Soft Graffiti

Another reason to <3 NYC: Getting yen’ed up by my office....

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:44:00 -0400

Another reason to <3 NYC: Getting yen’ed up by my office. Next up is Tokyo!

Tight as Conch Shells

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:00:00 -0400

his body folded inward as he bent, like a spider in a flame.
she could see the ghost tracks on his white fish belly
where the skin would stretch if he grew up to be a stout man.
his hands were mottled indigo from the ink of his jeans
only washed after the first year. his thighs were the same color
and she remembered the childlike oval of flesh smooth,
hairless, and high up where his junk rubbed as he skated.
he didn’t like to be reminded of that spot, brushed her hand away.

he was putting out the fire the cherry had started. her fault
and she watched silently, unhelpfully. she liked the
musty, smoldering smell. the town had banned burning
the leaves, said it was a health risk and you had to bag instead.
the ground was still damp and the fire didn’t go
anywhere though he kept mumbling and batting at it like a cat,
she thought. he had a certain way of shutting his eyes
and elongating, his spine popping like an Old West gunfight.

the sun was fuzzed behind thin clouds that didn’t look
like anything recognizable except clouds. the fire was out,
he felt sure and leaned back to relight the nub of weed. it was
a production, she gave him one of her barrettes to pinch the end
and her hair fell in a graceless clump, sticking to her forehead.
she watched him suck and burn his lip. she liked his wince,
the way his eyes snaked at the corners and she saw him old again.
he tongued his lip, hurt. there was hope. he could be a silver fox.

Together in Great Numbers

Tue, 29 May 2012 23:02:00 -0400

Everyone forgot how to ride the subway over the weekend. It only took three warm days and all the knots slackening in our shoulders as our bodies expanded into this newfound space.

In honor of all the George Pelecanos I’ve been...

Sun, 27 May 2012 12:55:40 -0400

In honor of all the George Pelecanos I’ve been reading…

District of Columbia in the Atlas for The Blind, c. 1837

Just polished off this Mother’s Day gift with the #1 Poe...

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:03:22 -0400

Just polished off this Mother’s Day gift with the #1 Poe lover in my life (Taken with instagram)

Wolf pile inside sculpture @ Proteus Gowanus (Taken with...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:41:04 -0400

Wolf pile inside sculpture @ Proteus Gowanus (Taken with instagram)

Until then I had thought each book spoke of things, human or divine, that lie outside of books. Now...

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:37:39 -0400

Until then I had thought each book spoke of things, human or divine, that lie outside of books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they speak among themselves. In light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was the place of a long, centuries old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another. A living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or been their conveyers.

Umberto Eco, The Name Of The Rose

Overheard

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:46:00 -0400

A young boy at a restaurant yells out, ” I like guns!” His grandmother scolds, “We don’t like guns. Guns hurt people.” The boy looks over, “But guns give water to the flowers.”

Found while unpacking

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:18:21 -0500

Found while unpacking

Subway Spider

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:37:48 -0500

Cream and yellow,

with eight crabbed legs like

some monstrous molar swinging

into the Canal St. Station

In which we pass through to more light @ Greenwood Cemetery

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:05:03 -0500

In which we pass through to more light

@ Greenwood Cemetery

Witch Hands

Tue, 24 May 2011 22:38:00 -0400

A wart on the back of the hand, root knuckle of the middle finger. That single blemish could have been a death sentence in times past. Toad holder. She had warts as a kid too, and her grandmom, usually so straight-laced and trusting of doctors, rubbed those warts with the clammy insides of raw potato skins which she buried in the yard of the summer house. It was very important that the burial location remain a secret, otherwise the cure would not have worked. Within weeks the warts had disappeared. Years later she decided it was the power of the mind, of total belief and wasn’t that some form of magic too?

Untitled Fragment

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:52:00 -0500

After a winter of private duets, he left.

She thought it was settled.

In the soft folds of recollection

She felt less certain.

Untitled

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:36:00 -0400

“I’m an orphan,” I said.

“I see,” my mother said.

My father stopped, spoon in hand.

“We’re sorry. We really are, but we’re parents.”

“Ok,” I said. “Yeah.”

They both went back to eating.

I went outside and sat down.

“I’m an orphan,” I said.

Based on Book 1; Chapter 33 of Richard Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar.

Reconfigured during a meeting of The Writhing Society

I Saw A Rat, Too

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:41:24 -0400

The fat sun dips and
the brute shimmer
of white diamonds spreads
over the dimpled surface
of a murky city lake like
wildfire across your corneas.

Gazing With Pitiless Eyes

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:00:00 -0400

A man falls underfoot,

His own.

We are thrilled.

Lost Smells of History

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:52:38 -0400

She slept like a rat, nose twitching.
In dreams, she followed flights of institutional stairs
to the stifling offices of Byzantine historians
who argued for a radical archaeology of the senses.

A few nips of whiskey, hours of talk
nestled into cracked leather armchairs.
They wept over the horrors of modernity:
Smog, petrol, car exhaust, plug-in freshners.
The air in their nostrils was not that of their ancestors.

Things that Shriek

Tue, 11 May 2010 20:30:00 -0400

People Jets Eagles Tires Cicadas Banshees Monkeys Pipes Bar Stools Tea Kettles Balloons Chalk Boards Basketball Sneakers Thoughts You Ignore

In progress fragment

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:35:40 -0400

Birds fly overhead in long skeins;

despotic macaques with bladelike, symbolic vulvas flash against

the smudge of brown sunshine glimpsed

through the dark and furry clouds of a Class 3 deer storm.

"And what traces, what crumpled ephemera—a carelessly written note, a chewed pen, coins, to-do..."

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:51:58 -0400

“And what traces, what crumpled ephemera—a carelessly written note, a chewed pen, coins, to-do list, photograph—have I dropped and someone else pocketed?”

- Notebook, undated