paralysis at the stove

though i am immensely fond of cooking
and don't mind so much the rigors
of the shopping trip, the hunt
for the right cut of meat,
or casting the proper vegetable
for the important supporting role,
though i pride myself on my good blend
of pragmatism, spontaneity, and
good nutrition, despite all this
I found myself, tonight, in a sea of confusion.
paralysis at the stove,
having already opened a packet of chicken,
having already sliced an onion and begun
the delicate dance of the stovetop saute,
having imagined a dish i can make on
autopilot, I discovered, too late,
I'd run out of ginger.

ginger, you see, being the one critical
ingredient the dish required, everything else
with a decent alibi, a passable stand-in. i could have used
tangerine juice instead of orange,
shallots for onions, chicken broth for soy sauce
there were possibilities in my pantry
because
everything but ginger had a running mate,
an understudy which could, in a pinch,
take the lead.

not ginger.
there's something irreplaceable about the root
like the singular microscopic skeleton of a snowflake
no substitute for this brand of miracle pungency
no way to...

wait. i know. you're thinking, poor
chef girl, i feel your pain, i see the enormity
of your sorrow, this disconsolate absence, but
what's the big fucking deal about ginger?

you don't know ginger.
don't know what it's like to bank on it like i do
to intuit its presence somewhere in the lower half
of the fridge, holding court in a corner
of the vegetable bin, the faith necessary
for this, an overarching certainty
for conjuring this knobby fortress of gold
for the way it will articulate this meal
like a verb articulates a sentence
the necessity of it
maybe you don't know exactly

but let's move on
let's say you understood
let's say you understood
so what i'll tell you is
i hadn't checked the fridge in time,
had cheerfully trotted out the onions and the chicken
and tossed into the saucepan, like afterthought,
a half-container of sliced mushrooms
like it was nothing, like the mushrooms were lucky
to be chosen this time, and everything began, as expected,
and like a tuning orchestra, to start making sense.
which is, of course, the time to peel the ginger and slip it
into the waiting broth. this
is the precision of infusion, the exact moment
a meal takes hold of itself,
aligns like symmetry
aligns as if the atoms of each separate whole
were to open like petals, breathing out
breathing in.
this is the time for ginger.

the fridge wasn't kind.
had deceived me
into being so sure the body lay
on its shelves that i had been careless
with the limbs. poor
chicken, unadorned by spice, lay wanting, the onions
flaccid now, a dull shade of
khaki, and the mushrooms - inconsolable,
flavorless as always.
without ginger the meal sank into mediocrity
a forgettable supper that couldn't quite be saved
by hasty sides of steamed rice and broccoli.

of course
i still ate.
you have to.
it's what we do.

normal

I'm at the tipping point, the magic hour
that ends one day and begins
another, and I'm thinking how
not even as a kid, when all you had to do was
BE a kid, get driven places, act your age,
keep yourself at the barest minimun of decency,
slide between grocery aisles with stolen
candy in your teeth and not get caught even once,
I'm thinking, not even as a kid
did I ever really, and I mean really, feel normal.

Instead here's what there was:
the constant, nebulous sensation of
being awkwardly too far in front or behind, yet
strangely invisible to those I wanted most to please.
I was not the exotic demure creature the boys
would swoon and vie for,
not the "it" girl who could gather, in seconds,
a coven of breathless, wide-eyed devotees,
not the brown-eyed beauty next door with the bounce
and the curls and the perfect, pristine A-cup
no

I knew, in my bones, that no matter how much
I tried to skate through the trends,
stay in tune with the pinkish hues of girlhood,
no matter my devotion to best friends or bullies,
I would fail at the grand disappearing act. Or
I could just be really, really good at it,
staying alert but silent,
normal-seeming because I wasn't the Outcast
and I wasn't the Rebel and I wasn't
the Trouble Child and I was never the one to make waves,
blaze trails as far as labels were concerned,
kept myself presentable enough to be picked for teams
but it would be lying to say that what I felt
was normal.

What I wanted,
even though no one could have possibly known,
what I wanted, ever-so-desperately, was a single caesura
in the system, the tape looping to the point of breakage.
I wanted all eyes, for once, on me.

Not at all costs, but for the best cost,
for whatever I could fashion from my own mind's plumbing -
perfect spelling and thorough lab reports and whatever goodie
I could come up with. Last-second free-throws,
a solo for the chorus - small acts
of specific and tortured courage. I could wound myself
for this, for the possible reward,
for the light at the end of all my narrow tunnels
I would crawl through the mud of school for this,
I could punish my body on the court
I could lose sleep, all for the reward.
I knew it, believed it, somehow
a moment of sheer brilliance lay waiting for me, a whiplash
of sudden and thorough discovery.
I'd turn the bend one morning and...shhh!
something would be whispered through the school halls, then confirmed,
later, through an overhead announcement,
the headmaster's deep bass booming.
Then ferocious twittering after class,
a feeding frenzy. Have you
heard? Have you seen? Can you believe it? It's...her!

I may have been wrong. The hours I stayed up
seeing the science experiment to its anticipated conclusion
merely led to exhaustion and a hatred of physics.
A rigorous push to the top of the heap
earned the grades and the college degree
and the normal things one gets when one puts in the time
but it wasn't like lottery, like splash or explosion,
it wasn't like out-of-body-cataclysm or overnight religion.

I wonder, where is the fulcrum of the pendulum swing
that exists between wanting all that's normal
and aching, in secret, for all that is extraordinary?
I yearned for that, I know it, for something
either beyond or inside
myself, the fibrous muscle of who I could become -
a superlative of all my favorite adjectives -
I wanted it, a glimpse at whatever magic
I was capable of exacting through my own
long fingertips, I wanted to feel on the verge
of the big flex, the letting loose and letting fly.

If I'd known to listen for it,
would I have caught the subsonic hum in the darkness,
the slightest atmospheric nuance of one day
turning into the next? Would I have known
what a simple and astonishing act
midnight is?

loud and clear

though it was not close to home
i decided to go to the open mic
in the middle of suburbia
no, further, san jose, a whole hour, and
a saturday night when i could have been
throwing back cosmos or sitting stoic
at the symphony
or flirting or better than flirting
i left the city for this
because of the plan
the big plan of
once a week
because once a week, I had said, you are going
no matter where, no matter if
the gas is getting expensive again,
you are going, forget the distance,
you are going to show up and
you are going to do this

you are a writer, I said,
and aside from the books you want to sell
aside from the fantasy of fame or fortune
aside from the dream-making and whirlpools of hope
there are things you can do
today
there are things you must do today
like show up
like show up and say something
you can do this
you must do this
reveal yourself, I said on the drive there,
the words you have been so carefully plotting
at home, twirling the syllables on your tongue,
forget about the shadows you normally
hide behind, the screen of your new Apple computer
which you love for its cheerful fluorescence and
better yet,
for its cheerful anonymity,
get out from behind that,
from anonymity,
get out and show up and whatever you do
be afraid of it.

see what it is to be afraid,
to let fear tingle your fingertips,
to let fear dizzy the pages as you hold them
to let fear rattle from the back of your throat
the veins of your insides
feel this galactic uncertainty of
am i good enough or
am i good
see what it is to be afraid but not
more than you can handle, not
enough to keep you silent
let everyone see this
let you see this
loud and clear
because
this is what it means to have a voice
and
this is what it means to use it
so

take 101, not 280
which is the slower, sweeter ride.
101 is that much faster
and they're going to start without you
if you're late.

sonnet

Funny how a day can loom and rumble
its way toward you like stomachaches
leave you bitter and anxious - worse, humble
to its grand power and the sound it makes
in store windows and candy boxes, each flower shop
singing its praises from petal to petal
while I grimace and snarl at even the red stop
sign placed innocently at intersections. I'm ill
with the thought of love so loud, roses
hopelessly adding to the clamor. The scents of chocolate
scandalize the streets. My heart closes
as billboard lovers swoon and manipulate.

I wanted only the simplest of tenderness.
A tiny shudder in the veins, or something less.

customer service

Sundays are for
cleaning the fridge and
watering the plants and
putting away the laundry I'd done
days ago.
Sundays are for the cleanse
before the week,
the soaping up, a kind of
spiritual cotton swab swipe.
Sundays are for bike rides and
chocolate chip cookie dough and
hippie hill's doped up drummers and
the liquid mudslide of midday espresso.
Sundays are for sneakers and tanktops and
swigs of water from a pink canteen.
Sundays are for the delightful swerve
into the park's wide lanes.
sundays are for windy escapades
on a sand-swept boardwalk with
dropped ice cream remnants and
forgotten gas receipts and
careless ATM withdrawals and trying
to avoid the sea gull shit.

Instead,
I'm doing a verbal dance with the Dell
customer service representative.
I don't know what I'm being
charged for, I keep announcing
to the ether of the phone wires,
I've PAID for this already, I insist and
she says, I'm sorry, and We didn't receive, and
There's no record, and Do you have the
Return Authorization Code and
We can't do anything about it
without the tracking numbers.

And I feel like a poor facsimile
of a James Bond heroine, unable to slip through
the cruel, clanging fiberoptic hoops,
the perfect parting shot,
don't have an alibi except a raw nerve.
This is the umpteenth time, I say, and
Why isn't this settled yet, and
Why are you still calling me.
As if she's obsessed, my coy Dell mistress,
as if she's aobsessed with me,
the way she keeps calling,
begging for answers, holding my invoice
over my head like a love letter
I composed her years ago,
some intention I'd made of a perpetual commitment
which I withdrew without so much as a
warning, explanation, kind word, reason. No
apologetic kiss, or follow-up tenderness, I did not check in again
and now, left to the devices of a madwoman,
the Dell girl tracks me down each week, pleading, pleading
Where is it, the check, your payment, we can
do this over the phone if you'd like, it's that
easy, phone payment, we can do that,
her voice downshifting into what I bet she imagines is a purr but
it's more like this, a bitter, lovesick whine,
coercing, guilt-edged, naked as a blade.
And each week I refuse, saying I owe nothing, saying I gave
everything, returned the merchandise exactly
as it came to me, I owe nothing, nothing, nothing, I breathe
into the wires like a reckless mantra, I owe you nothing.
I yank at the words like the tug-of-war rope, as if
my life depended on it,
the credit, a wrong being righted,
the collection service avoided,
I put all of my strength into an afternoon's delirious refusal,
I won't I won't I won't
give IN
I am thrashing, ungiving, ungiving,
I won't give this to you
I won't give this to you.
My fingers twist at the phone
while upstairs on the deck
all my plants are dying.

coming clean

the strangest of things, this ratio
between telling the truth
and hiding it
how much I wanted to tell the woman at the cafe yesterday
she was speaking too loudly, overloudly,
and what she was saying
wasn't worth the noise.
she was talking with a friend about how much
she hated small talk
and i wanted to tell her to stop complaining already
and get with the program,
she didn't need the small talk
she was older, now, could get to the center
of things, could tell her dates anything
forget that stuff about how long
she's lived in this city or how tiresome
the commute is to the job in San Jose,
even if the benefits
are keeping her there
small talk
she was talking small
but loud and oh how I wanted to tell her
to shut the fuck up, i was reading
or just having my coffee, but either way
she was disrupting the peace.

i said nothing, felt
embarrassed, if that's the word,
to say anything, and kept my own mouth shut
and small
said nothing, and the coffee was bitter,
the words on the page kept
repeating themselves,
i said nothing,
and nothing, in the end, was said.

and realizing, this morning, waking up,
the things i've hidden
even from myself
the small embarrassments
the daily precipice i dance against
the dizzying grief of questions marks
like
what are you going to do with this life
and
why haven't you been working to your potential
and
why haven't you been working
and
where is the money going to come from
and
where is your money going
and
when are you going to grow up, girl?

i wonder, if i'd said these things aloud
would the woman in the cafe have called me foolish
or simply knotted herself into a tight coil
of furious silence, found her life needlessly interrupted
by my personal metaphysics?
would my talk have been small and overloud to her?
would she have found my questions childish
and hopelessly uninteresting?
would she tell me to get with the program, sister,
because these aren't at all
the questions to be asking?
would she have reminded me
to drink my coffee
while it was still hot?

ride

easily, it could have been
the stories from emergency room doctors
or crazy city drivers
her parents' early and stern instructions
the generic and perfectly reasonable fear of falling
getting hurt
scraping herself
bleeding somewhere unstoppable
all of this could have stopped her
slowed her at least
the statistics alone
the idea of lowering her chances for...
she knows this and still
still


all week
she takes the three miles
from her house to the beach,
then back,
take the miles in the hardest gear,
straining, all calves,
she takes the miles
pedals churning, and helmet-less.

it's a delirious rule-breaking
a deliberate omission and
risk risk risk
you're being risky
oh my god do you realize...
you shouldn't...
i wouldn't...
you'd better...
don't you think...
what if...

and yet, as soon as the wheels hit pavement
they connect to the bike
and the bike connects to her body and
just as soon her body
is connecting to everything
movement, wind, the electric discovery
that she alone is responsible for how fast
and how far
and she forgets,
in the first rotation of the first downhill, she forgets
the kinesthetics of risk
the potential fall
a vision of embedded gravel
the ear-splitting whir of an ambulance
somehow
she takes to the ride this way
forgetting the inches from this
disaster, tragedy, blood
she takes to the ride this way
can't help it because
on the bike her heart,
her whole heart
is in her calves.

just after one

past midnight
eric clapton said
we should
let it all hang out
but i find this hour is better suited
for making two slices of toast
with butter and blackberry jam,
a flirtation with the breakfast that will come
in just few hours, with conversation and hot coffee.

for now it's just me
and bread
and butter and jam
with what feels like
a whole city sleeping and silent below
a whole city sleeping and silent.
whole but sleeping.
so yes, it's me, alone
past midnight
just after one, really,
and I'm buttering bread,
spreading jam, awake.

at this hour, it's just
the tartness of the blackberries,
the muted clank of the knife
against the plate, a napkin
balled up with errant crumbs.
in the glow of a single living room light,
just after one, a meal.
I thought it was solitude,
until this.