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Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Ode to the Pedicure Place at the Mall

This entry is part 26 of 93 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

 

That kind of day— when even the wren
in the tree swipes its bill back and forth
on the end of a dead limb, as if sharpening

a knife on the whetstone. And so instead
of waiting resigned for the blade to fall,
or the basilisk to sink its old caried

tooth into the vein throbbing at the base
of my nape, I betake myself to a spa
called Millennium Nails at the mall.

The water in the basin swirls with warmth;
and a dark-haired woman named Maria takes
my tired, callused feet into her two gloved

hands. She lathers and massages with pomegranate
oils, sugar and crushed walnut seed scrubs till—
don’t laugh— the ginger-root knobs on my toes

unclench. When she lifts my feet to pat them
dry on the terrycloth towel, I know all about
her so-called best friend who didn’t come

to her wedding, and she knows the age
when I had my first child. Is it the light
chemical veil of ammonia floating in the air,

or the low-key bubble of voices across the room?
No matter: I can only think of the poet who’d written
of the world in a grain of sand and of holding

infinity in the palm of his hand; and of how,
likely, he never had a pedicure in all his life.
Maria and I bend over rainbow rows of bottles

with names like Haze of Love or Cha-Cha-Champagne;
Snake Charmer, Bling to Me, Seize the Daze, Fire Starter—
for all I know, they could be ruby-lit signs:

shiny new fortunes just waiting to be painted on.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Shit

This entry is part 25 of 93 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

 

“Whither the thrush whose ethereal notes
woke me at dawn? A male towhee flies up to a sunlit
branch and takes a shit, singing.” ~ Dave Bonta

Explaining idioms to my youngest child,
I remembered a book we used to keep
in the bathroom of my childhood home,
stuffed into the basket of dog-eared

Good Housekeeping and Better Homes
and Gardens magazines: An Irreverent
and Almost Complete Social History of
the Bathroom— dishing out in droll

anecdotal detail the likely reasons for
expressions such as Don’t throw the baby
out with the bathwater (the master
of the medieval household the first to dunk

himself in the tub, the rest of the family
succeeeding); and Careful that you don’t
get the short end of the stick (public
toilets at a time when organic implements

were used in lieu of toilet paper, which
hadn’t been invented yet). The same book
blandly made the case for privies and
outhouses still being then so rare,

that belled skirts, hooped petticoats,
and perfume provided cover or necessary
counterpoint. Sometimes I can hardly
remember how I raised my older

daughters from birth through
toddlerhood without diapers whose
sticky tabs you could pry loose
after wiping and changing, to refasten

the bundle for tidy disposal in the can.
Shit, says the man skidding out of the drive-
way then hitting the row of garbage bins.
Shit, says his wife as the shit

hits the fan. A friend tells me
that in moments of great stress,
when not only his bosses but clients
get viciously mean, he closes his eyes

and simply imagines what they might
look like without a stitch of clothing,
or grunting on the pot; then smiles at
the equalizing release that ensues.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

At play in the fields of Google

This entry is part 17 of 20 in the series Poetics and technology

 

UPDATE (9/1/11): I’ve decided to end my use of Google+ due to Google’s intransigence over its identity policy. One Facebook is enough! See you over at the other corporate soul-stealer.

Cory Doctorow sums up the issues better than I could.

*

So I’ve joined Google+, the fantastic new social network for talking about Google+. (It’s still in private beta, but I have invitations if anyone wants one.) Enthusiasm for the still-developing service has been balanced by skepticism that we actually need another general-purpose social network — see for example what Lorianne DiSabato and Beth Adams have blogged about it. Here are my initial reactions.

1) Facebook has had a “lists” feature for quite some time, supposedly allowing one to keep up with subsets of one’s contacts — family, close friends, blogger buddies, etc. Unfortunately, it never shows me more than the most recent day or two of posts from the lists I’ve set up, and even then doesn’t seem to include everything. Facebook is good at suggesting people I should add to each semi-functional list, which makes me suspect it’s really all about data-mining with advertisers in mind: figure out how specifically we network so they can better target us in coordinated advertising campaigns. Now, there’s no guarantee that Google+’s ballyhooed “circles” won’t have the same ultimate purpose. But the interface for screening one’s data-stream by subset of contacts is much smoother, it’s not three clicks away, and (so far at least) it works.

2) Data portability is a critical issue for me. Google+ lets you download and save all your posts at any time. I like that. Despite my very liberal views on copyright and content-sharing, I don’t like the feeling I get over at Facebook that my content isn’t really my own.

3) Much as I like the 140-character limit at Twitter and Identi.ca as an enforcer of concision and spur to creativity for my microblogging at The Morning Porch, I don’t otherwise see the point, and I resent Facebook limiting the length of status updates. Google+ lets you go on as long as you like. It’s bloggish.

4) While it would be nice to have a “Facebook for grown-ups,” and I’ll be happy if Google+ becomes that and gets mass adoption, at this point I’m most interested in social networking around specific interests or for specific purposes. (Just look at the success of Goodreads among book-readers and Ravelry among knitters.) It’s not clear to me yet whether Google+, with its circles and video-chat “hangouts,” represents a major step forward in this regard. I am considering getting a webcam, though — the possibilities for small-group readings and workshops are very tantalizing. I’ve always hesitated to organize conference calls on Skype due to the sometimes intermittent nature of our internet connection here; far better if it were hosted in the cloud, as Google+ hangouts are. Also, spontaneous get-togethers are often the best kind, and creative types in particular are hard to herd, as would be necessary if I ever tried the Skype approach.

5) Like Beth and Lorianne, I’m a blogger first and foremost. I think that anyone who really has anything to say on a regular basis should have their own blog, and that we should preferentially leave comments about blog posts at the point of origin and stop letting discussions fragment and dissipate at a half-dozen different places where the link might be shared.

6) A link-sharing culture, regardless of its host (Google+, Reddit, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, etc.) is fundamentally about enthusiasm for things that others have written, captured or made. This is both good and bad. I like the enthusiasm (and the frequent displays of wit), but I get frustrated after a while and want to say, O.K., but what have you made? Where are your poems? Hang out too much with professional writers or artists, though, and you’ll notice that we tend to go in the opposite direction, rarely sharing anything we didn’t make ourselves. Is it possible that our participation in social networks has helped mitigate this tendency a little? Or for those of us who were already blogging before Facebook and Twitter got big, has it actually shrunk our blogs, diminishing the emphasis we once placed on linking out, assembling sidebar linkrolls, and being social, because hey, we’re doing enough of that elsewhere? Self-centered and often anti-social as I am, I do try to strike a balance between self-promotion and other-promotion, but it’s not always easy. I like to think my use of Facebook has forced me to at least stay focused on the problem.

7) Email is still the “killer app” for me and I think for almost everyone over the age of 30. Unlike phone calls or (god help us) instant messaging, it doesn’t interrupt whatever I’m doing and destroy my concentration. We need less distraction, not more. What keeps me involved in online social interactions are email notifications, and the more customizable those notifications are, the happier I am. Facebook has recently gotten pretty good in this regard, letting me decide on a page-by-page and group-by-group basis how I want to be notified. It would be nice if I could do this for each comment thread as well, because some discussions you really want to follow and others, not so much. (I’ve seen participants in Facebook conversations go back and delete their comments just to stop the flood of notifications when the conversation goes on too long!)

It is in this regard that the older blogging platforms are really falling behind WordPress. I’m much less likely to leave a comment anymore if can’t keep track of follow-up discussion via email. I’ll actually be surprised if Blogger doesn’t overhaul its archaic commenting system soon, and introduce a “subscribe to other comments in this thread” feature when it does so. Typepad is probably a lost cause. (Incidentally, for self-hosted WordPress bloggers, I recommend the plugin I’m using, Subscribe to Comments Reloaded, rather than the original Subscribe to Comments, which hasn’t been updated since 2007. Previously I used a different plugin with a double opt-in feature — in other words, the subscriber had to not only check a box, but reply to an email in order to confirm each and every subscription. That’s too many hoops to jump through, I think.)

The point is that for me and I presume most other email-oriented people who want to participate in online conversations, it’s important that we have the option to follow discussions via email — and that we have fine-grained controls, including the option to unsubscribe from any discussion at any time. WordPress.com currently leads the social media field in this regard, which may seem ironic, since WordPress is all about traditional, long-form blogging and website creation rather than social networking. The highlight of the latest version of the software is a distraction-free writing option, which shows what the developers prioritize. At the same time, they have more — and, I gather, better — mobile phone applications than any other blogging platform. But I think it only makes sense that those who most value thoughtful communication would build the best tools for discussion and response.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dear modest four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath

This entry is part 24 of 93 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

 

home with bay windows and a covered garage
almost identical to each of the houses down

the way and circling that cul-de-sac: how
many times have I driven past without knowing
that one day soon I’d be looking more closely,

more covetously (how is it possible) at you?
Last week, our neighbor the realtor unlocked
the front door to let us in. We stepped through

the foyer, heels sounding on hardwood floors;
then climbed the carpet-covered stairs to peer
at bedrooms, gaze up a skylight, click open

and shut the wooden blinds. Stripped of
furniture, adornments, pictures, vestiges
of clothing and former lives— and yet

it simmered with history. Should I not
have entertained the possibility; not dreamed
of how to lighten dark stains beneath the old

refrigerator, imagined all sorts of yeasty
smells glazing the kitchen walls done up in maize?
There was a mantel wide enough for our clock

that runs just a few minutes fast; and a side
door opening out onto the yard where a firefly
sailed past, inner wings glowing in the sun.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Curating the Dead

This entry is part 10 of 20 in the series Highgate Cemetery Poems

 

Broken-nosed cherub

They were the grinning stars
of our childhood museum,
looming above the conches
& fossil ferns, the brain coral
& the blue & green glass bottles
that once held medicine.
We’d found them in the woods
not far from the houses,
their other bones littered about,
but it was only them we carried
home, those skulls: two cows & a mule.
Our elderly neighbor remembered
the mule’s name: Charlie.
Some of the teeth were loose
& soon went missing,
like strip-mined mountains.

We didn’t think about their deaths
or even what they’d been
before, as working livestock;
they were still live enough for us.
The zigzag sutures where
the parts of the skull fit together
made them self-evidently whole
& perfect, & the way the lower jaws
hinged behind the empty eyes
inspired awe. Every kid,
no matter how bored, would stop,
lift the mule’s top jaw
& make him talk.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Prospecting

This entry is part 23 of 93 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

 

Incremental: [adjective] increasing gradually by regular degrees or additions

We do the rounds, list address after address,
then make appointments to inspect the premises;
all the properties we’ve checked are more or less
close: a range of eight to fifteen miles at best
from where we currently reside. New to the process,
we’re warned not to fall in love too quickly or say yes
to everything, not get too attached nor obsessed
with one or another set of charming features, lest
we forget what we’re looking for. Incremental progress
so far— as we calculate, submit to being assessed:
what we’ve earned versus what we haven’t saved, the press
of percentages against the sharp glint of dream. Oh dressed
doorways with welcome mats, driveways and shaded decks—
behind glass we almost see our figures at home, at last.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Dickinson on heaven


Watch on Vimeo.

I decided to envideo a poem by Emily Dickinson (#413 in the R. W. Franklin edition of the complete poems), written in 1862.

Heaven is so far of the Mind
That were the Mind dissolved –
The Site – of it – by Architect
Could not again be proved –

‘Tis Vast – as our Capacity –
As fair – as our idea –
To Him of adequate desire
No further ’tis, than Here –

While this obviously isn’t one of Dickinson’s greatest poems, it does encapsulate, I think, one of her core beliefs, and is therefore a useful key to understanding her work as a whole. I couldn’t resist adding an ironic visual reference to one of her most famous poems.

And I must admit I picked a short poem because I didn’t have that much footage. I spent some time going through Franklin looking for poems about Heaven and Nature, and almost went with #721, which is more apophatic (and still pretty short), but it wasn’t as good a fit.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Trace

This entry is part 22 of 93 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2011

 

Wind that moves in the tree behind the tree,
that leaves a spoor of unnameable scent
then dissipates— It’s strongest when spent
and all that remains is filament, memory:

like love that desired what the other desired
but somehow forgot its errand. Your fever breaks;
then the longer route home, blue-girdled by lake
water that bears prints of leaves fallen, still flushed.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Extremophile

This entry is part 9 of 20 in the series Highgate Cemetery Poems

 

be still

How many miles into the earth
would we have to dig to find true stillness,
free from all taint of life?
Some bacteria can thrive solely
on the energy from radioactive decay,
know nothing of oxygen, & persist
as a single-species ecosystem,
alone in their subterranean cosmos.
We’ve come to learn a full half
of the total mass of life on earth
dwells underground or beneath
the ocean floor. So thoroughly have
we infected the planet, it might
never be rid of us, the poor thing,
burdened as it is with a barren mate
that remains untainted by its contagion,
circling at a safe distance
& summoning with a regular tug
that we like to think is somehow
meant for us.

*

It’s always a fun challenge to try to work such utterly geeky material into a poem. The bacteria mentioned is Desulforudis audaxviator — see “Real Life Journey To The Center Of The Earth Finds First Ecosystem With A Single Species” in Science 2.0. (Be sure to click on the photo if you can’t read the inscription on the gravestone.)