kitchen table, with two bowls for my brother and me, and two spoons, and two different kinds of milk (whole milk and Lactaid for herself). This used to delight me to no end when I was a kid. Cereal buffet! Grandma has put out all the boxes! Maybe I will mix two different kinds together this morning; my mother never facilitated such options for me at breakfast.

Then she would start cutting up the fruit like a hundred people were coming over. Apples, pears, strawberries.

"Here," she'd say. "Eat this. Have some peach."

"No, grandma," I'd say. "I'm good with this cereal."

She would grow irate: "I cut up all this fruit for you!"

I can see her hands so clearly: small and white, the bright diced peach resting between her index finger and her thumb.

On mornings like this, when I committed to baking a birthday cake, or when I committed to doing anything domestic, I miss her; I miss grandmothers in general, how they always had kleenex, how they sat next to me in church and kept me quiet with sugar free candy, how they baby-sat me when my parents went out to dinner on those wintery nights when ordinarily I might have been afraid.

Roadhouse on AMC, can't go out now....

I don't know what it is exactly, but whenever I see that Patrick Swayze's bouncer-Christ sacrifice tome Roadhouse, I have to stop everything and watch it.

I think it's a combination of several factors. First, Swayze's messiah of the juke joint/speakeasy is pure hotness. He practices some kind of aikido or tai chi but approaches his new job with the calm prowess of a Western vigilante. He's on the classic Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey, but wow, who knew the journey would involve a monster truck squashing a car dealership?

And oh. That love scene with Kelly Lynch. Be still my cowgirl heart!
And oh. The dialogue. "Pain don't hurt" and a degree in NYU Philosophy. Come on over, Mr. Dalton. Come on over.

Preta (hungry ghosts)

what do i do with desire?

growling dog with blue teeth
lighting up the night?

prowl the Ping River at midnight:
the people who love me
have stuffed my mouth with feathers.

burned city inside me:
when there is nothing left
I will love the bones.

1927 Goss Street

you left
the astonished mouth of a front door
open
and a hammock in this tree: shroud for fallen leaves.
their spice in the catacombs of the yard
the only undead thing--
even the mailbox is a crushed lung
slowly breathing.

and still
I hear
what’s always
left behind in your garden (basil, begonias):

the wild
throb
of the half-eaten
heart.

Mormon Bride to Be, Boulder, CO

Where the earth splits
for final judgement
like holy burned bread
she will kneel
in a crater
and beg God to swallow her up.

But now her bag rubs against mine
on the bus up the mountain
in a most sinful way.

She talks about the river road,
how in December it freezes like a icy fist
and won’t let anyone pass
unless they walk;

how the Rockies holding
the sky are hands touching
heaven.

I ask her: fish with me
with this borrowed pole,

sleep with me
in this borrowed tent.

But at the falls
where air is thin and gray
we part ways.

I saw her loop through the pines
as alone and white as a bird.

The Naked Man Festival (Hadaka Matsuri)

Here’s the Spirit Man:
touch him as he passes
like a tossed orchid
through the wet street.

Mark him, his tenement,
win a year of good luck.

By the seventh hour his scratched face, eyes
pool blood, bearing the tattoo
of ancient pain:
tissue, bone, sweat—

you can’t really watch this if you’re a woman.

The festival forbids it: it’s for brothers, fathers:
men who wrap their dead sons and
they pray for a better year.

Even the reporter on the scene is a man
telling his crew what to blur and when,
until we can’t see what is an arm
and what is a jaw, an eye,

and what is a man anyway,

his chassis like broken stone?

When I Annoy You with My Feminist Soapboxing, Fill Out This Form

Dear ____________,


Today you offended me/the group with the following offense(s): (Circle all that apply)

*long winded rant about the new Summer's Eve commercial
*referencing “patriarchy” as well as other superstitions again
*paranoid theories about gas station attendants
*telling stories from the 90’s, when feminism was cool
*calling your husband “your partner” in an attempt to be inclusive and sexually ambiguous


Your recommended punishment:

*watch several episodes of Charlie’s Angels in silver hotpants
*listen to Lil’ Jon’s “Get Low” and not comment on misogynistic lyrics (we know you have it in your Ipod anyway)
*spend two days fishing with Uncle Johnny, who thinks women-folk belong in the kitchen