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breakfast buffet, alexandria

Nada Gordon2 Comments

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breakfast buffet, alexandria, originally uploaded by Ululate.

Unable to shake the memory of the breakfast at the diner in Alexandria, Virginia, last Sunday morning. Not only did I eat a little customized omelet containing jalapenos, cheddar cheese, onions, and tomatoes, but also hearty slices of Virginia ham, bacon, a biscuit and gravy, a flapjack, grits, cantaloupe and watermelon, and a little bit of peach topping that was supposed to go on a waffle had I had room in my physiognomy to fit it so I just tasted the topping, which was like, hmm, alchemical essence of peach. And to think of all the things, besides waffles, available for the taking at the buffet, that I didn’t eat: barbecued chicken, macaroni and cheese, greens, turkey sausage, potatoes. Oh, just a beautiful, caloric, vibrant muchness of a Southern diner on a Sunday morning.

The thing is, I was there for poetry, not for eating. Poetry has taken me all over the place (this utterance makes me think of Robert Frost who said something like, “poetry is a kind of gloating”, exact quote to follow). What a great event, “In Memory of My Theories,” a kind of tribute to the benevolent and “inscrutable” kingpin of D.C., Rod Smith. G. and I had to leave early in the evening to catch a plane back to NYC so that I could teach Monday morning.

a different motion-feeling

Nada Gordon2 Comments

The NY Times reviewed this weekend a book by Roy Blount Jr: Alphabet Juice. I quote from the review:

Disdaining those scholars who think the relation between words and their meanings is arbitrary, he argues that “all language, at some level is body language.” …. Blount zeroes in on the expressive words that “somehow sensuously evoke the essence of the word: ‘queasy’ or ‘rickety’ or ‘zest’ or ‘sluggish’ or ‘vim.'”

I could not help but note that

[Blount writes] “‘Swoon’ emerged from the old English swogan, to suffocate, because the mind and the mouth conspired to replace ‘og’ with ‘oo’ in order to register a different motion-feeling.”

Another thing about the Bay Area

Nada Gordon3 Comments

In the Bay Area, there’s a particular way of “giving feedback.” It’s very detailed, complex, and thoughtful, and the listener is supposed to receive it in a kind of quiet, receptive way. It’s a kind of social code or community behavior. We don’t have this in NY, at least not in any kind of codified way.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Today I’ll Decorate the World

Nada Gordon2 Comments

Day’s audible relief an avalanche
of vowels here at the impurity ball
of the possible futures. I walk my fingers
down the lazy spine of the future.
Things are hard like silicone and we
have been wanting to live like
exploding dorky lilies because
our brains are upside down
and also exploding. Spires point
to the giddy sky we’re hurtling though;
delicate badgers fling offal
at the singed oligarchy: tweet!
Tweet! Words roll out like votes
in the exhausting human universe,
while in the non-human universe
fungi, asteroids, rabbits, prions,
rings, and capybara just sweat
it out. Everything – the subway,
the body, the country, the globe,
the galaxy – is a sweat lodge where
we detoxify and what leaves us
commingles in the sweaty air.
Change has come to America
like a buttercup in 72 point type.
Today I’ll decorate the world
with stupid sleepy rosettes
and fall in love with almost
everybody. I’ve earned the
right to do that like wild dolls
earn their right to speak.
Lulled by the leafy, steamy frizz,
the citizens walk, stunned
and reflective, through
a ghoulish crowd of perfect tenses,
(have experienced, had suffered,
will have decided)
balloons streaming,
unconstrained,
from their upraised fingertips.