so now we bloggers can finally post pictures without using hello or hosting them on another site. yipee! i expect that nate will soon post many pictures from his trip to italy as a result, but here's one of my favorites to the left.my sister tells me we are cursed by the unattainable
no matter what happens, i know
i’ll be okay, i tell her, smoothing
the tears from my cheek
with my fingers, pausing
while the phone line falls silent,
interrupted again by the sound
of her voice. that’s another curse
of ours, she says.
six days later i am walking home
at five o’clock in the evening and i realize
what she meant. rush hour traffic is speeding
past me and my love life suddenly makes sense.
we will never completely succumb our lives
to someone else’s. suspended
in our independence- cursed in knowing
who loves
the least
is in control.
Venice, But No Gondola
I: On the Way
He says out loud (not necessarily to me)
“If you want to see poverty, just go to Venice.”
Funny how they’re both water cities,
whether it’s Italy or Louisiana.
Instead of a gondola, I’m in a Chevy Suburban
traveling down a highway.
Houses on stilts line the roadside,
the smell of oil seems to hang
among the cars on blocks, dark swamps with bright
green algae on the surface. Natalie Merchant
wails from the car speakers, a borrowed CD.
I didn’t borrow it, the lyrics reach me anyway,
climbing over the old stone wall
I am bound for the riverside.
When I look out the window, the leather seats
seem wrong for the situation. I feel compelled
to respond to the poverty comment but don’t know
what to say and the awkward lapse inevitable
of a four hour car ride with a stranger
fills the car. Natalie sings anyway, unaware
there is nothing to say, find a place
on the riverbank
where the green rushes grow
see the wind
in the willow tree
in the branches hanging low
We reach the dock and I board a boat headed out
to the Gulf. I watch from the back deck as we push
through the heavy water and every now and then
my gaze lands on small houses, isolated
by the swamps , connected only by dilapidated
wooden docks. Later, I notice the water has cleared,
the houses are gone and ocean water laps the tall grass
all around us.
to love rising in the darkness, eating breakfast at 4:30 a.m.
I learn exactly what to tell “Q” in the mornings
to have my eggs cooked just right. I learn what to call
the men. Later, I even learn their names.
I find that when the metal
and the men and the mud
become too much,
I can always find the sea.
It stretches out so far that I can no longer remember
where I might find land. At night, I forget that it’s only water;
the other rigs light the skyline as if they are outskirts
of a metropolis.
One morning, as the sun rose on the water
I noticed that the blue was being overtaken by a deeper,
darker brown. It’s the Mississippi, they tell me, even
twelve miles of water between us, it still finds the way
all the silt spilling into the gulf,
staining the blue. child it's lovely
let the river take it all away
the mad pace, the hurry
the troubles, the worries
just the river take them all away
flow away.
Silhouette is Virginia Tech's Literary and Art Magazine:
Dear Brianna,
Congratulations! Your poems, “
Poetry Editor of the Silhouette
Speaking of coffee houses...some big news here in the west lafayette (remember, that town you lived in for undergrad?) well, all was normal on thursday, vienna and village coffeehouse both open for java drinks (of course one is better than the other)...come saturday morning village is closed, completely empty with "for lease" signs in the windows, and the markerboard outside says "20 unemployed on a whim..." leaving vienna the undisputed champion on campus..."
Super swine was real, experts say, Tuesday, March 22, 2005
They also noted the super swine didn't quite live up to the 1,000-pound (450-kilogram), 12-foot (3.6-meter) hype generated when Hogzilla was caught on a farm last summer and photographed hanging from a backhoe.
Donning biohazard suits to exhume the behemoth's smelly remains, the experts estimated Hogzilla was probably only 7 1/2 to 8 feet (2.25 to 2.4 meters) long, and weighed about 800 pounds (360 kilograms).
