I’d like to introduce
Miss Maas
to
Miss Moose.

We’re grown ups now. Here are the red flags:

-We’ve started using our full names. The diminutive abbreviations are reserved for use by our families only. (e.g. Hello, my name is KimBERLY, not Kim)

-No more voicemail/answering machines with misleading, kooky, or lyrical instructions on how to leave a message. Now we know our boss will call us. Or better yet, our agents. Better still, that director we schmoozed with at that after-party. So you better speak clearly and sound like an articulate adult. (e.g. “You’ve reached the voicemailbox of ______, please leave your name, number, and a message. I’ll return your call as soon as I can. Thank you and have a great day”. My friend Blake is the exception to this rule, he is firmly petulant and exercises a fair amount of irony on his 15 second intro.

-We kinda want to have lots of money. Working 9-5 everyday but still barely scraping by when rent is due? It sucks. Majorly. And in New York, you always want to buy things. Consumable, wearable, depreciate-in-value sort of things.

-We don’t throw quite so much caution to the wind in terms of our health and general well-being. Sleep is key. There may be a few all-nighters, hell there may be one every weekend, but we all (should?) realize there is too much to be taken advantage of during the daylight hours to sleep through them.

3/29/07

My friend Dale misses me.
I miss my friend Dale.
meow.

The Mannequin

The Mannequin

Our Lady of Perpetual Window Pane:

Ever leveled,
Never weathered,
Severed indecently.

Lacquered simulacra:

Shes Lady Dye
and has the same color of eye
as Marilyn Monroe.

What is hot rayon irony?
A clotheshorse habited in jockey stripes.
What a dummy.

Well hello Spring, you seductress you.

You’re making me blush and glow from your sweet sun kisses.

I hope you’re not just being a tease.

Please come more often, I really want to see more of your bright round face.

The sickest things; ever.

Sneezy jalepeño cheddar potato chips,
Tepid tuna water hiccups,
Flakey milk crusted mouth corners,
Sour beer soaked tennis socks,
Filmy french fry greased handrails,
Sickly sweet ketchup smelling body odor,
Floating grey refuse in the crease of the streets,
Bug blood.

puke.

Brev.it.tea.

oh em jee!

double ewe tea eff?

ell oh elle!

tee tee u él.

bea arh bea.

oak kay.

pea ess.

arh ess veepee.

arh eye pea.

ess and ehm.

jee ehf. bea ehf.

exohexoh.

Writer’s Almanac 3/24/07

Poem: “Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from These Are My Rivers. © New Directions. Reprinted with permission.

Retired Ballerinas, Central Park West

Retired ballerinas on winter afternoons
walking their dogs
in Central Park West
(or their cats on leashes—
The cats themselves old highwire artists)
The ballerinas
leap and pirouette
through Columbus Circle
while winos on park benches
(laid back like drunken Goudonovs)
hear the taxis trumpet together
like horsemen of the apocalypse
in the dusk of the gods
It is the final witching hour
when swains are full of swan songs
And all return through the dark dusk
to their bright cells
in glass highrises
or sit down to oval cigarettes and cakes
in the Russian Tea Room
or climb four flight to back rooms
in Westside brownstones
where faded playbill photos
fall peeling from their frames
like last year’s autumn leaves

Literary and Historical Notes:

It’s the birthday of the poet, publisher and bookstore owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (books by this author) born in Yonkers, New York (1919). His father died five months before Ferlinghetti was born, and his mother was so devastated by the loss that she had to be committed to the state mental hospital. Young Lawrence was sent to live with his aunt in France.

He didn’t learn English until he was five, when he returned to America. As a teenager, he became an Eagle Scout and was also arrested for petty theft, as part of his involvement with a street gang called the “Parkway Road Pirates.” But shortly after, he was inspired by a copy of Baudelaire poems he was given, and became interested in poetry and literature.

After serving in World War II, he moved to San Francisco, where he decided to open City Lights Bookstore. Ferlinghetti also started a publishing venture with what he called the Pocket Poets series — collections of poetry designed to be small enough to slip into your pocket. The fourth book in the Pocket Poets series was Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, published in September 1956. The following year, the second edition of Howl was seized by customs officials, and Ferlinghetti was charged with printing and selling lewd and indecent material. Ferlinghetti won the case, with help from the ACLU, and all the publicity made Howl into a best-seller.

In 1958, he also published his own collection of poetry, A Coney Island of the Mind, which shocked everyone by going through 28 printings and selling 700,000 copies in the United States alone. By the end of the 1960s, it was the best-selling book ever published by a living American poet.

Ferlinghetti is one of the few poets in the United States who has never held a job at a university, never received government funding, and never attended an MLA conference. He’s also never won a Pulitzer. City Lights Bookstore is still going strong, grown from one floor to three floors. It still sells nothing but books and magazines, no calendars or greeting cards. It’s the only bookstore in America that’s also a destination on a tour bus route.

March 23

For yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if, like a crab, you could go backward.

What I actually find when looking for something in my apartment…

Dusty pennies and single white socks under the purple futon bed.

Blue-eyed earrings in the breast pocket of a leather jacket ( property of a lost friend, I thought I was telling the truth when I told her I returned them).

Sad, sad, sad sneakers peeping from beneath my beaurou.

White envelopes, silver thumbtacks, gold frame hooks.

Four clanging spoons at the bottom of a bookbag, I am 100% certain that they dished me tepid oatmeal from warped yogurt containers in the middle of an average afternoon.

That one guy’s phone number. What was his name? Didn’t he write a book?

8 soy sauce, 6 ketchup, and 3 splenda packets.

A little pin that reads “I am a feminist” in pink lettering. I bought it at the hipster xmas craft faire, put it in another breast pocket, and promptly forgot about it.

More than one pair of ugly sunglasses. They look terrible on me, and always have.

A feather. A sugarbird feather.

No sign of that new book of ‘Crops of the Americas’ postage stamps.