bags

I keep on having dreams you're talking to me about grace

and that I'm falling you

following you around from room to room

Always your head, the back of your head for sure

Always your slow stately bringing it up

  like the notion of grace stuck in you repeating

  or you secretly seek my advice on it

and you haven't anyway to work yourself around it.

I am also in a boat

in a cockpit

in a mall

in s america

and I can see your face as the back of your head slides around.

I am not a pretty girl

I am not intended

I wait for summers to come

I wait for bad news

I try to get some 

I try to wait

but I haven't any patience.

I wake up with kafka, breton, sanford, nelson, even nin

but I haven't swallowed anything, still just still just still just.

I got a sunburn, I want to pretend it's a cinnamon tan

I asked my friend if he wanted to get a manicure with me

because he always says he wants to do that with me

he paints his beautiful gold nails

like chitinous beetles

but today there's nothing I'd less like to do than that

like normally

like acetone

like $$

like filipino muzak

like a woman holding my hand, not speaking to me

like all of the problems of our national celebrities

like the stars are just like us

they bring their own to-go jars

they secretly compost in the bushes

they drink stale coffee

they drive home drunk

they wake up and write bad poems

to prove that they are bad, or that they're helpless

like I'd rather peel my skin off

peel my hair out, have a happy saturday

a good may

a pretty week-end

partysoul

throw yourself a soul party

maybe I'll get all high on drugs or something

or maybe I'll be a yuppie

with a shaved border collie at the farmer's market

in swedish clogs

just like the stars when they're just like us

or maybe I'll be an artist

I'll throw up on my nostalgia

and my sentiment will break me out

I did throw something away, you know.

It was a baggage tag for an airplane flight

it said 28 November 2006 on it

it said C A's name on it

it was from the last trip we ever took together, we went from Chicago to Montana

I remember it was 9 degrees when we left Montana

and we listened to Music for Airports by Brian Eno while we waited for the plane to come

and he took photos of me sleeping on the airport floor.

Apparently I'd been dragging that baggage ticket around with me for 6.5 yrs

I'd say that's pretty fucking impressive, Molly Stoddard

things we know about me:

I am 26 and a half today; it means that at every moment I come closer to being 27. 

Really, at every moment I come closer to being 28, and 31, and 46.

I have a dog. She was dirty, but then it snowed & she ran in it, and suddenly she's crystal clean.

I usually call Fat Tire Flat Tire but it's often the only beer in my mother's refrigerator. I unpacked it from her luggage; she moved the beer from california in august.

I am no longer sick.

I can wear pants, if I like.

I'm wearing these pants I got & wore everyday in london. I am wearing wool tights underneath.

There is snow & blue sky outside, and it reminds me of chicago at its wintry best. The crunch beneath my bootheels satisfies.

I am not hungry.

I am aware of my jobs.

I am ready to play pool & to drink pitchers. 

I am ready to wake up in different places, like colorado, and a tropical island, and new york.

I will paint my room the colors of the painted desert, once I have a room to paint. 

My fingernails are way, way too long.

I hold no grudges.

song for the dogs and denver

she is wiping her cool breath on me! she drops her leaves there, so I can foot them when I walk. is it the northside of chicago here? is it boise to the north? is it highschool, is it being 26, still? is it twins, the same person, the signs, the only children, the histories, the halved lives? is she later on in gone months, or is she samewise when before she existed? not missing the spiders of oregon (though don't I still love them?) is it being unemployed, is it the fish in the street, is it the p-i-z-z-a... the caffeine craze, the early mornings & kitchen floors. the sound of my sweet dog as she growls and snaps at the innocents, wanting to caress her iridescent fur... is it timed, now, after it's stopped and it's beginning to grow again? and as my health itself flourishes upwards with a dramatic flourish of the heart.