SCENE I (Matamoe, Landscape with Peacocks)
A shot of the water, which is still and the color of gunmetal. It is
rainy today in Matamoe. Gauguin arrived recently on the island and
can be seen huddled under blue branches, feet buried in pink sand,
wondering what peacocks might look like de-feathered.
Most likely just like any other bird, de-feathered, he concludes.
SCENE II (Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?)
He addresses his diary once, thou mysterious world. In this entry he
says the women smell like vegetables. Fragrant, fragrant. I do not
miss the yellow house, he writes. He does not even miss Vincent.
SCENE III (And the Gold of Their Bodies)
Gauguin can be seen picking gardenia petals for monoi with four young
native women, all in white sarongs. He addresses the youngest one.
GAUGUIN: I helped build the Panama Canal, vous savez.
She does not know what Panama is. She does know what a canal is, but
she does not speak French.
SCENE IV (In The Vanilla Grove, Man and Horse)
A man looks downward. A horse looks downward. A figure is hiding
behind two shrubs shaped like wings.
He sits to paint his last painting. He does not know it will be the
last. He had hoped his last one would be the last. But this is his
last.
September 7, 2009
July 19, 2009
When Irene and Paul Eloped to Miami Beach
The sun was a focused beam
flecked with dust,
a dirty projector.
Irene sat in long sleeves
on the shore. She could just make out
blades of coral scratching
a glassed surface.
Curving and hunching, all in a row
like vertebrae.
When the tide was low,
the whole reef lurked above the water:
a scattered skeletal puzzle.
Irene thought of it
as a living shipwreck.
A ghost ship’s great shadow.
Paul stayed in the room
smoking Cubans and eating
black olives off his browned fingers.
Paul was good at talking people into things.
Irene was very in love.
flecked with dust,
a dirty projector.
Irene sat in long sleeves
on the shore. She could just make out
blades of coral scratching
a glassed surface.
Curving and hunching, all in a row
like vertebrae.
When the tide was low,
the whole reef lurked above the water:
a scattered skeletal puzzle.
Irene thought of it
as a living shipwreck.
A ghost ship’s great shadow.
Paul stayed in the room
smoking Cubans and eating
black olives off his browned fingers.
Paul was good at talking people into things.
Irene was very in love.
June 1, 2009
Untitled, After Edward Hopper’s “Rooms by the Sea”
Of a front door flung open,
beyond the step is simple, open
sea. The light is milky.
Stirred by the wind with each
nearing current.
You know that familiar
mirroring: the bright echo
of glint and glimmer
bouncing off blue seawater.
But it’s better than that.
This light is a blinding
afterthought, the sun’s
consideration reflected as a favor.
The sea laps steadily
at the doorstep.
An eager dog.
Waves froth and curl,
tugging landward at the broad hem
of the sea’s golden skirt.
Her knees are pressed with sea oats
from kneeling so long.
Our floating house is getting full
of heavy light. A vase of sea holly
tumbles with the swell and unswell
of waves. The broken buds, like
little purple snowflakes, melt
into blinding white or crawl
like sea spiders
back into the ocean.
beyond the step is simple, open
sea. The light is milky.
Stirred by the wind with each
nearing current.
You know that familiar
mirroring: the bright echo
of glint and glimmer
bouncing off blue seawater.
But it’s better than that.
This light is a blinding
afterthought, the sun’s
consideration reflected as a favor.
The sea laps steadily
at the doorstep.
An eager dog.
Waves froth and curl,
tugging landward at the broad hem
of the sea’s golden skirt.
Her knees are pressed with sea oats
from kneeling so long.
Our floating house is getting full
of heavy light. A vase of sea holly
tumbles with the swell and unswell
of waves. The broken buds, like
little purple snowflakes, melt
into blinding white or crawl
like sea spiders
back into the ocean.
Two rooms by Edward Hopper, and some complaining
I wish things still seemed as limitless as they did not so long ago. The reality of my life continuing for the next seven months just as it has been since the beginning of May (barely employed, in touch with a total of two people in this city, without school or any kind of schedule or structure) is a totally new and suffocating prospect. I've never been less excited about existing. It's not that I'm sad, just claustrophobic and really, truly bored.
From a distance, summer always seems like this huge block of free time during which I will regenerate and become the person I'm too busy to be when I have school and work all the time. I will be well-read, I will write all the time, I will finish the projects I've been meaning to finish and write those stupid thank-you notes to the people who sent me graduation cards. I have done almost none of the above in the past three or so weeks. Summer is just too wide open with too many prospects and I am turning into a big, lazy idiot. I pick up a book and get through ten pages until I decide to take a nap. I spend most of my day on the internet. I guess I've been doing okay with writing pretty regularly, though. Good old Ed Hopper has been a main source of inspiration lately.
May 19, 2009
And now I will tell you
everything you want to know. Actually, I kind of just want to write this all here as a sort of mandatory to-do list of my life. Okay? Whatever.
So I graduated from college yesterday. A couple days before that happened, I won $1,050 in poetry prizes for some poems from my senior thesis. With that money, I am going to Lebanon in the fall. Before that, I will re-change my last name to Boulos, so I am not denied entrance into the country. After that, I will know everything there is to know about my heritage. DONE.
I'm moving to Jamaica Plain in September, to pay cheap rent and enjoy fall foliage in the arboretum (gay) until December 31st, when I will move to Los Angeles (Poetry Wasteland) to be with boyfwiend. Yesterday, my stepfather said Los Angeles is "blasé" so I think I will like it. Plus, I will probably work at the Paper Source in Beverly Hills, selling paper flower kits and obnoxious greeting cards to the stars!!!!!!!! Life rules.
This summer, there is much to do. First, I must establish a summer reading list. Then, I must find a boat and row myself out to the middle of a lake, to make myself read in total, watery isolateion. Also, I might get a tan. Jamaica Pond may provide these services to me. Otherwise, I will swim at Castle Island, road trip from Florida to New Jersey (with stops in Savannah, Asheville and many other hip Southern spots along the way!!!!), write one poem per day, and barbecue many things. Mostly corn.
And this is the summer of '09 jam, manditorily (maybe not a word).
So I graduated from college yesterday. A couple days before that happened, I won $1,050 in poetry prizes for some poems from my senior thesis. With that money, I am going to Lebanon in the fall. Before that, I will re-change my last name to Boulos, so I am not denied entrance into the country. After that, I will know everything there is to know about my heritage. DONE.
I'm moving to Jamaica Plain in September, to pay cheap rent and enjoy fall foliage in the arboretum (gay) until December 31st, when I will move to Los Angeles (Poetry Wasteland) to be with boyfwiend. Yesterday, my stepfather said Los Angeles is "blasé" so I think I will like it. Plus, I will probably work at the Paper Source in Beverly Hills, selling paper flower kits and obnoxious greeting cards to the stars!!!!!!!! Life rules.
This summer, there is much to do. First, I must establish a summer reading list. Then, I must find a boat and row myself out to the middle of a lake, to make myself read in total, watery isolateion. Also, I might get a tan. Jamaica Pond may provide these services to me. Otherwise, I will swim at Castle Island, road trip from Florida to New Jersey (with stops in Savannah, Asheville and many other hip Southern spots along the way!!!!), write one poem per day, and barbecue many things. Mostly corn.
And this is the summer of '09 jam, manditorily (maybe not a word).
March 24, 2009
The Yellow House
Arles, France
In one breath, a block of stone
hollowed, windowed, and painted
yellow. Summer, watercolored,
soaked through panes
of the sunny house.
The sky was usually turquoise,
painted in patchwork and seeping
through an archway shaped like a keyhole.
Above the rail station, though,
it was sometimes indigo tinged
with warm gray.
Your rooms were shaded,
suffocated in green shutters,
drawn glowing deep cobalt
from the insides. Your brush
could breathe only in gasps
of fleeting curtain flutter.
Oilcloth bed sheets lie stained
in struggling slats of light.
Diagonally across the road, a garden;
beyond it, gleam of moving water.
From that open mouth
of the Rhone, you hear
only half of what always-flowing
summer water spoke.
In a mirror above the wash basin,
chin bristled by drying sunflower petals,
you watch you, formulating
Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear.
A background of tangerine and blood orange
tells us it will not be there forever.
You sketch.
In one breath, a block of stone
hollowed, windowed, and painted
yellow. Summer, watercolored,
soaked through panes
of the sunny house.
The sky was usually turquoise,
painted in patchwork and seeping
through an archway shaped like a keyhole.
Above the rail station, though,
it was sometimes indigo tinged
with warm gray.
Your rooms were shaded,
suffocated in green shutters,
drawn glowing deep cobalt
from the insides. Your brush
could breathe only in gasps
of fleeting curtain flutter.
Oilcloth bed sheets lie stained
in struggling slats of light.
Diagonally across the road, a garden;
beyond it, gleam of moving water.
From that open mouth
of the Rhone, you hear
only half of what always-flowing
summer water spoke.
In a mirror above the wash basin,
chin bristled by drying sunflower petals,
you watch you, formulating
Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear.
A background of tangerine and blood orange
tells us it will not be there forever.
You sketch.
March 4, 2009
Colorado
Listen, you said,
rolling the window down
in still morning, winding
the crank of the gramophone
of this cold new day.
First, just the hush
of evaporating sand,
crumbling adobe—
we’d been watching the pueblos
thin around us all week.
Orange wisps swirling
upward into quartz sky.
We waited in near-light
until, from the depths
of some unseen celestial cave,
it came shivering up the backs
of the snow-dusted canyons,
a careful copper light
inching over the vertebrae
of obsidian mountains
etched into the horizon,
sun finally flowing
over the bone-dry mesa
in one trembling yawn:
some god’s whispering
life into day.
rolling the window down
in still morning, winding
the crank of the gramophone
of this cold new day.
First, just the hush
of evaporating sand,
crumbling adobe—
we’d been watching the pueblos
thin around us all week.
Orange wisps swirling
upward into quartz sky.
We waited in near-light
until, from the depths
of some unseen celestial cave,
it came shivering up the backs
of the snow-dusted canyons,
a careful copper light
inching over the vertebrae
of obsidian mountains
etched into the horizon,
sun finally flowing
over the bone-dry mesa
in one trembling yawn:
some god’s whispering
life into day.
February 25, 2009
Museum
A swarm of stuffed hummingbirds
broke free from their pins and plaster,
flew quick and calculated, single file,
through a crack in their plastic casing.
Soon, the buzzing reached
a fully synchronized hum
as many tiny wings beat back
invisible dew above our heads.
At first we were all alarmed;
small girls ducked and shrieked,
parents yanked wrists and ran,
and some stuffed antelopes and chimpanzee skeletons
scrambled for the door just as the vibrations
reached a deafening level.
Most of them made it out through
the broken window or the fire escape,
but we had nowhere to be until 3:30
and still hadn’t seen the traveling mineral exhibit,
so we decided to stay.
The hummingbirds headed immediately
for the glass flowers. We conferred and estimated
that their ranks were somewhere in the tens of thousands,
and once their beating wings neared the display,
glass cases and delicate Honeysuckle shattered
in the vibrations. Undeterred, some birds
ducked into the mouths of blossoms
of a big blue Delphinium;
others headed for the delicate Columbines.
All the while, the Trumpet Vines shrieked
and some liberated Gypsy Moths
swam into the forgetful head
of one particularly hungry Nepenthe.
We found our way to the minerals
and took cover in the commotion,
hunching inside two halves of a tall geode—
all purple and sharp on the inside,
many-toothed like some sea creature’s mouth—
until the buzzing lulled to a distant whine.
Wading through ground diamond dust
and many fallen phosphorescent wings
in the dusty model of an abandoned museum,
we knew the futility of holding onto
something so tightly it turns to sand
between your locked fingers
and is a monument only
to disappearance.
broke free from their pins and plaster,
flew quick and calculated, single file,
through a crack in their plastic casing.
Soon, the buzzing reached
a fully synchronized hum
as many tiny wings beat back
invisible dew above our heads.
At first we were all alarmed;
small girls ducked and shrieked,
parents yanked wrists and ran,
and some stuffed antelopes and chimpanzee skeletons
scrambled for the door just as the vibrations
reached a deafening level.
Most of them made it out through
the broken window or the fire escape,
but we had nowhere to be until 3:30
and still hadn’t seen the traveling mineral exhibit,
so we decided to stay.
The hummingbirds headed immediately
for the glass flowers. We conferred and estimated
that their ranks were somewhere in the tens of thousands,
and once their beating wings neared the display,
glass cases and delicate Honeysuckle shattered
in the vibrations. Undeterred, some birds
ducked into the mouths of blossoms
of a big blue Delphinium;
others headed for the delicate Columbines.
All the while, the Trumpet Vines shrieked
and some liberated Gypsy Moths
swam into the forgetful head
of one particularly hungry Nepenthe.
We found our way to the minerals
and took cover in the commotion,
hunching inside two halves of a tall geode—
all purple and sharp on the inside,
many-toothed like some sea creature’s mouth—
until the buzzing lulled to a distant whine.
Wading through ground diamond dust
and many fallen phosphorescent wings
in the dusty model of an abandoned museum,
we knew the futility of holding onto
something so tightly it turns to sand
between your locked fingers
and is a monument only
to disappearance.
LIFE
I turn twenty-one on my last day of college (May 6th, 2009). At my birthday party all I really care about happening is: cupcakes, "Rosalita" by Bruce Springsteen and a sign that says IT IS YOUR BIRTHDAY.
I am Emerson College's poet laureate. Sort of. (I was chosen to represent Emerson at this poetry festival/contest/reading/jerk-off thing at Boston College in April. I will nervously read poems and then get published in a chapbook. Word?)
I want my kitchen to look like this:
Also, this weekend I think I might paint something. I have wanted to start again for a while. I haven't painted or drawn since at least three years ago. But I hadn't played the piano in more than that amount of time and I started playing it again a couple months ago and now I can play the first page (four lines or so) of Clair de Lune again. I am a prodigy. Except the lines on the treble clef are still Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. Also, I am five.
And now I will stop this (LIFE) and post some poems because I haven't done that in a while. Maybe because they've mostly been big compilations of suck lately. Maybe?
I am Emerson College's poet laureate. Sort of. (I was chosen to represent Emerson at this poetry festival/contest/reading/jerk-off thing at Boston College in April. I will nervously read poems and then get published in a chapbook. Word?)
I want my kitchen to look like this:
Also, this weekend I think I might paint something. I have wanted to start again for a while. I haven't painted or drawn since at least three years ago. But I hadn't played the piano in more than that amount of time and I started playing it again a couple months ago and now I can play the first page (four lines or so) of Clair de Lune again. I am a prodigy. Except the lines on the treble clef are still Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. Also, I am five.
And now I will stop this (LIFE) and post some poems because I haven't done that in a while. Maybe because they've mostly been big compilations of suck lately. Maybe?
January 24, 2009
Orchard
Dusk sky draped loose
over arching boughs, its reddened ends
tucked deep into valleys
behind hills worn with age and rain.
Stained glass shadows
sprawled in the grass.
A light wind, sweetly rocking
the blossoms off the vine.
Orange, acorn-shaped:
heavy fruit hanging,
lunging groundward.
Some fallen, skin peeling
with innards slick
like the skin of an eel.
Picking one, the quiet ache of the unfamiliar
like the first time you saw the Pacific.
Like the first time you ate one,
overripe.
You came home cradling
a pile of big beating orange hearts,
one small persimmon flower among them.
White and silk, petals thin and veined
like the weaving tributaries of Sunday River.
over arching boughs, its reddened ends
tucked deep into valleys
behind hills worn with age and rain.
Stained glass shadows
sprawled in the grass.
A light wind, sweetly rocking
the blossoms off the vine.
Orange, acorn-shaped:
heavy fruit hanging,
lunging groundward.
Some fallen, skin peeling
with innards slick
like the skin of an eel.
Picking one, the quiet ache of the unfamiliar
like the first time you saw the Pacific.
Like the first time you ate one,
overripe.
You came home cradling
a pile of big beating orange hearts,
one small persimmon flower among them.
White and silk, petals thin and veined
like the weaving tributaries of Sunday River.
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