This Title Needs You To Read It As a Title

This line has a syllable count of ten,

and this line has eight syllables.

This line makes you think of bears.

This line is set apart from the rest.

This line is nothing without you, reader.

Maybe only the punctuation will remain.

                                                       ,              .

Nope, not even that, this line says.

This line won’t finish itself, it needs me.

Ah, but the day?

The day doesn’t need me to finish.

Ten syllabled trees will sway

and darken against the sky without me,

eight syllables of footsteps will own the pavement,

bears will still grizzle or be stuffed cuddlers.

This line will still be lonely, maybe,

or original. Or both.

All of these lines need you.

The Sixth of February Lemon Cake

This is the cake I baked for my mother's birthday. She loves lemon! So do I, so I've been experimenting with lemon cake recipes, tweaking and adding, subtracting, and tweaking again. This one is based on a Martha Stewart cake recipe which I found on the Everyday Food website, but I changed some of the ingredients and added a couple. This is a keeper, and I'm calling it The Sixth of February, because that's my mother's birthday. If you ask me for a lemon cake, and I like you, this is what you'll get.

The Sixth of February Lemon Cake

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) of unsalted butter, room temperature, plus a bit more for the pans

3 cups cake flour (I used Softasilk)

1 tbsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

1 3/4 cups sugar

4 large eggs

2 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups buttermilk

grated rind of 1 meyer lemon

juice of 1 meyer lemon

1 jar of Dickson's Lemon Curd

Preheat the oven to 350.  Butter two 8-by-2 inch round cake pans; line the bottoms with parchment paper. (This is a pain in the rear. I trace the bottom of the pan on the parchment paper, cut it out, and then use the first one as a pattern for the second. If anyone has a better suggestion, I'm all ears!) Butter the parchment once you've placed it in the pan, and dust with flour. Tap out all the excess. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set it aside. Grate the rind of the lemon into a small bowl. Halve the lemon and juice it, taking care not to let seeds into the juice. Use the paddle attachment on your mixer, and beat the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture a little at a time, alternating with the buttermilk. Add the juice of the lemon and the lemon rind last, and mix on low until it's blended.

Divide the batter between the two pans evenly, smooth with a rubber spatula, and tap the pans on the counter to release any air bubbles. Bake for 30-35 minutes, rotating the pans in the middle of the baking process. Put the pans on a wire rack to cool for 20 minutes, then flip, and peel off the parchment. Invert the cakes on the racks and let them continue to cool with the top sides up.

When the cakes are cooled, use a serrated knife and trim the tops of the cakes to make them level. (What a shame! You'll have to taste the extra pieces!) Split each layer into two so you have a total of four layers. Place the bottom layer on a plate or cake stand and with an offset spatula top with some lemon curd, spreading it evenly but leaving an inch of bare cake on the outer edge. Place the second layer on top, and repeat the process until you get to the top of the cake. 

For frosting, you're on your own. Don't feel cheated. I'm not much for measuring during this process, I test as I go along. I make a simple buttercream frosting (butter, confectioner's sugar, vanilla, dash of milk), and add a little lemon juice to it. I'm not much for measuring during this process, I test as I go along, which is why you're on your own. Have fun!

Valentine

You are everywhere, and covered in snow

in a park where no one even sleeps anymore.

You are the various conversations

between black gloved, very important men.

You are the screen door flung wide

that everyone tries to latch shut.

Whenever I return to you, a fight breaks out,

or someone shoves an eggplant in a tuba.

Oh, my blastoff of lions, my symphony of planets!

I write your name in water spilled on the countertop

and cover myself in books. I lie down in their pages

and swim around in all those letters. You

are in the story that is very near the sea, see?

I am trying to take you home with me.

Other People’s Happiness

Other people’s happiness

is not yours to hold. You

weren’t there for the flower

made of felt,  last night’s

baking scent still snugged

in the rafters, the titmouse

on the feeder. Confess,

that under your system,

everyone else’s happiness

may be as important to you

but you will never understand it.

The seeds of thistles, glory

of fire, temptress spots of the body,

cracked hands prized with dirt,

bootclack on the sidewalk,

salt spit at the corner of the mouth,

blue sky wine.

What pleases you

is not what pleases others,

and tapers to monosyllabic

in the attempt:

Street lamp winks off at dawn,

leaves creak shut, curl,

lift in the sun.

What other people own.

Wisdom

It’s the day I lose what’s left of my wisdom. There’s not much. I’m not sure I really ever had any, and if I did, it was probably on loan. Out they go, the teeth that should have been liberated twenty years ago. The waiting room is all morning television and fluorescent light. Outside, a piece of plastic tries to strangle the branch of a tree. Three other people wait for their names to be called like they’ve made an appointment for a mugging. A large man in a plaid overcoat talks to his ride about every little thing that can go wrong with wisdom tooth extraction. This is his way of overcoming his nerves, I say to myself as I read my book harder. Reading harder means I ask my husband if he will listen as I read to him. He's reading something by Pynchon, and seems happy to oblige, but he also knows it will relax me to read out loud. I hope this will block everything else out, but in this case I only hear the plaid patient's freight train nervousness over E. B. White’s essay titled "Poets". It goes something like this:

These are busy days for poets. There’s dry socket. You hear about that? Now happily, those days will soon be over; because America is to have an authoritative listing of major poets. I was pretty damned wobbly the last time I walked outta here. All a person need do, when confronted by a doubtful bard or a poem of uncertain proportions, will be to thumb through “Who’s Who in American Poetry” to discover if the writer has attained his majority. Yeah, it could get so bad you pass out. You might throw up.

I hope anesthesia is like an elevator ride. You get on, press the button, and for awhile you’re really nowhere – between floors. Ding! You’ve arrived, awake again. I think I might have interesting visions. Maybe I’ll see my dad, or my grandmothers, or some Gordian Knot will be cut.  I finally understand string theory! I can juggle!

My blood pressure beeps up anxiety. There’s a television in the new room too, where they’ve taken away my book and glasses, and connected me to enough wires to keep me cataleptic. A couple of missed veins later, a needle full of something that makes me feel like I’ve had a few glasses of wine, and claret swims behind my eyes. I’m between floors without knowing I’ve even stepped onto the elevator. I am not anywhere.

My husband tells me my heart rate went up when the nurse asked me if I was ok. It went down when I was told he was in the room. That’s the room I always want to enter when I get off the elevator. The one with him in it.

First Grade

She loved to draw and looked like you,

he read books, she played scientist,

he pretended he was a distance

runner at recess. She took kung fu

lessons with her mom, he chewed

on paper (delicious), she was proud

of her older sister, he  bowed

to the teacher. Everyone laughed. You’d

find her coloring each cloud pink,

she kept a seashell and a penny

in her purse, she wore a dinosaur

print dress with sneakers, he liked to think

there was a castle inside every

dandelion. She rolled on the floor.

She dreamed of spiders, he twirled

his hair, she knew there were faeries,

She danced during math,  he buried

a toy gun, she shared her gum with Mary.

She said love is harder than spelling whisper,

She painted long lines, he threw kisses.

Where I Started as a Poem

In the dream I smooth a hand over my belly,

thick with ripeness, a pregnancy, a melon.

It ends in a stillbirth, creativity

bypassed, membranes of thought

flushed. A punishment arranged itself

in my sleep. Judgment of the self.

I wake in celestial sweat, slide one foot

onto a cold floor. I am gladder to be alive

in the dark, in the dank, where I started

as a cloud, where I started as a poem.

Warehouse

Last night’s dream is watermarked stationery,

the sudden and unexpected architecture

of your day. Climb inside, says the deaf man

with binoculars, and the ceiling opens up

into a wave of calendar pages, each one

a reward you can’t reach. Fix it, he pleads.

You don’t feel like repacking old ideas.

Sequential, he demands. His hand

is unfinished, three fingers missing.

He can only point like a gun.

It’s just a day like any other,

a deaf man in binoculars

with you as you butter your toast,

tune in your favorite radio station.

His hand, what did it mean?

Learn a second language, you think

as you tear off yesterday’s

page on the calendar.

Mine Subsidence

Here is the hole. See how it leans

into the yard as if it always belonged,

seeks the warmth of your blood

like a lost kitten.

The borough calls it a hazard.

We call it a household.

Our Most Popular Manipulative

“It’s our most popular manipulative,” she said. Her voice was a highwire of mid-twenties control, a rise and fall cadence like the casual and lull toss of a ball. The trainees sat in rows, folders of papers in their laps, packets of papers to sign. A warship of organization, quite shipshape. There was a powerpoint presentation to follow,  reading along with the papers in the folders, then a dinner of sandwiches and potato chips. The woman with her hair in a frizzy ponytail didn’t raise her hand and was called on anyway. Another three women who sat in the back chatted away without any reprimand. Classroom management was a blip on the radar.  “It’s our most popular manipulative,” the director said as she tossed the pink soccer ball covered in numbers into the air. “Our most popular one. I don’t know why.” Learning is fun.

When she quit the job after only one use of the pink math ball, she recognized the voice from Human Resources as the same trained highwire act from training. The careful phrasing of “We’re going to ask you to go ahead and come in to finish up Thursday,”  and the final parting lob of  “Well, we thought you cared. We’re disappointed because we thought you cared and now the children are the ones who will suffer.” The most popular manipulative. She spiked the ball over the net with “I’m sorry you feel that way. Thank you for your time.”

Prime Meridian

The difference between me and you

is that, well, you are more alphabetical

and I am more numeric.

My God is better than your god,

who you don’t believe in anyway.

The difference between you and me

is skin color, eye color. The length

of your fingers? Spidery. Mine

are worker’s fingers. I live in the city,

you live in the country, and we all

know how important geography is.

You can’t live on the equator,

but you can sail over it and kiss

the fat belly of Neptune,

and become a Shellback,

maybe, if you’re tough.

The difference between you and me

is that you need to crawl through

rotting garbage, and I just have a raw

egg in my mouth. Your great-grandparents

were hit with short lengths of a firehose

while mine wore gloves for tea.

The difference between you and me?

Your opinions, voiced in status updates

on a daily basis, count. Your voice

is heard. Me? I don’t have

a public voice without an online

presence, so my ideas just knife

the air.

The difference between

me and you is, well, you are Filipino,

or Korean, or whatever, and I am

German or English or whatever.

All my relatives

are in silver frames,

and never had sex.

This means nothing, no,

everything in the world,

a glass of milk held up to the moon.

Your war is my war, brother,

we each have blood we need inside

our veins, alphabetical

or numeric. We crawl

on our hands and knees,

heads shaved, as we

hope to cross together

at the prime meridian.

To My Old Addresses

Oakland, NJ:

The apple tree, a yawn of lawn

where my father planted a vegetable garden,

porch where we played, 

a banister where my sister

lost a tooth, the accordion door

to my bedroom. Traffic

lights told stories on my walls.

A-Frame rental, Valley of Lakes, PA:

Red shag carpet, a loft, and stairs

with a space underneath I turned

into a post office. The pond my sister and I named

Anniversary Pond, one I wrote about twenty years later,

falling in love with the idea

of what is underneath the surfaces

of the world. So many.

Valley of Lakes, PA:

A dogwood tree, a deck with a space

left for a tree to grow through it, rooms

where my sister and I slammed doors

or created radio shows, a forest of cicadas

to wake to, dirt roads, a lake and a canoe.

The woods where I grew up, my parents

so young in t-shirts and jeans,

my grandmothers visited on Sundays,

holidays, and birthdays. Potato salad.

Nanticoke, PA:

first apartment during college,

my roommate’s knick-knacks and kimchee.

The Peeping Tom who left

a mountain of cigarette butts

on the lawn by the kitchen window.

Nanticoke, PA:

Not enough outlets to have

the fishtank and the coffeepot

plugged in at the same time,

a landlord who clipped his toenails

while my grandmothers visited

his real estate office. Green

shag carpeting. A kitchen table

from the 1960s, all vinyl and chrome.

My grocery receipts included

items that were only a dollar or less.

Ephrata, PA:

Home with Mom and Dad

for summer, then for a year or so

of a self-imposed college sabbatical.

Scrabble on the side porch, dinners with dad

while mom worked the three to eleven shift

at the hospital. House full of light.

Wilkes-Barre, PA:

Three flights up to a layered torte

of more green shag carpeting. My father

paid some co-workers to help him

haul  my apartment sized piano

up all those stairs. I didn’t play

it enough for that.

Topton, PA:

A slow chain of buildings with

blue doors, and a train that went by

at 1 a.m. every morning.

The piano only went up one flight

this time. When the building manager

had the units sprayed for roaches,

they only worked in the hallways,

so roaches became a staple.

Traps everywhere, scuttling

when the lights were flipped on.

Reading, PA:

Eight months pregnant, I painted

the ceiling of the bedroom

in our brick rowhome, and slept

on a mattress on the floor.

Later, I brought my new daughter

home and there was a bed.

Three floors to play with, and the top

had two rooms for painting and writing.

Our neighbor’s mouth was hidden by facial hair,

and he grew tomatoes where his dogs shat.

Gunfire.

Other neighbors threw eggs

at each other in the street.

Nanticoke, PA:

Here again, hello. Another whole

house to ourselves, two floors.

Cherry tree in the back,

a kitchen big enough to dance in.

Long walks in the strip mined land

my daughter called “The Jungle.”

Edwardsville, PA:

The first house I bought, then bought again

with the help of my parents during a divorce.

Not one right angle in it, thanks to the area's

coal mining heritage. The love of my life helped

paint the rooms alive again. My daughter

wore a cat tail, a ladybug costume,

a prom dress,  a graduation cap,

and then a baker’s toque.

We packed everything

but the years of growth

marked on the doorjamb.

Evidence it Was the Bee

Summer sighs Eh, and schedules herself
for something bigger, better, more colorful.
She's not gentle at all, but everyone loves her
and how she skims the novels of days
for their plot points and burns off their details -
the thirsty toad on the asphalt, seed in a spiderweb,
white pollen scattered on the petals
of a morning glory bloom. Later she asks
what you saw, what it meant.

How Many Can You Do At Once?

Well, up to twenty but sometimes they need a little nudge.
Ok, maybe 30, but honestly, that's a crowd, and I like to take it slower,
so the bigger the better, you know?

So I start with one, add another, keep one licking
around my knees, another two kissing my hands.
Oh they like the hips, sure, and I stall a few there,
let one drop a few inches, grind, then bump him back up.

There's the neck, mhmm, they like that, and I've let one or two
into my mouth, but only if they are clean. I toss the ones
that really want to play, and oh, how we giggle in the grass,
Oh, Oh, O, O, O!

Theorem

After a hard day at work of thinking about poems,
I like to trace the isolated spaces between powerlines
and rooftops. Unpainted triangles in a milky sky,
their spell of geometry is like a prism's
lick across the skin.

At least two equal sides would be satisfying
but this town is nothing but scalene.
Full of obtuse angles.

My neighbor has a family of grackles
nesting in his broken soffiting. That fallen cable
knobs up the isosceles. Children, be quiet,
please. I'm trying to see.

I like to think that poems are always around us
the way that math is, a structure hidden
to those who don't even look,
or who don't want to see.

You know the person.
The one who won't poke a stick
into a stream or hold a pollywog?
Maybe someone has to ignore for balance.

Wheel of Social Fortune

Light is pissed. The stars wrote yesterday
to say their coolness is now an iceball in the face.
The moon never asked for all the light from the sun,
she's fine on her own. Stop thanking the universe

publicly every time someone offers you a ride,
or a stranger pays for your coffee at Starbucks.
Open up a rock. Even a stone has insides,
maybe it's a cave, like a heart, so many paths.

Love? She's had it. Sistered too often with light,
splashed all over social media, she looks
like a prom dress made out of wax. Work
at life with the hush of a moth's wing.

Praise the world by living in it, give in secret
all you have to offer, even your wasp nest words.

--
This not-sonnet is not going to win me any friends. I may even lose a few.

Welcome to Foggytown!

Population: Veiled. Unsure.

A wonder to behold, if you can.

Town meetings every second Leap Year.

It’s so free! Belonging to nothing,

living nowhere but here.

Flip-Flop Handsoaps, Puzzles, and Stretches of Sand

Ah, the fascinating boredom of the beach. It is the only spot where people are likely to work on a puzzle, with the possible exception of a nursing home. The pearly insides of shells call to be touched, and the waves keep wooshing in, then out, and in again. There are waves to be crashed into, beach tags to be checked, the moon to photograph, and constellations of freckles to count. I have plenty of those.

People come from all over to Long Beach Island, New Jersey, to spread out their rainbow of chairs and umbrellas, don their floppy hats, and smear coconut sunscreen onto their bodies. By noon, the beaches are filled with families. Plastic baby dolls bake in the sun outside of the aid of a staked umbrella, while the owner splashes happily by the shoreline until the ice cream bells ring.

A pod of New Yorkers stays put in their staked claim of land, drinking Coronas and laughing. Some very tan young men lie on their stomachs and face each other. One holds a smartphone. They all huddle around its reflective surface as if it were fire. A few girls they flirt with pose on a nearby blanket. There is a lot of hair tossing, and feigned disinterest when their men get up and leave. Twenty minutes later, they leave too. The seagulls close in on the Cheez-Its they’ve left behind. 

We are here for an entire week, and this is the first week off work for the past twenty years for my husband.  So far in three short days we have eaten a lot of toast while sitting around in our underwear, we’ve flown a kite, saved a land locked sand crab, spent a total of 15 hours out in the sun while covered in SPF 1000 sunscreen, and fared just fine without wiFi. My writing “office” is the yellow dining room with a window that overlooks the beach.

The house we’re in is the Jersey Beach house of my childhood. Dark paneled walls and ceilings make it feel like being inside a cheesebox. The dining room is the only room that is painted, and the television, which we haven’t turned on once since we arrived on Saturday, still has a sticker on it that reads “32” LED TV.” The living room art consists of a resin plaque with a rose and the word “Welcome“ on it, and two posters of beachscapes – one of a porch with two Adirondack chairs looking out onto the ocean, and the other of a flower-filled dune.

Flower-filled dune landscapes seem like a good artistic choice after a few days of being lulled by gulls and waves, but everything I buy at the beach is rendered useless and sad at home. I suspect this is a common phenomenon. Beach artifacts. 

A few years ago I bought a large scarf that was perfect for walks in the evening along the shoreline, but when I wear it at home I feel as ridiculous as if I’d wrapped myself up in a piece of Saran Wrap. Shells plucked out of the sand are out of place and homesick sitting on the back of the toilet in the bowl my daughter made in pottery class. Thankfully, I’ve fought off the urge to buy the flip-flop hand soaps that were advertised in The Sandpaper.

On this visit I didn’t win over the henna tattoo. The lotus flowers fade on my ankle out of pure embarrassment now that I am home, having found themselves adrift in a sea of asphalt whose waves wash forward, and forward, and forward forever.

It’s Only Seventeen Quadrillion Gallons of Water

From this angle,

even the glittering water

just seems unhinged,

like a serial-killer

who prefers the summer

months, the thrill

of laughter and play

stretched out on the sand,

ah yes, yes, so close-by.

Lace of foam

at the water’s edge?

Hell, no.

Froth at the mouth. Spittle

of excitement. Drool.

The ocean wants to eat me,

process my precious parts,

no compromise, until I am

just an idea. My husband’s

beloved pattern dismantled.

So many shipwrecks,

skeletal slough now part

of the majesty of a whale,

oh poetry! The circle of life!

I should mention

the lifeguards are people

who still have locker

combinations to remember.

Soft-bellied and drowsy

from long vacations,

we wag in the waves,

leap, shine in saltiness

that keeps us thirsty.

Twist deeper,

ah yes, yes,

nevermind

the hiss.

A Side by Side Comparison of Burlesque and Poetry

Either everything matters, or nothing does. I believe that everything matters. I'm working through a knot of feelings about my creative life, so I came up with this list of notes about two art forms that I love. One is new to me (I made my debut last Wednesday), the other isn't (I made my debut in Kindergarten).