a better speck of dust

driver, look over your shoulder

2010-12-28T20:15:00.000-08:00

smell is important

2010-10-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

I know that smell is important. There was the one I couldn't smell at all, even though he told me he hadn't showered in days. He laid on top of me and kissed me even though I said I didn't like him like that. He did a weird thing with his lips which felt wormy and didn't move very much. He didn't use tongue and after a while I kind of got horny but not in a good way. Later I met him in the park to tell him I wasn't attracted to him. It was completely odorless.

There was the one who rarely showered and probably didn't use deodorant at all but who didn't smell much either, except faintly of tobacco and cold air. Sometimes like leaves, sometimes like a bonfire. I told him I liked the way he smelled and he said it was a good sign but then later I smelled the top of his head and it smelled like scalp, maybe like dandruff. I thought that maybe I had lied. In the morning I was so hungover that I thought if I smelled him too much I would be sick.

There was the one whose smell reminded me of a love I felt 5 years prior. Because it was him that I loved, but I hadn't loved him in five years and I didn't think that a smell could bring it back, but it did. He smelled exactly the same and I felt exactly the same, I knew what it was to be in his blankets and I knew what it was to lay on our sides together and have my arm around him and my nose smushed up against the back of his neck, right below the hairline.

There was the one who smelled best when he was drenched with sweat. Like when his t-shirt stuck to him and his hair was dark dripping curls. He smelled so good I wanted to lick his neck and it was the smell that made me stay longer than I should have. It was the smell that held my attention for months after it was over.

Now I tell him that I like the way he smells but I don't know if it is him or his deodorant or a combination of both. He always smells clean but sometimes the smell is too strong, like cologne and I don't like cologne. Later I smell him on my pillow and it is just faint enough, but I still wonder if it is him or the soap.

diving board

2010-08-03T21:23:00.001-07:00

the photo is of me age eight. I have on a tie-dyed one-piece swim suit with a yellow center on my belly bleeding into pink then blue then green bands of color and my arms are up in the air and my legs are splayed and I am suspended, six feet in the air, straight out from the diving board and I look at it and think I can remember climbing the ladder, my slippery hands grabbing cool metal, the skid-free plastic steps scraping the bottoms of my feet. knowing I have never fallen this far before but I am doing it and in the moment captured there is no turning back.

after work

2010-08-03T21:10:00.001-07:00

after work I rode my bike straight to the lake not stopping once on the steep hill up by the freeway in the hot dry sun laid my bike in the grass threw off my dress and got right in, ducking under the rope to the drop-off spot, swimming on my back and looking up at a sky with no clouds, just blue. Drying my skin in the sun I thought about the perfect day. imagined it much like this but spending it with someone - a boyfriend. a new lover. a best friend. someone I've just met. But in the end I couldn't pick who it would be, who could be there that would have made that moment any nicer, with the sun and the ducks and the kids just outside the city and traffic, just a short downhill ride away, and realized I was OK being alone, feeling comfort in this thought that came to me precisely because I had no one to share it with.

the day you left

2010-05-16T21:00:00.000-07:00

the day you left my orchid died
5 months overdue
but that is too melodramatic of a metaphor
for our relationship
I had been waiting for the first pink petal to drop
and then it happened all at once
which also felt significant
but probably isn't.

beltane

2010-05-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Root Works freaky forest people naked face paint feather boas men in dresses with ruffles an umbrella the colors of the rainbow May pole ribbons a big rock for a clit public blow jobs men kissing men what we dance for do a jig to show your excitement mushroom tea flowers serenade an owl with a ukulele shinny dipping waterfalls icy cold screaming before it touches my skin marijuana and can't stop laughing shakers and clementines glockenspiel accordion and don't stop now music in the garden peeing in the woods bonfires rock piles oskar the cat chases lizards vegan smores fresh pressed carrot ginger kale apple lemon juice in the morning fresh rolls MIA on a rope swing dancing wearing a thong climbing rocks sun red shoulders, cheeks and noses roof top garden bio-fuel station of the future early to bed sleeping with the crickets and that's what's up

just ask the universe

2010-04-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

So this hippie dude in Dolores park asks me what I do and when I start to explain my part-time nonprofit paid internship he interrupts and says no, I don't mean what do you do for money I mean what do you DO? And so I figure he wants an answer along the lines of his previously proclaimed doings, which is to get high and play with shiny things. I feel sheepish when I tell him that I write, which makes me feel kind of phony, but I think this answer satisfies him. My friend buys a purple crystal ring off of him and even though the hippie dude's not from here he tells us if we want to find him again we just have to ask the universe and while I don't really subscribe to that way of thinking I know when he says this it's true, because it was just yesterday that my friend said he wanted a crystal ring and then we just happened upon this dreadlocked man with a woven blanket displaying an array of crystals and copper wire that he will mold into a piece of jewelery, custom-made just for you.

take a bath

2010-02-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

but don’t use bubbles. Don’t think about the people who may have been in your tub before you. The water should be clear. Put your head underwater to hear the echo of moving furniture in the apartment below. Forget the time he washed your hair, or used your deodorant. Make it hot enough to turn your skin red, at least in blotches, at least on your chest. Don’t think about using anyone else’s toothbrush. Scrape off the dead skin with your fingernails. Concentrate on the neck and shoulders. Forget about certain body parts, like lips and thighs. Wipe any buildup on the side of the tub. Plan on cleaning it later. Get to the next layer. Don’t think about the dents in your pillow. Pick dead skin off your feet. Using a fingernail, remove any dirt from under your toe nails. Especially the big toe. Let the water drain slowly. Rinse, repeat.

there is glitter in your pavement

2009-12-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

you used my toothbrush
but not my toothpaste
it is too conventional i know.
later i wanted to tell you bout
the men who used it before you
my friend thinks this is how you get hep A
but i'm sure you are fine
despite being the type to die tragic
young and beautiful
just finished your masterpiece before
you could live the fame.
but it has always been there anyway
you have been wearing disguises since puberty
more like costumes
cos U know who U are
all stripes and gold and
exposed stitching.
but soon enough
that glitter in your pavement gets blown
remnants the next morning like
the aftermath of a car accident
more like a busted tail light.

when you find yourself on the ground

2009-11-14T09:43:00.000-08:00

It was one of those things where you just find yourself on the ground and you don’t know how you got there. You look over and see your bike a few feet away from you and remember riding over the curb, how that girl walked right in front of your path causing you to descend at an awkward angle right above the drainage grating where your tire sunk in and got stuck and you feel slightly angry at this girl, who continued walking even though you know it was your fault for riding your bike on the sidewalk and now you are sitting on the pavement, surrounded by students walking to and from their morning classes, but one of them stops, a tall boy, maybe a senior, with floppy brown hair and an attractive concerned look on his face when he asks you if you are okay and this is the point that you realize that you are, and he pulls your bike up off the ground as you stand up on rubbery knees, your hands shaking as you push a smile and a thank you before getting back on and riding away, wishing you could have stayed a little longer to find out who this boy was, thinking maybe if you had chatted a bit you would have realized you had something unique in common, like perhaps you went to the same summer camp as kids, at which point you would have fallen in love and looked back on that moment and reminisced at your chance encounter, that fateful day when you fell of your bike and he helped you up.

who blinks first

2009-10-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

We’re going to have a conversation okay and I will mention my feelings and you will say how busy you are and I will tell you even world leaders have time for relationships with their spouses, anyone has time if they really want it, which is to say, you don’t really like me all that much do you, but I can’t say this aloud because this is the worst thing you can say to someone you want to like you because in most cases it becomes true the moment the words pass the lips and so I will nod like I am cool and discerning and we will act like we have come to some mutual understanding where we can smoke on the steps contemplatively and get under the covers afterward where will we cuddle and I will never hear from you again.

When you come in you ask me where you should sit.

“You could sit there. Or there. Or there.”

Three cherry bark chairs surround the kitchen table, a circle approximately 4 feet in diameter.

You shuffle around, take my backpack off one seat, ruffle the cushion on another, and finally sit directly across from me, after arranging the cushion so it sits in the exact center.

You look into my eyes and we wait until the other blinks first.

that night

2009-10-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

tears dripped into open mouths
mixing with laughter
like something had to break
and the shower drain overflowed
mopping water in circles
didn’t abate the flow
your blue shirt soft as morning
was all we wore
I was underneath it all and wanting.

2009-09-15T22:16:00.000-07:00

The day that fear of life crept in so did a trickle of ants that evolved into thick brown lines and she couldn't find the source, she checked the seal of the windows and found them in the crack between the stove and kitchen counter, they came in the window and then she found the garbage bin under the sink ants circling the rim and up and down the sides, at which point she started feeling philosophical and began to consider how they are just like us (but) how they work together towards a greater purpose, she noticed the confident ones who act as leaders, the ones who seem to help each other out and the ones fighting over a crumb of bread, but all toward the goal of building their home unknowing of their vulnerability to the sole of her shoe which gave her pause to kill them but then she told herself it was self-defense, this was her home they were invading, and yet she knew at the same time there could be something bigger than herself that one day decides to wipe her out with a squirt of dish soap and the sweep of a sponge.

love letter

2009-09-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

remember when we met i broke your glasses and you ripped my sheets? i liked the way you talked, your nail polish, the shirt you made soaked with sweat and how you wrapped your scarf around my neck when we danced. in the morning i spun you around in circles, i tried not to look away but your eyes were intense, i was shy and smiling and you invited me for a bike ride and i could just see it, you and me and a picnic riding through the sun, finding a spot on the beach to breathe sea air and watch the light turn to dusk over the horizon.

hobbies

2009-09-10T14:56:00.000-07:00

you had a realization today that you need to get a hobby and this is a good thing because you think this could potentially improve your life and that maybe it is what your life has been missing all along and once you make this simple life change new doors will open up and you will meet new people who share your hobby and you will become more passionate and ambitious and when people ask you what you do you can tell them about your hobby, thereby solidifying your identity as an Interesting Person with something concrete and concise and worthy of the sound-bite response that everyone is looking for. But then the realization becomes depressing because it makes you think of retired people and bird-watching and let's be honest post-retirement hobbies are a way to distract old people who are waiting to die and you are only 25 and should definitely not be waiting to die and of course it doesn't help that for the life of you you can't think of a hobby that sparks even the slightest interest in you and you add it to your to-do list but deep down you are afraid that, like making pickles and cleaning behind the fridge, you will never cross it out.

Old San Juan

2009-08-17T14:04:00.000-07:00

In Old San Juan
feral cats hide under parked cars
and in doorways
in the narrow cobble stone streets
their likeness painted
in white stencil on the sidewalk
like outlines of the dead
warning people not to feed them.
But you know the tourists do
as they stroll in off massive white cruise ships
tossing crumbs on their way
to the casinos, or the souvenir shops
selling t-shirts, diamonds and gold.

2009-07-22T11:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I am laughing for extended periods of time and I just can't believe how funny life is a brief flash of anxiety comes over me and I think there must be a limit to the amount of joy a person can feel and maybe I am using up too much happiness right now like serotonin could be escaping at too fast a rate from my brain and tomorrow I will wake up from a nightmare, and this morning I woke up, momentarily not knowing where I was, not remembering going to sleep the night before but I spent the night dreaming about my ex-boyfriends and their parents and why am I all of a sudden feeling bitter over something that happened three years ago? So I get up and brush my teeth, lay in bed while listening to reggae on my record player and I tell myself that my brain just has to restore its joy, I have been smiling a lot lately and although my body feels like the weather outside, dark, windy and cold, I remember that it is July and it can't last long.

Lagos

2009-06-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

I have been to Lagos, Portugal and every time I remember this fact, the picture that comes to mind is one of my friend Mauria on the beach, matte finish with white borders, her face taking up the left half of the photo, eyes closed, straight dark hair and an understated smile. The right half of the photo and peaking out a bit above her head, a few strands of black hair blown by the wind, a perfect blue sky, blue like the Caribbean, and cream colored sand. Just outside of the frame there is a rock formation out in the water, a sand formation really but it is tall and wide with gaping holes out to more ocean. We are at the bottom of a narrow cliff and years of sand have hardened and formed walls around us. If I think hard enough I can get a fuzzy picture of the bar we went to, the grocery store where we bought yogurt smoothies, a hostel balcony. I don’t remember the countryside or the bus ride there or the bus ride back to Seville. I don’t remember what we ate for dinner, or what we did during the day other than sit on the beach, or the conversations we had. I don’t remember how cold the Atlantic felt that day we swam, in late September after acclimating to warmer Mediterranean waters, but if I think about it I can imagine immersing myself underwater, my head tightening like ice but without pain, my skin and pores at full attention, the taste of salt and holding my breath. I don’t remember what that felt like that day, but I remember the feeling of being alive. I have the photograph to prove it.

Imaginete!

2009-04-23T08:30:00.001-07:00

Cesar loves to explain to people how the jungle is his supermarket. If you are hungry you can go to the river and get some pescado, on your way back grab a banana from las palmas and if you are thirsty pick some of that grassy looking stuff and you’ll have yerba luisa tea, warmed in a big black kettle over the fire. Inside that tree truck are hearty chewy hearts of palm and if you’re lucky you can peel back the bark and find some fat white maggots – wrap them in a banana leaf and smoke it over the fire, it may taste like shampoo to you but they say it is delicious. Imagine you are visiting the family next door, sitting on the floor of their tree trunk floored palm-roofed shack, no electricity or running water and the little girls run up to you with gifts of an adorable variety of mini-banana and after eating it you just throw the peel right there in their front yard. What is more, Cesar fondly relates, the jungle can be our pharmacy. Chop some gengibre to relieve stomach aches associated with diarrhea caused by drinking too much of the mastication-induced fermented alcoholic beverage known as chicha. Sangre del Drago is a thick blood-red tree sap that heals wounds right up and also foams like soap when you bathe with it in the river. Mud caked on faces gets rid of pimples and hot hot water poured on skin relieves the itching and discomfort related to insect bites. And then there is always the local shaman and hallucinogenic plant-based ayahuasca brew to cure your blues, your broken heart, and evil spells cast on you by the people you’ve wronged. Yes, everything you need is right here, and the jungle knows no currency. All of this said with satisfaction by Cesar, self-proclaimed man of the jungle, father of 12 at age 40, estranged from his ex-wife and children, wielder of machetes and fearer of anacondas.

The First Date

2009-04-16T19:10:00.001-07:00

So we’re riding our bicycles through San Francisco and it is a beautiful sunny day in the middle of summer. He’s a couple blocks ahead of me, not looking back to see if I made it through the traffic lights or whether my relatively weaker legs can bring me and my 50 pound 1970’s red steel frame up the steep steep streets to the top, and as I’m trying to catch up I’m thinking, will this be a metaphor for our entire relationship?

Panda is a dog

2009-04-14T22:49:00.000-07:00

I saw Panda curled up on the couch looking sad and I said to her, “Why do we even exist?” Because she is a dog and she’s just sitting there looking sad like what am I here for? And really she is so out of place of course when you think about it, part wolf, in our little tiny house just laying on the couch all day looking depressed. Hannah overheard me say it from her bedroom and got worried that I was all depressed or suffering some sort of existential crisis and I cracked up, trying to explain that I was talking to Panda and it was just a joke, which really didn’t explain it at all.

be someone, do something

2009-04-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

It was at a basketball game of my brother’s. He was in eighth grade and I was in fourth. I remember sitting in the bleachers, the yellow sheen on the wood paneled flooring, the squeak of sneakers and the smell of sweat and rubber and it was then that I began to think about how fast the school year had seemed to pass me by, for probably the first time in my life, and how when my brother completed the eighth grade he would be in ninth, which would be his last year of junior high and then he would go on to high school and this in my mind meant that he would be so old, nearly an adult and then of course the next thing after that would be college and he would no longer live with me and my parents, it would just be the three of us and what would that be like? And I thought how soon it was all rapidly approaching and there is no slowing the passage of time, this unstoppable force and I felt a profound sadness and nostalgia, like your first realization that we are all going to die and that this will all end, everything you know and there will only be blackness and can you imagine the blackness, the nothingness? You start to imagine but then you stop yourself, because you find yourself capable of imagining the nothingness, and so you push it out of your mind, far far to the back where it sits and exists only as a sense of urgency, something that whispers in your ear, be someone, do something.

In Bed I Remember

2009-04-03T01:31:00.001-07:00

Although it's been so long
in bed I remember
the space between your shirt
and the elastic band of underwear
your side right above your hip bone
your tan, hairless skin
the feel of a t-shirt
that's been washed a hundred times
the change in heat under covers
when it comes from two bodies
instead of one
and how I could warm my toes
between your thighs.

Lost Boys of Sudan

2009-04-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get depressed and feel pathetic and sorry for myself and then there exist the lost boys of Sudan – I watched a documentary about them and I read a book and saw the images of people walking their skin and bones like corpses rotting thousands of miles across the desert heat and suffocation the fate of millions suffering an endless war when all they wanted was to live in huts made of mud and straw in the green grass and bring their cows to the river for a drink of water, that’s all they wanted but instead they ate mud and drank urine to survive and watched their friends mauled by tigers or just sit down beside a tree in the Sahara where they died from hunger and thirst, flies buzzing in their faces their skin eaten by vultures until their bodies were swallowed by sand and I think of this and then consider my own private universe and how can I not be grateful, happy that my biggest problems are occasional loneliness and feelings of isolation which leads to feelings of guilt because how can I pity myself, what do I have to feel sorry about and how pathetic can I be to ever feel depressed when there exists lives of people, struggling to stay alive and for what, more suffering, hunger and torture and war and things I can’t begin to imagine, not even close, and yet I remain depressed and how can this be real, my life and then theirs.

it began in Chipiona

2009-03-20T00:05:00.000-07:00

He told me I look fast like an elk
and we drank warm Heinekens
on a crowded Spanish beach.
When we went to swim
a condom floated in the water
emitting terror like a shark.
I did an impression of him
and slept three hours in two days.
He rested his head on my knee
and asked me if I wrestle.

Do you ever get the feeling? vol. 2

2009-03-12T19:47:00.000-07:00

Do you ever get the very strong feeling that you are going to die? Not like someday, but soon like your death is imminent, just looming over you, and then you think that by thinking your death is imminent you are likely willing it to be so? And the more you think about how you will die soon, like maybe within weeks or months, the sooner it will happen and it will be tragic because it is always tragic when the young die because they had so much potential and life to live, and it is so sad for parents to outlive their children? And do you ever get the feeling that maybe you are already dead and none of this is real? Like maybe you were hit by a car last night on your bike ride home, but you just haven’t realized it yet and your mind is going through what you imagine you might have done that day, like get up, go to work and then to a restaurant with your friend where you sit outside in the sun with his dog talking about what you want to do with your life and how choices become more difficult the more you have? And all the while there is a strange feeling inside of you that you can’t explain and it seems just as plausible as anything else that you feel strange because you are actually dead and this whole experience is just an alternate universe and in the real universe in which you used to exist your family and friends are mourning you and talking about the tragedy of your death, on your bicycle hit by a car, at such a young age, when you had so much potential?

rubber band banjo

2009-02-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

when i woke up this morning
it felt like winter
and then my bed
felt like Christmas.
it's almost December
and my heart's beating fast
like the resonance
of a rubber band
stretched around an open shoebox
a rubber band banjo.

I want to eat this book

2009-02-28T11:14:00.001-08:00

I want to eat this book.
I want to reach inside
and scrape out the seeds
spreading it over my skin
to soak into my pores.
I want to absorb it
breathe it in
inject it into my veins
and feel the burn
as it flows under my skin.
I want to drink it up.
I want to suck each line
through a coffee stir straw
swallowing the little black letters
and hold them in my bladder
for as long as it takes.

Do you ever get the feeling?

2009-02-21T20:55:00.000-08:00

Do you ever get the feeling like say for example you are sitting in a cubicle in a grey office where you work typing out a transcription of an interview about gang-related crime and all of a sudden you get the feeling you had when you were twelve after soccer practice the fresh spring air and the smell of outdoor sweat and that feeling that happened on the way home from soccer practice and it hits you, there in the office for no reason? And then you remember there exist a number of past selves that you have lost contact with and it is only in these memories as well as photographs those feelings that wash over you out of nowhere like when you are sitting at your desk typing now 12 years into the future and you feel it, you feel your former self and it is like hearing a song you used to used to love and forgot and somehow still remember the words.