misswhistle
when i sing she doesn't care; when i whistle she looks at me expectantly
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Oh My Goodness
Amber
It never mattered that there was once a vast grieving:
trees on their hillsides, in their groves, weeping –
a plastic gold dropping
through seasons and centuries to the ground –
until now.
On this fine September afternoon from which you are absent
I am holding, as if my hand could store it,
an ornament of amber
you once gave me.
Reason says this:
the dead cannot see the living.
The living will never see the dead again.
The clear air we need to find each other in is
gone forever, yet
this resin once
collected seeds, leaves and even small feathers as it fell
and fell
which now in a sunny atmosphere seem as alive as
they ever were
as though the past could be present and memory itself
a Baltic honey –
a chafing at the edges of the seen, a showing-off of just how much
can be kept safe
inside a flawed translucence.
EAVAN BOLAND (2006)
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Tracy's Marvelous Egyptian Salad
With apologies to Yotam Ottolenghi whose Turkish salad from Plenty inspired this assemblage
Serves 8 Booklettes at dinner
for the salad
7-8 ounces arugula, washed, dried and well-chilled
1 large fennel bulb, sliced thin
8 ounces feta, crumbled into chunks
1 ½ cups freshly toasted almonds, roughly chopped
12-14 dates, pitted and sliced lengthwise into eighths
½ cup fruity extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup Meyer lemon juice
Zest of 2 Meyer lemons
1 tsp. honey (more if you’d like it sweeter!)
salt & pepper to taste
Blake
-- William Blake
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Diving into the Wreck
We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
-- from "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."
-- From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot
Friday, January 27, 2012
We Dogs of a Thursday Off
Their unsteady stance against the working world,
The intense intoxication of nothing to be done,
A day off,
The dance of the big-hearted dog
In us, freed into a sudden green, an immense field:
Off we go, more run than care, more dance—
If a polka could be done not in a room but straight
Ahead, into the beautiful distance, the booming
Sound of the phonograph weakening, but our legs
Getting stronger with their bounding practice:
This day, that feeling, drunkenness
Born of indecision, lack of focus, but everything
Forgiven: Today is a day exposed for what it is,
A workday suddenly turned over on its back,
Hoping to be rubbed
-- Albert Rios

