September 11, 2022

I watched 60 Minutes' story about the FDNY during 9/11, and was transported back to that day and its aftermath. I was teaching at Queens College, CUNY, that morning -- a course on Gothic fiction, of all things -- and during our mid-class break (it met once a week for three hours), one of my students entered the room and said that the towers had been hit. I asked her if she was serious, and when she confirmed that she was, I cancelled the rest of class, answered a few students' questions about assignments and such, and then exited the building and turned west...The news hadn't seemed real until I saw the huge charcoal gray funnel of smoke drifting peacefully above the southern end of Manhattan Island. The rest of that day was numbing. I wasn't able to get home to our apartment in the Bronx because all the bridges were closed, and wound up staying that night with my ex's mother and sister, watching the non-stop news coverage all afternoon and evening. The subsequent weeks were also difficult. I remember being afraid for a couple of weeks when the bus I took to and from the campus crossed the bridge between the Bronx and Queens, thinking that a plane might take it out while we were there -- completely irrational, I know. I remember a favorite student, a young Iranian-American woman, disappeared for a few weeks afterwards, then told me when she returned that things were hard in her neighborhood and she hadn't felt safe. I remember in the classroom in which that course met, a student pointing out a piece of graffiti someone had scrawled above the door: "Kill all sand n*ggas." She asked that it be removed, and I or another of my students did so. I remember visiting the Financial District a few weeks after 9/11, once the area had been reopened to the public, and how ghostly the streets and closed shops looked blanketed in a pale gray powder, and the lingering acrid chemical smell. That day in September, and the rest of that semester, fundamentally altered my approach as a teacher, and changed me as a person; and watching the footage of these public servants putting their lives on the line, and in many cases sacrificing them, and hearing the interviews with the survivors, the pain and resolve in their voices, was really difficult even two-plus decades later.

September 10, 2022

Spike left the petri dish (as the Aubrey Jr. twins were disparagingly calling it) and became a "real plant" (the twins' words) last night. As obnoxious as the twins are, thankfully they're not vegetarians, so I think Spike will survive her time with them until I switch her to a big pot in the living room. (I on the other hand would feel anxious if I had to spend the night in the kitchen with them.

 

September 8, 2022

Since I can't have pets in my apartment, I give my plants names. The contraband night blooming cereus leaf is about ready to be planted, so it's time for her to have her own handle. I thought about names that reflect her shady past, but since she doesn't have a partner, I rejected Bonnie (no Clyde), Ethel (Rosenberg: no Julius), and Thelma or Louise. Since she's a night bloomer, I considered Hecate, but I didn't want to scare the other green guys. Then I looked at her, and the choice became obvious: she's a cactus (if a gangly v. prickly variety), and those adorable roots...So world, meet the new girl: Spike!

  

August 22, 2022

When you want to make space in your fridge cuz there are only three slices of the peach tart left and you put two slices in a tupperware but the third one won't fit but that's by design cuz you want dessert and you don't want to use a plate cuz you don't have a dishwasher and you live alone so you can do TF you want.

 

August 21, 2022

 

Two new poems of mine appear in the Summer 2022 issue of The Midwest Quarterly, which came out at the end of July.  Here's an announcement from the journal's Facebook page (posted last month): 

 

 

August 20, 2022

When I left Austin at the end of 1999, one of the things I regretted having to leave behind was my night-blooming cereus, a big gangly cactus (picture a Christmas cactus on acid) that does in fact bloom at night, and produces amazing, and amazingly fragrant, 4-6" long blossoms that last just that night. Blooming was an event, then, and I used to invite friends over to enjoy it with me.  (There is of course a Wikipedia page on them that you can check out if you're interested to know more.)

I met friends for dinner tonight at a Thai restaurant in a nearby neighborhood, and while we were sitting on a bench near the door waiting for a table for six to become available, I noticed that the plant next to the door was a NBC, and that it had recently bloomed (there was a wilted blossom hanging from one of its fronds). That set me to thinking: should I ask them if I could take a segment home to sprout and plant? I mostly put it out of my mind during dinner, but as we were leaving, the thought returned, and as I approached the door, I surveyed the plant and noticed a small segment at the end of one of the higher branches. "Oh eff it," I decided, and snapped it off on my way by. Since the little guy is contraband, I decided a glass for liquor was the right one to sprout it in. I'm not sure if I'll be able to coax it to bloom, but, well, a cactus on acid is welcome in mi casa any day.

 

August 17, 2022

I threw on a baggy black cotton dress before running to the post office this morning. I mean "threw on": when I got back home, I noticed when I turned off my car that there was a seam running down the dress's front, which I didn't remember seeing before, then realized I'd put it on backwards. Sometimes it's hard being me.