calamity has already been and gone, its arrows still clean

I do not wake up buzzing with happiness. 

In fact my bed is full of wasps. I have been stung 

 

everywhere tender. I have not had fun 

in a long time, maybe in ever. 

 

My blessings do not run over and also 

I have none. My sink is leaking. 

 

My sink is running over with wasps. 

They have carried off all my sugar. 

 

See how poor I am, how luckless, how unshapely 

my head from which no hair falls in waves. 

 

I have no children to speak of, 

no robes sewn with threads of gold, 

 

no robes. I am a patch of dirt, a glass 

of vinegar, a bony goose among fat others. 

 

I am an unworthy enemy, small and mean. 

In fact calamity has already been and gone, 

 

its arrows still clean. I do not need to play dead. 

Not even death would want to play with me. 

 

 [Claire Wahmanholm, ‘If Anyone Asks’, from Meltwater: Poems]

I won't pretend I haven't screamed in the kitchen

    If you like podcasts, I recommend The Dish Podcast (by Waitrose), hosted by Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett. At the end of a lighthearted interview with someone famous—conducted while they eat a terrific meal—Nick and Ange ask a series of "rapid-fire" questions. 

    What follows are more of those questions, adapted to American culture and customs. My original post in what may become a series, from last January, is here. 

 

poached egg

What is the scariest way to eat eggs? 

    poached. Eating eggs is an act of willful ignorance for me. In order to turn my brain off, I need to accept it as something less than what it really is; I can't look at the original format and think it's something that I'm supposed to consume. 

What is your favorite pie? 

    peach melba. I love fruit, and raspberries and peaches are among my favorites on their own. Together, they are tart-sweet and extra flavorful. When made properly, a good pie can keep them relatively intact, so the result is not a swirly pinkish mixture but two great fruits coexisting in a crispy crust.  

What is your favorite chocolate bar? 

Orecchiette

    Milky Way. Not usually my first choice if I'm buying a candy bar (which so rarely happens, anyway) but the one I enjoy the most when offered as an option.  

What is your favorite pasta shape name for a cat? 

    Fedelini (it's a very thin spaghetti, whose name means "little faithful ones") or Orecchiette (meaning "little ears") or maybe Pansotti ("big bellies")

What is your favorite drink to use to splash in someone’s face to show disgust? 

    purple Jesus 

When you’re away from home, what dish do you miss? 

grilled cheese

     hamburger gravy & mashed potatoes. It is the flavor of my childhood, an absolute and immediate comfort food, and just difficult-enough to make in small quantity that I rarely cook it just for myself. 

What is your favorite dish from childhood? 

    besides the above? Grilled cheese. 

What is your favorite toast topping? 

     on especially good bread, butter only. On regular bread, low-sugar strawberry jam.

What is your go-to pizza order? 

    Canadian bacon, fresh tomato, and either green pepper or green olive 

maple long johns

What is your favorite donut? 

    maple-frosted long johns, from the local place 

What is your favorite thing to barbecue? 

    I don't actually barbecue things, on my own. I've got a policy about working with fire, which is that I don't.

    I like things that have been grilled, but I'm super picky about it. Nothing charred, nothing stuffed, nothing with a bone. No barbecued hamburgers. I prefer my steak pan-fried in butter.

    After all that: I would choose a plain brat, on a white bun, with mustard and ketchup.     

 

[the title quotation is from Angela Hartnett]

love and fear, grief and joy

Within the circles of our lives 

we dance the circles of the years, 

the circles of the seasons 

within the circles of the years, 

the cycles of the moon 

within the circles of the seasons, 

the circles of our reasons 

within the cycles of the moon. 

 

Again, again we come and go 

changed, changing. Hands 

join, unjoin in love and fear, 

grief and joy. The circles turn, 

each giving into each, into all. 

Only music keeps us here, 

 

each by all the others held. 

In the hold of hands and eyes 

we turn in pairs, that joining 

joining each to all again. 

 

And then we turn aside, alone, 

out of the sunlight gone 

 

into the darker circles of return. 

 

[Wendell Berry {1934- } 'Song (4)', from New Collected Poems]

as full of spirit as the month of May, and as gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer

More accurate than a Buzzfeed quiz; less accurate than your therapist’s raised eyebrow.🤨

 

🌼 How Should You Celebrate May Day? 🎀

 

May Day has worn many hats over the centuries—spring festival, workers’ holiday, excuse for flowers and dancing, or simply a moment to step outside and welcome the turning of the season. But the best way to celebrate depends on your personality. Take this quiz to discover your ideal way to mark the arrival of May.  

---

1. The first truly warm day of spring makes you want to: 

    A. Head outside and wander somewhere green. 

    B. Invite friends over for something festive. 

    C. Start a creative project inspired by the season. 

    D. Sit quietly and soak in the sunshine. 

 

2. Pick a springtime scene: 

    A. Wildflowers along a quiet trail. 

    B. Music, laughter, and a gathering in a park. 

    C. Craft tables covered in ribbons and blossoms. 

    D. A porch chair and a gentle breeze. 

 

3. Your approach to seasonal traditions is: 

    A. Get outside and celebrate nature. 

    B. Share them with friends and community. 

    C. Make something beautiful to mark the moment. 

    D. Enjoy them quietly in your own way. 

 

4. Your spring soundtrack would be: 

    A. Birds and rustling leaves. 

    B. Folk music and cheerful chatter. 

    C. Something whimsical and creative. 

    D. Quiet, peaceful silence. 

 

5. Your ideal May Day memory would involve: 

    A. Discovering a beautiful place outdoors. 

    B. Laughing with friends under blooming trees. 

    C. Creating something colorful and joyful. 

    D. A calm moment that feels quietly perfect. 

 

Results in the comments! 

 

[the title quotation is by William Shakespeare, from The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 2]

the name of a faraway city

Why make? I used to wonder. 

Is it something you have to keep on 

making, like beds or dinner, stir it up 

 

or smooth it down? Sex, I understood, 

an easy creaking on the upholstered 

springs of a man you meet in passing. 

 

You have sex, you don't have to make it, 

it makes you—rise and fall and rise again, 

each time, each man, new. But love? 

 

It could be the name of a faraway 

city, end of a tired journey you take 

with some husband, your bodies chugging 

 

their way up the mountain, glimpsing 

the city lights and thinking, If we can 

keep it up, we'll make Love by morning. 

 

I guess it was fun for somebody, 

my grandmother once said. By then I

was safely married and had earned 

 

the right to ask, there in the kitchen 

beside the nodding aunts. Her answer 

made me sad. In her time, love meant making 

 

babies, and if I had borne twelve 

and buried three, I might see my husband 

as a gun shooting off inside me, each bullet 

 

another year gone. But sex wasn't my question. 

Love was the ghost whose shape kept 

shifting. For us, it did not mean babies, 

 

those plump incarnations the minister 

had promised—flesh of our flesh, 

our increase. Without them, and twenty years 

 

gone, what have we to show 

for the planing and hammering, bone 

against bone, chisel and wedge, 

 

the tedious sanding of night 

into morning—when we rise, stretch, 

shake out the years, lean back, 

 

and see what we've made: no ghost, 

it's a house. Sunlight through the window 

glazing our faces, patina of dust 

 

on our arms. At every axis, mortise 

and tenon couple and hold. Doors 

swing heavy on their hinges. 

 

 [Rebecca McClanahan 'Making Love', from The Best American Poetry 1998; John Hollander, ed.]

swear, my heart, that you will never give them up

Sing, my heart, the gardens you never walked, 

like gardens sealed in glass balls, unreachable. 

Sing the waters and roses of Isfahan and Shiraz; 

praise them, lush beyond compare. 

 

Swear, my heart, that you will never give them up. 

That the figs they ripened ripened for you. 

That you could tell by its fragrance 

each blossoming branch. 

 

Don't imagine you could ever let them go 

once they made the daring choice: to be! 

Like a silken thread, you entered the weaving. 

 

Whatever image you take within you deeply, 

even for a moment in a lifetime of pain, 

see how it reveals the whole—the great tapestry. 

 

Singe die Gärten, mein Herz, die du nicht kennst; wie in Glas 

eingegossene Gärten, klar, unerreichbar. 

Wasser und Rosen von Ispahan oder Schiras, 

singe sie selig, preise sie, keinem vergleichbar. 

 

Zeige, mein Herz, daß du sie niemals entbehrst. 

Daß sie dich meinen, ihre reifenden Feigen. 

Daß du mit ihren, zwischen den blühenden Zweigen 

wie zum Gesicht gesteigerten Lüften verkehrst. 

 

Meide den Irrtum, daß es Entbehrungen gebe 

für den geschehnen Entschluß, diesen: zu sein! 

Seidener Faden, kamst du hinein ins Gewebe. 

 

Welchem der Bilder du auch im Innern geeint bist 

(sei es selbst ein Moment aus dem Leben der Pein), 

fühl, daß der ganze, der rühmliche Teppich gemeint ist. 

 

 [Zweiter Teil, XXI] 

 

 [Rainer Maria Rilke {1875-1926} "Part Two, XXI" from 'Sonnets to Orpheus', in In Praise of Morality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, trans. and ed. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy]

a fair game

when all the cards are in

when all the chips are counted

the smiles smiled

the pictures taken

i wonder

if they'll say

you played a fair

game 

of game? 

 

[Nikki Giovanni {1943-2024} 'The Game of Game', from The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, 1968-1998]

all those pineapples gave me a stomachache. So I went to a bar

Average rating: 7.75 (not counting the DNF)

Cellular {Final Call} (2004) - "A woman held captive manages to piece together a broken phone and reaches a random young man on the other end of the line, pulling him into a race against time to save her and her family. The entire story unfolds through fragile connections—calls that can drop at any moment, information that arrives incomplete, and decisions made under pressure. As the stakes escalate, what begins as an accidental contact becomes a tense relay of trust, improvisation, and urgency across a city in motion." 

length: 1h, 33m  |  source: my DVD  |  directed by David R. Ellis  |  why I watched: I'm digging deep into the Jason Statham filmography

IMDb: 6.5/10  |  Rotten Tomatoes: 56% / 58% Audience  |  my IMDb: 7/10  |  MPAA: PG-13

tone & texture: unsettling, fast-cut/kinetic

notable quote: "'You're gonna need about five stitches. But some of this tissue looks...gangrenous.'

    'That's avocado mud mask. It's for combination skin.'"

my notes: Cellular suffers from an identity crisis. Is it a comedy? A thriller? Ironic, energetic, indie? It starts out feeling like another teen movie, or maybe an episode of Criminal Minds. In the end, it feels like a somewhat more engrossing and sustainably intense Speed. The destination is worthy of the bizarre journey. It's a different sort of movie, but I liked it.

    I particularly enjoyed producer Dean Devlin (of Leverage fame) as a cab driver, and (surprising for me) Rick Hoffman as the lawyer. 

    Roger Ebert's review is here—and he really liked it!  

themes: courage, found family, justice

overall:  recommended

 

Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) - "In the early days of television journalism, broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and his team at CBS take on Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose anti-communist investigations have created a climate of fear across the United States. In Good Night, and Good Luck., the newsroom becomes a battleground where words, images, and integrity carry real consequence. Told with restraint and precision, the film captures a moment when speaking plainly on air required both courage and clarity—and when the cost of silence felt just as high." 

length: 1h, 33m  |  source: my DVD  |  directed by George Clooney  |  why I watched: it's been recommended many times, I like Clooney's work (especially as a writer and director), and the subject is timely

IMDb: 7.4/10  |  Rotten Tomatoes: 93% / 83% Audience  |  my IMDb: 8/10  |  MPAA: PG

tone & texture: straightforward, noir shadows

notable quote: "We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always, that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to associate, to speak, and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular."

my notes: I admire the filmmaking, which is gorgeously done—tight shots, interesting (but not distractingly intense) angles, brilliant lighting, and almost flawless acting. It's a good story, well told. It's also a movie that I do not need to see again. 

    Roger Ebert's excellent review is here. 

themes: courage, justice, tradition vs. change

overall:  recommended

Chungking Express {Chung Hing sam lam} (1994) - "Two loosely connected stories unfold in the restless pulse of Hong Kong: a heartbroken cop marking time by expiration dates and chance encounters, and another drifting through routine until a quietly eccentric woman begins to reshape his world in small, almost invisible ways. Love is fleeting, accidental, and often one step out of sync—felt more in passing moments than in declarations. The film moves with a buoyant, improvisational energy, capturing the strange intimacy of loneliness in a crowded city." 

length: 1h, 42m  |  source: my DVD  |  directed by Wong Kar-wai  |  why I watched: this film is a sort of trifecta, uniting a favorite director with two favorite actors, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Takeshi Kaneshiro

IMDb: 7.9/10  |  Rotten Tomatoes: 89% / 93% Audience  |  my IMDb: 9/10  |  MPAA: PG-13

tone & texture: intimate, high-color/stylized

notable quote: "We're all unlucky in love sometimes. When I am, I go jogging. The body loses water when you jog, so you have none left for tears."

my notes: trippy, melancholy, incredibly funny, sweet, thoughtful, and deeply romantic... This is one of the best movies I've ever seen. As it ended, I was beaming and in tears. It's so good. 

    Roger Ebert's review is here. 

themes: identity, memory, love

overall: very highly recommended

Spy Game (2001) - "On the day a veteran CIA officer plans to retire, he learns that a former protégé has been captured in China and is facing execution. Over the course of a single day, he navigates a web of bureaucracy, politics, and surveillance, using every ounce of experience to influence an outcome from behind a desk. Past and present intertwine, revealing a mentor–protégé relationship forged through missions, compromises, and hard-earned trust—where loyalty may matter more than the rules meant to govern it." 

length: 2h, 6m  |  source: my DVD  |  directed by Tony Scott  |  why I watched: I've seen it before (previously reviewed here) and liked it

IMDb: 7.1/10  |  Rotten Tomatoes: 64% / 75% Audience  |  my IMDb: 7/10  |  MPAA: R

tone & texture: straightforward, crisp & modern

notable quote: "'We're going to need you upstairs a bit longer.'

    [sighs] 'You've got something in your teeth.'"

my notes: the first time I saw it, I was more swept up; this time I saw the support structure (and thus the flaws). Still, it's a good film, and any opportunity to see Robert Redford is worth the time. The story is intricate, the pacing demanding, and the finale rewarding. 

     Roger Ebert's review is here. 

themes: loyalty

overall:  recommended

 

L'Amour Braque {Mad Love} (1985) - "Sophie Marceau, Tchéky Karyo, and Francis Huster form the mad love-triangle at the core of Andrzej Zulawski’s L’Amour Braque (a.k.a. Mad Love), a postmodern, existentialist homage to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel The Idiot. A manic bank robber (Karyo) aims to take back his beloved moll (Marceau) from rival gangsters. On a train to Paris, he meets a neurotic dreamer (Huster) who assumes the mantle of the tale’s 'idiot' and gets swept up in the ensuing maelstrom of love and vengeance. Brimming with outbursts of energy and eruptions of emotional violence, L’Amour Braque is a deliriously unique, perverse and bloody ballet choreographed by the visionary director of Possession and Cosmos." 

length: 1h, 41m  |  source: my DVD  |  directed by Andrzej Zulawski  |  why I watched: I'm fascinated with Tchéky Karyo, whose work in La Femme Nikita, Kiss of the Dragon and A Very Long Engagement I admire

IMDb: 5.9/10  |  Rotten Tomatoes: NA% / 45% Audience  |  my IMDb: 1/10 DNF  |  MPAA: Not rated

tone & texture: unsettling, absurd/surreal

notable quote: "'I've never been in love, just sick.'   

    'Same thing.'"

my notes: manic, loud, and obvious—this is the polar opposite from the qualities of Karyo's work that I've admired in the past. Yuck.

themes: chaos v. order

overall: not recommended

 

[the title quotation is from Chungking Express]

would it not be difficult

'I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's 

Version of Three Blind Mice' 

 

And I start wondering how they came to be blind. 

If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister, 

and I think of the poor mother 

brooding over her sightless young triplets. 

 

Or was it a common accident, all three caught 

in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps? 

If not, 

if each came to his or her blindness separately, 

 

how did they ever manage to find one another? 

Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse 

to locate even one fellow mouse with vision 

let alone two other blind ones? 

 

And how, in their tiny darkness, 

could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife 

or anyone else's wife for that matter? 

Not to mention why. 

 

Just so she could cut off their tails 

with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer, 

but the thought of them without eyes 

and now without tails to trail through the moist grass 

 

or slip around the corner of a baseboard 

has the cynic who always lounges within me 

up off his couch and at the window 

trying to hide the rising softness that he feels. 

 

By now I am on to dicing an onion 

which might account for the wet stinging 

in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's 

mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon," 

 

which happens to be the next cut, 

cannot be said to be making matters any better. 

 

 [Billy Collins {1941- } 'I Chop Some Parsley While Listening to Art Blakey's Version of Three Blind Mice' from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and selected poems] 

if I did say that you were hollow and heartless, I meant it in a positive way

    Farewell, years of the zoth century. Goodbye 

collectively and individually. I will miss you. 

 

    Goodbye 1991, year of the palindrome. There will never 

be another year like you until 2002. 

 

    Oh 1968, you and your friends 1967 & 1969 were a riot. 

 

    I'll never forget you, 1978. You were the year in 

which I first had sex. I bid you farewell in French, the 

language of intercourse: 

    Baisse-moi, prends-moi ici, dans ce poème, 

    sur cette page. Oh, mais tu es si sensuel, 

    année provacant! Au revoir. 

 

    I wish I had known you better: 1904, 1905, 1906. I 

always think of you guys together, sitting at the back of 

the 20th century. I wish we could have hung out!      

     

    1992. The year I graduated from law school. What have 

you been up to? Let's have lunch. 

 

    1955. I wasn't born yet, but don't think for a minute 

I don't lie awake, nostalgic for you. 

 

    I would like to apologize to the 1980s. I never said 

you were hollow and heartless. If I did say that you were 

hollow and heartless, I meant it in a positive way. We only 

hurt the years we love. 

 

[Pam Quinlan, 'Yearbook', from American Poets Say Goodbye to the Twentieth Century, ed. and with an introduction by Andrei Codrescu and Laura Rosenthal]

no heart or saving grace

We have done what we wanted. 

We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry 

of each other, and we have welcomed grief 

and called ruin the impossible habit to break. 

 

And now we are here. 

The dinner is ready and we cannot eat. 

The meat sits in the white lake of its dish. 

The wine waits. 

 

Coming to this 

has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken away. 

We have no heart or saving grace, 

no place to go, no reason to remain. 

 

[Mark Strand {1934-2014}, 'Coming to This', from Selected Poems]

those mesmerizing eyes stared right into hers with an intensity that caused her brain to do an abrupt control-alt-delete

More accurate than a Buzzfeed quiz; less accurate than your therapist’s raised eyebrow.🤨

 

⌨️ Which Keyboard Key Represents You? ␛

 

A computer keyboard looks orderly, but every key has its own personality. Some launch big actions, some quietly keep everything organized, and some exist purely to add a little flair. If your personality were hiding somewhere on a keyboard, which key would it be? Take this quiz to discover your inner keystroke.  

---

1. When tackling a big project, your first instinct is to: 

    A. Start fresh and build it cleanly from the beginning. 

    B. Help coordinate others and keep things moving. 

    C. Add clever touches that make the final result shine. 

    D. Fix problems when something inevitably breaks. 

 

2. Your friends would say you’re the one who: 

    A. Keeps conversations moving forward. 

    B. Helps everyone work together. 

    C. Adds wit and personality. 

    D. Notices and corrects mistakes. 

 

3. Pick the environment where you thrive: 

    A. A clear path where progress feels satisfying. 

    B. A collaborative team environment. 

    C. A creative space where ideas bounce around. 

    D. A place where things occasionally go wrong—and you fix them. 

 

4. When something goes sideways, you usually: 

    A. Reset and try again. 

    B. Step in and help restore order. 

    C. Laugh and add a little humor. 

    D. Undo the mistake and move on. 

 

5. Your personal vibe is closest to: 

    A. Direct and decisive. 

    B. Supportive and cooperative. 

    C. Playful and expressive. 

    D. Practical and quietly heroic. 

 

Results in the comments! 

 

[the title quotation is by Lisa Kleypas, from Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor]

it gave me bravery and my anger back, walked me to the tossing water and proclaimed the water mine

When my Sorrow was born, I held it, a dark pearl spit from its shell, 

and I remembered the salt that had rounded it before, centuries ago, 

before I even had a mouth. 

 

And my Sorrow was unafraid and it gave me bravery and my anger 

back, walked me to the tossing water and proclaimed the water mine. 

 

My Sorrow held me and did not tell me not to cry, and the girls about 

me watched our sweet days together with longing, for they too wanted 

to be held by something with fingers as slender and delicate as my 

Sorrow's, fingers that tapped their temples and had them see how they 

had been wronged. 

 

And those who longed for my Sorrow would never have a Sorrow like 

mine. I knew that, for my Sorrow had a forest black mane like mine. 

 

And my Sorrow let me say I, I, mine. 

 

And my Sorrow sat with me on the fire escape all that breathing 

winter, and my Sorrow would not let me into the water. 

 

And my Sorrow deveined shrimp and patterned them on my plate, 

brought me a wide bowl brimming with broth. 

 

And we ate fried eggs with chopsticks. We waited for my Joy to come. 

 

[Emily Lee Luan 'When My Sorrow Was Born', from The Best American Poetry 2021]

in the mirror he appears to be on fire

As simply as a self-effacing bar of soap 

escaping by indiscernible degrees in the wash water 

is how a man may change 

and still hour by hour continue in his job. 

There in the mirror he appears to be on fire 

but here at the office he is dust. 

So long as there remains a little moisture in the stains, 

he stands easily on the pavement 

and moves fluidly through the corridors. If only one 

cloud can be seen, it is enough to know of others, 

and life stands on the brink. It rains 

or it doesn’t, or it rains and it rains again. 

But let it go on raining for forty days and nights 

or let the sun bake the ground for as long, 

and it isn’t life, just life, anymore, it’s living. 

In the meantime, in the regular weather of ordinary days, 

it sometimes happens that a man has changed 

so slowly that he slips away 

before anyone notices 

and lives and dies before anyone can find out. 

 

[Marvin Bell {1937-2020} 'A Man May Change', from Iris of Creation: Poems]

Plated Wares

It dropped so low—in my Regard—

I heard it hit the Ground—

And go to pieces on the Stones 

At bottom of my Mind—

 

Yet blamed the Fate that flung it—less 

Than I denounced Myself, 

For entertaining Plated Wares 

Upon My Silver Shelf—

 

[Emily Dickinson {1830-1886} 'It Dropped so Low', from The Premier Book of Major Poets]