The Body: Owner’s Manual

1- STOP WORRYING: It is very very very very solid. It has survived centuries, Roman armies, tornadoes, terrible presidents, Chick Filet’s, and innumerable orgasms in which it lost its mind, its skin, its nationality, maybe even a tooth or two. 2- REPLACE WORRY WITH CARE. If you don’t know the difference take all your clothes […]

Nobel Prize

This piece I wrote in response to a prompt I gave my Goddesses retreat in Arles, France, June 2017. The prompt was, “Write your own Nobel prize reception speech.” Image credit: Proserpine, by Gabriel Rossetti   The poet speaks like ancient druids and fairies of turning sideways into the light. Makes no sense to the shareholder, the […]

Coupé-collé (d’après W. Burroughs)

J’adore proposer dans mes ateliers  d’écriture des exercices qui poussent un peu les limites du bon sens et de la logique. C’est en explorant cette limite qu’on accède, parfois, à l’indicible, l’impensé, bref: la poésie. Ce poème vient de là–une méthode qu’affectionnait William Burroughs. On prend deux textes, on les coupe en morceaux, et puis on […]

This Begins in the Darkness …

Without light my cave was all touch and a little bit of sound, faint condensation drips from my breath my sweat the excrements I turned into art. Without light to draw a world, perception finally becomes awareness: fulfilment instead of distraction. There was the stone and the moss and the lice, and after a time […]

What I See When I Think of Next Year …

There are no trucks: only pigeons. No steam-spouting trains: only pigeons flirting with pigeons. No lawnmowers, no leaf-blowers, no grunting AC, no airplanes (they’ve been forbidden to fly over cities since the cataclysm of WW2’s ally bombings). Only pigeons flopping about the rooftops. On Thursday mornings there is a church bell—a real one with a […]

This is how our dreams arrive …

A carriage and 12 horses like the Apocalypse. A rickshaw in a Beijing hutong. Wiry rider stands on pedals because our dreams are heavy. 20 chickens in 3 boxes on 1 moped—brown feathers glitter in the fog. The little girl next to me on the bus to Xin Ping wants to know my name but […]

Neshoba County Fair

They have bunnies in a cage, the bunnies are babies, palm-size. I want to bury my face in the pile of them, drown out the duck-hunting arcade, the die-with-your-head-upside-down ride, the Mississippi drawl that spikes through one hundred generators growling like Humvees. There are people who come back every year. It’s a family thing. It’s […]

8.5 Seconds of Nirvana (Walking with Thich Nhat Hanh)

The grass is short and grey and there are bald spots everywhere. It trembles in my breath. My arms tremble in Chaturanga—still, after twenty-two years of sun salutations, each day three times I bow to kiss the ground. Twenty-two times three-hundred-and-sixty-five times three is a lot of trembling with the ground. But today is a […]