A combination of being too busy, sad, or otherwise engaged in late November has forced me to play catch-up in a gamely manner of sorts: I have picked headlines from November 18-30, and wrote one poem using all the headlines’ major words.
THE ARTICLES:
“For California, a New Month, a New Deficit”
by Adam Nagourney
November 18, 2010
“Axis of Depression”
by Paul Krugman
November 19, 2010
“Hiding From Reality”
by Bob Herbert
November 20, 2010
“Teaching for America”
by Thomas L. Friedman
November 21, 2010
“A Safe Haven in Cartoon Confidants”
by David Bornstein
November 22, 2010
“The Sound of Lincoln’s Silence”
by Harold Holzer
November 23, 2010
“A Very Risky Game”
by the New York Times Editorial Board
November 24, 2010
“Dig Out Those Pocket Combs”
by David Coman
November 25, 2010
“For Retailers, Black Friday Expectations Are High”
by Stephanie Clifford
November 26, 2010
“Winning the Class War”
by Bob Herbert
November 27, 2010
“A Women. A Prostitute. A Slave.”
By Nicholas D. Kristof
November 28, 2010
“A Stale Food Fight”
by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser
November 29, 2010
“A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored”
by Charles Zanor
November 30, 2010
THE POEM:
west coast
she didn’t love an East Coast man
by coincidence or on principle
the man for her is in California
hiding from reality a little bit like her
she finds a safe haven in cartoon confidants
he’ll find a safe haven in the Science T-shirt she wears out on the town
in her brown curls and the glasses he’ll find
before she realizes she’s misplaced them again
love is a very risky game
sometimes it goes stale
she takes time to decide things
falling in love is a three-year affair
it doesn’t happen over dinner
or even a season
it’s a new month
a new deficit
of things missing
things not here
of things elsewhere
some in Europe
where she left them
on the east coast her best friend is
naked on two axes of depression
crying from left to right
yelling from top to bottom
in most parts of the country, narcissism makes people ugly
but in California narcissists arrange themselves in fit, tan clumps
the first time he saw her, she was sitting next to a group of them at a bookstore
in jeans and a T-shirt
no makeup
no cellphone or computer
just a girl in Converse
reading something for children
there is a woman on 36th Street in Manhattan
she’s a sex slave
in the city where white kids from rich families and good schools
teach for America against the backdrop of Lincoln’s silence in between words like a house divided cannot and this hallowed ground
it’s a city consecrated by art and money by clothes that don’t hang off a person
on the west coast a man will dig out his pocket comb
before the girl reading a fantasy series
agrees to meet him for a beer and some philosophical foreplay
her clothes hide her shape
he’ll trace it later
she will not be impressed when he does all the right things
he will not be impressed when she pays her half
in the aftermath of a Black Friday and the math of a White Christmas somewhere else they’ll agree a class war in East LA rages on but this isn’t East LA this is an unimpressive bar that they’ll come back to every year on this day to celebrate where something good started where something that looks like a west coast morning feels like a redwood tree’s deep roots tastes like a beautiful fog is physics is science is an equation that you can’t calculate but every force they learned about in school
she says gravity doesn't even exist
he says then how did we fall in love
she says gravity doesn't even exist
he says then how did we fall in love
