It's December in NY -- by Florence Cassen Mayers

***

It’s December in NY

and dogs wear coats.
Rich ladies air fur coats,
the homeless bundle worn coats.
Annual coat
drives distribute hats and coats.
Cold as the Norwegian coast,

cold as South Dakota.
Button up your overcoat.
Layer sweater, leggings, petticoat,
mittens, muffler, ascot.
Is that coat
warm enough? A new winter coat

need not cost a
fortune, coats
are on sale everywhere. 25% off on these coats
40% off on those coats.
Searle on Madison shows beautiful red alpaca coats.
Ducks float

on the reservoir in Central Park (there are no boats),
and boast
down layers under smooth green throats.
We’re not supposed to but we toss them oats,
dry toast,
sugar-coated groats.

Rim of reservoir: ice coated.
Policemen: blue coated.
Ice coats
puddles in crosswalks, sidewalks: coated
with salt, driveways: sand coated.
I coat

I fish fillets lightly with flour, recoat
in hazelnut coating,
a Tbs. olive oil will do to coat
romaine. Vanilla custard thickens, coats
my spoon. We drink a red, a Cote
de Rhone. Please bring home a bag of tacos.

I buy us a used coat rack: we’ve no room in the coat
closet for so many coats. It needs three coats
of paint: an undercoat, a primer, a top coat.

-- Florence Cassen Mayers

***

I would like this please. Thank you.
Pillowig = JooYoun Paek
***

Revolution Only Needs Good Dreamers Who Remember Their Dreams

***

“You said, 'They’re harmless dreamers and they’re loved by the people.' — 'What,' I asked you, 'is harmless about a dreamer, and what,' I asked you, 'is harmless about the love of the people? — Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.'"

-- Camino Real

***

Source
***

all night long, all night long

***

Lined paper Tea Towels.
College-ruled, of course.

***

STOLEN MOMENTS

What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge—
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.

-- Kim Addonizio

***
I love me some Koko Taylor.
Come on mama. Come on.

***

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy.

it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. If you can raed tihs, psot it to yuor wlal.

Olny 55% of plepoe can

Source

The Branch that Holds Us: Reach Out and Touch Faith

***

The Branch that Holds Us
Heidi Garnett

An eagle falls without knowing its falling,
what up or down is. It flies the thin water of sky
like a pour of grace, breaks the properties of air
into flexion and extension, wide, bold wing strokes.
Time is a hunger a slanted eye, open or closed,
light or dark, the past and future out of sight.

Only we know the hooked branch that grafts the past
to now, the weight of wood and skull,
the thin rings of dry years. We sit and watch,
our eyes frozen open like a horned owl's,
pare the moon sliver by sliver until there is just light
enough to see the distance we've fallen.

But there have been times when I imagined myself
a bird suspended in the moment, and
trusted barbs and barbules would hold,
saw how the corn flowers I picked so long ago
were the most precious blue, the sky fallen to bits, and
I knew how small everything is, how perfect.

From phosphorus, 2006.

***
Song of the Day?
Johnny Cash and John Frusciante collaborating on a cover of "Personal Jesus"

Dear dad: thanks for preaching Cash to me as a kiddie wink.
Dear teenage years: thanks for making me angsty and pushing me towards the Chili Peppers.
***
New Year's is just around the corner.
I'm heading to DC for some lovin' with the besties: JCK & MAC --
besties from college & childhood. Here I go: watch us scatter.
***
Still Waters Run Deep
Source

this sky, your sky, my sky, let's sail away and section it off to make our mark in that sky,sky, sky

Source

Marfa -- Linda Gregg

Marfa
Linda Gregg

They said they were going to telephone me
here in faraway Marfa, Texas, to ask me about
my poetry, past and future. I am here struggling
with the desert and used-up words.
Stillness, sacred, death, peace and farness.
With God's body, dreamless and sleeping
while awake. Nothing between me and it.
Empty and willing to be judged by Heaven.
Readiness to be received. God might be the old
version who struck people down because somebody
asked him to. A kind of courtyard for the Mafia.
The desert after rain with a three-colored rainbow.
A place of your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine.
Christ as the sun going down when the border
patrol cars are dragging tires on the dirt road
every evening to look for footprints
the next morning. I keep thinking that if I go
alone into the size of this silence, we can
straighten things out. To know what to question,
and what to believe. How to let my heart
split open. To print in clear light
the changing register of this grand world.