Pig and farm report

that up there is ginger growing in a clay pot on my desk

I admit that I made my go to cake an angel food cake yesterday then had one piece and it was so unlike a carrot cake that I threw the rest in the bin full of snot and longing I stood outside this morning among the tomato vines inhaling to fix my heart and it may have worked tomato vines growing in the sun is a fragrance right up there with new babies and milky puppies and low tide mixed with campfire smoke and the forest floor after a rain and the first handful of lilacs in spring that signal joy directly to my brain I soaked a ginger knob overnight in water to remove any growth inhibitors that might have been on it and threw it in a pot with some soil and watered it when I remembered I was surprised to see it grow so violently after a long time of dormancy my son brought me dahlias this morning and a black moleskine notebook and now he is out getting us dinner to go at a Mexican restaurant the next town over I had a burrito at Taco del Mar a couple weeks ago or months ago but other than that I have cooked every meal I’ve eaten for five months and I am heady at the thought of eating a meal someone else has cooked this morning Hal threw himself at my bedroom window and howled his first ever feral kitten war cry at an outside grey interloper cat who was standing looking stunned by Hal’s ferociousness I was stunned too and after I rewarded him with catnip and praise and sang songs and hymns to his wild instincts who knew such a big sound could come out of such a small body it even brought my son barreling from a deep sleep in his room asking WHAT HAPPENED such excellent excitement for a July morning for a July girl filled with longing

that down there is what happened to a tiny fern that I planted in a Weck pickle jar three years ago my first summer here the fern has exploded upward and it’s raining in the terrarium and all is well here at the Zero Hour Bar and Grill at the end of the world

67

Pig and farm report

Pictures and adverts of people without heads make me uneasy they are usually click bait so I never click to see if the heads appear

William “pig bacon” Barr does not believe that there is systemic racism in America’s police force

Gladioluses look like hilarious spears and clematises look like Mickey Mouse flowers I am unsure of the plural form of either of these flowers

I have to mute the television when Gym Jordan speaks because he is so screamy and irritating and wrong and his lack of a suit jacket at all times proves to me that he has no respect for america whatsoever

Tomorrow is my 67th birthday if anyone ever says I’m “67 years young” I’m going to sock them in the neck

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was 78 years old when she died she fought like a wild thing full of anger denial and general piss-offedness I love her for tossing her own goddamn five stages of grief out the window at the end

I keep thinking about the blue land crabs that marched through a Miami suburb in early June I believe they were harbingers of a strange and eerie art perhaps a reversal of doom we should have paid attention

William “pig bacon” Barr twirls his pen adjusts his glasses smooths his hair and attempts to talk over anyone but especially women right now he is leaning his head on his hand giving himself a hitler mustache with his middle finger he has a lot of tells William “pig bacon” Barr can also be called William “pig bacon” Tell

Earlier this week I gave myself a tragic haircut and now I can’t tuck it behind my ears hippos get deep cuts and scratches and ticks and bites on their skin which they can’t reach (obviously) so they enlist barbell fish to nibble them to clean and sooth them after which the hippos go into a deep happy trance this is how I feel at my hair stylist

I saw a harmonium on the side of the road just hanging out among the trees it was a perfectly good harmonium and it was on the road for two weeks I wonder where it was going and why

White men have weaponized their cars against children’s soft bodies why aren’t these republican politicians on television outraged and why is it more important to them to protect buildings instead of the soft bodies of Black men and women and children

When I was seven years old I learned how to do yoga from a book about the practice written by Jascha Heifetz and Gloria Swanson once I learned how to stand on my head once I found my center of gravity I was unstoppable and I have been unstoppable ever since no one has knocked me down though they have tried

I believe that human unmasked faces will become ero genous

Do you remember May 30 when we watched a dragon launched into space

I am going to become a secret lip-synch assassin when I grow up but first I am going to learn how to build a carrot cake

My lion-headed son just drove up in his giant truck

That’s it for now

In deepest July

I am in a dark cave I can hear the whole wolf world howling at me but it’s muffled I am in the cave scrambling out because the tide is rising

I saw remarkable and terrible things this week

when I was at the beach an eagle flew down and plucked an oyster from the sand not three feet away from where I stood his tail feathers spread he took his time with it in no hurry to fly off

this morning I sobbed watching John Lewis’s body travel over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma Alabama in a cart pulled by two black horses a cart with red iron wheels driven by a stately Black man in a top hat the bridge covered in red rose petals Mr. Lewis’s family walked behind and near the end of the procession each member of his family was given a single long stemmed rose which they placed in a row on the bridge upon which the black horses walked their hooves loosing the petals I could hear people singing We Shall Overcome

this is a historic moment in our country’s dark time on a Sunday in which fires blaze in our cities a Sunday in which the president is a craven beast encouraging us to bring civil war to our infected cities our infected farms our infected schools and hospitals our infected democracy a terrible dark time in this country

I saw a dead owl on the road this week his huge wing fanned out I watched three young boys carry a forth by the arms and legs down the street all of them laughing I watched a lame rabbit drag his broken leg behind him as he disappeared into the underbrush at the state park I walked past an eight year old boy tap dancing like Gene Kelly alone in the back of a truck with the tailgate open a look of pure concentration and joy on his face

two people flew giant homemade squid kites at the lake

Friday I baked a peach pie and after I put it in the fridge before I baked it I realized I forgot to add flour that magic bit that binds the juices so I cut the top of the dough off in a circle and mixed the flour in with the peaches and sugar and nutmeg and lemon juice then put the top of the crust back on and tried to reseal it as best as I could and that pie was delicious though not very pretty having been through violent surgery

I found some lavender in a bucket on the road *thank you unknown lavender woman* and have hung it near the back door to dry

this week I ate my first tomato and mayo on white bread sandwich of the year the tomato from Maria Lopez’s garden not mine the mayo Best Foods the bread as close to wonder bread as I ever get it was spectacular one of my most favorite treats since I could hold a sandwich one of my pure summer joys you can take the girl out of Spokane but...Spokane is connected to me like my shadow

the madronas all around me are shedding their red bark to show their startling bright green underthings these amazing trees these luscious beauties I am embracing deepest July outside at the state park in the lake and in my fragrant kitchen in my woods in my garden I am embracing deepest July with my entire being because I am and always have been and always will be a summer girl

Pig and farm report

I can’t seem to do a g.d. thing except go to the beach stand in my garden enjoy the heat and yell at people who get too close to me at Maria Lopez’s fruit stand even if they’re wearing a mask though they usually aren’t

I did however make this spectacular pizza the pix are after and before instead of before and after because The World

I want a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting for my birthday but I haven’t made one since high school and have no idea to go about it

going lake swimming this morning

Joy 

A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts

by Wallace Stevens

The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—

There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.

To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full

And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,

You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,

You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.

Three strange things

A wasp nest attached to my back door that looks like the Invisible Man in a hat

An alligator lizard of all the goddamn things in my yard near the roses the lizard was about seven inches long more alligator than lizard he lunged at me so I lunged back

A wee mushroom the size of my fingertip growing in an orchid on my windowsill

There are so many things I want to write but this much exhausted me Portland is a fire bomb in my heart I have zero plans for July for the first time in maybe ever I have so many friends who are teachers who are deeply concerned about the school year when I taught orchestra in middle school I could not have imagined containing all. those. droplets. I built a plant stand today I have green tomatoes and sugar snap peas and roses and calla lilies in my garden I made cinnamon rolls last week and canned marionberry jam this week

I feel adrift lost at sea I wave from my boat Ahoy! Ahoy!

Cecile Creek, Okanogan WA

Photo by Page Loudon

100% full

This is the Jack Ruby moon


ruby is my birthstone the gem of July Ruby was my grandmother’s name this moon is a jack moon a jack knife moon a Jack and the Beanstalk moon a jackoff moon a high noon moon a Jack Torrance moon a screw you moon a moaning moon a moon of betrayal and butter knives this moon leaves suicide notes in cookbooks then makes dinner this moon shoots a gun on black and white television this moon dangles over the Aurora Bridge in the middle of the day but it’s a strong swimmer this moon shakes up history this moon is a tourist a sham a mark a shill a Shaklee salesman needing a drink of water a used car salesman moon with a cigar

Beware
Beware
Beware

small america

my least favorite holiday in my most favorite month

I tuned in to the broadcast from South Dakota last night to see the protests when I heard the police tell the indigenous people to “go home” the camera then swung to the US Air Force Academy concert band and I saw a trombonist empty his spit valve on the ground in front of him as brass players do all that breathing going on all those spit valves being emptied

not a mask to be seen

today I tended my garden ate an apple baked a loaf of jarlsberg cheese sun dried tomato and basil bread changed and washed my sheets changed and washed my tablecloth anxious with all the explosions I did not go to the beach

the american president is a Russian agent and a war criminal I heard him last night slurring his words sweating like the gross vile pig he is while calling peaceful protesters “leftist fascists” and trying to incite civil war and I only listened to one minute of the speech that was written for him

not a mask in sight all those human bodies crushed close because the american president ordered the chairs to be zip tied together to make the crowd look bigger

the feral kittens are hiding under my bed I don’t blame them not for one hot second I might join them Jupiter remains with me here in the sun stalwart queen that she is





Sidenote ::

I for one will be very glad for high fiving to finally pass out of fashion all that bro and bruh garbage ugh also please don’t slap my hands ever

Pig and farm report

there are three or four or five little girls who live down the road they are wild with bright blond tangly hair and dark eyes they run around with stick swords whooping and hollering then when I drive by they become statue still stick swords in the air or down though lately they’ve begun to wave at me sometimes they all wear capes sometimes big floppy boots they appear to be feral always in some manner of disarray and bloodiness they could easily kick a stranger to death if they so wanted and I flat out adore and admire them sometimes my son and I call them the children of the corn if one flies out of her yard and disappears upon seeing us remarkable children in an age where so many children can’t entertain themselves without a screen I secretly hope to be teaching them all violin lessons someday they built that structure in their yard this week I don’t know if they are going to imprison each other or if they’re going to capture a wild pig or a black bear or a neighbor child it’s quite amazing and they built it with no help from their parents

with luck they’ll be running this country soon enough

my son is in the Okanogan Valley tending the orchard what’s left of it I went outside in the rain this morning in my nightgown and flip flops to pull weeds which became loose with the 40 days and 40 nights of rain we’ve had I got muddy up to my knees and I could hear my son in my head asking me what the hell

I don’t mind his voice in my head I miss him

soon it will be bean time


Love.

All the Montanas live in me

If I am speechless, would love be a mouth?
                                                          Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries


bees inside the corn husk
blatant silk
royal jelly
night swung its sugary gardenia stick

                                       and so it rained
                                       for 97 days

we dined on the roof gerald and I
held the business end of a lightning rod
religious conversion
gerald’s hands on the electric fence

                                       the body he said is a great conductor


§


a horse laid his head in my lap
I could hardly breathe the oh the oh the
christmas crisp rough fur
they were steam cleaning the streets
of vienna for mozart’s birthday



                                       a bee-cloud all around
                                       humming wet between
                                       baroque and revolution



we had a conversation about the girls
that died one from each school
murder suicide found in an apartment
a forest clearing a fishing shack
by the river

                                       gerald spoke in tongues



§



there is a banquet inside me
candied and perfumed there is
lonely and there is
there is
good


                                       oh lamb of god I come I come












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