My last Take It Off before I head off to the world of long skirts and girls named Shoshanna! Guess which item Jonathan bought for me!!! You can put the girl in the yeshiva but not the yeshiva in the girl...hee hee.
It's really hitting me what I'll be leaving here, but in a way, it's not really leaving, it's more like a pause, though I know things won't be the exactly the same, but I'm hoping that the people that I love will still be in DC when I come back, but as we all know, opportunities and life comes knocking. I've been lucky to find all that I have here. Gilda, pink roses will always remind me of you now! Whether they're in a vase, or well, you know where!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sunday, August 26, 2007
August Poems
Perhaps a new direction for Ramona for those of you who know her---I had intended to be funnier and have more puns...like usual...
Grocery List
It’s more than the possibility of oranges and arugula,
the promise of endives, someone to hold.
Mystery is the banana ripening, the suggestion
of peeling, the melon ready to be cut, the juice
of a day running down your chin. It’s the sizzle
of letters, the garlic hiss of the pen as Ramona composes.
It’s not a list, it’s a lifestyle, a hieroglyphic
of recipes, raspberries born between your teeth,
the surprises she hides in fresh baked brownies
so you’ll remember her.
The chakra of potatoes sing to her in sleep so she writes
it down on scratch paper. It’s as if the foods are calling
her, not that she needs them, but they need her.
There’s a prophecy in her pantry.
She goes to open mics and reads her produce of poetry,
each item a secret, a kernel of memory, of strawberry
picking late summer, taste of childhood, of love,
the onions of possibility, layers and layers to peel,
a tear from long ago, something you thought
already shed. Hopes and idiosyncrasies to husk
and shuck off.
She’s a firm believer in the mantra: you are
what you eat. She breathes peanuts into the microphone
and it’s grade school lunches and baseball, homerun
of meatless protein, Thailand and Reese’s Cups.
A lemon is a door back to that stand where you saved
enough for your first dream, vinaigrette
of something foreign and familiar, kiss of sun,
small enough to hold in the heft of your hand.
In another time and place you’d be Rosemary,
the woman who will bake bread in the mornings
and sing when it rains.
Grocery List
It’s more than the possibility of oranges and arugula,
the promise of endives, someone to hold.
Mystery is the banana ripening, the suggestion
of peeling, the melon ready to be cut, the juice
of a day running down your chin. It’s the sizzle
of letters, the garlic hiss of the pen as Ramona composes.
It’s not a list, it’s a lifestyle, a hieroglyphic
of recipes, raspberries born between your teeth,
the surprises she hides in fresh baked brownies
so you’ll remember her.
The chakra of potatoes sing to her in sleep so she writes
it down on scratch paper. It’s as if the foods are calling
her, not that she needs them, but they need her.
There’s a prophecy in her pantry.
She goes to open mics and reads her produce of poetry,
each item a secret, a kernel of memory, of strawberry
picking late summer, taste of childhood, of love,
the onions of possibility, layers and layers to peel,
a tear from long ago, something you thought
already shed. Hopes and idiosyncrasies to husk
and shuck off.
She’s a firm believer in the mantra: you are
what you eat. She breathes peanuts into the microphone
and it’s grade school lunches and baseball, homerun
of meatless protein, Thailand and Reese’s Cups.
A lemon is a door back to that stand where you saved
enough for your first dream, vinaigrette
of something foreign and familiar, kiss of sun,
small enough to hold in the heft of your hand.
In another time and place you’d be Rosemary,
the woman who will bake bread in the mornings
and sing when it rains.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Grace Paley Passes
I think it was Honi Jeffers who told me I needed to read Grace Paley---she had made me a list of who I should read---Linda Pastan, Muriel Rukeyser, Rita Dove---Honi had known who would speak to me---she recognized that voice within me as a young writer and what it needed to grow. I heard Grace read here in DC---how still we sat at the JCC, hanging on to every word, our own hearts, silently nodding along as if she had reached into us and pulled out a story we didn't know we had.
She was the grandmother I think many of us younger writers wanted also to call our own. To read her work, was almost to be standing next to her at the stove or sitting next to her. She will be much missed, but she will live on through her words.
She was the grandmother I think many of us younger writers wanted also to call our own. To read her work, was almost to be standing next to her at the stove or sitting next to her. She will be much missed, but she will live on through her words.
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