"AOC. What's that?"

Two guys, one covered in tatts, talked loudly next to the tourist vans they drive, while their tourists were at the temple. Something about taxes, then "no one looks out for the workers; it's the employers who take everything!" 

 

"You should support AOC next time," I said. "What's that, AOC?" the one guy asked, baffled. I said her full name. "Mayor of something?" "No, a congresswoman who supports workers." 

 

"I just live under a rock," the more heavily tatted one said. The other guy asked if my camera is digital. Yeah, but it looks retro, I said. "Poor person's Leica." He said he was a photographer. I asked if I could take his picture, and he asked what for, so I showed him some of my instagram feed, mostly abstracts, which popped up first. He liked the rusted metal photos. But he preferred taking the pictures to being in them. I asked the other guy if I could take a photo of his tatts. Nah, he said. "I see I struck out!" I said, as Lilith and I climbed the hill.

 

Ed Foster, a personal obit

I met Ed Foster at the first of the Russian/American conferences in Hoboken in the 1990s. The conference was amazing, though the scheduling was not. There were two breakfasts in a row, as I recall, and then no time between panels/events. The "lounge" exploded with smoke from the Russians talking to the Americans in no particular language. At one point, Russians and Americans bonded over hearing the sound of gunfire at night in St. Petersburg and Detroit (say). One Russian poet tried to walk out of his own reading, but was heckled back on stage by Andrew Dragomoshenko. (Lyn Hejinian told me what they were arguing about, and I forgot.) I later saw him wrapped around a staircase railing. I believe he died by suicide some years later. Ed was quiet and kind throughout; there was no grand master of ceremonies shtick from him. 

 

At the last Maine conference, he spoke up from the back of a room to say that becoming an editor was "a disaster." "No one thinks of you as a poet ever again," he said, I attended one of his conferences in Amherst in 2019 (was it?), a lovely gathering of souls who read to each other (no one else seemed to come!) and ate Chinese food together. Ed's introductions to the readers, including me, were kind, thoughtful, incisive. It was a blessing to be so introduced.

 

Ed published two of my books and would have done a third if illness hadn't taken him away from us years ago. He sent me his last book of poems, which was stark. His childhood had been more than difficult and, combined with the New Englandly stoicism, made for a stern brew. 

 

In recent years, the conversations between some of us have centered around the question "how's Ed?" I corresponded occasionally with his friend of the many names, now deceased (like my memory), about his failing attempts to keep Talisman on track. Now I find the Talisman House website littered with hacked intrusions, and feel sadness. (Google his books and you find them--and a slew of books on being Wiccan.) And I feel awe at what Ed accomplished over his many years of service to our craft, his close care to others' work, his quiet kindness.

 

Sweetie's new digs

"Are you the person who took Sweetie?" I asked the woman who answered the doorbell. "I wanted to thank you." She was, and I did. We adjourned to one of the rooms in her house; the TV was playing Nemo over a comfy dog bed. And there she was! I'd been afraid that Sweetie might be completely unsocialized after her years alone on the fenced lanai. But she came over to say hello, and has clearly bonded with her new person. Mary is retired military; she did logistics for the army groups that traveled to excavate the graves of dead Americans in SE Asia. While in Vietnam, she had visited the Hanoi Hilton; she's also following the Theravadan monks on their walk across the south, and I told her about the weeping man who told the head monk that his father had been a POW there. She flinched at the memory of her visit. 

 

Shortly after my confrontation with the previous "owner," and before the Humane Society came by, the owner had told Mary that she could have the dog. "Take her," he'd said. She'd asked for Sweetie a year ago, but he didn't want to give her away then. All she could do was to give Sweetie a platform that got her off the cement. Mary decided to think it over, but that next night was cold and wet, so she took Sweetie into her home already populated with a rescue dog and several foster cats. The vet had said they'd check her heart first; if there was something wrong, it's wouldn't be worth going further. Her heart was strong! She was 25 pounds underweight was all. All.

 

Sweetie couldn't walk when Mary got her a few days ago. She's now walking, indoors and out. "Has a bit of a swagger when I take her on short walks," Mary reported. Sweetie's a lovely soul, and she sure smells better than she used to. "For however long she has left," Mary told me, "Sweetie will have a good life."

My heart, cracked hard by the events of this past week, year, decade, opened wide. Next time, I'll take Lilith with me.

Death on the street

I try to stay off my phone during Lilith walks but today we had a long light at Kahekili on the way home, so I turned it on to Threads. First item: "He called her a bitch after he killed her," read the caption to the agent's own video of Good's death. He had started on her side of the car; she smiled at him and said she wasn't angry. He walked behind the car, where Good's wife told him that they didn't change their license plates every day. She heckled him a bit. She had her phone up. Her last words to him before he came all the way around the car were, "go get your lunch, big boy." He came around the front of the car, its wheels turning away from him, and he shot. Digital noise. Video over. 

 

Lilith and I crossed the street.

 

Update on Sweetie, the neglected dog

"The woman with the big white dog took Sweetie," people told me. I couldn't place her, for no good reason imagining a fluffy dog. But, yes, it's the woman who rescued a white pit bull from He`eia; Lilith and I have to navigate around her and the dog, who pulls hard. She told me about her white dog once, her voice gentle. "She's a real animal lover," the property manager told me, "spends thousands of dollars on cats. She asked if she could take Sweetie over a year ago, but the guy said no."

 

Mary (for that might be her name) took Sweetie to the vet, the manager told me. She's healthy, except that she's supposed to weigh 60 pounds and she's down to 40. (She looked like a camp survivor when I last saw her, her haunches nearly fleshless, her ribs protruding.) The Humane Society talked to the man who'd neglected her for over an hour the other day. Perhaps there was a fine. Apparently, there's only one person who does this work on the whole island, the manager said.

 

On our way home, Lilith and I decided to find Sweetie's new person. We were walking beside the next parking lot up, when we saw Sweetie's old "owner." I'd spoken to him last week, telling him I was fond of his dog, was very worried about her. He'd spoken to me with a faint smile on his face. This morning, as he came toward us in his emergency lime green vest, wearing that faint smile, I said, "did Sweetie find a new home?"

 

Mr. Faint Smile walked by us, uttering not a word.

 

For Sweetie

I won't post my last photos of Sweetie; they were taken for the Humane Society. She lived in a fenced-off cement lanai about the size of the box I'm writing in now. This morning, when Lilith and I approached her enclosure, we saw an empty plastic igloo (her residence), a damp cushion half-way into her open door, the yellow plastic bone she never played with (why would she?), a smallish shit stain, no water or food dish, a hose. Her filthy, faded red collar sat on top of the small door on the way out. Sweetie was gone.

 

from Startles

 

Startles

Upside down tee shirts hang on the line under an overhang, dripping from the head space below. Half moon on white shirt or window whose translucence wrinkles. Clothes pins turn to the right; palm fronds hang down. Wallace Stevens is not my type, a poet announces on social media; and if he were? What would dangle down?

Farther trees lumber in moist wind under a clotted gray sky. My teacher corrected me to “skies,” but I see only one, smeared like chalk on cement. Small boy hands brightly colored drawing to monks; one receives it, hands held out, palms up. The new mayor prays with open palms, gloved ones. The palm outside drops dead fronds beside the laundry.

Era of objective falsehoods, like fictions about facts, or facts without invention’s anchor. To tell the truth is to look outside of us, as through a camera, not to dance inside among the crazy synapses. Under tyranny, we see, not think, at least not feelingly. Nothing’s traced inside the diagram of depth, where feeling used to lie like the monks’ dog. Only if introspection orbits over black lines can it operate at all.

Where’s the manual for this time? If space and time are invented by us, we’ve made two big problems! The spaces of time constrict, like blood vessels, while the time of our constructions dissolves like water on salt. That leaves us on a flat surface, flailing to launch. My dog killed a bird the other day; in the family story that followed, bird became two chicks, and death a couple of snacks.

The monk calls our phones our lovers. Hundreds pointed at him, who is coming to be loved through them, set on silent to honor pilgrimage. He urges us not to worry about the world, but to be present to ourselves. “Selves” is not the right word, but will take the place of emptiness for now. At the turn of the year we cling to the high rope with bare toes, bare life meeting the asphalt of a Georgia road, our blisters the size of saucers.

Not flying ones, but those that hit the hard ground. If I cannot find myself inside, I will look for “it” on the road, treasure each pothole as an internal incident. It or thou, no matter. The difference is in our being taker or receiver of the photograph. One monk runs ahead, holding out his phone to record the other monks walking. The phone contains a sacred space, but compresses it for social media.

“I’ve never before seen anyone act Christ-like,” a woman tells her phone. “You give me reason to stay alive,” another tells a monk. She and he are sitting on asphalt. Compassion is also hard. As is this present.

Published photos, now and then

 The expansive new issue of Laura Hinton's journal, Chant de la Sirene, is on-line now. My photographs and writing are among the features, along with Laura's kind, perceptive critique of my abstract photographs. See here: https://www.chantdelasirenejournal.com/issue-5-ontyranny-poetry-protest-art

 

Because I no longer keep my cv updated (it's also retired!), I'm going to post two other journal issues, these from 2023 and edited by Zhang Er, that include my photographs. Here: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6DEEqCKEFw4umhBfSrE8ug

and here: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yQL9HiX4r4dJG0UfdJDIEA 

The poems in this journal are in Chinese, but there's a translation button, too.