Prospect

In the night, the building is still—the pipes dry, the floorboards cold.
Everything is tainted a strange gray, only sleep is in color.
The passing train vibrates her stomach like an eager violin and she knows:
Every night we surrender ourselves—
she will die tonight and wake up tomorrow reborn.
The ghosts of the old Jewish hospital bow their heads.

The ceiling soundlessly parts with the walls, evaporates—
after-blizzard clouds float lazy and full overhead.
Above her, the stars are suspended lanterns,
while in bed, she’s a tree-stuck kite.

The shadows step forward, offering colored balloons
to lift her into the disinterested sky—
she tries to fuse them, loses all but one, shrinks as they distantly pop.
She holds the lingering blue balloon firmly,
keeps it from swimming away.
She remains earth-yoked but looks constantly
toward the balloon as it sways against the sky;
connected, they both dance.

An Actual Email I Sent

While getting back into the swing of things, I decided to share some actual emails that I have sent to actual people in the past few [actual] days. I consider myself the Emily Dickinson of email-writing and self-induced reclusion. (I think it would be particularly funny for you to imagine that I sent every single one of the following to the same person. I didn’t. But I could’ve.) Continue reading →

Movie Review: Knight and Day

My favorite kind of movie is a free movie; this is obvious to all by now. I will see any movie if it is free, mostly because they are fun to write about when they fail spectacularly. Anne scored us tickets to see Knight and Day, the new rom-action film starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. First of all: all right already with the movie title puns. Maybe I’m just being a jerk because I recently saw Just Wright, but I think it’s completely fair to say that puns involving characters’ names have no place in movie titles.

Continue reading →

In Common

In Common

My father dove through the sky 19 times—
once while I watched.
No more than four, I only remember his last ten feet
and then ground, the parachute like a dress around him.

Now, on a drive up to Sacandaga Lake:
a diver swimming down toward the trees,
lazily falling like a belated gift.
The colors of his fall were an amusement park,
his chute a ferris wheel and his body a lollipop.

He said, He’s an amateur;
the trained like to dance in the sky,
playing all the way down—flips, tricks. 
(At 10: With an umbrella, he jumped off the roof,
trying to fly. Broke leg, mother’s nerves.)

I always took the first jump, with anything;
none of my kids are that way.
It’s true—I will never fall from a plane.
A roller coaster drops my stomach,
no recovery from Down to Up.

It’s too fast for that, your insides unaware.
You drop your hands from the side of the plane
and you feel like you’re floating—
you’re actually just going down, too quickly.
You don’t even know that you’re falling.
A familiar feeling.

Movie Review: Moon

It would have behooved me to write my review of Moon yesterday, since it was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon, but. Well. I wrote about government  cheese instead so I think that that’s enough of a memorandum. Despite the seeming impossibility of this request, spoilers are at an absolute minimum since it’s a very spoiler-able movie. Though, I am happy to provide the main spoiler: Sam Rockwell is hot. Sorry! Ruined the ending for everyone! Continue reading →

The Hangover Reviewed (Somewhat Angrily)

I’ve been keeping an eye out for The Hangover since March. I love Ed Helms. I love Zack Galifianakis (so much so that I didn’t even have to check how to spell his name). I love Bradley Cooper. I love Mike Tyson. (What?) Win-win-win-awkward win, right? I don’t want to spoil the post by giving my coveted rating so soon, but I only give this movie a 70 out of 100. Why did you make me do that, The Hangover? I really wanted to love you. (I’d usually point out the spoilerlessness of my review, but you’ve basically seen the entire movie in trailers by now, I assume, making it sort of impossible for me to spoil anything.) Continue reading →

Movie Review: Up

Are you ready for another more-or-less plotless (and purposely spoiler-less) review? This weekend, I saw the new Disney Pixar animated feature Up (which I keep typing as UP and should therefore be officially changed) about an old man and his Wilderness Adventurer (read: boy scout) friend floating a house to South America with balloons. It only gets better from there. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Star Trek

When I walked into the theater, I signed an invisible contract that said, if I enjoy the movie, I then have to sit through every last episode of Star Trek. And that contract was written up by my dad, the Star Trek Expert/Temporary Contract-Writing Lawyer. But this is not going to be a nerd review. I am not nerd-qualified. Despite being the daughter of a Trekkie, I’m only really familiar with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Which means that I used to run around the house with a head band over my eyes pretending to be LeVar Burton, and I know more about Wesley than Chekov. But I can say this: hardcore Trekkie or just an action fan, if there’s one thing everyone is going to leave the theater wondering after seeing Star Trek, it is… Continue reading →