Suddenly the trees are blooming and it stinks like the The Valley. I can hear the angry cows where I’m crouched on the concrete ramp. Yesterday she pointed at one of the blooming trees and exclaimed how beautiful, I see her pointing in these as well. Every tree, small face, teeth, pointing. The cows groaning from over on the other hill sound much too close, that sound and that stink. At lunch I’ve considered stopping to see the calves, but always something else going on. A little ledge over which I never cross. A type of small daily precipice. 

Two flocks of starlings pass over head, sounding like metal birds. Small metal clanking, bolts turning in their sockets, little steel tabs. This is a false land, this swath here. The squat looming versus the flat green lumpy. I love you I love you touch typed back at the desk. I speak with my grandfather on the phone multiple times in the parking lot, my mother says “talk to him before he no longer recognizes you”. His hair is longer, I say I’ll see him in the summer, “deine ist viel länger, Sommer, ist das bald?” We are both much too entrenched in our age. 

I hear sirens over on the other hill, the green hill. So many sirens, the angry cows, the clean expanse. I expect the cows are on the road again, needing herding again. The medicine is dry. I tried to take it no water in the car. The lot out here is windy. I tried to understand it at a distance, with the sounds it made and the items passing hands. I didn’t learn anything. 

I dream about the man that owns this land, bought it for the mineral rights. He hung that banner from the lamp post that flaps like bleached ripped jesus in the fog and setting wind. The field is empty and green because one day he will need to dig. He will put an ad online and bring men to dig and fill into buckets. Who combed my opa’s hair? Who will comb mine? 

On the leftish hill stand three objects: two palms and a billboard. Big advertisement for hill for sale, the second green hill. No minerals there, just the two palms and the billboard. The palms throw two thin legs of shade down the near side of the hill. The grass doesn’t make sound, only the cars and beeping, metal clanging from the warehouse and the birds. The cows, also, when they’re close and angry, make sound. The first hill has a clump of oaks in one of it's folds, looks like it’s embarrassed. As though it’s shrugging away, the clump so embarrassing.

Nonce prayer

Nonce prayer 

A tree fell in the graveyard to lay 

among the resting. 

A man on his wharf, axing the ice

into the bay.  

A boat beat at the mooring to say, 

go on, let him run.

One day I will have a son

and I believe that is more important 

than boughs laid over the stones. 

Fourth sunday of ordinary time

Fourth sunday of ordinary time

I changed my mind I don’t want 
to be                                                          a dog again 

No rocks no 
ditches 
no bushes
Not the practice nor the postbox 

Perhaps I may be sheltered I could 
I could lay soft 
And lay low
singing into it I could 

On Monday I will 
pasture and couch the flocks with none to disturb them.

 

Fresnel Lens

My eyes set behind my eyes set above the 

nose – watched me draw a bull

Scab the scalp the skull Hitting 

the corners, want to see the calves

the colts 

Thank you for Easter, for 

Paul, the 

pocked drive and 

also,  

The keeper 

out 

at the lighthouse, heard

piping from the 

gulls, the gannets 

the gadfly Knocking 

into the tide the

hobbled pegs the rendered

fat and what now 

remains kept 

on the eastern sill

Anita

Last summer Anita heard impossible anomalous radio pulses, not from outer space, where Anita was meant to listen, but from below the ice. Anita was built to track neutrinos; you have a billion neutrinos passing through your thumbnail at any moment. Neutrinos detected by Anita must travel to Antarctica without interacting with anything else. Anita could be detecting a neutrino coming from the edge of the observable Universe. There are new, unknown types of particles or processes in the universe. Could be tau leptons, which emerge from the Earth and decay into atmospheric showers that could generate detectable radio waves. This theory is unlikely. In science, finding nothing often means finding something.

stratostat balloon

                  Anita

I've recently been fascinated with Antarctic infrastructure. There is something poetic about it, indescribably so. 

I always think about god even though I’m not religious and maybe it’s because I’m baptized

I was like a pillar.
I sat in the church pew and marveled at the order, did people take the pens the pencils home sometimes? Did someone have to come and replace all the little pencils and branded pens every day? Who made the pens? Who put the little sticker on them with the Presbyterian name? Everyone’s ears were glowing. The light was showing me their ear veins and earring holes, their folds folds. I stood in another church before this, Catholic, and listened to a singing song come out of little speakers in the lobby. I looked sort of shifty, my face poking through the warped yellow glass, trying to find the man who was singing, the organ that was playing. There were people standing facing forwards and the front was empty. No man, empty organ, empty organs. A woman approached the other side of the glass from me, gestured to come in. I shook tight smiled. There was a line of people out into the lobby, a man in the line was singing along to the hymn, was this him? Was he micd up and pumped through the speaker? His voice was lower than the disembodied song, he was waiting in line for the confessional. It was Saturday night, I drank hard fast in the park and watched people making out on the long bench next to me. I cried on the empty bus, my $2 confessional, and thought: can the autonomous vehicle out there to my left watch me crying? If alone and crying inside an autonomous vehicle, is it like church? Is the vehicle like priest? Like disembodied song on the speaker? The bus driver is closer to god than any of this. 

Old year moby dick

 I couldn’t find it, in sleep or wool or the winter water. I shrugged down my pants and stuff under the striped towel, feeling vulgar on that windy strip. Two figures, the man in his neoprene anzug and long fins and camera with the bright light, flashing in the peripheral, I keep glancing over to check for a star or headlights. Both would be catastrophic down on the cliff faced beach. The horse, both monocoular and binocular, blind in the front and back. I remember walking the narrow road, twice, once the lagoon was emptied and the small motor boats sat with their bellies pushed up in the mud. The fish and gun club. One time with my parents, the first or second, the empty lagoon or the filled, one time with an ex boyfriend, we looked at glass shards and rocks on the beach. I would like to be able to say: I regret explaining that my brain is a giant glass orb, filtering, jellyfish. I am rarely angry. Watched dogs swim and the gulls, oh the gulls. I change under the towel, naked naked naked. That’s what I imagine people see as they walk by me, let’s pants her! No swell, but wind, and yet, water still, still. But wind, still. Yet still the water. The wind, warm, tossing the sea grass and weeds in tornadoes, as if there were a storm coming. There is no storm coming, the water is still. I run my feet over the ridges beneath the surface, watch the plain-backed expanse of sand muddied by my movement. Muddied by movement, the second figure: a seal in the small waves that push in now and again. At first I thought: a neoprene man swimming face down, but then: face down too long ∴ a seal. As I go out further, I find a steady conviction that a tsunami is coming, the water pulled back like this, still, and yet, the wind. I turn my back to the horizon and look at the shore, these people will die with me in the tsunami. This couple is obstructing my view, they walk 5 feet (a short distance moved along a long stretch) and then embrace. They hug they kiss, touch each others faces, each others hair, are they breaking up? I can’t imagine this display being for any other reason. I peer. There’s a man wearing all black with his dog, who is brav, sehr brav. Brav like obedient, not like tapfer. Tapfer like brave, not like tapier. There is a family taking photos together, I overheard them say they were from Delhi, “they don’t have beaches in Delhi.” There is a girl very happy laying on her towel, wearing socks, she is looking out. I wish I had on socks. I saw this tsunami simulator video online, very poorly animated, filmed from a phone held by poorly animated arms on the pixel beach. The voice in the video was real, layered with a big whoosing sound. The animated sim with a real man’s voice kept saying “oh fuck it’s a tsunami, oh fuck it’s a tusnami”. I go down into the shallow still water, the warm wind, the gulls. Water in my ears, bob my head to one side every couple of minutes, everyone thinks something's wrong. I walked to this canyon earlier and past signs “trail closed” with my field recorder with the fuzzy microphone wind shield. I was worrying that people in the houses up at the ridge would look down and think I was a girl in a hat in the canyon with a gun. I sat on the ground and watched a bee walk along the flood path, I tried to record bird sounds but just got a leaf blower and airplanes, I took an advil for my headache, it was all pretty depressing. I cried on the beach when my friends asked me about Something and they rubbed my back. I was wearing the hat so I could angle my face down and make a little fort between the brim and the towel, I looked up and made eye contact with an old teacher from highschool walking by. There isn't really anything good to say about Something, the teacher isn’t wearing a shirt. I tried to say something good at the bar the other night and later on someone said they wanted to put me in their pocket. That’s not what I intended, I felt angry in my bed, angry on the couch. Like Ahab, I don’t want Moby Dick to end.