Prayer by Marie Howe

Someone or something is leaning close to me now
trying to tell me the one true story of my life:

one note,
low as a bass drum, beaten over and over:

It’s beginning summer,
and the man I love has forgotten my smell

the cries I made when he touched me, and my laughter
when he picked me up

and carried me, still laughing, and laid me down,
among the scattered daffodils on the dining room table.

And Jane is dead,
and I want to go where she went,
where my brother went,

and whoever it is that whispered to me

when I was a child in my father’s bed is come back now:
and I can’t stop hearing
This is the way it is,
the way it always was and will be

—beaten over and over—panicking in street comers,
or crouched in the back of taxicabs,

afraid I’ll cry out in jammed traffic, and no one will know me
or know where to bring me

There it is, I almost remember,
another story:

It runs along this one like a brook beside a train.
The sparrow knows it, the grass rises with it.

The wind moves through the highest tree branches without
seeming to hurt them.

Tell me.
Who was I when I used to call your name?

[Reprinted from What the Living Do (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999)]

Sick day and a poem by Arda Collins

Garden Apartments by Arda Collins

It was raining a little.

I wondered if I were outside

if I would get wet.

I was in the car.

I passed a school.

I didn't really know where I was.

I had lived near here for a while.

It was a quiet, residential neighborhood,

garden apartments in the back of the town.

I parked near a driveway and turned the car off.

They were basically ugly.

It's no one's fault though.

I wondered what I would do the rest of the day.

People were running their lives from here.

They had a coffee table and mugs with writing on them.

They had the rest of their lives. It was just like the other day.

The weather was warm for the first time.

I was out walking.

A young couple came out of a house.

She had just taken a shower,

blow-dried her hair and put make up on,

and put on light-colored pants and a t-shirt.

I smelled her shampoo

when they passed, and I felt afraid of the day.

The rest of the walk was better.

It smelled like rain in the car. There was no one around.

I heard my jacket when I moved.

I thought how god loves this place;

the grass was coming in, and the crocuses.

What if someone died, or got fired,

or vomited alone in the middle of the night?

The apartments were wood on the outside.

They were stained red like the color of a picnic table.

I was so ugly, I wasn't sure I'd even be able to drive.

Pillow Talk, T-shirt and Shaking Hands: One More Reason I'm Attending Bennington

In exactly one month I will be arriving at Bennington. This morning I spoke a woman who helped me set up my college e-mail account. I successfully logged-in only to find an email reminding me that my health forms were due last week (yeah- about that-). This exact email also included a link to the following:

(From Bennington College's website)

For your listening pleasure: a collection of music composed and performed by current Bennington students and recent alumni. Spanning the genres from indie rock to Celtic to classical, it's a lively (but by no means exhaustive!) sample of what we're playing and listening to right now. The list was compiled by Sarah McAbee, Bennington College Class of 2007.

Needless to say, I'm pretty happy right about now.

What stumbling taught me (after therapy).

1. "I told a kid in kindergarten that candy canes were the bones of reject elves."

2. "You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." - (Jessica, age 8)

3. See feeling chart above.

4. My four new favorite words to describe touch and texture: polished, knobbed, grity, and biting.

5. All dogs go to heaven.

The Constellation and The People

Please read about it here.

Scissors