Night

Filmy curtains
made from the gossamer
of mosquito wings
swirl
like the hem
of a lady's nightgown.

Darkness,
but no sleep
tonight.

At least
the air is salt.
The night
too hot
too hot
but at least
not thirsty.

There is nothing
but nothing
like a night that is thirsty.

J'ai soif,
he whispered.
Toujours soif,
encore soif.
Marseille is salt
and heat
but not dry.

Sleep doesn't come easy
in the city
with a thousand
sins
and a single truth.

So I will remain
a servant of this night.
I will watch
the play of white
against a square of living dark
and wait
to fall...
if I fall
asleep.

sans titre

Lately
When it rains
It really rains
I mean
It pours
Truth
Lies
Drink
Tears
N'importé quoi.

Falling apart
Maybe
Is
Knitting
Newly together
Or maybe
Not.

You're crazy.
Crazy bored
Crazy lonely
Crazy lovesick.

France.
It's a dream
A hoot in hell.
Ah
But how beautiful
Is hell.

Devils?
Elsewhere.
Broken
Or not
Who knows.

It doesn't rain
Not in
San
Diego
But
In Santa Cruz

Also
No.
Only without.

Leave
Really really really
Leave.
Can't.
Come home.
No such thing.

Lately
When it rains
It's inside
Your
Two
Waters.

Salary

The salt stung,
bleached what was black,
dried what glowed,
healed what wept,
and purged what festered.

Rocks,
shells,
jagged bits of glass,
bit
at toes and ankles
like flesh hungry piranhas
as the tide roared in.

The salt danced
a wild madrigal,
shook out seaweed locks,
like a banshee.

And it becomes like blood.
And like blood,
how freely it flows.

Shut eyes
forgot the perch of the sun.
Salt replaced it.
Salt was the only truth,
the sole surviving reality.

From salt we came,
and to salt we return-

not the sun.

Remembering Casablanca in Syracuse

Today snow fell in large clumps and it was strange. I am well used to snow by now, but still I ran and exclaimed jubilantly at the blemishes I made in what was smooth and white. We spun with our tongues out and roared when we caught some wayward snowflakes.


It is very late, so likely there will be less sense and more truth in what I am saying. I opened this document with the vague notion that I ought write about my experiences on my home campus, and also that I wanted to explain my little poem a little. It is not my intention to say anything against Casablanca, or Morocco, or Africa. My poem, however flawed, captures honestly how I felt in the moments after it all happened.

I did cry, and I did hate those men. I never thought of the difficulty of their situations, how the economic disparity created desperation that forced crime rates to rise. The iPhones they stole could buy groceries for months. I had 400 durham in the bag one man tore from my shoulder, but that is nothing. Forty euros, maybe. Funnily enough, I remember adding that little bag and its contents to my list of grievances. It cost me 9 euros, a not-quite-impulse buy from an H&M in Place Kleber. It was black, and the perfect size for going out. I still can't understand why its loss bothered me so much. It was as if the fact of taking it from me was stripping me of an externally imposed femininity that I held to nonetheless.

The man was small and nondescript. I never even saw his face, although he took little care to hide it from me. He hit me across the ribs with his crowbar- hard enough to bruise, but I knew immediately that they weren't broken. When he saw that I wasn't fighting back, he grabbed the bag, gave a jerk, and took off, the cheap strap flapping absurdly behind him. I watched him go. I don't know why I didn't try to run. I turned and watched another crowbar descend on my friend. I heard the thud as it hit her between her shoulder blades. Michelle screamed.

It seems almost ridiculous now, as I sit in my dorm, miles and months removed from that day. I feel safe here, and already the room begins to take on the familiarity of home. I have never dreamt of that night in this bed. It is too comfortable, that bed.

Morocco was a funny trip, because Fez and Chefchauen don't seem to belong with Casablanca. I will write more about them later, when I am more capable, and again, when I return to Morocco. But Casablanca was so strange because I never saw anything of the city. Only the train station, the walk to the Airbnb, and the little streets around it. We bought wine in a corner shop, and bread that we were thankful for later. We had come by train from Fez that afternoon.

I remember that it was 10 when we finally left for dinner. I wore my friend Anna's green sweater. She wore it just the other day, and I could not stop looking at her in it, remembering and not remembering. We went to some Italian restaurant, because it was not too far. Still, we had to take taxis. When we left, some five men followed us back in a car. I suppose you can guess all that happened next.

To add insult to injury, we were all immediately and violently ill afterwards. Food poisoning. So we never saw the beautiful mosque in Casablanca, nor the beaches, nor the markets. Non-Muslims are not permitted to enter most mosques, but this one in Casablanca was an exception. However, we were sick. Terrible stuff. Police swarming the apartment, asking me questions in Arabic and then French, about our passports, and to recount again and again what happened.

I remember waking up the next morning unable to move, sweating profusely. My head hurt so badly that it took all my energy to turn it away from the light streaming in from the window.

I am leaving out many, many details. I do not want to paint a bad picture, and one day I will write a post that presents Morocco glowingly. It is a wondrous place. It is hard for me to remember it all here and now. It is also hard to keep from submitting to MENA stereotyping. You know, the lurid descriptions of the mysticism of the Orient, the enigma, the seductive, beguiling sands.

Sometimes I am afraid to walk alone, or at night. During those few days in San Diego, I saw a man in my driveway and I was afraid. I had bad dreams for a long time, but that's life. We were not seriously hurt, and it was a good lesson to learn.

Go to Morocco. Go safely, and do not carry too many valuables. Let the mint in the tea soothe in the heat of midday. Let the Berber talk you into buying their wares- they are beautiful and stoutly made. I bought a rug as a gift. Dyed saffron and poppy.

I can hear the snow. Isn't that odd? It shouldn't be possible.

Good Night.

Casablanca

They came in the night.
They'd lain in wait,
planning and brooding
on angry stomachs

as not even rats can.

Men.
two, three, five,
(or so we heard)
who grabbed for us
and brandished rusted crowbars
and a knife meant
for chubby, childish fingers.

We fled?
We must have. 
We fled into brick and mortar
that welcomed us 
like the board welcomes a steak.

Like a dream, it was.
Yet it was not a dream,
for Casablanca is warm in my dreams.

And I cried.
Not as a child,
not as a woman,
not as an American,
not as the daughter of a fortunate man,

But, my God, I cried.
Inshallah, a cry I knew and didn't know.

I cried because they took my phone and my money.
I cried because strange men grabbed me
and groped for more things
they could take from me.

I cried because I was small.
They made me little again,
a child wailing for her mama
because men bruised her
and flung her aside.

I cried because I was scared
and never thought to fight back.

I cried because I couldn't stop 
once I'd started.

And an evil part of me
wished their mothers could see
how
low 
their
sons
fell
so that they would cry too.

The terrible weight of mortality,
I remember,
balanced on the point
they held against
Anna's green sweater.

I cried 
because I didn't want to play 
at being grown up anymore.

But now I do not cry.
Maybe the cameras will catch them.
Maybe even the police will help us then.
But maybe not.
Maybe there's no one we can trust.
Not even the doorman
who asked me kindly to sit,
and offered me Café au lait.

We will leave Casablanca tomorrow.

Nomophobia

To burn
the bridges of your past
is easy.
Just forget to take care.
let die
all the photographs you saved.
no more.
Cry, if you want to,
or rage,
but it doesn't matter.
They're gone.


Last week I went to Morocco. We were mugged. When I got back, I erased the wrong device. The end.

The Sun Child

I thought he was a ghost
with his skin like alabaster
and his hair like corn silk.
He stood in the cold,
outside my door,
when it was still dark,
to remind me of the morning.
"Hello," he said.
And I said it back, for
it was all I knew how to give.
He watched me
while we cut the bread
and drank the coffee with it.
What great, big eyes,
so brilliantly violet, so clear,
as only such a child's eyes can be.
He was as white as snow,
Madame's little Sun Child.

My Chucks

 ...climb enough staircases

to reach Heaven

and return with with a snow globe.

...step gingerly around puddles

only to sink unwittingly into mud.

The soil, you see, 

is soft and full of guile

in this part of France.

...collect lime dust,

as their owner 

counts the spirals 

in Jesus' robe.

...are removed with relief

Dijon Stone

What is dirty here

is soiled from passing years.

And what is water-stained

has withstood tears.

What is whole 

fears

what is broken

and crumbling

and grand.

The stones of Dijon house 

what bleeds prayer.

Don't Be a Girl if You Can Help It

So shone the lamp
to pierce the midnight-morning
as truth lurked in hallowed alleys
and spirits took wing.

So whistled the wind
amongst the petal'd arches
danced it did, like promise,
like the rats of human persuasion.

So clicked the boot
on frozen pavement.

So glittered the eye,
small and beady and clouded.

So raised the hand,

So flinched the girl.

So.

Do not stand quietly
in darkness kept at bay
by only lamps.

The Train

So we said our farewells 

to the jewel of the German South

and boarded a charcoal monster

that flew ever lower on the map.

Eyes wide in wonder,

cheek pushed against palm

like a prisoner captured

by sunlight for the first time.

Lieblich. 

I wrote this on the train that took us from Munich to Salzburg. In between bouts of childish imagination and pages of The Immoralist, I watched what flew past the windows.

My friend told me once that the German countryside is the stuff of fairytales. But there is something ever so slightly twisted about the faerie folk, don't you think? Something altogether too dainty and pretty- beautiful, but full of guile. No, the sun-drenched meadows fringed with trees as eyes are with lashes came from gentler stuff. The lullabies sung to sleepy babies, the scent of robustness drifting from wildflowers clutched in chubby fists.

There were little cottages with stone foundations, and neatly plowed fields. And there were streams that glistened as they danced over the rocks and muck. How funny it is that the land should look so different than my desert sands back home, yet the light is the same. The very same.

And lord, those mountains. I have never seen anything half so honest as the giants who bent and grazed the heavens with their spines. It seems to me I've forgotten too many of them, although they cried out to me like old friends. What a jolly group, those mountains are, like old men gathered around a circle of glasses.

I didn't even have a window seat.

I wish I'd realized then, as I held an idle pen, what glory there is in trains. Perhaps when I am older I will not remember this. Perhaps I will forget how carefully I tucked my ticket in my journal, how glad I was to find the car nearly empty. Perhaps I will forget the jovial faces of my companions who sat around me.

But I got a window seat on the train that bore us dizzyingly to Vienna.

Ice in the Summertime

A sea of shattered glass
sprawls patiently on the carpet.
Wicked sharp corners dance
on jagged smiles.

An ocean of malice-
taunting, beckoning, waiting.
What moments before was
muscular, a tempest that tore loose
is now glacial and quiet.

Yet it calls,
a wordless, siren wail,
this sea of mine
as it waits at the foot of my bed
knowing
that none dare venture
into its lair and
disturb its blasphemous exultation

Palm Tree Wasteland

The hours pass like cars in traffic
so that the day is stuck between noon and evening.
A hundred thousand watch it founder,
with eyes dulled and sleeves rolled to the elbow.
The air is no great river, as it can be-
so sharp is the smell of dust and perspiration.

This is a strange place,
a forest of steel and palm trees and neon signs,
half flickered out.
Carpeted in dust and sin,
it beckons the dreamer,
seduces and binds the hopeless.

It is the land of diamonds
It is the land of starving starlets.
In its heart of hearts
is a wee orange apartment who houses
a flat, marvelously outfitted with a screened window
that lets in the dust
and this sunless heat.

One orange jumble of plaster
in a sea of the lost and seeking.
It is where the cars pass like hours in a long day.

3 AM

Before the sky was touched
in patches
here and there,
with pink and song;

Before breath could deepen
and grow heavy,
to blow like the breeze
in the stillness
of blue prison walls;

Before the heart could slow
its furious
rat-a-tat-a-tat-tapping,
and quench the fire it fed
in young veins;

Before exhaustion beat out
wrath and sorrow,
put out rebellion
with a mighty hiss...

There was wakefulness,
in the dusky moments before dawn.

It was 3 AM, before sleep came.

The Butterfly

A butterfly lives in my mother's throat. I couldn't tell you if it's beautiful, but I can tell you that it's deadly. Sly, conniving, greedy.

I've never caught glimpse of shimmering wings, nor graceful legs, nor beady, buggy eyes. When my mother coughs, I stare at the greenish stain that blooms across her throat. I can almost see the delicate feelers, tickling her, forcing great, wracking coughs out of her.

The butterfly grows a little everyday. Slowly, they say, verrry slowly. A slow and evil approach, an inexorable thudding in her blood. It will not listen to reason, nor even threats. It invites war, for it thrives on chaos.

It could kill her.

Legions of unseen soldiers fight their way in, burning and razing all that stands in their way. The butterfly is their leader, their king, their God. Grown fat on her life, it heads its forces with malicious, malignant pleasure.

It's killing her now, and I can't save her.

My mother searches for God. A God within, or a God without- something to believe in. But faith doesn't come easy to people taught to survive without it, so she puts her trust in other things. Not in the Sun, who promises her to rise each day, and not in the moon, who promises to watch over her. She has no use for the oaths of waves.

She believes in people, men and women who wear cold masks to hide their sorrow and suits to hide their bodies. She has put herself in their covered hands. She has put herself in mine.

None of us can promise her anything like the sun, the moon, and the waves can.  The butterfly rejoices, an evil, ghoulish sound.

A Forest of Phantoms

Giants, they stretch bony fingers

to stir the clouds like a child 

disturbs the smoke of a fire.

Eternal, wise, older than Time,

(Time, that monstrosity invented by mankind!),

and powerless against the wearers

of so many fine, old rings.

They were once many,
filling the land

the way the stars populate the skies-

thickly, and with no end.

But there can be,

and an end seems fast approaching:

their deaths.

And so their sweet blood 

will shine darkly on the earth.

And so the nymphs will wander,

homeless, broken, lonely.

And so the bones of brothers

will burn or rot or lie forgotten,

as the ghosts

of giants stretch bony fingers

to part the rain

that finds graves and apartment complexes

instead of ash and oak.

The birds have gone. 

The berries have fled.

The rivers are brown with dirt,
their fish choked to death.

The child has grown .

The man is lured into the city.

He has left one graveyard for another,

in a monster that huffs

and puffs

and blows poison to the skies.

Phantom limbs sway

in so desolate a wasteland.

Their voices, once great and booming,

cannot move the stones.

They have joined the chorus in the sky,

the congregation of the old nations,

at the table of the ousted,

in the hall of the once free.

Ah, footsteps.

The man has returned,

tired of smoke and sick of steel cages.

His youth is fading, failing.

Too soon his heart will creak with years

it hasn't seen.

Old friends, he cries

as his shaking arms spread wide.

But the only answer is the echo of his own words.

Dust, blown by gray winds,

settle greedily on his shoulders,

hungry for roots to hold onto,

desperate for a home.

An old story, this.

Nothing but an old man,

come to pay his respects

to the companions of golden days past.

A squeal.

A giggle- brook music 

that hasn't sounded in years;

the streams to shocked to hear it. 

The stones awaken, daring, still, 

to hope.

It's a child, his daughter.

She scampers to his side, grasps his gnarled pinky,
brandishes her

stubby, chubby, grubby fist

like a knight might.

She holds in her other hand

new life.

A seed.

Witness to a Dream

I am swimming in a sea of faces 

that shine with anticipation,

glow with excitement.

Young faces grow up a little

and old faces are young again.

Bodies are rigid, tense,

or else writhing and undulating

like waves.

The thud, thud, thud

of a thousand screaming feet

can't drown drums,

nor bass,

nor strings,

nor man.

Man, that marvel that 

towers above the sea

as though it were his.

It is.

This sea dances for him,

roars for him,

foams and crashes for him.

Godlike, this creature

makes us forget the man,

for he is sheltered by glory

and protected by brilliance.

We have fallen in love

with his dream.

So I went to a Hozier concert in Vegas...

I kept trying to write about it in my diary after it was all over, but I couldn't. I couldn't talk about the concert, and I couldn't think about it. All I had was this huge mess of wordless thoughts that I couldn't make sense of. Although now that I think about it, that may have had as much to do with sleep deprivation as anything else.

The concert was beyond words. I had gone to concerts before- Carrie Underwood and Robert Plant when I was 12 and 14, respectively- but this was something totally new. I don't know if the difference is because I'm older now, or due to how close I actually was to him (front row), or because Hozier more fittingly embodies some kind of romantic ideal.

I thought about that a lot, actually. That we have such strong feelings, some of which actually feel like love, for a stranger. Someone we know next to nothing about, and it's because of this image that we inevitably construct, this presence that is felt by us. Hozier jiving onstage was Andrew living his dream, and he as much as us, was drunk off of it. That's what we fell in love with that night- that dream. Because we have no way of knowing the human being behind it all. 

I couldn't even listen to music afterwards, because recordings couldn't compare. I remember having that reaction after the Robert Plant concert too. In person, voices are so much fuller and richer, and the cellist, Alana Henderson, had a voice that was done a great injustice by the recording studio. Mind you, it sounded wonderful on the CD, but live it was something fantastic. 

I also discovered Low Roar, as they were the opening act. I bought their CD immediately after, got their autographs, took some pictures, and flipped out a little. Then we ran into them in the hotel the next morning, and got another picture. 

Usually Andrew (Hozier-Byrne) comes out to meet fans that stay behind, but the venue didn't really lend itself to meet and greets, so he never came out. I had brought Hotel du Lac (see that post here) to give to him, along with a note explaining the exceedingly romantic circumstances of my possession of it. "The hobo said he liked the sound of my voice, so I'm passing it on to you, since I decided I liked the sound of yours", or something like that.

Imagine my disappointment. I'm staring at it right now.

Next time.

Del Mar

Black hair, Black eyes
looking at the road through as sea of dark
one hand, a finger, none at all.
She decides if we die
hurtling down this road,
this life.

The sea beckons 
with foaming robes of
blue, gray, black, black, black
we are closed in,
in black

We three girls, not so young 
yet children still

Los Arboles, the turn
Clarion, the inn
Vida, Brio, Bustle

The air is salt,
the ocean sweat,
and our car black.


Maybe I shouldn't explain anything, because that would box in the meaning of my poem. But I will, because I feel silly leaving it like this, as though I could ever hope to be an enigma.

Tomorrow I will wake up at 4 am to catch a 6:15 flight to Syracuse, New York, where unlike San Diego, is expecting actual weather. 

Lord, I haven't seen snow in so long. Apparently asides from the interviews (that's why I'm flying to New York), the dress code is casual. Dress like you would at school, they tell me. That would be appropriate. Except that I wear flip flops and shorts to school like my life depends on it.

Anyways, that's all besides the point. I just meant that it's cold up there, which is why I went to Del Mar. For those of you non- espanolers, that's a beach here in San Diego. It hit and passed ninety this weekend, and I wanted to spend as much time as possible in the sun before I stuffed myself into a thick coat and Doc Martens and a liberal dusting of a meth-like white powder. Back East, they call that "snow".

It's warming up here, which is nice because I was getting tired of cold weather. Well, not cold. Coldish, I mean.

So the poem is about Del Mar (hence the name). The first stanza is about my friend Brittany, who was driving. I'm not trying to rat a girl out, but she scares me when she drives. She's so confident that I never think she'll get into an accident, but really, who the hell drives with one hand while spooning the contents of her Sambazon bowl into her mouth with the other? 

"Yo, Nina, put the car in drive for me."

Lord. 

Then, obviously, the next stanza is about the sea as it meets the shore. When you drive along the main road, you can see the ocean on one side. It's so pretty, how it sparkles and wrinkles and folds. 

"The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls..."

The "black" thing is referring to Brittany's car, which is black. Sleek, shiny, man-made. The roar of its engine is lost in the roar of the sea, which is sometimes also black. Different, though.

The stanza with a seemingly random assortment of words is a collection of landmarks in Del Mar. A sign at the turn reads "Los Arboles", but I'm not sure what it means because I never read farther than that. I mean, it's Spanish for "the Trees", but I don't know if they're condos or apartments or a real estate company or whatever. Then, as you drive on, you'll certainly pass the Clarion Inn.

Clarion, like trumpets. Like bells, like the clash of spears. Sorry, "Clarion" just sounds so Camelot-y.

Vida, Brio, and Bustle refer to other small businesses. A nail salon, a boutique, whatever. 

I don't know why I've been writing so much poetry lately, or why I've suddenly gotten so comfortable putting it out on the internet. It's not very good, but I'm getting there.

Hope you're all well.