The Turkey

Cole brought this message about the turkey home from school a couple of days ago. He seems a little conflicted about his turkey eating. He loves to eat turkey and he loves turkeys. What to do?

Our conversation:

Me: So you don't think that we should eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
Cole: Do you eat turkey on Thanksgiving?
Me: Sometimes.
Cole: I am only going to eat turkey on Thanksgiving.

The Turkey
by Cole S. Cunningham

The turkey is known on Thanksgiving. I have to state that it really hates it.

The turkey hates everything about the Thanksgiving day. They see one after another being slaughtered all day. Before they know it, they're being slaughtered too.

So please eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Aidan's Red

I finally found Aidan's red poem. It had been hiding amongst the hundreds of papers that inhabit the house. Someday those papers are going to have their own room.

Red

Red leaves in the fall
from the trees
to the ground, from the
top to the bottom.
Red, deep red deep as blood
flowing through the
heart. Red hearts, apples
in fall, like leaves
falling to the ground
top to bottom in
the fall.

Edge

Today I follow the small, black fin of a harbor porpoise.

I run. It swims. I run until I am out of breath and the fin is out of sight.

Yellow, the center of a flower, in the leaves and on the wall.

The long of it. And the short of it.

Walk until the edge is out of sight.

Cole's Halloween Poem

What Happens to a Thing from Halloween In November
by: Cole S. Cunningham

Ghosts groan
candy rots
witches go to China.

Zombies take the day off.
A Jack-O-Lantern is useless.

Now cats are just cats.

Bats go in caves.
Skeletons shatter down to their graves
bones and all.

It's stormy
the moon won't be glowing
like it did on Halloween night.

Halloween's frightened by November.

Halloween masks don't give people a fright
it's November.

No more spiders no more rats.
It's November.

Halloween is over.

At midnight I hear his voice; she has fallen out of bed and is crying and he is trying to soothe her.

It is confusing for both of them. He's been trying to get home for three hours, ankle deep in swamp, dark as hell.

She's in a strange, cavernous house.

I pick her up, carry her to my room.

I leave him standing in the half-lit hallway of broken promises.

Why wasn't he here? Why do they worry? What to do?

The story is the same.

At 12:24 the baby screams. We are separate and not sleeping, all of us under this roof.

I am here for him. They are here for them. He is here in a dream.

And Malcolm Gladwell is not the golden boy they describe.

A Postcard from Salt Lake City

Yesterday I bought the album The Suburbs, Arcade Fire and listened to it in its entirety (two times) while I sewed curtains. Sew. Listen. Sew. Pin. Listen. Remove stitches. Pin. Sew. Listen.

The album got in and got stuck and will not leave. Maybe reading Olson has something to do with its persistence--or memories of childhood or talk of the grid or self-aware lyrics (maybe painfully so) or the prettiness of the song about sprawl that made me want to find out more about this album, folks who live in Montreal now, but wanted to write about growing up in the suburbs of Houston.

In finding out about them I found what's below: The Wilderness Downtown--worth the efforts of installing Google Chrome--especially for people who grew up in the capital of grids, Salt Lake City.

I'm a bit haunted by this song and this video and the opportunity to write a postcard to my younger self as it brings up all sorts of stuff--the house that raised me, the city of salt, the people who have come and gone. It's a bit surreal, watching a memory explode with trees while listening to this band's postcard to and from the suburbs.

My Wilderness Downtown

About Walking

It is September and I have been walking.

I am taking note because James Cook and Peter Anastas and Charles Olson have got me thinking about walking. In Gloucester.

Do people walk? Do people in Gloucester walk? And why do they walk? And why do I walk?

1. Gloucester has walkers, walkers who make a person stop and think about walking.

a. Richard from Bananas walks. He walks from East Gloucester to Main Street and home again. Almost daily.

b. The man with the sandals from Lincoln Park walks. He walks and he sits and walks and he sits.

c. Aurora used to walk. Aurora used to live in Lincoln Park. I miss Aurora.

d. My backyard neighbor walks. She waves and I smile. I wave and she smiles.

e. The dog walkers walk. Sometimes they collect their shit and sometimes they don't.

f. Ernie walks. He is training his new dog Bogen with the three legs to walk long distances because Ernie walks long distances. With his camera.

g. The Boulevard walkers walk. I do not know their names, but I recognize their faces.

h. Main Street walks. Briskly. With packages. With purpose. With anger. With amusement. Pushing baby carriages. Drag feet style.

I walk because I like the sound of footsteps following footsteps. It is slow some days and I sit. I look people in the eye--if I want to. I notice the flap, flappity of the flags that I wish someone would take down after the holiday.

I count stars, lights, bits of sea glass. I count waves. I count people. Walking.

Some days I think about her and her and him and her. And you. Sometimes.

Tonight it came up about what matters.

I think that Gloucester matters. And walking matters. And people matter.

Tonight I am happy that people matter.

Thea Writes

Uh. It was a great day. There was just two rains and then there was two sunnies. And then dark.

We played on the park. We went to the gym. We had fun at the park.

I'm done.

The Bash

Storm

Last entry, December 21, 2009.

Why does a person write and then not write and then write again?

I'll start somewhere, pick word petals, throw colors to the wind.

Fall in love again with the click of the keys and the beauty that is around me.

I'll begin with a storm. The one that I can feel outside my window.

"No breeze. No currency of leaves," it presses into my spine wide awake with unrest.

The people on the news are unconvincingly frantic, as is their hair. They are too well kept for this coming storm, hairspray and hair dye whispering sweet nothings to Earl.

Earl pays them no attention.

Storm is one of those words, the kind that can get mixed up for another word.

Storm as a noun. Storm as a verb. Storm as finite.

For now. In, get it out, let go.

Mark time between storms until breathing eases, until words swallow little words and little words swallow little letters.

An i. An eye. Your eye. Always.

Summer