Dancing through the Chihuly Exhibit at The Denver Botanical Gardens by Gail Rieke

These exquisite photographs were taken by Gail Rieke
ridetheflyingcarpet.blogspot.com

Call It Slush: SFLR call for submissions

We’re reading!
Staff Lydia Gonzales, Baro Shalizi, Veronica Clark, Kate McCahill, Sudasi Clement, and Meg Tuite are busy looking for publishable poetry, fiction, and memoir.
Submit to:
SANTA FE LITERARY REVIEW
Miriam Sagan
6401 Richards Avenue
Santa Fe, NM 87508

Deadline: December 1, 2014

Send black & white art via jp file to: SFLRARTSUBMISSIONS@GMAIL.COM

Tip: we’re looking for the unexpected–comics, graphic novels, mixed genre, screenplays, and bilingual work.

Bibi Deitz on Being a New Yorker

This is the first part of a longer essay on being a native New Yorker who lives in New York. More to come over the coming weeks.

I had lunch with someone the other day who grew up in New York. So did I. Well, I had hot water with lemon and she had a sandwich that had so many onions that she wound up feeling sick, and she was on her phone when she walked in the door, but unapologetic about it because that’s how we are, we New Yorkers, we born-and-breds: We live here, and the street is our living room, taxis and subways our parlors, and restaurants and cafes—forget it, we might as well take out a toenail clipper and go to work. Though we never would. There are boundaries. We have dignity.

There’s a special flavor to a fellow lifer. I can spot my kin from across a crowded subway platform sometimes. We have a way of taking up space that is upfront, frank. We say, I belong here. There are no I’m-sorries about our demeanor. If we need to take a phone call, we take a phone call. If we want to speak or laugh loudly or gesticulate or sit on the same side of the table or take a selfie, we do.

Some see this as entitled. I’ve seen the looks—are you kidding? That’s the other thing. We never miss a thing. You might think we didn’t notice your eye-roll or your sideways comment or even your catcall, but fret not: We heard. We’re just ignoring you. Anyway, it’s not. Entitled, that is. It’s confident. It’s asking for what we need in the world without feeling bad about it. It’s taking up the space we require to breathe in this city. That’s why we don’t feel claustrophobic. We stretch out.

I often hear people talk about what one of my friends calls the “psychic claustrophobia” of the city. It’s so grim, they say. Just so dirty. Move, then. I did, for seven years. I lived in Santa Fe. The sun shone most every day and there was nothing to block it: I could see a hundred and eighty degrees of sky wherever I was. Those seven years were healing, transformative, restorative. It was like a seven-year-long yoga class. And now I’m back, hammer and tongs, and silly things like weather or the state of cleanliness of any given block are not going to stop me from enjoying myself.

*

There are two ways to view city life: Pro and anti. By city life I mean New York city life—of course I am aware there are other cities, but New York is the city. I’ve never called it by any other name. Including New York City. It’s just New York, or the city. In any case, the anti-city types will give you a whole grocery list of complaints, but the pros: Well, we’re pros. We can take it. Take today, for example. My friend and I left lunch—at a cafe in the East Village, my childhood neighborhood, that popped up in the past seven years, but what hasn’t, really?—and walked up University Place in search of cigarettes. Not for me, but that’s the other thing: New Yorkers smoke like Europeans. We go outside, but we enjoy being outside. Or we enjoy complaining about it. There’s a certain savor in the act of smoking. And you better believe we won’t apologize for it. Once they were procured, I had two drags of Camel Light, thank you very much; and yes, it was delicious.

So there we were, on the street, and a spritely Asian man pushing a wire shopping cart full of laundry began serenading us. He said, Tell me, why am I so short? He answered, Because my parents were both short! He cracked himself up. He told us, Your mothers were both beautiful! Then he resumed his song.

If you’re not from the city, this might be an alarming or noteworthy experience. You might not know how to react. You might worry he’d next pull a gun from his pile of laundry, or try to have a quick grope as you passed. We wished him good day and moved on. Which brings us to five minutes later.

We were outside the newsstand; she was smoking, and I was fiddling with my phone. There was some schmutz on it—a feather, or an eyelash, or something—so I blew it off. And as though he were an actor offstage just waiting for his line, a fortyish man waltzed by and said, “You just blew on your phone! Is that a new app?” He waited for his applause, paid in the form of acknowledgement, and continued on his way. That’s the thing with New Yorkers: We interact with one another. Or, rather, others interact with us—God knows if the crooner or the actor were born in New York or not, though I suspect not—and we take it in.

This is the other thing: We don’t really take it in. I mean, all of the experiences I’ve had in New York have amalgamated into one rather delightfully juicy apple, if you’ll pardon the awful metaphor. Actually, I won’t pardon it: That’s one thing I can’t roll with. All of the cutesy New Yorkisms: The big apple, the city that never sleeps. Those are phrases we made up to titillate tourists. It might work on them, but it doesn’t do much for any of us. We can see behind the curtain, and believe me: There’s a dead rat in there. As there is in many of our walls, and on every subway track ever.

Anyway, the apple. Every time a stranger has had an opinion about my appearance, asked where I got my shoes, or asked for directions to the nearest L train has been collected in a lovely, hazy memory bank. It’s a foggy mental scrapbook, and on the cover is a raked-up photograph of, like, Tompkins Square Park. In other words, I take these experiences in the way I might a breath of fresh air. Or stale subway air. Or piss-tinged stench on a hot day on Fourteenth Street. I take them, and I experience them, but I also forget about them right away. I interact—or not—and I’m present—or not, as the case may be—but I also move on right away. It’s rare that I’ll remember an interaction with a stranger.

There are exceptions. I can still picture a man shuffle-punching down St. Mark’s Place in the Eighties. I was a kid, probably with my mother, and we crossed the street to avoid him. That was her strategy back then: If you see something strange, cross the street. Now they say, If you see something, say something. Not to the person, I hope everyone understands. Those poor out-of-towners trying to say something to the pervert on the corner. When I say shuffle-punching, I mean exactly that: He was so drunk or coked-up or insane that he more crabwalked than sauntered, and he was kicking the shit out of someone who did not exist. In this man’s mind, though, he was absolutely fighting a pretty awful guy. Or gal, I suppose. He was winning, too.

I am not Grandma Moses–or am I?

I wanted to add a bit of comment to the poem below, obviously inspired by Moses.
“You’re not Grandma Moses,” an artist friend said recently, meaning I wasn’t going to turn into a visual artist in my sixth decade. This was in relation to my text installation off-the-page work. I had to agree–I was going to continue to need collaborators or a very well thought out design to continue to make these pieces.
Or maybe not. Maybe I can actually teach myself enough to function as an outsider artist.
“I’m not Grandma Moses,” I told an assembled group at Salem Art Works this summer, giving a process talk. But then a young man reminded me that we were indeed in Moses’s neighborhood of upstate New York. And I remembered how I’d loved her work as a child. How she is a great American woman painter. A folk artist, or outsider, or maybe not. And she started with needlework and textile.
So the poem was an exploration of how she was “self taught.” And that is something I can indeed aspire to.

A Field Guide to the True American Diner by John Leavitt

Reprinted from The Awl.

I found this probably the most charming essay on diners I’ve ever read, and hope you enjoy it as well. MS

A Field Guide to the True American Diner
John Leavitt

dinersHello, I am an American from New Jersey and I care about diners.

The True American Diner is a casual sit-down restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner—all three meals—all day, often for all twenty-four hours of it. Time has no meaning in the presence of eggs, steak and hash browns. Portions are large but not obscene; sides are available with nearly everything. The food is sturdy and simple, a few strong flavors and techniques. Nothing in a True American Diner couldn’t be made by a moderately skilled cook in their own kitchen: corned beef hash, club sandwiches, and a variety of scrambles.

Menus are oversized and presented as a single, huge laminated page with unavailable items taped over, or in a leather-bound binder. Everything in the “diet” section of the menu contains cottage cheese or is steamed. There are daily specials, and they come with soup or salad. Chicken Parmesan and mozzarella sticks must be available. Ketchup is served in bottles, not packets. The coffee is available and drunk at every meal; cups may even be set out on the table before patrons arrive. Refills are free and assumed to be always wanted, unless you indicate you want no more by turning the coffee cup over. Dessert is pie, and if displayed in a glass case at the end of the counter, it must rotate. We did not free ourselves from England’s cruel yoke to have static pie.

A server takes your order, but you pay at the cashier, which will have a small bowl of pillowy mints that taste like toothpaste. (The area near the cashier should have framed, signed headshots of the various celebrities and notables who have eaten at the diner. Ideally, these people are long-dead regional celebrities you’ve never heard of with one famous name, like Keanu Reeves, prominently displayed in the mix.) The server at a True American Diner may be a man or a woman, young or old. They can be curt, motherly, sassy, or taciturn but they always take your order on a small notepad and deliver food with speedy efficiency and stunning acts of plate balancing. The ability to effortlessly juggle nine different heavy platters of breakfast food at 10 pm is the hallmark of the True American Diner server. There should be a sign that asks you to “Please Wait To Be Seated” or “Please Seat Yourself,” and it should always be turned to “Please Seat Yourself.”

True American Diners run small, with a capacity that tops out at around sixty-five people plus counter space; thirties-style railcar diners rarely seat more than twenty people, but have long counters running the length of the restaurant. They are single rooms, with no areas for anything but food service. There is also no outdoor seating in a True American Diner. Where are you, a bistro in France, about to order a country pate’ avec moules frites?

But not all diners are exactly alike. There are vintage sleek bullet diners, modern silver-and-neon highway beacons, converted farmhouses, dusty desert truck stops, low-slung ranch-styles attached to motels, and mansard roof shoeboxes full of fake grapevines that resemble suburbian banks. Somewhere, there is neon. There are always leather or leather-ish clad booths in a True American Diner; without them, it’s just a breakfast joint.

In the east, True American Diners are located either in the downtown area or just off a major road leading into it. In the west, diners are more likely on highways in between towns, merging with that other American institution, the truck stop. If a town has more than one, there will be unresolvable argument over which is “the good one.” People are very loyal toward “their” diner because a True American Diner will be family-run or at least locally operated. The ideal True American Diner owners are Greek, or at least willing to pretend.

Chain imitations of True American Diners try too hard. They impose a false, forced sense of familiarity and nostalgia. These are the places with tableside jukeboxes that never work and vintage cars and Happy Days-esque kitsch bought by the yard and glued onto the walls. Attempt no luncheons there. (A notable exception to this is the Waffle House, a southern chain that’s managed to retain True American charm and values. So integral are Waffle Houses to the communities they serve that FEMA uses the informal Waffle House Index to gauge the severity of a natural disaster by what’s available on the Waffle House menu.)

True American Diners exist in a bubble of no-nonsense egalitarianism; they exist outside socioeconomic distinctions, because there is something for everyone. There are always at least two retired people at the counter; they will never speak to each other or anyone else. Someone is on the run from the law; someone is the law. There are always at least two teenagers in a True American Diner and they are simultaneously talking about nothing and having The Most Important Conversation Of Their Lives. You wouldn’t go there for a special occasion, but you can always go there after one: proms, weddings, or funerals.

Without diners, where would outlaws stop to discuss bank robberies over coffee? Where would strippers go when they get off work? Where would covert agents talk about business with waffles or lovers arrange clandestine meetings? Without diners, are you even sure you’re in America?

In Memory of Miriam Bobkoff

My friend, sometimes known as “the other Miriam” died yesterday in Kingston Residence in Santa Fe, attended by friends, caring aides, and Ambercare Hospice. She was a librarian (in public, community college, and tribal libraries), an ordained Zen priest in the Soto lineage, and also a lover of poetry and editor of the e-zine “Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.”
Here is an incredible poem she wrote based on what she called her “communal past,” that speaks not just to an important part of her personal history but to that of the city of San Francisco’s. It is about the famous drag queen, activist, and local personality Hibiscus.
If you knew Miriam Bobkoff and this is your first notice of her death, the team that cared for her will also be sending out a group email of a more personal nature. Also, feel free to write me at msagan1035@aol.com.

Unexpected Elegy

When I wrote him off he was famous
in his fashion,
a caricature of all the people who had imitated him,
whole audiences of them,
the screwy drugged-out Angel of Light making only the
occasional flight
in the theater he created.

Afterwards he died of ‘gay pneumonia’
before so to speak there was such a thing as AIDS,
as if he had invented his death, too, and all the others have
imitated him.

“I heard that Hibiscus was dragged screaming in chains
down the middle of Polk Street,”
said Jilala or Ralif or someone else who would have heard it
at the baths,
and we all disapproved.
I could see it plainly, the nineteen flowing layers of garments,
the wreath of real flowers in waist-long hair and the
glitter in his beard, writhing in oil and broken glass
under the feet of buses and cars and the aunties of Polk Street–

right then I forgot him for ten years,

whom only now I remember:

he showered us with rose petals, my first lover and I,
coming through the velvet curtain between his room
and mine, scattering handsful over our bodies
as we lay there making love

he called me Garance sometimes, and once when the commune was
in a crisis too ordinaire for his delicate self
he handed me a note and fled the house,
I have the paper still:
‘Garance — Never mind. The moment is past.’ Baptiste

he came from New York longer ago than that
(I was a model, he said, my specialty was looking sullen)
the beautiful boy who wanted to sleep with me
when I was still
living alone in a carriage house and had never slept with anyone,
and he was still George Harris the Third.

1/2/89

3 Questions for Glenna Luschei

1. What is your personal/aesthetic relationship to the poetic line? That is, how do you understand it, use it, etc.

2. Do you find a relationship between words and writing and the human body? Or between your writing and your body?

3. Is there anything you dislike about being a poet?

1. My mother said I used iambic pentameter before I could talk in words and my children remember that
I spoke to them in rhyme when they were little so I guess I use it as basic and fundamental.

2. I think I bottle up words in my body. The name of an early book was “Back into my Body.” so I definitely feel I use my body as a storage shed. I feel I am at my physical peak when I am writing or on the tail of a poem. Having a book published is a let down which makes me feel restless. I need to get going again.

I get good images when I’m walking , even better, running. Best yet, swimming.

3. Sometimes I wonder why I have given my life to something so obscure but I like the hermetic life, too.

Glenna Luschei was born in Iowa, educated in Nebraska, and has been a poet all her life. She was a
corn detasseler in Iowa who graduated to raising avocados in California. She has lived in South America and in the American Southwest. With her PhD in Hispanic Languages from the University of California at Santa Barbara she has served as medical translator for migrant workers. In the year 2000 she was inducted as poet laureate of San Luis Obispo, California, City and County.

Since I’m getting on a plane, here’s a short one.

Flight Haiku

So much joy in life
I will be forced to declare
this extra baggage.

Poetry in Cookies

Most cookies are cute–only a few are works of art– and Naja Druva’s are:

Thanks to Stella Reed for drawing my attention to these. To see more, click here.

Pop Up Poetry

We got some nice post event publicity from Santa Fean Now.

I think contributing writer Bibi Deitz knows something I do not! Read her essay on patience, below.

On Patience

My friend told me that to be patient in Spanish is to study the science of peace: Paciencia comes from the Latin pax and Spanish ciencia, peace and science. I did some research and found that this etymology lesson is not quite right—looks like paciencia originally derives from the Latin pati, to suffer or undergo, which morphed over time to the Latin patientia, meaning endurance, tolerance, forbearance—but I like my friend’s version. If science is the intellectual activity of studying the ways of the natural world through observation and experiment and peace is simply freedom from disturbance (thanks, Oxford American!), then to have patience is to mindfully observe the ways of the world through observation and experiment—peacefully. That sounds about right.

I have been challenging myself to have patience with everything lately. In the past eight months since I moved back to New York, I have been constantly tempted to rush things: I’m back! I’m ready for the job, relationship, apartment of which I’ve always dreamed! But I’m constantly receiving reminders to have patience.

Peace is hard to come by when you’re waiting for something. If a child knows there’s something to look forward to later, she’ll anxiously look forward to it all day—the “are we there yet?” syndrome. It’s the same way with adults who have a treat on the horizon. If I know it’s coming, I’d much prefer for it to come now.

This isn’t always the case. I like to savor a good book, tick away the days until a B.B. King concert, and don’t get me started on the delights of foreplay. There’s a time and a place for everything, and this includes patience.

But, for the most part, if I don’t know it’s coming—if I just trust that things come, as life unfolds, because that’s the way life works, and keep showing up and paying attention but not itching about how it’ll all look in the end—then I can just relax, free from antsiness or distress.

Spiritual teachers seem to be really amped up about patience. Yogi Bhajan has a great little ditty on patience in which he booms out, “Patience pays!” in his deep voice. I hear him in my head sometimes when I start to get restive. And my friend and I watched a metaphysical-y video recently from Ra Uru Hu, who basically said, Put a sock in it. You think waiting sucks? How about you get used to it and embrace it for a change.

They’re right, obviously. Take longing and desire—the way things are at the very beginning of a romantic entanglement, that precarious place where both people have expressed interest, a sizable handful of kisses have been exchanged, but the trajectory remains unclear. These fluttery moments could be for the memory mine, to be conjured up from time to time in the future as hazy reminiscence. Or such a thing could be worth waiting for.

If it’s Option A, the former option, then in some ways, wouldn’t we all rather it be dragged out a bit? We love to pine, though we think we hate it. Truth be told, I live for it. I love the pursuit, the dance, the uncertainty and heartache and tumult. If something is given to me on a platter, I’ll take a nibble and leave the rest for the mice. If, on the other hand, something is shoved at me piecemeal in jagged little unpredictable bites, I’ll lie down on the floor with my mouth open, eyes closed, and hope the next bite is something with truffle oil and not, say, rat jerky. But I’ll take that chance, because I so adore the thrill of the chase.

If it’s Option B, all the better. If a romance is going somewhere, what’s the rush?

Only time will tell. Patience is sometimes bolstered by distraction. Take the other day: I was thinking of firing off a text message about something that felt urgent, but instead I got sidetracked by dinner with my friend, which led to a walk around my neighborhood, which led to the discovery of a new kind of macaroon and sitting on a bench in the twilight, sharing a snack and watching the moonrise. That’s the thing with patience, and with life: you never know when you might be surprised with the perfect opportunity to practice the science of peace, there in the twilight, perched on a bench with your friend from college in the last of the lambency of the day.

¡Paciencia y barajar! Keep trying—don’t give up!

You can hear Yogi Bhajan’s patience affirmation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjNBzaNxCwE

And watch Ra Uru Hu’s patience video here: http://www.jovianarchive.com/Media_Library/Videos/14/RaZen_-_Ra_Uru_Hu (and then click “Waiting”)