Amy texts to tell me the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood is about to close. Pang of regret. Gone forever, the only concrete geodesic dome in the world
mumber 3
“I’d like
a Dreaming Princess cake,*
please, with a sprinkle
of fairy dust
on top. Have the unicorn
bring it over to that table
by the window.”
These are not meant to be literal translations, but interpretations, or approximations, of Matsuo Bashō’s haiku. The goal in each case was to capture the essence of the original and add a sparkle of my own
Once upon a time there lived a woman who, instead of hearing what people actually said, heard thoughts that swarmed in people’s heads. In her youth, this woman did not even know that what she heard were other people’s thoughts.
The problem with me, he says, is that my parallel is too nice, thereby making me too mean. Apparently it’s because I clamshell up even though we live a 10-minute walk from a pho place with the best Bun Bo Hue in Sunnyvale, because even pho can’t drag me out of this house, from under its short ceiling that feels closer to squashing me into the ground every morning, from the rails of the balcony overlooking the street where I can hear gunshots every several nights even though this area is supposed to be super gentrified, full of software engineers and their 4K monitors.
In the blue light of your bedroom
I could be anything: housewife
mending the shadows as they drape
the clothesline, ghost boy, music
pulled from the belly of the lake.
am neatly obsessed with warm concrete
am neatly obsessed with my favorite water brand
am neatly obsessed with tercets & triplet hearts
am neatly obsessed with names that a hold a home
am neatly obsessed with streets that overflow in obscurity
am neatly obsessed with trails that go on for miles
am neatly obsessed with packages that read like blankets
I whisk myself away, and
appetite follows. My stomach growls
when it’s horny–I mean hungry.
One of my favorite albums is
Sex and Food by Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
I want you on top.
Let me see
a man cast out of heaven
on my account.
I want to see
the moment
a goddess goes
gilded—right before
she goes on to glory
When I go to sleep I do not see monsters, it is your slight figure,
the windows are open and you give it to me easy with sugar and
I still don’t know what too much of a good thing can do, sugar
leave the drapes open—those moonlines have kept me up for fortnights,