Author: Nada Gordon

skirt artist entertainer ESL teacher poet

in bolinas

Nada Gordon1 Comment

waiting for my camera battery charge up and my hair to dry a little more before I set out on my mesa adventure. why don’t I live here? I don’t understand why/how my life evolved to put me where I  live now or why I am at this juncture or what on earth is next. was it my “choices”?  this, people, is the grand question. don’t you wonder this? about your life? bright sun through eucalyptus leaves. Elia’s art around me everywhere. ocean air. California. little red light turn to green, I wanna go outside.

at jfk

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I feel like a piece of kelp
with a glass jaw
floating on a goth ocean
listening to sentimental christmas songs
unwillingly now I’m a cormorant
and they are forcing the songs down my throat
but I can’t open my mouth because my jaw is
broken.  Stupid solo bird-kelp not oblivious
to the idiocy of men. Six geese a-laying,
presesnting their butt tufts to the aggressive
ganders: this makes me want to weep.
She’s not pretty, skinny legs and fat cheeks, bug
eyes and relatively thick waist…I asked him
if she was beautiful and he said doubtfully
I guess. I look like an ash now.  Clothes as
smooth coatings for this depression, like
the red part on a bitter Advil. He won’t
be able to focus on her either.  She “isn’t an artist
of any kind,” as if that was a kind of boast.
Bounsouaysana.  A kind of rotten pacifier. His
egolust as a kind of machete cutting swaths
into people, blind infantile subway rat, that
hunched pose, the cravenness of dogs in
fear, where is that bold-as-love love
that keeps munching my dreams? We all
fall down.

can’t chew

Nada Gordon2 Comments

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I can’t chew at all. The only way
I can eat anything is if I mash it up
with my cheeks but my cheeks can’t
do much. Dogs can’t chew gum.  A
sleeping puppy can’t chew on inappropriate
things. “What has a mouth but can’t chew?”
When you think of a mouth, you first think
of people, but they all can chew. But I
can’t chew. I am full, I am not hungry. I don’t
know how to chew! If You Can’t Chew It,
Push It To The Side Of The Plate. The Media
Can’t Chew Gum and Scratch Its, uh, Head
at The Same Time. Rabbits: My Bunny
Can’t Chew hard Food? “Mom, that’s silly
you can’t chew on a Kindle.” Unfortunately
I can’t chew at all! I thought I could manage
extra-soft bread so I bought some on Saturday,
but it took me two hours to eat. You can’t think
because you can’t chew. A horse that can’t chew
its food can get impactions of the throat and also
intestines. . And pigeons can’t chew. Alligators
can’t chew! So, they have to eat large animals
together. One or two crocodiles effectively brace
the carcass in the jaws. Piggyshoe can’t chew gum.
You can’t chew these Gummy Bears. Yummy, yummy,
gummy bears! I’ve been playing again. Can’t chew gum
without blowing bubbles.” Can’t chew through his last
pants…(uh-huh) for havin’ blood on my ‘gators. Dogs
enjoy chewing on things that they can easily destroy
or shred, some humans will chew food in the month
to feed to a baby, termites can’t chew through steel
or lightbulbs. You can’t chew tobaccy on that golden
shore, ‘Cause the Lord don’t have no cuspidor.
What has a mouth but can’t chew? There is a
Yiddish saying that you can’t chew with somebody
else’s teeth. pyramid of hearts · i can’t chew my truth
DAISIES · face the smile …if you can’t chew it, you
can’t screw it! If I’m doing something very intense,
I can’t really chew gum because I can’t chew and
breathe hard at the same time. You don’t understand,
I might look big, but I can’t chew. I only have plankton.
Oh I can’t chew that piece of broccoli Mom gag. You can’t
chew the cud with beef on your breath and you
can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd you can’t eat
your friends. Your throat feels closed in. Babies
do not chew with their teeth, She can’t chew
through the metal bars as easily as the softer
green grass. I can’t chew the suckers but then
I couldn’t chew the old ones. I know you can’t
chew up a concertina, but what about using
a box cutter to cut it in half? Your throat feels
closed in. Then he breaks your heart by doing
something that hurts you so bad that you can’t
chew or swallow your food right. Somebody
else’s teeth, DAISIES, pyramid of hearts: I can’t
chew my truth.

the ordeal

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Here’s a fuller version of the story.  There’s been a lot going on for me lately, good stress (a reading, a wonderful book party) and bad stress (I don’t think I need to spell that out), plus finals and the confusions of doing something every night and talking to many new guys as a distraction from this tenacious brooding and anger.  On Wednesday, I went to my therapists’, and we talked about how I needed to slow down and take some deep breaths and not be in such a hurry to “solve” everything.  After my appointment I stopped to buy cat food and groceries at the bodega. By the time I got home it must have been after 8… I spent some time e-mailing and cleaning up… I was very keyed up, very wired… and by the time I looked at the clock again, it seemed too late to make dinner… I had some almonds, some oat bran pretzels, and then I took my customary bedtime pills (magnesium, 5htp, progesterone, and a Remeron… a whole dose rather then my usual half because I really needed to unspool, and besides I’d taken a whole one the night before)… and then… sitting on the toilet… I found myself feeling nauseated…and dizzy…. I remember thinking, I’m going to pass out… if I can just get to the bed, I’ll be OK, so I got up, and that’s the last thing I remember

because I didn’t make it to the bed… I came to lying prone next to the bed… there was blood around me… I wondered, did I get my period, after six months? so I went into the bathroom… and looked in the mirror… a gash on my chin like a flap… about two inches wide, and pretty deep, and I started to freak… held a towel to it as compress, and called 911… shaky… somehow managed to get jeans and a sweatshirt on over my slip… and unlock the door… and buzz in the EMTs… they came quickly… they got my coat and a few things… my phone… my wallet… my keys… swaddled me in a sheet… took me in the ambulance to Lutheran Hospital in Sunset Park… went through triage .. interviewed by a woman with amazing tattoos… they asked me what day it was, where I was… I knew… then they brought me to a cubicle in the emergency room… where I lay for almost 24 hours… many doctors came to see me… to ask many questions… over and over again I gave my history… a surgeon came to stitch up my chin…

I could barely sleep with all the monitors beeping and the constant activity outside… I remember telling myself to just pretend I was at some avant garde music experience… the beeping in waves… people’s hearts, doctors’ conferences, busy floor staff conversations, and sick people moaning miserably… I think there was someone with Tourettes… there was nothing to read… not even a magazine… I had no paper or pen to write with… I just lay there until the next round of doctors came by with questions… I had blood under my nails, blood in my hair, blood on my ankles and shins, blood on my slip… they didn’t clean me up… I tried to sleep, must have slept… a little… they brought me a muffin… I had to take tiny pieces of it off and let them moisten in my mouth because I couldn’t chew… so then while Thomas was visiting they brought me some puréed stuff… it tasted like meatloaf & mashed potatoes and candied yams… it was gray and orange… and I was so hungry it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten… also the Greek yogurt Thomas brought me… and apple juice… many tests… I mentioned them earlier…

and finally finally the next day they gave me a room, a miserable little room on the cardiac floor… and gave me more and more and more tests… I had to scrub off all the little glue marks from the nodes and tape from the tests and IV bandages… riding about in a stretcher… one transport guy actually tried to pick up on me… I had never looked worse in my life I’ll bet… we were in the elevator… I said are you working the night shift?  he said, just so I could be with you… I gave him my phone number… I must have still been in shock as that is not my normal behavior… the MRIs I treated as an extension of the avant-garde music concert… but I was getting so sore from lying around on that awful bed… the nurses coming in to bark at me… and for some reason they put me on a “liquid” diet… pudding and jello… and I was so bored, and achy, and unclean… I didn’t know if I could take a shower with all those stitches… I tried to wash myself…

I kept hoping they would let me go… and Friday evening Marianne and Jim came over with bags of groceries and a change of clothes… panties!  new panties!… and they entertained me… I sang them The Frozen Logger… my hair matted at the roots with the gel they use for EEGs … and I’d had a cardiogram… seen my heart beating like some undersea creature… and I saw my brain scan!… like beautiful cauliflower florets… oh, I have the most beautiful brain… and the next day, I so hoped SO HOPED they would let me go…  and I started to put up a fight… because I’d been there since Wed. night and it was now SATURDAY…. and finally finally at 4:30… Mitch was visiting… they let me go home… never was my apartment so exquisite, never a bubble bath so adored… I made soup… took possession of my life again…cuddled with Nemo and Dante, and slept in my regal bed…

trying to push out the thoughts of anger and betrayal… that if I had not been so overwrought… so very sad… and trying to fight it… and if I had not been alone here… this would not have happened…

and the fearful thoughts, too… of how much worse it could have been, if, say… I had not come to… or if I had hit my head and got a concussion instead of “merely” a split chin and a jaw fracture… so OK, I can’t eat solid food for a few weeks, but I’m here… my friends are incredible, really incredible…. and I…will… heal.

Outrageous

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This is outrageous. This is my fourth day in this miserable place. The first entire 24 hours I was in a cubicle in the emergency room surrounded by monitor beeps, constant activity, fluorescent lights, and not even a magazine to distract me. I’ve had two MRIs, a CAT scan, several EKGs, a thorough sonogram of my heart, my brain waves measured, panoramic dental x-rays etc etc. The doctors nurses dietitians and orderlies don’t communicate with each other. Of course all my damn tests are coming up clear. I could have told them that. They knew I needed thyroid meds and antidepressants but they didn’t provide them. Yesterday a friend brought them to me from home. The nurse wouldn’t let me take them, said she had to talk to a doctor. I said screw that and took them this morning because I am getting almost unmanageably distraught. I didn’t need all those tests. I could have told them that I passed out because I didn’t eat enough that night and because there is too much language in my head and because I am trying to do too much and fill up the awful hole in my heart too fast.

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