Party Poet on the Hillside
Party Poet on the Hillside Podcast
High Summer//Hi, Summer
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High Summer//Hi, Summer

Over the Sink

I imagine I was born
knowing how to do this
my belly pressed 
up against the sink
my chin dripping juice
and the nectarine
letting go of its insides
like a believer visiting
a sacred cave
in order to expel 
some soft trickle 
of evil from inside him
and the sweetness
is covering my hands
like a conductor's glove
my heart swelling 
as if bugbitten
my face like a child
reading by herself
for the very first time
and pronouncing the words
in her head all wrong
What is done in love
is done well 
said Van Gogh
and I can't disagree
as my body devours
a flavor I wait for
through the season
of whiteness and wind
I watch the birds
landing on the limbs
of the dead butternuts
smothered in grapevines
their trunks greener
than the treeful mountains
surrounding the airport
in Roanoke, Virginia, 
where cicadas screamed
their names or my own
and when I wipe
my face with a cloth
I also remember to straighten 
my skirts to flatten 
the puff of my hair
and shuttle the now
sopping dishcloth
to the basket
to languor with its dirtied
companions

*BREAKING NEWS*
After many moons, I have a poem published in a literary journal. It went live on the solstice and it takes place right at the start of spring when everything feels possible. Read it here!

What I Just Read:
The Position by Meg Wolitzer: This one wasn’t as skillful as The Interestings or The Female Persuasion, but I still enjoyed it— Meg knows how to create characters that you’ll think about when you’re not reading the book, and how to braid a story using the right amount of strands and the right amount of twist.

A Body of Water by Hudson Gardner: Poems by someone I farm alongside!! I am currently borrowing the last copy of this book available, but I highly recommend subscribing to Hudson’s newsletter, Grass Journal, if you want to read some wise and well-written thoughts on wildness and what it means to live here on this planet, with these people, with these creatures, at this time in the world.

The Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden: The current pick for my lady-family book club. I will not include any of my thoughts on it here so that I can save all of them for the book club meeting!!!

What I’m Reading:
Summer Book by Tove Jannsen: This book is delightful—relaxing, wry, wise, and funny—but, you probably already knew that! Because everyone has already read this book except for me, right??

On Immunity by Eula Biss: This is another one I’m late to the party on, and I found it both enjoyable and useful. It’s not very long and does a nice job thinking about immunity from both a philosophical perspective as well as a scientific one. Eula’s worries about H1N1 seem sort of cute ‘n easy, considering what we’ve been living through, but there is still lots to learn and muse on. (I *love love* Eula’s more recent book, Having and Being Had, which investigates home ownership, domesticity, class, motherhood, and more, in a way that combines both research and lived experience—highly recommend it).

Quickie Kids Book Rant:
I dread reading Curious George books. Let’s take a look at the premise: “the man with the yellow hat” STEALS GEORGE FROM HIS WILDERNESS HOME and domesticates him by making him live in a zoo and then, in subsequent books, the man’s house. (On a related note, Babar’s quickie domestication process care of the “rich old lady” rankles me in similar ways.) George does things wrong all the time (”he’s curious!”), but, can we blame him? He is a wild animal. His captor is never given a name, and is only referred to by way of his hat choice, which seems sketchy even to me, someone who is almost always wearing a hat. Also, and I’m sorry, this is a really poet things to say, but…the line breaks are terrible in these books. Sentences are frequently cut off in the middle of the page, often in the middle of a phrase, often not even at a breath point or a logical halfway mark between clauses.


IF YOU READ THIS FAR YOU GET A PRIZE. The prize is that you read something, perhaps laughed, perhaps sighed, perhaps learned. The prize is that you still have an attention span. The prize is your own wonderful self, completing one small thing.

Enjoy this newsletter? Support a working poet and buy me a cup of coffee. Thank you. I love you.

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Party Poet on the Hillside
Party Poet on the Hillside Podcast
Poems and letters and little jokes, from me to you
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Taylor Mardis Katz
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