Parents' Weekend
Before your arrival,
I stood on fault-legged kitchen chairs
and wobble-wiped the cobwebs
from the highest ceiling corners.
As I kneaded the dough,
I imagined crescent marks
in the crust:
a smile,
a bite.
I sat you at my simple table,
offered you tea, rosemary bread,
a tour of my life.
Like parents
faced with their child's offering,
you beamed at everything I showed you;
the California architecture,
the pebbled beaches
and small bursts of sun,
the stream of loudmouthed warmth
that came steady through
the open Shabbat doors.
Those smiles
were copies
of my earliest memories,
when I had nothing more to show you
than a tuft of hair,
a fist balled around your thumb.
10/28/2009
10/23/2009
10/20/2009
Seattle 75, or Just an Ordinary Life
8am. The mist on 23rd Avenue is so thick I can only see the trees one at a time. Though it's not raining, I'm in my rubber boots. I carry a wicker basket under my left arm, which holds potatoes, eggs, my homemade salsa verde, my sharpest knife.
I'm heading up to make breakfast for Tamar and me. We've been trying to make study dates for weeks, but our schedules are wildly incompatible. This is the first one we've been able to come up with. The deal: I make breakfast, while she studies/teaches me whatever she's learning in nursing school. As I dice potatoes for hash browns, she tells me about the aftercare of tonsillectomies, and how strep throat can cause heart problems, if undiagnosed.
Joel comes in, sniffing hungrily. There's enough for three; we sit down together with bowls of eggs and potatoes. Tamar holds her bible-sized textbook in her lap and continues between bites. Joel opens his laptop and intersperses our conversation with news about the local elections, and what various kibbutzniks think of the latest programming idea. I chime in with medical anecdotes from my childhood, and plans for the week.
The kitchen smells like garlic and potatoes and olive oil. The big window is steamed up, and by the time Shaul thumps into the kitchen for yogurt, it feels like we've been sitting there a long time.
I'm heading up to make breakfast for Tamar and me. We've been trying to make study dates for weeks, but our schedules are wildly incompatible. This is the first one we've been able to come up with. The deal: I make breakfast, while she studies/teaches me whatever she's learning in nursing school. As I dice potatoes for hash browns, she tells me about the aftercare of tonsillectomies, and how strep throat can cause heart problems, if undiagnosed.
Joel comes in, sniffing hungrily. There's enough for three; we sit down together with bowls of eggs and potatoes. Tamar holds her bible-sized textbook in her lap and continues between bites. Joel opens his laptop and intersperses our conversation with news about the local elections, and what various kibbutzniks think of the latest programming idea. I chime in with medical anecdotes from my childhood, and plans for the week.
The kitchen smells like garlic and potatoes and olive oil. The big window is steamed up, and by the time Shaul thumps into the kitchen for yogurt, it feels like we've been sitting there a long time.
10/17/2009
Seattle 74, or Fall Hits
The rains have come, as promised. They haven't stopped for two days. I wake and sleep to the sound of a torrential, endless drizzle. It's almost become background noise - almost. I am used to winter - snow, and ice and cold. I like the feeling of toughing it out, of feeling as though I've really *earned* spring, when it arrives. I like wrapping myself in layers, and fires and cider and cocoa. This seems too gentle, and yet too persistent.
I don't have a rain coat. The sixth-grader I tutor twice a week loaned me an umbrella to walk home with. I wear two wool sweaters. I carry sneakers to work, and walk in my rain boots. This makes me feel like a real Seattlelite. Only tourists wear raincoats, the natives say. Get used to being wet. It makes you clean. It makes you grateful.
Sergey and I drive to the farmer's market. The haul: kale, chard, cilantro, garlic, lemons, fresh eggs, a bag of carrots. I am dreaming of greens. The rain makes everything shine, look that much more tempting inside the fluttering tarp walls of the market. In my wool, I smell like a sheep. I love that smell. I buy a small bottle of spiced apple cider and drink it as I walk - it's like bottled apple pie, nutmeg, cinnamon, the apple flavor coming through like a trumpet.
Shabbat at house Aleph: lots of soup, salads, a collection of boots and dripping outerwear by the front door. Asya, the Yiddish culture professor with a sharp sense of humor, sings everything pronounced in Ashkenazi, and I can see the newcomers peeking down the table: who's this young woman singing like my grandfather? Joel reminds us to thank G-d and the unions for the weekend. He does that every week, before Kiddush. We go around the table and thank each other for being good housemates, for being each other's support. Shaul got a high score on his LSAT exam. There mazel tovs and kol hakavods across the table. It's not been the easiest few weeks for the kibbutz. There's hard, hard work coming. We take triumph where we can get it.
I've invited a friend over for a rich dinner of greens and potatoes, and I'm making salsa verde in the meantime. The tomatillos in the back yard are finally ripe. I've been waiting for them for a long time. In the Big Room, pop/dance music blasts as Steven and Zara get ready for the Moishe House Prom. They say they'll be happy if 10 people show up. People tend to stay in after such a big change in the weather.
I don't have a rain coat. The sixth-grader I tutor twice a week loaned me an umbrella to walk home with. I wear two wool sweaters. I carry sneakers to work, and walk in my rain boots. This makes me feel like a real Seattlelite. Only tourists wear raincoats, the natives say. Get used to being wet. It makes you clean. It makes you grateful.
Sergey and I drive to the farmer's market. The haul: kale, chard, cilantro, garlic, lemons, fresh eggs, a bag of carrots. I am dreaming of greens. The rain makes everything shine, look that much more tempting inside the fluttering tarp walls of the market. In my wool, I smell like a sheep. I love that smell. I buy a small bottle of spiced apple cider and drink it as I walk - it's like bottled apple pie, nutmeg, cinnamon, the apple flavor coming through like a trumpet.
Shabbat at house Aleph: lots of soup, salads, a collection of boots and dripping outerwear by the front door. Asya, the Yiddish culture professor with a sharp sense of humor, sings everything pronounced in Ashkenazi, and I can see the newcomers peeking down the table: who's this young woman singing like my grandfather? Joel reminds us to thank G-d and the unions for the weekend. He does that every week, before Kiddush. We go around the table and thank each other for being good housemates, for being each other's support. Shaul got a high score on his LSAT exam. There mazel tovs and kol hakavods across the table. It's not been the easiest few weeks for the kibbutz. There's hard, hard work coming. We take triumph where we can get it.
I've invited a friend over for a rich dinner of greens and potatoes, and I'm making salsa verde in the meantime. The tomatillos in the back yard are finally ripe. I've been waiting for them for a long time. In the Big Room, pop/dance music blasts as Steven and Zara get ready for the Moishe House Prom. They say they'll be happy if 10 people show up. People tend to stay in after such a big change in the weather.
10/15/2009
Seattle 73, or Iwps Top 10
In no particular order, a top ten list of my favorite bits and snatches from the Individual World Poetry Slam last week...
10) Location - Berkeley works really well for slam in general (support for the arts, leftist-leaning audiences, borders Oakland, which has strong urban arts culture), and the organizational team worked all the advantages to their fullest. The venues were not only all on one street, they were less than thirty feet apart from one another - fantastic! The Finals night venue was on UC Berkeley campus, which was another excellent use of location - the university auditorium brought in university students, who might not have otherwise known what was going on.
9) The Organizing Team - the Berkeley folks were not only warm, welcoming and well-organized, but were absolutely committed to hospitality. I had interactions with organizers that ranged from "would you like some coffee? I'm making a Starbucks run," to "what do you think we could be doing better right now? Is there anything you need?" Even the head organizer, Charles Ekabhumi Ellik, took a few minutes to say hi and ask me how I was. I never had to ask for anything - they even had free food for us!
8) Food - yeah, it's important to feed the poets, and it happens so rarely that when someone announces free pizza, or plunks a giant box of delicious baked goods in front of a crowd of poets, we sometimes forget our manners. Thank you for feeding us, Berkeley!
7) Karen Finneyfrock's piece "What Lot's Wife Would Have Said if She Wasn't a Pillar of Salt"
6) Jen Rinaldi's piece about her student with whom she developed a haphazard, agonizing, tight rapport, only to lose him to the justice system.
5) The Jewish open mic, as usual. It's really a mini family reunion within a family reunion.
4) The "Poetry and Activism" panel. Well done.
3) Karaoke night - after these long days of workshops and bouting against one another, the late-night events were an oasis of drink and revelry. Highlights of karoke included Mike McGee's "I've Got Friends in Low Places" (got everyone singing), Sean Conlon's version of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" (got everyone dancing), and a whole bunch of folks who got up and sang Beyonce's "Single Ladies"
2) My roomate, Arrian Wissel, of Phoenix, AZ, who proved to be everything one wishes in a hotel roomate - reasonably neat, good at sizing up potential outfits for bouts, sweet as pie, game for 4am sushi adventures, and not big on snoring. I'd room again with her any time.
1) During the first half of finals, I sat with my friend Colin, while we watched our friends (and his girlfriend) battle it out for the championship. We took turns cluching one another during poems with special significance for us. It was kind of adorable.
10) Location - Berkeley works really well for slam in general (support for the arts, leftist-leaning audiences, borders Oakland, which has strong urban arts culture), and the organizational team worked all the advantages to their fullest. The venues were not only all on one street, they were less than thirty feet apart from one another - fantastic! The Finals night venue was on UC Berkeley campus, which was another excellent use of location - the university auditorium brought in university students, who might not have otherwise known what was going on.
9) The Organizing Team - the Berkeley folks were not only warm, welcoming and well-organized, but were absolutely committed to hospitality. I had interactions with organizers that ranged from "would you like some coffee? I'm making a Starbucks run," to "what do you think we could be doing better right now? Is there anything you need?" Even the head organizer, Charles Ekabhumi Ellik, took a few minutes to say hi and ask me how I was. I never had to ask for anything - they even had free food for us!
8) Food - yeah, it's important to feed the poets, and it happens so rarely that when someone announces free pizza, or plunks a giant box of delicious baked goods in front of a crowd of poets, we sometimes forget our manners. Thank you for feeding us, Berkeley!
7) Karen Finneyfrock's piece "What Lot's Wife Would Have Said if She Wasn't a Pillar of Salt"
6) Jen Rinaldi's piece about her student with whom she developed a haphazard, agonizing, tight rapport, only to lose him to the justice system.
5) The Jewish open mic, as usual. It's really a mini family reunion within a family reunion.
4) The "Poetry and Activism" panel. Well done.
3) Karaoke night - after these long days of workshops and bouting against one another, the late-night events were an oasis of drink and revelry. Highlights of karoke included Mike McGee's "I've Got Friends in Low Places" (got everyone singing), Sean Conlon's version of Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" (got everyone dancing), and a whole bunch of folks who got up and sang Beyonce's "Single Ladies"
2) My roomate, Arrian Wissel, of Phoenix, AZ, who proved to be everything one wishes in a hotel roomate - reasonably neat, good at sizing up potential outfits for bouts, sweet as pie, game for 4am sushi adventures, and not big on snoring. I'd room again with her any time.
1) During the first half of finals, I sat with my friend Colin, while we watched our friends (and his girlfriend) battle it out for the championship. We took turns cluching one another during poems with special significance for us. It was kind of adorable.
10/11/2009
Berkeley 1, or Hi from IWPS!
There will be much more to say, much later. For now, just this:
That's Tucson's Mickey Randleman behind me. Cutie pie.
Okay, and this:
Both pictures courtesy of poet Mike McGee. The second one was at the post-Finals dance party. He caught me just as I turned around, hence the funny smile. But the hair looks pretty good.
Here's another one Mike took, at one of the bouts:
More about iwps later.
That's Tucson's Mickey Randleman behind me. Cutie pie.
Okay, and this:
Both pictures courtesy of poet Mike McGee. The second one was at the post-Finals dance party. He caught me just as I turned around, hence the funny smile. But the hair looks pretty good.
Here's another one Mike took, at one of the bouts:
More about iwps later.
10/05/2009
Seattle 72, or Published!
Czech it out: Foundling Review took one of my pieces! You'll see me under the "Poetry" section, left side of the page.
Seattle 71, or Day of Mountains
This morning, I woke to several notices: steam-cleaning costs for our (immensely dirty) area rug are too expensive for my housemates. A friend somewhere is having girl trouble, wants me to call and advise. And my alma mater is having Mountain Day.
It's the last one that gives me a small smile. Mountain Day goes like this: everyone spends two weeks before Mountain Day speculating when it will be. Some of these speculations include weather reports, campus activity schedules, whereabouts of the school president, professor's schedules, and possibly calculus. One section of campus stages a riot in the form of a giant food fight, then marches to the president's house and demands Mountain Day.
On Mountain Day, presumably, the school president wakes up, sees that it's clearly one of the last truly beautiful days of autumn, and spontaneously cancels classes for the day. She does this by having all the bells rung - there is one chapel, and two churches bordering campus. Students wake up to hear the bells, and their housemates running up and down the halls yelling "It's Mountain Day!" and go back to sleep. Some of them will get up later, go for a hike, go apple picking, or, as my house generally did, took a road trip to the Brattleboro Food Co-Op to stock up on all the fair-trade goodies we somehow thought tasted better in Vermont.
I suppose I'm really a grownup, because I'm going to work today, after I bake my third loaf of sourdough (the sourdough experiments are going well, though my loaves are still coming out denser than bricks. I'm trying a different baking approach with this loaf, involving a really hot bake, and a cooler one, to get the inside. We'll see how that goes. It's a rosemary-peppercorn loaf.)
Last night, we had an all-kibbutz meeting to decide if we want to incorporate as a nonprofit, or not-for-profit organization so people can make tax-deductible donations to a legal entity (as opposed to writing a check to Joel Rothschild, and trusting that it'll support the whole community.) It would mean a whole lot of work that I'm not convinced we're ready for - the committees we made back in August have yielded very little, so how am I to believe that we can handle the work of full-scale incorporation? We voted, as we usually do, to "find out more information." I wonder what's going to happen.
It's the last one that gives me a small smile. Mountain Day goes like this: everyone spends two weeks before Mountain Day speculating when it will be. Some of these speculations include weather reports, campus activity schedules, whereabouts of the school president, professor's schedules, and possibly calculus. One section of campus stages a riot in the form of a giant food fight, then marches to the president's house and demands Mountain Day.
On Mountain Day, presumably, the school president wakes up, sees that it's clearly one of the last truly beautiful days of autumn, and spontaneously cancels classes for the day. She does this by having all the bells rung - there is one chapel, and two churches bordering campus. Students wake up to hear the bells, and their housemates running up and down the halls yelling "It's Mountain Day!" and go back to sleep. Some of them will get up later, go for a hike, go apple picking, or, as my house generally did, took a road trip to the Brattleboro Food Co-Op to stock up on all the fair-trade goodies we somehow thought tasted better in Vermont.
I suppose I'm really a grownup, because I'm going to work today, after I bake my third loaf of sourdough (the sourdough experiments are going well, though my loaves are still coming out denser than bricks. I'm trying a different baking approach with this loaf, involving a really hot bake, and a cooler one, to get the inside. We'll see how that goes. It's a rosemary-peppercorn loaf.)
Last night, we had an all-kibbutz meeting to decide if we want to incorporate as a nonprofit, or not-for-profit organization so people can make tax-deductible donations to a legal entity (as opposed to writing a check to Joel Rothschild, and trusting that it'll support the whole community.) It would mean a whole lot of work that I'm not convinced we're ready for - the committees we made back in August have yielded very little, so how am I to believe that we can handle the work of full-scale incorporation? We voted, as we usually do, to "find out more information." I wonder what's going to happen.
10/03/2009
Seattle 70, or Poem - September Love Song
September Love Song
Your sunshine finds me elbow-deep
in the end of the season's basil crop,
stripping leaves from tough stalks
into a basin in the sink.
The pile grows as I sing.
In the oven, my first sourdough bubbles.
It takes whole days to go from starter
to finished loaf. but I have time like this,
for this,
to pickle some green tomatoes,
roll the rest in cornmeal
and fry them, served with hot sauce
as fast as they come out of the pan.
These are days I have dreamed for:
when I can look around the kitchen at the end of the day
and see evidence of sunshine, dirt, and my own hands.
I see the same things in you.
Someone took time to make you
out of these long warm days,
racing beauty for her crop,
picked your features at their fullest,
before they spoiled,
preserved them in honey so I could find them
twenty three years later still intact, and sweet.
You gave me a bucket of asian pears,
hard as golf balls, and asked
"can you do something with this?"
and I said yes, bring me your unripe, your spoiled,
the mysterious vegetables you don't know how to eat,
bring me the colors of summer and I will do my best
to keep them through the rainy season.
You know how to bottle sunshine?
Three cloves of garlic, a fistful of basil,
a squeeze of lemon and as many tomatoes
as you can fit in the jar –
boom! A photograph of summer,
of your toddler self with angel hair,
pocket poor, but kitchen rich
(just taste those green tomatoes).
In winter,
I barely cook with the sauce,
I just take it out of the freezer
and smell it: clean soil, river rocks,
bright colored things bursting from their skins,
remembering the days when the race was on
and the sun was ripe
for picking.
Your sunshine finds me elbow-deep
in the end of the season's basil crop,
stripping leaves from tough stalks
into a basin in the sink.
The pile grows as I sing.
In the oven, my first sourdough bubbles.
It takes whole days to go from starter
to finished loaf. but I have time like this,
for this,
to pickle some green tomatoes,
roll the rest in cornmeal
and fry them, served with hot sauce
as fast as they come out of the pan.
These are days I have dreamed for:
when I can look around the kitchen at the end of the day
and see evidence of sunshine, dirt, and my own hands.
I see the same things in you.
Someone took time to make you
out of these long warm days,
racing beauty for her crop,
picked your features at their fullest,
before they spoiled,
preserved them in honey so I could find them
twenty three years later still intact, and sweet.
You gave me a bucket of asian pears,
hard as golf balls, and asked
"can you do something with this?"
and I said yes, bring me your unripe, your spoiled,
the mysterious vegetables you don't know how to eat,
bring me the colors of summer and I will do my best
to keep them through the rainy season.
You know how to bottle sunshine?
Three cloves of garlic, a fistful of basil,
a squeeze of lemon and as many tomatoes
as you can fit in the jar –
boom! A photograph of summer,
of your toddler self with angel hair,
pocket poor, but kitchen rich
(just taste those green tomatoes).
In winter,
I barely cook with the sauce,
I just take it out of the freezer
and smell it: clean soil, river rocks,
bright colored things bursting from their skins,
remembering the days when the race was on
and the sun was ripe
for picking.
10/01/2009
Seattle 69, or Food and Yom Kippur
Today, I made four jars of green tomato pickles, each one a different flavor: fennel/mustard/cumin, lime/garlic/ginger/mint, mustard/garlic/sugar, corriander/mustard/ginger. I tried setting a jar of baby carrots and cabbage to pickle. We'll see what happens with those.
I debated starting a loaf of sourdough but decided I didn't feel like it. Maybe tomorrow. The starter is smelling so good and healthy.
On Yom Kippur, I couldn't stop thinking about food. On the walk to shul up the giant hill, even the slightly sick-sweet smell of garbage from the Catholic school parking lot made my mouth water. I stared at people's gardens as I walked past them. Tomatoes. Basil. Squashes and carrots and beets. I wanted all of them. I stood in shul, beating my chest with every repetition of my myriad of sins, thinking about onions.
For a long time, I thought my grandmother had a secret ingredient that she added to her onions as soon as she threw them into her cast-iron pot, because “onions-frying-in-Mammy’s-kitchen” was a smell that ballooned into my memory, one I could never replicate.
And then I read a memoir, and the main character’s mother-in-law says don’t ever add the fat before you add the onions. Dry-fry them for a minute, first. Then, when the smell hits you, add your schmaltz, oil if it’s not a meat meal. I thought, why not.
The onions, I diced perfectly. Threw them into a hot cast-iron skillet with no oil, almost felt the scent before it hit me. Perfect. Mammy’s kitchen: its vintage stove, rolled linoleum floor, butcher-block table and single fluorescent bulb blooms from my frying pan. This smell has the power to bring people into the kitchen by their noses. It fits into the crevices of my hands like a child’s trusting palm. My hair, greedy with snarls, pulls it in and holds it for hours.
After that great shofar blast, I grabbed some cookies from the break-fast table at shul, a fistful of cherry tomatoes from a giant bowl, walked home feeling bouncy and light, trading bites of cookie for bites of tomato. Such sweetness. It started raining just as I reached home - home, bagels, schmear, lox, matzah brei, figs, shul clothes traded for borrowed sweatshirts and cozy time on the couch, reading stories out loud to the gathered kibbutzniks and stragglers.
I debated starting a loaf of sourdough but decided I didn't feel like it. Maybe tomorrow. The starter is smelling so good and healthy.
On Yom Kippur, I couldn't stop thinking about food. On the walk to shul up the giant hill, even the slightly sick-sweet smell of garbage from the Catholic school parking lot made my mouth water. I stared at people's gardens as I walked past them. Tomatoes. Basil. Squashes and carrots and beets. I wanted all of them. I stood in shul, beating my chest with every repetition of my myriad of sins, thinking about onions.
For a long time, I thought my grandmother had a secret ingredient that she added to her onions as soon as she threw them into her cast-iron pot, because “onions-frying-in-Mammy’s-kitchen” was a smell that ballooned into my memory, one I could never replicate.
And then I read a memoir, and the main character’s mother-in-law says don’t ever add the fat before you add the onions. Dry-fry them for a minute, first. Then, when the smell hits you, add your schmaltz, oil if it’s not a meat meal. I thought, why not.
The onions, I diced perfectly. Threw them into a hot cast-iron skillet with no oil, almost felt the scent before it hit me. Perfect. Mammy’s kitchen: its vintage stove, rolled linoleum floor, butcher-block table and single fluorescent bulb blooms from my frying pan. This smell has the power to bring people into the kitchen by their noses. It fits into the crevices of my hands like a child’s trusting palm. My hair, greedy with snarls, pulls it in and holds it for hours.
After that great shofar blast, I grabbed some cookies from the break-fast table at shul, a fistful of cherry tomatoes from a giant bowl, walked home feeling bouncy and light, trading bites of cookie for bites of tomato. Such sweetness. It started raining just as I reached home - home, bagels, schmear, lox, matzah brei, figs, shul clothes traded for borrowed sweatshirts and cozy time on the couch, reading stories out loud to the gathered kibbutzniks and stragglers.
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