WRITING SAMPLES

Forgetting

I scoured the winter garden in the dark, the late afternoon when the sun had already gone behind the pinnacled mountain Montserrat. Matagalls in Catalan, that means killer chicken, someone told me. Or was it, colored chicken. Between my fingers I felt the dark velvet leaves, bending over to smell the center which still carried a faint rose scent, this late. 

I found the rose in the Spanish garden for the birthday party, and took off the bad petals, gone black around the edges, as it was November, and the rose was dying. Tempted to let the rose stay in the thinning flock. But it would make such good color— for the frosting, for the table.

I squeezed gently its hips - that fruit of the rose, the teardrop globe that sits willingly between petal, thinking of sometime long ago. Between my fingertips, it reminded me of a kitchen somewhere in Rhode Island, a memory so faint as to not really bother the soul.

We made jam there, took pectin from rosehips — we were all friends back then. Sometimes forgetting is a blessing. I daydreamed of the citrus air, dropping them in to boil slowly in the kitchen

• • •

I’d forgotten the marigolds, the persimmons —completely. Marigold carries the color of turmeric, the County Fair in California, sticky green leaves feathering out like ferns, but all the wildness drawn out of them, a crossing between safety and desire.

Inside the Spanish farmhouse, the girls put on make-up and we photograph ourselves with cupcakes - strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, espresso, turmeric - Louise dons a red sparkly cape and lays across the table, dangling grapes above her mouth. Marianne in a pink party dress, French. Someone rolls a joint by the printing press in the corner of The Bodega, admidst canvasses and paint brushes.

In the morning,
everything is forgotten,
rainbow paint splashed across the concrete garden table. 

Little Griefs

Sometimes sex ends — not immediately — in writing your email account in a small notebook stained with patates braves sauce. Pink-beige sauce has been fashioned like ink blots by a young French artist who’s crazy about artificial intelligence, about space. She is in love with the moon. She etched the letters out with a toothpick - TIME IS BRAVE. How carelessly we handle little griefs and yet ask ourselves to be devoted entirely to them.

you laugh over her shoulder

Arnau, the beekeeper with a mohawk draws on a napkin a pictogram of the colonies that answer to three queens. I am trying to talk to him about feminist beekeeping, but he barely speaks any English. I am looking out the window in the dark -

Time is a cloud passing over the mountain, barely moving. When an entity, some form, is unable to stop do we call it brave or foolish, natural or headlong - it depends on the angle. I stare through pine needles as if they show me the way home. 

I am glad for a moment, knowing that what happens

can’t be wished away.

Peach Tree

Blossoms fall like when I was a child,
Under the peach tree

Dad lifts a child, white as day
Hair on my head matching the 
Light peach fuzz, enshrouded in green.
There are easter baskets, woven plastic
Bright colors, at the base of the tree

Like I’m going to lose
Everything good 

Persimmon (3)

You can love a persimmon tree bare, something once loaded with such sweet richness - the color that bleeds right into a bright summer, leaves like green flags 

As time goes on, the leaves turn amber and orange
becoming hard to distinguish from the fruit. 

It offers more than the average person can really receive. So we take to storing - like we can’t quite hold it all, but still long for the space. We fill each crevice and cupboard, every soiled refrigerator drawer

When loved back, do we also feel bare. Slipping naked into the tub of broken eucalyptus leaves, steam rising to nostrils, filling the lungs, escaping the breath 

Gift

fluorescent light glows over the brick archways 

light begins and then fades 

a quilt hangs on the window light 

the window open 

the morning passing 

the feeling of something changing 

shifting

A questioned gift 

The gift returned 

A melancholy that sweeps over 

Nothing ends and nothing begins, I read once

Somebody wants us to believe that

Even when an ending is asked for,

Begged of, pursued. Still, some of us want things to go on forever it seems. A river. Slanted squares of light that harbor shadows of grape leaves. A wind that barely stirs.