Walt Whitman (and His Mall)

We spent Saturday and Sunday not at the beach but at the Walt Whitman birthplace, in Huntington, Long Island, two hours west of here, where Mark was in residence for the weekend. Here he is reading, an especially good reading. And here is Walt's house, which was apparently built as a spec house by his builder father, before he moved the family to burgeoning Brooklyn.






The ironies of location. While Walt's house in Camden is across the street from the state prison, the house in Huntington stands amidst suburbia. Men's Wearhouse just a few feet to the south. Walt Whitman Fence, Whitman Jewelers, Walt Whitman Road, Old Walt Whitman Road. And a short walk away, the Walt Whitman Mall, where excerpts from Song of Myself are etched into the front of the building. The woozy surreality of seeing this radical, visionary text, repeated over and over, on the same structure that houses Saks and Bloomingdale's. I had the feeling that I might have been the first person ever to stand out there and read it, which might have accounted for the fact that I started to feel like I was about to be targeted as a security risk. How not to be rearranged by those lines? According to someone from the Whitman foundation, more than a few schoolkids come to the house thinking Walt was named after the Mall.

Cup of Night

The Gulf. The states around the Gulf. Louisiana. Mississippi. Alabama. Florida. I've been sitting here at my desk, trying to write about oil (or write past my rage about oil), but sentences will not work the way I want them to. Better, I think, to post a poem from Danielle Sellers, whose Bone Key Elegies arrived in the mail a few days back. Danielle, whom Mark and I know from San Miguel de Allende, grew up in the Florida Keys, and I can think of no better song to the weird wonder of that dark island chain--"Cup of night," as Joy Williams calls it--than the series of poems that make up this book. To love a place like a person--not just its culture, but its plants, trees, leaves, birds, fish, skies, snakes, water--even if we couldn't live there, even if life said we had to let it go. Maybe that would change us?

December Evening, Key West
from Bone Key Elegies
Danielle Sellers

Today I sat on the seawall behind the house
I've lived in twenty years, watching mullet
turn circles in the canal. Impossible
to count how many, it always looks like more
spiraling in from the unprotected bay.
They raise their silver bellies to the sun,
flashing like strobe-lights under the water.
Some thing unseen hunts them,
most likely barracuda. Occasionally one
or a few leap from the edge to the hub.
The ripple rings expand and disappear.
The school, a gilded body, plunges
three feet, its lights subdue, shapes
distort. On a whim one brave or stupid fish
pilots them back. They form a plane,
then vortex, octagon, what could be
a shield. We sold this place last week.
I thought of the mullet swimming the still canal,
and wondered how they never tired
of turning their bellies to the sun.
How close I came to jumping in.

*****

Here are a few pictures from the What's Your Exit reading at NYU last night which turned out to be the sweetest event. Please click on to the icon on the right to find out more about the book, edited by the wonderful Joe Vallese and Alicia Beale, which includes essays, fiction, and poems from the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Pinsky, Gerald Stern, J. Robert Lennon, Denise Gess, and many others.

Photos courtesy of Sung Woo

Joe and Alicia

Josh Goldfaden

A nanosecond of excitedness.

Between the Island and Mainland

The Night, Saturday, Bridge
Laura McCullough
from Panic, forthcoming from Alice James Books, January 2011

The mound they gathered around
was a green sea turtle
dead, her flippers stiff,
head elegantly bent,
the carapace a swirl of green and gray and black,
a signature for sure,
and the children who found her
tried to tip her over
until a mother yelled, Don’t touch it; it could have germs,
and then a kid used a stick to jab her flipper
to see if she would bleed.
Behind them
the boardwalk was stirring;

The lights that had been blinking invisibly
in the glare of the white sky
were revealed as night came,
the same night two teens,
a boy and girl, would be lured away,
the boy tied up, the girl raped,
the perpetrator fleeing the dry town of Ocean Grove,
taking the Garden State Parkway
either north or south,
and was never caught.
It’s all anyone talked about all week,
the turtle, the rape; then Saturday came.
The mayor was glad;
then the bridge between the island and mainland
got stuck open due to the heat,
and it was something to see,
the long snake of cars,
the air rippling above them.

Her Hands and Arms Were Shining

Soulful, wild, visionary, wrecked: this book is a beautiful thing.

*****
From the novel The Sky Below
Stacey D'Erasmo

"All right, Gabe," she said. She looked straight into my eyes with a raw solemnity that she rarely let me see these days. This, I knew, was her deepest secret. I squirmed, not sure I really wanted to know her deepest secret. She reached into her back packet, took out a plastic bag, dipped her hand inside, and briskly rubbed something all over her arms, as if she was putting on suntan lotion, though it was nearly dusk in the swamp, the day's light rust-colored, shadows lengthening around us. She grabbed my hand and put something in it, a dab of some mushy, grainy stuff. "We don't have that much time before it gets dark." She closed her eyes, balanced perfectly on her branch, and extended her arms, turning her palms up. Her hands and arms were shining. "Shhhh."

....The swamp smelled of life and rot, and my sister, on the branch next to me, gave off the calm alertness of a swamp creature blending into its home turf. Her crazy black hair seemed to have been pulled from the shaggy tree we sat in, and to be reaching to retwine itself among the branches. It was hot in this swamp; it seemed hotter than it had been outside of it, as if the heat of the day had collected and condensed in here, caught and held by the abundant undergrowth, waiting for the tide of night to cool it. Where we sat felt like the exact edge of day and night, heat and coolness, earth and air. The tree against my back was sticky and sharp, holding and biting me at the same time.

We were both sweating, but Caroline was smiling, a look of concentration, of will, wrinkling her brow. I tried not to think about how high up we were. I wondered if she knew how strange she was. No wonder she didn't have any boyfriends. Mosquitoes began biting me as the dusk thickened. Outlines blurred. I slapped at my arm, and Caroline again, sternly, hushed me. "Fuck you," I said, but then I was quiet anyway. The sooner she was done, the sooner we could go home and I could see if any of my treasure was left. I particularly wanted to see if any of the Christmas trees with the rubies at the top--even though I knew they weren't really rubies--had survived. I focused on how bored I was and how stupid the swamp was. Gingerly, I licked at the dab of stuff Caroline had put in my palm. It was greasy and sweet; I sort of liked it.

They weren't there, and then they were. They seemed to arrive so suddenly that I might have said they emerged from her hair, that the ends of her black hair had turned into small black birds with yellow wings, but of course that isn't true. They flew to her and landed softly on her outstretched hands, her arms. They settled on her shoulders and the top of her head. They seemed to bring a light with them, but maybe it was a sound, or a motion. Or it might have been a feeling, or something that they knew all together. Caroline smiled, winced as they pulled at their hair, keeping her eyes closed. They jostled one another, dipping at her shining hands and arms. They were the most gorgeous things I had ever seen, and my sister seemed to be dissolving into them beginning with her outer edges, undoing herself into a flock of small birds streaked with gold. Her arms were their branches; her hair was their nest; the black-and-gold birds were her thoughts whirling in the air around her. Her eyes were closed. She had become something else. She was so beautiful. She was elsewhere. The gods had chosen her, they had changed her, they were changing her before my eyes. More than anything in the world, I wanted that to happen to me.

The Fish Get a Visitor

The fish were having a banner day, a red letter day--cliches, of course, but that's just how they looked (banners and red letters) as they darted across the pond. The sun was strong, the water was warm, and now there were two of us to pinch and toss those stinky fish flakes through the air.

The pollen spiked. Our eyelids weighted. We went inside. I woke up a half-hour later to see-- apparition! Ghost swallowing greedily, on the edge of the pond.

I ran outside. The heron roosted on the roof of my study, defiant, before it took off: white white white white white through the leaves.

We looked down. No fish. Just the bullfrog, crouching between the iris spears, with sly mouth.

Had he frozen there, above-it-all, as the heron cleaned out the pond?

But early Friday we saw them again: one orange dart and then another, but deep beneath the surface now, chastened, frenzied.

As for who became food? Only the creatures know.

What I'm Feeling's Always Written on My Face

The following videos just went up on YouTube. Joni in London in 1974. "Joni at her creative peak," as the description says, though that makes me cringe, as I'm certain she'd be pissed. (Tip: never tell an artist, particularly an artist who's worked for decades, that you love the work she's best known for.) These performances are obviously from the Miles of Aisles era, not my favorite Joni era (mine would be The Hissing of Summer Lawns through Don Juan's Reckless Daughter), though they're remarkable to see and hear. What startles me is her face, the shifts and colors in it. Intensity, yet poise and restraint: does she ever crease her brow or tense up her mouth? And the pitch-perfect rightness of "getting them to FEEEEEL like that."

Storms, Mothers, Elephants

We woke up Sunday morning to wild storms, a tornado warning, and the loudest thunder I've heard in years. Thunder doesn't seem like an adequate word for it. Whatever it was, it was on us. It got in our ribs, it made the muscles and nerves tense and shift around our ribs. As for the lightning? Two reactions: an awareness of the top of the head and a belly-deep need to crawl into a cave.

Which my mother, dog, and I did--or at least our version thereof--nineteen years ago. We were in the house my parents owned north of Tampa-St. Petersburg, a few miles in from the Gulf. The red warning banner crawled across the bottom of the TV. And suddenly the new house didn't seem like adequate protection against what was happening over our heads. The lights went out; the transmission towers in the distance flared blue. So the three of us went into the laundry room, sat on the floor, shut the door, and huddled by the washer and dryer, as if by being that close to the ground we'd be safer.

We passed our Boston terrier back and forth between our hands until she stopped shaking and panting and her heart calmed down.

This past Saturday it occurred to me that my mother had been gone one year, exactly. That day.

No wonder I'd been feeling restless and bored and incredibly tired of our hotel room. It felt good to put a name to that feeling, even if I was just feeling restless and bored.

*****

Mothers to Elephants. I can't look at an Elephant without thinking of mothers, and here are the pictures I'd promised. If you haven't already read Mark's post on our visit to the Audubon Zoo's Elephant House, you can read that here. Just one thing I'd like to add. I thought that proximity would make me feel closer to the elephants, but they were almost too much to take in up close. I got a better sense of their thinking, their humor, when I stood out there with the others, watching them shifting from side to side, turning their butts to the people. But every once in a while in the Elephant House I'd look up to their eyes, long lashed and a little wry, which let us know they were looking back.

A Goat is Needed

After the bears, the elephants, the flamingos, the white Bengal tiger, the alligator, and the albino alligator, we came to the
petting zoo, and though I felt sheepish about going inside the gate, we went ahead. And there, in the dirt, the highlight of the afternoon, at least for me: the goat who leaned into my thigh as I rubbed the crease behind her ears. And every time I stopped, she did her version of that back, which was to clean my forearm with her rough pink tongue. And when I got up to leave, she started running with me and made a sound, halfway between a cat and a bird cry, which sounded like "no!"

Said goat appears at the bottom of the stack.

(And no, the bear below isn't dead, as the schoolchildren cried, but taking a nap in the heat.)

Rain, Oil, Horseshit, Cloud

Rain, oil, horseshit, cloud: these are the smells of New Orleans tonight.

More text soon. Our hotel is wireless-less, and I'm writing from a bar in the Quarter....

*****

Thursday, 8:30 PM

Out of nowhere, the multiple parts of you--head, stomach, bowels, cold and sweating feet--are having an argument; they refuse to corral themselves in the same skin, which is why you walk down Decatur Street, holding yourself at your stomach with pained face. The sun is taking the day toward a woozy 87. The wafting of crawfish boil, truck exhaust, even black coffee... They might as well be kicks in the gut. Is it even possible to find a bland thing to eat in the French Quarter? Miso soup? Chicken soup? The mere sight of the words "crawfish omelet" on the breakfast menu practically sends you wobbling off the chair. As for the sticky, glazed muffins placed before you?

So my day--sleeping, holding my stomach, trying to stay still, finally getting to read The Gate at the Stairs. By three, I had a craving: it had to be bland, but of a very specific sort. The choices, after much consideration: soft pretzel or Matzoh. "No one has soft pretzels or Matzoh in the French Quarter," said Mark, kindly and aghast at once. List was extended to sourdough pretzels, Wasa crackers, OTC Oyster crackers. Bland cheese. And sure enough Mark came back from the market with sourdough pretzels, which is about the sum total of what I've eaten today (okay, plus strawberry yogurt, a little fruit, orange Powerade, an iced Latte, and Alka Seltzer).

Here's a bit of comic absurdity: Poets House (the sponsor of Mark's residency at the zoo) put us up in the Bourbon Orleans Hotel, which just happens to be the site of the Saints and Sinners conference for LGBT writers. We've been presenters at this conference at least twice. Here we thought we'd have a (mostly) non-professional vacation for once, and the gods have a different plan for us.

Transition Time

Novel manuscript formatted, Fairfield packets sent off, NYU portfolios read and graded. And tomorrow we're headed to New Orleans, where Mark is Poet-in-Residence at Audubon Zoo, and where I'll reportedly get to go behind the scenes. By this I mean, get to meet the creatures up close, possibly... elephants? More, obviously, to pass on in a day or two, but in the meantime two things:

Kathy Graber, whom some might remember as Arden's favorite animal sitter in Dog Years, has an excellent poem, "The Drunkenness of Noah," in the May 17th New Yorker.

And Bindu Wiles' interview with me went live on her blog today. I hope you like it. It was good to get to talk about genre and truth and animals and things l usually don't get to talk about.

The pictures above, by the way, were taken in the backyard out in Springs today. A cold dry sun on the leaves, a very good weather for raking, weeding, pulling, sweeping. Then, off the ocean, a wind so moist it almost had a taste in it. Even the maple out front shuddered.