Stones

At my aunt's unveiling, my mother said there were sixty people.
She said a lot of people spoke, or read poetry.
And she said she didn't cry.
You know how people put rocks on gravestones? she asked me.

Yes.

Well, your uncle brought a bag of her rocks.

They had traveled across the world together,
and she had taken home stones from six continents and had carefully labeled each one.
My mom said my uncle took the bag of rocks to the cemetery
and carefully placed them, one by one, on her grave,
held onto the headstone, and said something like:

You will always be able to travel to these places with me.

How not to spend a Sunday, a recipe

Ingredients:

Jeans
Sinus pain
Coffee
Expresso
Red Bull
Tylenol Sinus PM
Plans

Directions:

1. Aimlessly fish around for decongestant with your glasses off.
2. Take two Tylenol sinus pain. Realize you have taken the night-time formula.
3. Put on jeans. Lurch to Duane Reade. Buy Red Bull.
4. Moonwalk to Starbucks. Buy coffee, expresso.
5. Chug.
6. Do not cancel plans.

Numbers

As a single woman in New York, I've started to pay more attention to numbers. Telephone numbers are obvious. So are the number of times he's called. The amount of money I've blown on shoes. The train I take to work. The rent.

There are numbers you can work on, such as weight, and there are numbers you can't. Recently, I've found myself on dates with men who are a decade my senior. Men who suddenly feel compelled to tell me their life story, to blow hundreds of dollars on an expensive dinner and tasting portions of the entire wine list.

How many times does a man ask you out before you give in? That is my worst number. How many business cards will I drunkenly give out before I meet someone whose call I will actually look forward to receiving? Five. Zero.

After succumbing to a fifth phone call, I allowed one to take me out. He took me to a darling of the New York Times food section and ordered me glass after glass of wine. We swirled, sniffed, and sipped our way through the dinner, and I grinned wildly when he began to put his hand on my leg. Hand on my hand. How do I find thee repulsive? Let me count the ways...

I changed the subject, and we moved on from a discussion of wine to the art driving. I am a speeder, I told him, pressing the limits of my old, used Saturn. I'm a menace, I continued. It's a good thing I moved to New York.

He said he hadn't driven in so long that his license was expired.

Prove it, I said, I want evidence. And he put his hand on mine again.

Before I do, there is something I need to tell you, he said. He was very serious. I stopped grinning.

I have to be honest with you, he said.

And he was. He had lied about his age. He was more than a decade older: The man was an entire bar mitzvah my senior.

I let him take me home, and kissed him politely on the cheek before stepping out of the cab. He called many times after that, and I quietly silenced the phone and let it go to voicemail.

That's the thing about New York. The men might lie, but the numbers never do.

The Joke

The older women loathe me. I can read disgust from their taught pulled faces, their cat eyes blinking back dried flecks of mascara. Twice my age and smoother skin. At least their breasts are uniformly hideous. They are either saggy and wrinkled or stiff half melons sandwiched between jutting clavicles. Martini glasses are clutched in carefully manicured nails. I sip my scotch and soda through a straw. I want to choke on the lemon.

"So you have to let Julian tell you his joke." Arthur sits beside me and tries to get his friend to talk. The two of them are entirely greyed over, sipping on single malt and handing the bartender twenties. I wonder if they are actually friends, but I suppose they are the type of old men who exchange pleasantries at the bar for years without ever really being friends.

"Julie! Tell the pretty lady your joke." Arthur turns back toward me. "Julian tells the best jokes."

Julian shakes his head and smiles.

"Come on, Julie. Now she's waiting. " I notice the women on the other side of the bar glaring at me. I am certainly waiting for something.

Julian is smaller than Arthur. His bright eyes dance around the bar and he places his scotch gently on the coaster. "Okay. Okay. If I don't tell you this joke, Artie will keep pestering me." He winks.

I smile.

"Two men are sitting at the bar, having a drink and chatting. They're having a real good time, and one of them says, Hey, where are you from? The other one shakes his head and says, Oh, I'm from outa state. And the first guy goes, Me too!"

Arthur nudges his glass forward and spills scotch on his silverware. "Me too!" he guffaws, and slaps his thigh.

"Wait, wait, Arthur. So he says, Yeah, but I'm from Illinois. Get out of here, says the other one. I'M from Illinois! And the other goes, Well, I'm from Chicago. Pershing Road."

"Pershing Road!" Arthur hollers, and the cougars next to him titter and try to blink. Arthur whoops and orders me another scotch and soda. I feel my feet slowly slide off the barstool.

"Wait!" Julian, murmurs. "Wait, Artie. So the first one goes, Unbelievable! I grew up on ten-nineteen East Pershing! And the other one, he is so shocked, he raises his hands and yells, Buddy, I grew up on ten-nineteen East Pershing."

A woman next to Arthur groans and he clinks her glass while looking at me. "Tell her, Julie, tell her how it ends."

Julian smiles. "So the bartender sighs and says to the waitress, he says, Shelia, the Murphy twins are drunk again."

I smile, this time all teeth, and watch as the bartender silently adds more ice to the old men's scotch. He nods at me. I look into the bottom of my glass at the beached lemon, the light casting a dull yellow glow into my palm, and the women trying in vain to furrow their brows at me.

Julian and Arthur are laughing at their joke. I slip away from the stool, away from the bar, and into the slow greying night.

Tangental

It's not the rain I love, it's the overwhelming darkness of the city. Pulled under the pale brown-blue like a week old bruise, the noise is dulled, the walks are slower, the pavement is slick with glitter, the people are solitary and humble.

We are all afflicted. All of us. Many people open little black bibles on the subway that sweat salvation. This is not one of them.

This is not a book of poems. It is not a book of stories. It is just words, most of them empty.

When I was a child I wrote a story on a piece of paper and glued a second sheet to the first. I called it a tall tale, and kept writing and gluing until the words didn't matter and the story extended on for six or seven feet. Those were empty words, whole sentences devoid of any motivation but length.

Here is my allegory for the American life. Here is what I fear: rounded vowels, very few words, too many lines, deep dissatisfaction.

Stalker

When you constantly dream about someone, time and again, inside and outside of sleep, are they stalking you? Or are you stalking them?

Dumb Blondie

I am not one of those girls who needs chocolate everyday or I will whine. I don't get fro-yo cravings or delight in a bowl of m&m's. Yet for some reason, at exactly 3:12pm EST, I was knocked, bowled, thrown over my desk chair by a desire for a blondie. Oh, blondies, the sweet, sweet counterpart to the childish brownie. Toss in a few nuts and I will get down on my knees for a blondie.

Onwards, I marched down Madison avenue in search of a suitable blondie. Oh, hello. What do we have here? Tea? A butterscotch blondie? Oh heaven in midtown.

It was the greatest 3:17pm EST I've had in months. Had I not been in plain sight, right there amongst the sniveling tea-shop bloggers, I would have moaned about said moment of bliss.

Now that several hours have passed, I am still holding onto that afterglow.

Manhattan

"Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion. Uh, no, make that: He romanticized it all out of proportion. Now to him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. (Ah, now let me start this over.) Chapter One. He was too romantic about Manhattan as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles. (Nah, no, corny, too corny for my taste. I mean, let me try and make it more profound.) Chapter One. He adored New York City. To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of the contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity to cause so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in-- (No, it's gonna be too preachy. And, you know . . . let's face it, I wanna sell some books here.) Chapter One. He adored New York City, although to him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitized by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage. (Too angry. I don't wanna be angry.) Chapter One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. (I love this.) New York was his town. And it always would be."
--Woody Allen, Manhattan

A Pound of Flesh

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will." --Ezra Pound

Blink

You are no longer in love but your heart is swollen with it.

An Easy Metaphor

Let me tell you something:

My iPod broke yesterday, and suddenly I'm on the 6 heading downtown without my earbuds. I'm exposed. I hear everything. And it's nice, because I'm able to give my seat up to an older woman and politely talk to her. But I also hear terrible people saying awful things.

And I guess you might say that having to face this half hour commute in the sort of silence so loud that it's literally distracting is exactly what I need. It's an easy metaphor to make: I have been walking around New York for the past year with my guard up, unable to experience the sweet because I have turned away from the bitter.

I suppose I can also argue that I am so aware and overly conscious that the moments I relieve myself from my acute observations, I am suddenly more vulnerable. Hence, my guard is down.

There is no right answer, suffice it to say that I draw comparisons where ever and however I see fit. And when the music is absent, something else must approximate the rhythm of the subway and the trilling of its tribe.

Be a Camel!

That's what she tells me, sexually speaking,
and though I have to agree with her point
(the one about going so long between drinks),
I am thinking about the hump
and the way people describe the journey
the rolling and jolting rough-sea rock,
the slow-aching hip bruising,
An unfortunate way of telling someone to wait:
endure that painful mammalian convulsion.
How can I be a camel, I think,
blowing softly on my hooves.

Rainy Day Woman

Rain breeds loneliness. In the case of the single New York woman, there is nothing worse than coming home damp to a musty apartment. Maybe coming home with food poisoning. Maybe.

Warm rain I can handle. I put down my umbrella and let the rain soak down my hairline and drip mascara into my eyes. Others give off this look of pity, envy, and irritation. How dare I enjoy the rain? Easily, and I saunter around in my romantic mess with my raccoon eyes, drunk on the weather.

I can't handle cold, pulsing rain. I can't handle the emptiness of my apartment, or decipher where exactly the off-putting smell is coming from within it. Under the sink. Under the floorboards.

I digress.

This is the rain that makes me yearn. It is sinking rain. It is rain to light up a joint under the covers, burning down the hours until the clouds slowly part.

The real reason I am not on antibiotics

I've heard it's bad to go on antibiotics, I tell my doctor. I've heard your body develops strains of bacterial infections that are resistant. I think my body should fight this off on its own.

My doctor is so impressed he writes me a prescription for muscle relaxers and smiles. Keep using that nasal spray, he says.

I sure will.

You can't drink when you're on antibiotics. Or you can, but you'll probably vomit up all that pricey scotch. And the generic alone costs $20. No thank you.

There are certain situations my health insurance won't cover.

The 94th Street Taco Bell

A homeless man needs tacos, too
even though he spits on the floor
and growls at the garbage
purple plastic trays spilling everywhere
I walked 17 blocks to eat my crunchy tacos
they are delicious and I don't care what you say
I love the salty meat and
I don't see any rats, or e coli, just
my dinner date slowly unwrap a burrito
as the evening unfolds before us

Vino

When you graduate from college you are supposed to throw away all of your empty wine bottles. This way, guests cannot pickup on your alcoholism and there is less to dust.

Xanax

You don't need to be held.
Look at you, lying there on the carpet
with the child safety cap off.
It doesn't matter if you're alone: take two.
It doesn't matter if you're lonely: take three.
The pills will dry your sweet whiskey tears.
And when you wake, they'll be gone
thumbing for a cab in the split white dawn.

This is Not a Boating Accident

Junie cracks her gum like broken bones.

She leans her bobble head into my cubicle and I can smell the spearmint. She ruined toothpaste for me. Paste is just another word for glue, anyway, which is exactly what I feel like I'm wiping all over my mouth: thick, gummy glue that tastes like Junie smells. Once I told Junie I could smell her approaching before I heard her, and she licked my ear, right there in the middle of the office.

I am forty floors above sea level.

"What's all over your face?" she asks, working her hips in time with her jaw, bouncing against the half-wall of the cubicle. A fax comes through the machine. I can't tell if I feel trapped, or if I've always felt trapped. Something is caged within me, or I am caged within it.

I examine myself in the dull reflection of the computer screen. From this angle, I appear alright, though I can taste my lip bleeding. My cheeks feel raw. "I don't know what you're talking about," I say, and rub a few scabs off my chin.

It's not my fault I only have one arm.

The pink plaster skin peels away from the stubble off into my hand. Junie ducks away and makes calls to her boyfriend. I hear her whispers about my face and the sudden absence of my arm. I start to reach down to open my desk drawer, but remembering my left arm is gone, I pause, slumped over to one side.

I wish I had a window.

Junie sticks her minty face back into my cubicle again, eyeing me carefully. She is still on the phone, and shakes her head. "I think it's spreading."

This is ridiculous. I settle back into my chair and begin to frantically stab at my keyboard with my middle finger. I'm already behind on my sales reports. Numbers flash across the database as I type. Blood is beginning to stain the keys. Junie has stopped chewing her gum. I straighten up and grab my briefcase with what's left if my right hand. A fine trace of bumps begins to spread down my wrist like ivy.

I am aching for an oatmeal bath.

Something stabs at my hand and the briefcase falls to the linoleum. Bic pens spill under my feet. Junie screams. I make a move to the elevator, and enter without checking the floor like I usually do to ensure I won't fall down and empty shaft.

Everything is burning: I'm out of the office, into the misted over air, into the streets filled with wild eyed stares, limping away from skyscrapers. I am tripping away from chrome and cabs and fists of coffee, making my way towards the East River.

My left leg stumps along the FDR, dragging along the remains of my right. If I wasn't so cold I would think I had caught fire. It's nearly ten o'clock in the morning. The sidewalk is slick, and suddenly I'm toppling and slipping into the tiny waves. I can't flail, and I can't exactly sink, so I force my eyes open. I drift slowly, down and down, into the brown and merciless tide.

Dear, I Do, I Truly

She knew what heartbreak sounded like from television and it scared the shit out of her. She chose not to watch the evening news anymore. When she ate dinner she watched Jeopardy and said the answers out loud in her empty kitchen. When she folded laundry she sat on the floor with the pile of clothes and stroked the linens. She paired socks. She folded towels in half and stacked them up beside her. From the floor, she could see the Empire State Building. It rose in her window like a charmed snake, suspended stiff above the city.

It was May. She had eaten dinner in silence and retrieved the laundry from the drier. She beamed at the building and suddenly felt needy. She knew all of this by heart. Regardless, she pressed a hand against the window and stationed her pelvis west, rubbing her face against the tempered glass. Her breath clung to the condensation and spread against the glass like ivy. The past was past. Echoless, meaningless, her breast, her lashes on the clear surface. She blinked, focused and refocused. "Just stay there," she murmured. The steel blinked and she closed her lips, its tall frame froze in her landscape.

This is not panoramic. This is not something everlasting. Her warm breath sent opaque clouds towards the window and she knew then that the present was something that could not be counted on-- not for pleasure, but not even for pain.

She creased her lips. She looked into the unstarry light. The street-lamps were forgotten. The traffic lights glowed. Somewhere, someone groaned. If she had turned on the tv, she would have heard heartbreak. Unequivocal, empty and self-loathing heartbreak. She sat on the floor, folding white shirts at ninety degree angles, hoping she might fold herself into what she used to be.

When the first building fell she was folding laundry. She didn't see it, but she heard it, and watched as the Empire State Building quivered from the mighty fall. All along the streets of New York City the pavement shuddered with the impact. She felt the vibration before she saw the smoking heap on the television. Her phone rang. On television, tiny people fell from windows.

Slide guitar tears dribbled down her chin. He was in the second building, calling her from his cellphone. "Dear, don't worry," she spoke calmly into the phone. The line went dead. He called back soon. "I do," and shouting in the background, "I truly." He openly wept. The line went dead and she felt another vibration.

She will not lose another building. She will not lose another sock. The Empire State Building will eventually vanish, it will fade into the skyline as more buildings are erected in New York. Many more will replace it in height, in magnitude. But it will not be lost.

Evolution

AS WE WALK through the sidewalks
imitating the haves, and even worse,
the have nots, all of us
sucked in tucked in fucked in
turned down for the evening,
LET US reveal our selves
our teeth and our deep breaths.

Can we escape these selfish genes?
We shall be slaves to our birthdays
or we will become silhouettes:
Fragments of our childhoods,
the benevolent space between
baby and stuffed lion
between incorrigible mistakes
and sweeping failures of yesteryears.

LET US behave like animals.
Let the soft down of our skin
rub against the grains
and our loins fold into one another.

Praised be the animals!
loved by the krebs cycle and
damned by the fossil fuels.

Blessed be the sinners!
the arrogant, the mistaken,
the khaki pug-nosed hunters.

This species is the fittest so far.
We will suffer not in the jungle,
but may the low winds of the subway
kiss our open mouths.

What a Woman Thinks About on the Subway

In order to feel feminine, she squeezes her ass cheeks together when she gets on the subway and makes eye contact with the man next to her. She is young, and he is not. She knows he is married because he wears a ring.

Recently, she has decided to look for rings on the subway. Pretty things with important bags have shiny rings with big, boxy stones. Older women have smaller rings, tarnished rings, or no rings. Men have bands, and she likes those more than the diamonds and their settings. She likes the way a strip of metal is welded together in a circle, then welded itself to a man in between his knuckles. A woman wears her ring with pride, but a man wears his with complacency. She likes a man's complacency more than a woman's pride.

The subway jerks, and she squeezes her hand around the pole while squeezing her ass cheeks together. She is crowded and uncomfortable. Because she is so short, hands came past her to grab the pole and her body is forced into an awkward angle. She stares at her hand on the pole and tries to assess it and feels decidedly less feminine. Her fingernails are bitten down and her cuticles look ragged and pink. Her hands are pale.

She makes eye contact with the husband again, just to see if he will look back. He does, and she half-smiles. He looks away, ashamed, and inches closer to the doors. The train bucks again before it comes to a halt. He hurries out into the crowded station.

It's hard to feel feminine on the subway, she decides. She tries to catch a look at herself in the darkened windows, but it is too crowded. Her back is sandwiched between a fat woman and a baby carriage, and she cringes at the immediacy of her childhood and her dissent into age and weight.

She wears a ring on her right hand, a band with an inset diamond flake. It is so small, only she is aware of its presence, and she is comforted with its indiscernible weight on her hand.

Aerial Shells

I haven't seen the stars in months
and their absence
seems, like everything else,
to make sense, to play into that
dark seediness of new york city,
where they are replaced stars with movie stars
and the moon with
times square.

Go Forth

The city is colder than you want it to be.
It is colder than your vegetable garden in Walden
or your sunrise over the Atlantic.

Listen: Terrible things happen, and people get scared.
People's hearts grow cold in the winter,
so they peel them off their sleeves
and wrap them in layers and turtle-shells.

Anyway, life and love are terribly subjective
and sometimes I get them confused.

You can bottle contraband emotions,
but they will be searched
in the subway stations.

You can swim across the Hudson river
and live for 200 years in New Jersey,
but you will leave everything in New York.

Even colder in the winter, the city rises like a chest.
You go forth, ring your bells and buy boots.

Lead Pipes Last Longer

All along the lake Irma skimmed rocks while chewing on blades of grass. The stones hit water and skipped through small circles before sinking in the brown, cloudy pillows. Occasionally, one would hit a lump in the surface and the collision would spark.

The dying stars of last night left the sky dotted. Embers smoldered on the landscape, releasing the faint scent of sulfur and peppermint oil.

Irma chewed thoughtfully on grass before scraping the sweet meaty white under her teeth and flicking the blade into the pond. She examined a rock methodically, and pressed its flat surface against her cheek. Then she angled it in her fingers and threw it to the water. She bit her lip and tasted salt.

Children howled in the distance.

Irma dragged her fingers up past her neck and through her hair, tossing her mane over her left shoulder. She picked up her hood, her gloves, and her lead pipe. When she first started, she used a wood bat, but she found that lead pipes last longer.

She began her dissent into town. Already, she could see a crowd forming in the distance and felt a stone in her throat. They were clustered in front of a remarkably fat oak tree whose trunk was tinged maroon. A man was pressed to it, his arms barely wrapping around the bark on the trunk, his feet unsteady on the roots.

Irma pulled on her hood and tasted grass. As she approached, the crowd parted. Even the children were silent.

She clutched her pipe, and swung it against his head, turning away before she could see it make contact with his face, mash against the great oak, and hang limp. She could hear the wind rush through the leaves as she turned around and walked slowly back to the lake.

This is Not the End, This Has Not Even Come to Pass

This is not the end, this has not even come to pass.

That's what I thought when I knew I was going to die.

What else do you think when you die? You think about the last meal you ate. I had a turkey sandwich. I doubt anyone ever eats the last meal they compose when asked. I think that's an awful question. No one ever asks what will be your last smell, or who will be your last true love.

This is to say, we take dying very lightly. For all the fuss we give it, we are still prepared to launch into our last meal.

I will not think about my last meal. When I knew I was going to die I thought about breathing. The car was hurdling down the hill and sliding into the rocks and all I could do was breathe in as much air as possible, holding it in my lungs. The glass fractured and I could taste pebbles of it in my mouth cutting up the insides of my cheeks.

This is not the end, I want to think. This has not even come to pass.

The subway is a long, living coffin.

We live our lives recreating tragedy and re-experiencing loss. Those left behind draft unsent letters and hunt wounded ghosts in the subway. It is empty, slowly rocking like a crib on the track. Outside, the clouds loom and the thunder purrs and the city is wrapped in a cocoon of yellow-gray fog. Underground, New Yorkers hold their loneliness like candles or cigarettes. Whichever it may be, it is a hot flame of desperation. It is backlit desire. It is the sweet sweat of the subway. Let us down slowly into the deep blue concussion of the neighborhood. For now, we are under the ground, we are hollow and preserved, one billionth the size of a gravestone.

The Time Machine

My grandmother lived on one for years, feeding her, breathing her, pumping her blood with enough life to keep her white eyes open. There were downsides-- like her infected tongue, for example, or her sunken mouth that no longer puckered around dentures. Her arms became receptacles and her stomach lining bled. She no longer cared if she wore florescent nail polish because she no longer knew she had nails. Within a year she was gone, but her heart kept on ticking and the years passed like so much silt through her feeding tube. We grew, yearned, we mourned, we continued. Still, she lay beside the machine. Lightbulbs died and dust settled on picture frames. Four years can pass slowly in a room of indifference. The time machine just hummed.

Sermon on the Page Count

The New York Times Book Review is the bible, but you wouldn't know it. On any given Sunday, New York's most intellectual denizens clutch the publishing industry's holy text and systematically choose their next subway fashion statement. Sam Tanenhaus may or may not have brought the Bestseller List from Sinai, but he certainly leads his chosen people to the Holy Land. And Barnes and Noble couldn't be happier. Amen.

Are you breaking up with me?

Yes.

I think the next time I break up with someone, I want it all to happen on the subway: no man's underland, where the wild things are. This way, he can get off at his stop and I can get off at mine. We can exit through different sides of the car, and then that train can just keep going without me in it.

Such is the way of loss and a twenty-four hour metro system.

Loose Change

Most of the time I try to act normal. I play music and read magazines. Sometimes I write letters, but I never remember to buy a stamp. Halfway through a letter I know will never get sent, I usually give up. These letters get thrown in a drawer along with loose change, old tubes of lipstick, and extra buttons. I will never send the letters or wear the buttons, and the loose change ends up in the garbage. Sometimes I unearth the lipstick and brave the microscopic germs and bacteria in order to remember the color that made me feel so good three years ago.

I never looked that good in lavender.

At my small liberal arts college, my friends and I used to get really high and read poetry out loud to each other while we stirred our herbal tea. Reading poetry out loud is not considered normal anymore. It is normal to make off-hand references to a poet you once read while burning your tongue on a soy latte.

Drinking coffee is normal, something normal I need to master. It makes my stomach hurt and my legs shaky like an old table. Regardless, holding this magical cup somehow transforms my designer-less bag and chafing flats into something more put together, more professional. Buying an overpriced cup of stomach cramps grounds me to the sidewalk. When I was a smoker, the cigarette kept me company. When I quit, another step toward normalcy, I was left with an empty hand.

Sometimes I fill my right hand with a man. Sometimes I try coffee again. The man will give me endless heartache and insufferable if's. I know the coffee will make me turn green no matter what.

Like that lavender tube of lipstick, there are some shades that will never look good on me.