/pretend..

hey, do you remember the night we crawled into the coconut shell? and we kissed and kissed and kissed in the coconut milk like two little baby kittens who couldn’t stop rubbing against each other. my body isn’t warm without your body. my fingers only reach out to touch you. my tongue tastes nothing but your sweetness and salt. do you remember when we slept in the sand pail? it rubbed against our skin until we were nothing but vulnerable, nothing but innocent and pink. my body isn’t whole without your body inside of me. my ears hear only your whispers. do you remember when we crawled into the car tire? it deflated all around us and the only air we could breathe was from each others lungs, from each others chests. tummy to tummy. cheek to cheek. feet tangled.

my body aches only for your body and my body only sleeps next to your body.

the secretary

I’m not even lying when I say to you that I took ballet lessons for about 8 years out of the back of a country store.

We moved to Kennesaw, Georgia, from Stone Mountain, Georgia when I was still a baby because my father got a job there for a roofing company. His office was across the street from my “ballet studio,” which was the back room of a two story country store. It was a wonderland of peach potpourri, handmade rocking chairs, hand-dipped candles, and stuffed bears with parasols and Scarlett O’Hara dresses. My ballet instructor was the red haired, big-eyed daughter of the couple that ran the store. To me she was a goddess.

My father’s office was in a small white building across the street, across Main Street of course. Sometimes he would pick me up from ballet on his way home. I would climb up into his big pickup and listen to the radio for the three minutes it took to get to the house. One time in particular, I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7 years old, and he told me to come with him back to the office for a minute before going home.

The office was uncharted territory for me.

We walked in and my father plopped me down on a chair in the room, straight across from his secretary, while he wandered over to the vending machine. The room smelled like paper and carpet, my chair was hard and black. The secretary sat at a big metal desk covered in architect paper and a bulky beige phone with a shoulder rest. The phone had so many buttons! His secretary was intriguing; I couldn’t divert my eyes no matter how hard I was trying to be polite. She smiled at me with her magenta lips and I rustled around on the chair in my tutu and tights.

“What’s your name, darlin’?” she asked, squinting her eyes a little. I didn’t say anything, just blushed and looked down, fingering the tulle of my tutu. She went back to typing with her long acrylic fingernails on a huge IBM.

My father returned with a moon pie from the vending machine and handed it over to me. I grabbed his hand and pulled his face down towards mine and whispered in his ear:

“But daddy, when she types on the computer she doesn’t even have to look at the keys!!”

tired

my body is tired

my mind is tired

and if i knew where my home was

i would want to go there now.

sunday morning

I wake up this morning after a rather interesting, wild night out, to a message:
Tant que c’est moi qui paie la soirée je crois qu’il n’est plus nécessaire que tu viennes a l’avenir.

For those of you who don’t speak french, here is a translation:
"You are a total bitch for not wanting to sleep with me anymore, and because I had to go home alone it makes me feel better to leave you nasty messages at 4 AM."




The thing is, even though I know this true translation......





it made me cry anyway.

inspired/ uninspired

i would really love to live life making vanilla cupcakes with butter cream frosting // stitching calico napkins with rickrack edges // collecting vintage frames for my robins-egg walls // baking bread to bob dylan //dinner parties with chicken and dumplings and friends in knit hats //reading magazines with american coffee // local bands and local bars // i miss athens, georgia and my lovely lovely people there // people with curves and bends and singsongs //far sighted friends //The Grit for a sunday brunch // painting parties and band-in-a-box // waking up next to fresh-faced hipsters saying :we've got to get out of this town....: sometimes i think i was born to b-and-b

nowtimes i feel like i am surrounded by robots (robots charged by credit cards)

25 stories

I woke up in the dark, messy rive droite flat of a tall, dark man from Strasbourg with adorable black-rimmed glasses.

He kissed me on the cheek and told me to sleep as long as I’d like, then shuffled out the door in his suit and tie and black attaché case.

( It was so cliché that if I hadn’t of lived it I wouldn’t believe it.)

I slept another hour or something (in awe of his capacity to be not only awake but dressed and out the door at 9.) I managed to find one boot, two boots, pants, bra, my favorite black sweater... drink some water from the faucet, put the champagne flutes in the sink, made the bed.

Right next to the bed, on the floor, was an issue of Playboy, the new French GQ, and an Italian dictionary. It was so cute I had to take a picture.

I left him my card.

its personal

i'm 25 today.
i started this blog when i was 22.

This was my first post

that seems like a long time ago.
xo

n'importe quoi

when I miss you I miss you like my pancreas

when I miss you I miss you like a sunburn
when I miss you I miss you like a blood stain
when I miss you I miss you like chopsticks
when I miss you I miss you like a broken vibrator
when I miss you I miss you like windex
when I miss you I miss you like shoe boxes
when I miss you I miss you like gift baskets
when I miss you I miss you like leap years
when I miss you I miss you like
when I miss you I miss you
when I miss you

I hate telling you how much I miss you.
but I miss you.

tu m'as fait vibrer

i washed you out of my sheets today

i'm not letting you back in


no no no no way no how

resolutions and adjustments to your new model

resolved
that i will stop asking the boy to dinner
when i know
he wants only after-dinner
that i will stop obsessing over
life and love
in new orleans
by online means such as facebook
(when i should be out living real life with real
three
dimensional
people)

resolved that
the way i feel on the 6 metro
at 8 at night, on the way home
crossing over the black seine and
devouring the sparkling eiffel tower
with my soul and my eyes and my fingertips
the way i feel when the woman
at the boulangerie says "bonjour ma biche"
and already starts to cut me a demi-baguette
is the way i will ALWAYS feel

(and resolved that the canadian bitches

won't hurt my feelings anymore)

i miss anna

on the island
when we were really really broke
(too broke for rum)
we made potato curry
and still invited everyone over
to take a bite

paper doll II

the paper doll girl got a paper doll boy
(he had a beret accessory)
and she fashioned him into her lover

instead of dressing him up,
the clothes came off

until the day she
looked
at his one dimensional body
and realized that
no matter how many Gucci shirts she bent over his arms
or how many wine glasses she pasted to his hand
he would always \be made out of

wood pulp and red #5

the party

wendy grey was perpetual jet lag.
susan condor was red wine stained teeth.
martha winters was apathy and over-education.
miriam paul was solitude.
and every night they had a party all together all at the same time in the same place.

wendy would always say “I am so tired! why can’t I sleep?”
and susan would smile sloppily.
martha would nod and be rudely aloof while miriam usually locked herself in the bathroom.

what a strange group of girls they were.

home for the holidays

everyone is prayin' for rain with their eyes up toward that cloudless sky

but i'll just lay down in the cracked clay of lake lanier
and say

"man,
i know how you feel"

and one day you'll be in the NY Times too

The bridegroom’s previous marriage ended in divorce

smile for all the camera flashes, baby

just look at that diamond sparkle.

paper doll I

There once was a paper doll girl. Each time she met someone new, they would pick up the blue polka dot spring dress and place it onto her, bending the paper taps over her shoulders and hips, and stand her up somewhere. Or they would put onto her the tulle and flowers wedding dress. Or the little black cocktail outfit. Or the business suit that had been ripped a little at the waist and pasted back together.

Everyone loved the paper doll girl because she became whatever they wanted her to be.

plans for 2008

take up courses at the Sorbet (that’s in Parisfranz) in pencil sharpening, cursive handwriting, and the metric system.

work some times for Mr. Vansnuzzlegarf, collecting cans and reading warning labels.

after exams, begin work with Mr. Widdy Lohan, in his low-rise office building overlooking some seines, re-corking wine bottles.

in august, return to Lose-yer-antlers, with new hair color and passport of Lottie Majors.

dip

he used to rest his hand in the dip near above my hip

and push into me, laying behind

and beg me to stay the night

i would reply, with retrospective irony,

that my single-girl ways wouldn’t allow it

anywhere but here, anytime but now

i wish we were playing yam under the mosquito nets
listening to the short-wave radio oh oh

walking on the sky