Desirous

From the Manifesto of the Selfish

by Stephen Dunn

Because altruists are the least sexy
     people on earth, unable
to say "I want" without embarrassment,

we need to take from them everything
     they give,
then ask for more,

this is how to excite them, and because
     it's exciting
to see them the least bit excited

once again we'll be doing something
     for ourselves,
who have no problem taking pleasure

always desirous and so pleased to be
     pleased, we who above all
can be trusted to keep the balance.

Top Ten

turkish delight

wide-brimmed straw hats in summer

jasmine pearl tea

eyewear

outdoor fruit and vegetable markets

tepertős pogácsa

freshly ground peanut butter

peanut butter on toast with tabasco and cucumber slices

baking bread

being in my body

whiskey, neat

pockets

Széchenyi Fürdő

my mother's dumplings

rocking chairs

scarves

giving books I love to people I think might love them too

The Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter

diners

grandma Kelley's rice casserole

Le Mans Hall

midwives

Spencer Tunick

wool socks, knee-high, with stripes in the winter

clowns

"In My Mind" by Amanda Palmer

bread and butter

cooking split-pea soup

democracy

church bells

Gellért Fürdő

African chicken and peanut soup from the New England Soup Factory

martini with blue cheese stuffed olives

1059 Riverside

gesztenyepüré

Greek yogurt with honey, in Greece

listening to my kids giggle and play after the lights are out at bedtime

bodza

Book Club

Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins

Rome

sunflowers

Indigo Girls

dandelions

sleep

Warren Dunes State Park

french fries

Ted Kooser

blue

the fact that baking bread is so simple

clean pressed sheets

One Billion Rising

walking by a lilac bush in bloom

holding hands

playgrounds

NPR

PBS

hard wood floors

handmade afghans

coffee

Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer, by Jean- Hippolyte Flandrin

marching bands

HONK! festival of activist street bands

my clever, funny friend

roasted chestnuts

Rachel flodnija

birdie sing in the tree, woo woo woo, wee wee wee, I love you and you love me

Henszlmann Imre utca, 5

cuckoo clocks

handwritten letters

potluck dinners

Kelet Kávézó

Pad Thai in Budapest

tabasco sauce

massage

Amanda Palmer

marathons, watching them

hiking, with the right shoes

chocolate chip cookies, baking them

snorkling

Gloucester

public schools

#metoo

neighbors

pie crust

yellow roses

Orange Theory Fitness

the truth

My Apartment

This is Just to Say

by Erica-Lynn Gambino

(for William Carlos Williams)

I have just
asked you to
get out of my
apartment

even though
you never
thought
I would

Forgive me
you were
driving
me insane

boom.

I'm Alive

Indigo

by Ellen Bass

As I’m walking on West Cliff Drive, a man runs
toward me pushing one of those jogging strollers
with shock absorbers so the baby can keep sleeping,
which this baby is. I can just get a glimpse
of its almost translucent eyelids. The father is young,
a jungle of indigo and carnelian tattooed
from knuckle to jaw, leafy vines and blossoms,
saints and symbols. Thick wooden plugs pierce
his lobes and his sunglasses testify
to the radiance haloed around him. I’m so jealous.
As I often am. It’s a kind of obsession.
I want him to have been my child’s father.
I want to have married a man who wanted
to be in a body, who wanted to live in it so much
that he marked it up like a book, underlining,
highlighting, writing in the margins, I was here.
Not like my dead ex-husband, who was always
fighting against the flesh, who sat for hours
on his zafu chanting om and then went out
and broke his hand punching the car.
I imagine when this galloping man gets home
he’s going to want to have sex with his wife,
who slept in late, and then he’ll eat
barbecued ribs and let the baby teethe on a bone
while he drinks a cold dark beer. I can’t stop
wishing my daughter had had a father like that.
I can’t stop wishing I’d had that life. Oh, I know
it’s a miracle to have a life. Any life at all.
It took eight years for my parents to conceive me.
First there was the war and then just waiting.
And my mother’s bones so narrow, she had to be slit
and I airlifted. That anyone is born,
each precarious success from sperm and egg
to zygote, embryo, infant, is a wonder.
And here I am, alive.
Almost seventy years and nothing has killed me.
Not the car I totalled running a stop sign
or the spirochete that screwed into my blood.
Not the tree that fell in the forest exactly
where I was standing—my best friend shoving me
backward so I fell on my ass as it crashed.
I’m alive.
And I gave birth to a child.
So she didn’t get a father who’d sling her
onto his shoulder. And so much else she didn’t get.
I’ve cried most of my life over that.
And now there’s everything that we can’t talk about.
We love—but cannot take
too much of each other.
Yet she is the one who, when I asked her to kill me
if I no longer had my mind—
we were on our way into Ross,
shopping for dresses. That’s something
she likes and they all look adorable on her—
she’s the only one
who didn’t hesitate or refuse
or waver or flinch.
As we strode across the parking lot
she said, O.K., but when’s the cutoff?
That’s what I need to know.

• Ellen Bass is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University. Her most recent book is “Like a Beggar.”

Will Have Sex for Chipotle

To the woman who ran her car into my daughter's bicycle in a crosswalk, I say, accidents happen and its okay. I say this to her on my blog because what she did after my daughter was knocked to the ground was not okay. She got out and yelled at my daughter. “She said it was my fault. She yelled that I damaged her car.” Then she got in her car. And left. My daughter is 10 years old. She was alone, bleeding, and her bicycle handlebars were bent so that she couldn’t bike. Accidents happen. Being cold-hearted to child is a choice.

When I arrived by bike a few minutes later, two men from a nearby building were there. One had already brought tools to fix her bike. They were kind and helpful. One of them was wearing a white t-shirt with black letters that said, “Will have sex for Chipotle.”

I decided to get back on the bike and take Iza to computer programming day camp, as planned. Then I returned to the accident scene to thank the men. Those men did a good thing today. To the woman who had an accident and then behaved badly, here I am. If you find me, I am willing to forgive you.

Found List

I found this on Bartok Bela street. A street filled with galleries, coffee shops, and gallery-coffee shops. This is a list of highly ordinary things. Still, its good to make a list. #fundamentals #budapest

Date Night

  

The Babysitter

by Sharon Olds

The baby was about six months old,
a girl. The length of her life, I had not
touched anyone. That night, when they went out
I held the baby along my arm and
put her mouth to my cotton shirt.
I didn’t really know what a person was, I
wanted someone to suck my breast,
I ended up in the locked bathroom,
naked to the waist, holding the baby,
and all she wanted was my glasses, I held her
gently, waiting for her to turn,
like a cherub, and nurse. And she wouldn’t, what she wanted
was my glasses. Suck me, goddamnit, I thought,
I wanted to feel the tug of another
life, I wanted to feel needed, she grabbed for my
glasses and smiled. I put on my bra
and shirt, and tucked her in, and sang to her
for the last time — clearly it
was the week for another line of work —
and turned out the light. Back in the bathroom
I lay on the floor in the dark, bared
my chest against the icy tile,
slipped my hand between my legs and
rode, hard, against the hard floor, my nipples holding me up off the glazed
blue, as if I were flying upside
down under the ceiling of the world.

Delicate

A Blessing

By James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, 

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies 

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows 

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture 

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness  

That we have come. 

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other. 

There is no loneliness like theirs.  

At home once more, 

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.  

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms, 

For she has walked over to me  

And nuzzled my left hand.  

She is black and white, 

Her mane falls wild on her forehead, 

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear 

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist. 

Suddenly I realize 

That if I stepped out of my body I would break 

Into blossom.

Cool Disgust

This paragraph from Matthew Desmond's "Evicted" lingers in my mind:

One day, a friend gave Arleen a cat: a half-black, half-white thing. After Sherrena said they could keep it, Jori named him Little and began feeding him table scraps. Jori laughed when Little would spring at a loose shoelace or gulp down a ramen noodle. Jafaris would pick him up and press his nose against his ear. Both boys especially loved it when Little caught a mouse. He would drag the thing to the middle of the room and smack it around. The mouse would take different routes, trying to figure out what Little wanted. Bat! Bat! The mouse would tumble and roll with every swat. At some point, the pathetic creature would burrow under Little's arm, hiding. Little would let the mouse rest and warm itself. Then he might reach down and grab the creature with his mouth and throw it into the air and, enjoying the effect, do it again and again. Eventually the mouse would just lie there motionless, and Little would look at with with cool disgust, wondering why the creature didn't get back up.

This passage captures the story of eviction in modern America. 

A free cat, neither fully white or black. 

He is little, thus his name. 

The children's delight in his antics. 

The fact that they feed him ramen noodles. 

The fact that the entire scene--the killing of the mouse--was witnessed more than once. 

The cool disgust of the cat. 

Don't we all have an attitude of cool disgust when we go about our business and fail to see or understand the damage we inflict on others?