“Did it come out looking like a pile, or like a sausage?”
Archive for the ‘Lucy’ Category
overheard: at the vet.
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009book review: Tinderbox Lawn by Carol Guess
Monday, July 27th, 2009Originally published at Dusie.
Tinderbox Lawn
Prose poems by Carol Guess, Rosemetal Press, 2008
Tinderbox Lawn lives in the hugeness of small moments, the hazards of love, and the fierceness of the mundane. It is the place you find yourself when you step past secrecy into façade, displaying photos of your brother instead of admitting your love. A place where sex and chores blur – where it’s a given that your body is commodity, but getting paid for it is punishable by death and dumping in the river.
(more…)
dinner for two: smoked salmon salad with toasted almonds and blueberry vinaigrette
Monday, July 27th, 2009After a couple hours picking blueberries at an organic farm half an hour from my house, I had most of a bucket full. That’s probably three or four pounds, I thought, not wanting to overestimate my achievement. I’ll make some muffins and freeze a few for winter. A nice little harvest.
My nice little harvest turned out to be eight pounds, not four. I started eating the berries as fast as I could. I don’t bake, actually, and I don’t even have a muffin recipe to turn to. What was I thinking? That, and dinner time was quick approaching. Here, boyfriend, I thought. Have some blueberries for dinner after a hard day at work.
I’d picked a head of lacey green leaf lettuce from the garden earlier in the day, and glanced around the kitchen for inspiration. A bag of almonds for snacking on at work, a chunk of wild caught smoked salmon, and ooh, a gold beet from the farmer’s market. Hmm, sounds like a night for fancy salad!
last time
Friday, May 29th, 2009my grandmother is in a box that looks like the cell phone we gave her when she moved to the nursing home. picked it frosted pink with silver trim. filled it with phone numbers of her family. set it next to her bed. pink for breast cancer and crocheted hats and mary kay samples, lipstick and blush on paper cards. drugstore diamonds I never thanked her for and I never called and I think she was gone too far anyway. and so instead this matching box, these flower arrangements, these photos of her in yellow cap and gown, smiling with dark hair, looking like my sister.
her husband was climbing around on the ceiling
Monday, May 18th, 2009when I finally found her she was sitting in a corner on a brown folding chair. I think her hair had gotten longer. she looked so tired. she said her feet hurt. I looked at her pink puffy sneakers and then I remembered: how her feet looked in the pale bed, what was left of them, no longer for walking, and how I grabbed my sister’s hand. so I held her hand. I said I’m so glad you’re doing better. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to carry her. I wanted to keep better track of her this time. I didn’t want to recognize the dream.
Papua
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009the men in the Jayapura airport ash their clove cigarettes directly onto the floor. I sit on the floor reading Berenstain Bears to a two year old and a five year old; we share our books with a young Papuan woman and her child with enormous eyes. we smile and nod at each other, but can only share terima kasih. a man with glasses nods at me and we trade selamats. “how many?” he asks appraisingly, less of the boys than of me. “they’re not mine,” I say, and he leaves without further conversation.
*
ambulances carry dead people. funeral processions look like motorcycle gangs. imprisonment follows raising the flag of the independence movement, so Bob Marley, and Che Guevara walk around on t-shirts and posters, strange surrogates for freedom. police vans carry groceries for extra cash, while garbage trucks are cheap transport.
*
high over the Baliem valley, the mountain streams are sand. below, fish live in the garbage ditches and no, don’t drink the tap water. we bathe in the river with other children; they laugh at us in a language we do not understand. they bring soap to the water’s edge. later we shower in secret at home.
dinner for two: nettle pesto, asparagus, and ravioli
Monday, April 27th, 2009I think I’m going to start a series on recipes for two people, based on the awesome dinners my boy Simon and I make.
notes:
- wherever possible, ingredients are organic and local. they are a little more expensive that way (very little, really, during farmer’s market season!), but taste oh-so-much better.
- 99% of measurements are approximate — but we rarely make things that are hurt by eyeballing.
on to the foods!
nettle pesto, asparagus, and ravioli
it was my day off, and I promised to make something yummy for dinner. it’s one of my favorite things, when I have the time, to have something delicious ready (or close to it) when Simon gets home from work. we love cooking together, but I work until close to eleven five nights a week — so it’s especially fun to share good food with him at the end of the day.
I’m crazy about nettles right now — yeah, the stuff you snagged yourself on when you were a kid. cooked, even briefly, nettles lose their sting and are high in iron and tons of vitamins, as well as helpful with seasonal allergies. you can steam or sautee them as you would any green, or pour boiling water on them for a nice spring tea (local honey boosts the anti-allergy factor).
I ended up spending the bulk of the day working on my novel and visiting with a friend. I started this pesto about a half hour before he got home, but it was still ready in time. it takes a tiny bit of prep, but it tastes way fancier than it is and is always popular.
Ellusion
Saturday, March 28th, 2009following Naomi’s theme – I didn’t write this drunk, but I’m posting it after (amidst, really) celebrating my partner’s birthday. I made marinated chicken and asparagus and salad with raw beets, plus garlic bread. we decided to get the most out of our bottle of chardonnay, and drank it shots-style. pure class, over thisaway.
An Instance of Repeating
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009to continue with the sex theme, this one’s alternately titled Who I Did on my Summer Vacation (joking. sorta.).
An instance of repeating
when the world is only beginning
Strong coffee in the evening and a walk through the bookshelf of a stranger. He is too young for his grey hair, and he has been to Prague, and this Kundera, he’s Czech, isn’t he? We have already dreamed aloud together, and every step taken on common ground must surely bring us closer. I take the book home with me: heavy, even in its unbearable, unbeatable lightness.
Incarnation
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009Incarnation
I. Rabbit
The first memory: yellow carpet of my bedroom in the duplex where we lived when I was five. I am sitting on the floor; I am wearing a short dress. There is something involving a dresser drawer and the wrapping paper (from a years-ago baby shower) lining the bottom of it, and there are carpet lines on my bare legs, and there is this necklace – the flatly glinting rabbit and the cheap, indelicate silver chain.
