When You Get That One Chance: Feel It

It isn't everyday you get to be there when it's happening.
For some reason or another, I'd met the right people.
My boyfriend was the right person; his friends were the right people, and
I had the right chutzpah.
I was able to be one of the many reviewers for "Angels in America."

After catching the most incredible,
Eye-opening, spleen-rending early editions at the Mark Taper
I returned to Broadway to see the east coast iteration
After it had been rediscovered
Apparently in San Fran

But instead of just reviewing,
I'd asked to interview the cast or director or writer
And they brought me the head of Joe Mantello
And we had breakfast in Chelsea
At a Greek diner

The memory is still good, but lost.
I was so enamoured with what they were producing
That my notes were a complete mess
And my recollection of our conversation wasn't crystal clear

And in the moment, I recall merely being lost in a feeling
Lost in the specialness of knowing I was near something great
Joe was welcoming and friendly.
But my experience was not that of a review in any way.
.
On the walk back, I remember a substantial Brownstone he pointed up at saying,
"That's Tony's place." (Or was it George C. Wolfe?)
Then dragging out our time together,
I ran my mouth off trying to be insightful.

Embarassed that I knew so little
It was good our time was coming to an end. I was no critic
I was what I truly am: a dilettante and fan
I was enamoured and enraptured and I felt every moment of it.

And I write this now,
Wishing against wishes that it was happening right now
All over again. Because happenstance like that.
Doesn't happen often.

Like Alisyn Camerota told me (probably as she was editing my interview with him at work),
"When you meet celebrity, remember as much of it as possible.
Don't let those moments go, remember that you may never meet those folks twice.
You get that one chance. Feel it."


*upon hearing that Angels was moving from Southbank to Broadway

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The Charity Shop Shirt

Last Night The Smell in Your Shirt Was Gone

I kept a shirt, and it was yours. 

I used to be able to smell you in your old shirt: that shirt you'd gotten from the charity shop.

I remember thinking how that smell was you.

Even after a million washes, there was still you.

Then we stopped. It stopped. The mind is fascinating: 

No sooner have you told yourself you'll never forget, 

Then you live and then in the living and the moving on,

You forget.

You forget with every ounce of the effort you intended to remember with.

You can't remember, because your mind chooses what the spirit cannot.

The shock to the system was profound after the move from the old house here.

In the old house, I swear to god that smell of you was always in that shirt.

But no, no it must not have been.

When I looked up, after unboxing and storing. I noticed.

The smell in your shirt was gone.

And I stood up and thought. Now 

Where did it go?

Where was I when it left?

How is it I cannot keep that moment, that sense memory?

And why? Why is it we cannot have what we hope for

In spite of the brutality of partition.

The nation of our lives was cleaved. And the smell of you was gone.

And the smell of that shirt in the charity shop 

Left, during the move.

I suppose I should be grateful. 

But I'm left with the feeling that if I'd only paid attention.
If I'd only opened that box first

If I'd only remembered which box it was in.

If I hadn't run into it in a peculiar moment, 

I'd have known what it was from that shirt from the early 20th century

That bonded us. 

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On Louise, or Thank Your Toaster

On Louise

(upon the death of Louise Hay)

You and your thoughts were there in a way that The Bible couldn't be.

There's almost no way to express how opaque the Bible was

When I reached out and there were no words.

I only had the catechism and that was a mantra I could repeat to speak through the fear.

Then came Louise.

The voice of a Bible that spoke in sentences, not mythology.

The affirmations that were so silly, yet

So tangible when you are dying of something that has no cure.

Then you look up and you say, "Thank you toaster for helping you make all those meals."

Thank your toaster.

*on her passing, Sept. 2, 2017, New York Times obit

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Let the Poems Begin

Something struck as the death of poet laurette John Ashbery. The Newshour did a great piece on him last night and it inspired what I'm hoping will be weekly poems. We'll see.

The work I hope to write will about taking the little moments and seeing the profundity or the complexity. And it'll hopefully take his "difficult work" and from that, I hope I can steal the thunder and make mine more robust, more compelling.

Here's the first efforts:

Why We Text, or 

Rage in the Phone Receiver

The rage from you on the phone the other night.

Wow.
I remember, then I forget, how we are just not a relationship anymore.

But at the same time, we turn to each other and say,
"You are really the only one I can have these conversations with."

And we pause. We reflect in real time and we think,

"Yeah. True."
So how do I give you space to be raging on the phone

Miles away from here. From me?

We are two now and have been for so long.

There's really very little room for patching things up.

When you think about it. To consider otherwise, 

Well, I'm not so sure that's fair.

Irreconcilable difference only mean something when I 

Can still smell you in the shirt I kept of yours from 17 years ago.

But there's no smell there. 

The nose and the mind and the amnesia.

We're really quite lucky, when you think about it. 

I think it's a quirk in the pattern. You still buy the dress 

Because it still looks soon, in spite of the seam not matching up quite right.

It's why we text.

So we don't have to feel the nerve, the anguish of that lost life 

We could never live after the break.

The break that allowed us to breathe again after 15 years of youth.

How do you move on at 34?

You 

Just 

Move

And the sound of the movement rustles like a child hiding in the curtains

And it giggles a little thinking it's getting away with something clever.

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