tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23960137281528354722023-11-15T09:09:37.336-08:00Shipwrecked PoetryPoetry by Ally Malinenko author of The Wanting Bone published by Six Gallery Press and available on Amazon.com and in fine bookstores.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.comBlogger232125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-52499160735917851112012-04-04T14:12:00.003-07:002012-04-04T14:15:58.811-07:00FarewellI'm retiring this blog...I'll be posting poems, stories and novel excerpts over at <a href="http://allymalinenko.com/">AllyMalinenko</a> instead.<br /><br />Come, join me. We'll have a blast.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-38624910373143955662012-03-12T03:39:00.001-07:002012-03-12T03:39:23.744-07:00Birthday Presents as Red as ThreadWhen I wrap and pack<br />the birthday presents that I will<br />then take to the post office,<br />I’m struck<br />with the fact that you are soon to be thirteen.<br /><br />And I stop to remember myself then too,<br />back through time,<br />unraveling the years, <br />like shedding clothes<br />as one walks through their house<br /><br />and it all comes undone this way.<br />And for a moment I can see myself<br />as I once was<br />holding the necklace that your mother<br />now dead<br />gave to me.<br /><br />I imaging giving it to you.<br />The sentiment. The power.<br />Entrusting you with the only thing I have of hers.<br />It would be a sort of un-doing. Severing the lingering red thread.<br /><br />I cannot think of love as a constant.<br />It must, for me, wax and wane,<br />the way a wave comes to the shore but is still always part of the deep.<br /><br />I have to think of it this way – as something I can touch <br />once or twice but not hold. Otherwise<br />I can feel my fingers locking<br />and I know I will choke it to death.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-28890239519128079092012-02-21T03:16:00.001-08:002012-02-21T03:17:21.045-08:00Winter HardyOn my walk through the park,<br />towards the dock,<br />alone<br />I pass them. <br /><br />Succulents all fat and stout,<br />waiting<br />through the heat<br />waiting through the wind<br />waiting through winter.<br /><br />There is a stillness here, <br />that until now <br />I didn’t know I was seeking.<br /><br />Later at the dock,<br />in the wind<br />while the Mexican children<br />rollerskate<br />over the planks of wood<br />as the water laps below me<br />I sit and wait.<br /><br />There are several unknown things<br />down there <br />that maybe <br />we are better off not knowing.<br /><br />I watch the sunset over staten island<br />all hot white light<br />and burning orange<br />so bright I can taste it<br /><br />and when it’s gone,<br />I turn and watch the lights wink on<br />downtown,<br />and think<br />at this angle<br /><br />Manhattan looks so tiny.<br />Small enough to fit <br />in my hand.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-14322766807624233292012-01-31T06:00:00.000-08:002012-01-31T06:01:48.879-08:00Year FourteenThere is paper and there is ink.<br />There is the couch, the gentle depression,<br />the part the cat has scratched.<br />There is the glass and there is the ice.<br />There is him<br />And there is me.<br />And for awhile there is silence, except<br /><br />Then there are words that come out <br />and my brain saying, shut up shut up shut up<br />but I keep talking and he keeps talking<br />and then there is pacing,<br />the long walk down the hall.<br /><br />The stiches that held it together have come apart.<br /><br />This is the power of words,<br />the moment is both the recording and the record needle,<br />it is the doing and keeping, creating and solidifying<br />into things we cannot, do not, take back.<br /><br />We are the palimpsest. We can rewrite this. <br /><br />He shifts. He opens and closes his book.<br />He does not want to talk,<br />but I am tugging loose a thread I should not have touched,<br />my fingers picking and picking, <br /><br />because tomorrow I will go to the doctor<br />and he will listen to my heart<br />and I will think about dying.<br />Because that is what we all think about when someone listens to our heart.<br />Think about the hard ground, the mushroom blossom.<br />Think about the grainy ash between fingers in another winter<br />that we won’t know. Think about a universe beginning and then beg it to stop.<br /><br />I want to ask him each day: Is this what we have been waiting for?<br />Are we just too scared to admit it?<br />But I’m not speaking now. He is.<br /><br />Imagine the whole ocean fitting in your mouth. <br />Imagine holding it there.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-66339018565553549132012-01-11T03:59:00.001-08:002012-01-11T03:59:27.048-08:00Marble SoulWhen I flip through the pages of the past,<br />it goes like this:<br />yesterday, with open windows<br />first neat and cut <br />laid out side by side<br />and then sloppy as I go back farther, towards childhood.<br />I remember the red door, the smell of the dog’s food.<br />I remember the bookshelf low to the ground<br />page after page after page<br />and the murmuring groan of feet on hardwood,<br />rocking rocking chair<br />women cackles and coughing.<br />It goes on like this, <br />from the things I remember <br />to the parts I make up,<br />fill in like so much putty,<br />weave into ropes to<br />tamp down the tents.<br /><br />Why not?<br /><br />Tomorrow is just more flowers, bodily pink and spiked green.<br />It is only more kneeling at gravesites,<br />more ashes to scatter.<br />We will take off and put back on<br />the funeral clothes.<br />We will set and clear the table<br />as we have for generations.<br />All the births<br />except your own<br />are behind us now,<br />a soul like a marble,<br />round and glistening in your pocket. <br /><br />You squeeze it tight, the way I used to.<br />You check your pockets,<br />padding down. <br />Frantic.<br />Is it still there?<br />Is it still there?<br />Well, is it?Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-36738937248966881772011-12-13T02:44:00.000-08:002011-12-13T02:50:59.882-08:00¡Salud!I spot them down the street before my husband.<br />Where? he asks<br />craning his neck a little until they appear,<br />like a magic trick between <br />the crowds of tourists and New Yorkers.<br />They’ve been in this country one week<br />and already, too much has happened.<br /><br />We agree to drinks and set out. Salud. We clink glasses.<br />I ask how the day went.<br />It is so big, they tell me. Not like Madrid.<br />We build up and up and up<br />I tell them, pointing at the buildings<br />thinking of America’s need to reach something unreachable.<br /><br />It is like a fucking movie, Oscar says. A fucking movie<br />a wide grin as he rolls his cigarette. I love it.<br />Me encanta, she says. We love it.<br /><br />Later, we’ll put them in the car,<br />after hugging<br />and promising again maybe next year.<br />Maybe Rome?<br />Maybe Barcelona. Again next year?<br />We promise and we promise.<br /><br />Write us, my husband says.<br />When you land so we know you are safe<br />and I watch him help her get her bags in the car.<br /><br />We will miss you so fucking much, Oscar says.<br />We hug again and again.<br />They get in the car, doors shut. I have already helped<br />them put together the fifty dollars for the driver.<br />Tip, tip! Oscar says and I nod. Yes, tip.<br /><br />The car pulls away and they turn and wave through the back window<br />Aida mimes a tear on her cheek and I brush at my own.<br />They wave frantically as the car heads down our street. <br />It is like a fucking movie.<br /><br />We got back inside, clear up the beer bottles.<br />We sit on the green couch, in the thick silence of their absence.<br />My husband places a warm hand on my knee<br />and reaches down to fetch the wine bottle,<br />my hand already reaching for my glass.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-36553692545169258482011-10-13T02:52:00.001-07:002011-10-13T02:53:22.253-07:00Moon PrayerYesterday<br />in that waned<br />or waxed time of night<br />on the long walk home<br />with the moon hidden<br />so hidden <br />in fact<br />it was just a smear<br />of white under more white<br />the way the sun can be at times<br />both blotted and blotting us out,<br /><br />I said your name out loud<br />without expecting you to answer.<br /><br />And for a moment I was more than less.<br />I could be that indifferent element<br />that charred wood,<br />that spark of flame,<br />that bubble of water,<br />that small breeze,<br />that rustles the back of a single leaf.<br />Or more, an atom<br />a muscle strained, unstrained,<br />strained again.<br />Something simpler.<br /><br />Praise to the child king<br />and the walking stick.<br />Praise to the warrior girl,<br />the tallest trees,<br />praise to the mushroom,<br />the hot hot sand and the wettest sea,<br />praise to the next life,<br />praise to the train tracks and leaf blades<br />to the molecule splitting,<br />to the whale, floating weightless<br />praise to the moon.<br /><br />Praised be.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-42602344200170729382011-09-12T03:23:00.001-07:002011-09-12T03:24:21.813-07:00What the Bridge SaysThey leave things behind, <br />junk and garbage sometimes,<br />but also books<br />the pages wrinkled with dried rain<br />and blotted with ink.<br /> <br />One time also a baby bird,<br />pulled too soon from its shells,<br />wingless<br />her eyes glistening now<br />with everything she doesn't see.<br /><br />This is what they left behind on the bridge.<br /><br />There was a bible once<br />and a ceramic Santa Claus. Marbles.<br />A box of baby clothes, moldy and stained.<br />Wishes are left here too, whispered from dry lips<br />falling from tear stained cheeks<br />tossed like coins down into the exhaust of the cars below.<br /><br />If this is where we say hello, then also say goodbye.<br /> <br />On this bridge they leave love notes<br />and dog collars,<br />stenciled drawings<br />empty chip bags too but also<br />parts of his soul,<br />bits of her heart.<br /><br />I have walked this bridge twice a day for four years<br />so I know that<br />I am leaving parts of myself on this bridge too,<br />so that maybe someone <br />else will see them,<br />and then we will know I was real.<br />These are the sacrifices we leave.<br />Cheap tokens of our existence<br />so that maybe we can have one more day,<br /><br />of searching, of dreaming <br />of reaching through the wires<br />of love, yes, of fingers almost touching<br />but also one more day of hope.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-16490354367110883602011-09-02T03:29:00.000-07:002011-09-02T03:32:51.196-07:00Dying CatShe’s thin
<br />and getting thinner.
<br />I watch her wander to the table, rub up against it,
<br />the sad concave of her sides.
<br />
<br />I turn back to the cooking food,
<br />pull out a piece of chicken,
<br />crouch down,
<br />coax her forward.
<br />
<br />Eat, please, just eat.
<br />Eat and let it stay.
<br />Eat and stop the matting of your fur.
<br />
<br />Eat and be better.
<br />Eat and don’t be dying.
<br />Because all I want is for you to be better.
<br />
<br />She takes the food,
<br />opens her mouth
<br />pink tongue,
<br />squeaks out a nearly soundless meow.
<br />
<br />Like a thank you.
<br />And I fall apart,
<br />because I can’t save her,
<br />
<br />I’m so afraid there is something I can do
<br />and I’m not doing it. Something simple
<br />something overlooked, something
<br />like a miracle.
<br />
<br />I can love her,
<br />I can clean her and hold her
<br />and pet her and hope but
<br />I can’t save her
<br />
<br />and it's killing me.
<br />
<br />because she is old
<br />and sick and
<br />because she is dying,
<br />but also
<br />because she is one of my only friends on this awful planet.
<br />Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-24122509264751412262011-08-31T03:10:00.001-07:002011-08-31T03:12:42.152-07:00What the Cicada Showed MeBecause there was nowhere else to go,
<br />I ran down the back staircase
<br />after the rains came and went
<br />and left nothing clean.
<br />
<br />Outside there was a dead cicada,
<br />its legs curled in like it was doing yoga,
<br />the Child’s Pose,
<br />its big segmented eyes
<br />watching
<br />but no longer watching a million versions
<br />of my movement.
<br />
<br />I watched it in its stillness
<br />the way you watch a painting
<br />searchingly,
<br />not the way you watch the television
<br />vacantly.
<br />
<br />And its leg twitched slightly,
<br />flexed and relaxed and flexed again
<br />and I thought, my god,
<br />it’s still alive and with a stick flipped it over.
<br />
<br />I thought maybe it was just stuck
<br />like a turtle, unable to turn on those wide wings.
<br />I thought I could save it, still
<br />the way I couldn’t save myself.
<br />
<br />But then tons of small ants
<br />crawled out, little red things
<br />so tiny they needed a million to be seen
<br />the way a mob works,
<br />and then the cicada stopped twitching.
<br />
<br />Then I knew the truth: There are things,
<br />eating us from the inside out,
<br />licking us clean till there is only a shell
<br />and then after a hard wind
<br />not even that.
<br />
<br />I want to not be afraid.
<br />I want to go back to the earth
<br />fearlessly.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-53367333765076316902011-08-30T03:16:00.001-07:002011-08-30T05:11:14.443-07:00During the Hurricane<div>
<br />
<br />During the hurricane, there were tornados
<br />and just before, an earthquake.
<br />Nothing major just a tremor,
<br />a shudder in the sleep of a planet
<br />suddenly chilled in deep space.
<br />
<br />We wonder what next?
<br />Locusts?
<br />Plagues?
<br />Has it been so long since the last
<br />swath of disease, bounced lighter than air
<br />down our throat, warping our blood,
<br />changing our lives, permanently.
<br />
<br />In the end, we flip the light to make sure.
<br />We turn the handle on the faucet,
<br />we flush the toilet.
<br />We want to make sure that the life we lived
<br />when we went to sleep
<br />is still the life we wake to when night has passed,
<br />when the hurricane has passed, tiptoeing through
<br />lower Brooklyn,
<br />
<br />leaving only a few downed trees,
<br />like giants felled,
<br />across the lawns of the very rich
<br />and the very prosperous.
<br />
<br />I tell you it could have been worse
<br />and you nod and shrug,
<br />kicking at fat twigs shaken loose
<br />during the night of the hurricane, a night
<br />
<br />when I slept, fitfully
<br />my head on your chest,
<br />dreaming of water,
<br />too much black water,
<br />and an octopus that wouldn’t let go.
<br />
<br />This is how we pass the days, now,
<br />stepping from one disaster to another, narrowly missing
<br />true tragedy but I wonder how much longer can we go on?
<br />How much longer, my friends, can we last? </div>Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-88848288702367195302011-08-24T04:40:00.000-07:002011-08-24T05:18:16.272-07:00Hospital<div>These are the people who tend to the healing,
<br />my mother says, the mending and setting of bones,
<br />the cuts, sutures, fingers in rubber,
<br />thread through skin
<br />plaster and metal against muscle and wet organ.
<br />
<br />This is the land of recreation,
<br />of doctor’s plates and metal tables.
<br />This is where we wait and wait, 1983.
<br />
<br />But at only six years old this too
<br />is the land of under-chairs,
<br />of shoelaces
<br />of finger-counting, alphabets and books.
<br />This is the land of the beep beep beep machines
<br />of funny nose-tickling smells,
<br />of pretending penny-farthings,
<br />of the inside outside upside
<br />of dreams and naps
<br />summer-drying up
<br />
<br />of tears and more tears and what high
<br />tall tables and what hard bread.
<br />
<br />where all things are made and unmade
<br />and remade again,
<br />what shiny tools,
<br />what clean floors,
<br />what time-travel
<br />space ship dimension
<br />naturally, a family
<br />but still no because
<br />what lips
<br />of my mother shushing, shushing me
<br />pressing my head to her leg
<br />hold still, hot hand to cheek
<br />what tall
<br />what lips thin line of the nurse
<br />saying words that are just letters
<br />strung together,
<br />and she says
<br />the man with the funny smell is dead,
<br />we’re sorry,
<br />but he’s gone.</div>Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-80461661887888864832011-08-23T03:41:00.000-07:002011-08-23T06:07:58.631-07:00Lullaby Girl<div>
<br />- for Anneliese Helen
<br />
<br />We do not hear the phone ring
<br />over the noise of Manhattan
<br />so we did not know
<br />yet
<br />that you were born,
<br />
<br />that you have already
<br />been held,
<br />warmth and light
<br />and kissed,
<br />soft and gentle.
<br />
<br />That you had changed
<br />those people,
<br />from husband to father
<br />from wife to mother
<br />
<br />That you have already
<br />stretched two hands
<br />two feet
<br />toward the light
<br />on these bare and bold first hours.
<br />
<br />Already you have dreamed
<br />as your parents have been dreaming,
<br />fluttering eyelids and wonder.
<br />
<br />Later there will be home,
<br />and later still, growing
<br />and someday you will read
<br />these words yourself.
<br />You will race and tumble and
<br />grow bolder and braver.
<br />Someday you will board a train,
<br />cross an ocean,
<br />see the world,
<br />and then come back to us with a suitcase full of stories.
<br />
<br />But that is later,
<br />that is what will come,
<br />here, it is quiet,
<br />hush now
<br />here, there is just this,
<br />the strong thrum of your heart
<br />hands waiting to hold,
<br />night in New Hampshire.
<br />
<br />Sleep, little love.
<br />It is Midnight,
<br />and all is well. </div>Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-8613162991282878052011-08-02T02:55:00.000-07:002011-08-02T02:56:12.476-07:00To LiveIf there are people dying<br />then there are always people to write about the dying<br />to lift the shovels and dig for the dying<br />to preach about the dying.<br /><br />Even now<br />there is my grandmother<br />gone four years<br />and I raise a glass on the couch<br />to Joan,<br />and think four years, my god,<br /><br />what have I done?<br /><br />This is how we keep track of the dying,<br />by what we have or haven’t done<br />in the time they have been gone<br />as if that adds time to our own old clocks.<br /><br />So Joan, here’s what I have done:<br />I have paced hard floors with dry cracked feet,<br />I have written<br />small things at night in secret.<br />I have been to Europe and fallen in love<br />with sad girls on Spanish street corners,<br />with the whores on Grand Via<br />with the waiters at La Rotunde<br />with the bard’s grave and church stones.<br /><br />Joan, I have fallen in love.<br /><br />And I have tried, so very hard<br />to breath each day,<br />to make tea,<br />to catch a sunrise in Brooklyn,<br />just to live, Joan. <br />To live.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-57003433172541930362011-07-19T03:55:00.001-07:002011-07-19T03:55:25.885-07:00Forty FourToday you would have been forty four,<br />with all the complications<br />and beauty of forty four<br />this double digit life.<br />I wonder<br />what you would have looked like<br />if you would have had another child<br />how much you would have hated these wars,<br />but loved your birthday,<br />and seafood,<br />and surprisingly early autumns.<br /><br /><br />But no,<br />instead you are gone,<br />like you were <br />ten years ago,<br />a stone left behind,<br />a carved name,<br />to remind us<br />as if anyone could forget.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-74442572802891646992011-07-10T07:52:00.001-07:002011-07-10T07:52:50.801-07:00These Days are the Days of Long WantingThese days are the days of long<br />wanting, of shade-less stretches <br />down Lexington Ave, of swirling<br />blue and green and flat trees you can touch <br />only maybe.<br /><br />These days are the days of nowhere road,<br />going nowhere, coming from nowhere,<br />entering the part of you that is still<br />nowhere and unseen and hidden.<br /><br />These days are the days of the dying,<br />of the lifeless tubed rattle breaths,<br />of the choked hysteria, of the bed<br />with just a key in the tenement over Third.<br /><br />These days are the days of living,<br />of heat and saliva, of ocean water<br />salty foam, boys in shorts, with hairless chests,<br />of kissing and finger twirling, ache and spasm,<br />the ripping seer, the bold woman, naked<br />with the light on.<br /><br />These days are days of movement refined,<br />of packing for California, of bent backs arching<br />and the curve of deepest knee,<br />of leaving and staying and going and remaining,<br />of paint and text on paper and pencil marks,<br />and new poets who are old poets, their bodies<br />already wracked and broken underground with the rat kings.<br /><br />These days are days of you, twisted glass scars,<br />cold glasses of beer that you hope come and keep coming,<br />of movies, of Spanish lilting phrases and songs, the <br />chatter of fast moving tongues and cold bedroom sheets<br />eager for calves and heels and feet.<br /><br />And these days are the days of me, too,<br />and perfect pancakes and hardwood chairs,<br />of old hips and myself, turning ever so slight <br />to the left, a new light, to be a person you thought<br />you have never seen.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-78249593723771813112011-06-27T03:13:00.001-07:002011-06-27T03:16:06.966-07:00Garage SaleThey start out small, nervous with detail,<br />labeling with a felt tip marker<br />the price on each little china plate.<br />The ink bleeds and floats like a plant root<br />digging through so much soil paper,<br />spirals<br />like a seashell<br />a sensation. <br />What a memory,<br />this life,<br /><br />What agony,<br />what history laid out on the cheap<br />plastic tables.<br />No one wants this, he says,<br />lowball offers on someone else’s<br />memories. Save your money,<br />he yells to the woman with the felt tip.<br />This is overconsumption.<br /><br />A breath between<br /><br />the things that we want<br />and the things that we fear we need.<br /><br />A breath we think might save our lives.<br /><br />I lift the doll from the table.<br />Trace a finger over her pursed lips<br />her plastic needles form eyelashes,<br />half missing,<br />lost somewhere in the backyard,<br />her chipped finger<br />un-stichable body tufts of grey wiry cotton loose.<br />What desperation<br />what soft hands, <br />Tilted her back,<br />so often<br />wordlessly<br />cheap plastic pursed lips,<br />one eye closes<br />one stays open <br />staring right up into the sun.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-20219559162111021482011-06-15T03:20:00.000-07:002011-06-15T03:22:02.662-07:00Inside the Waiting HouseSomewhere inside me there is a house,<br />with the windows thrown open.<br />The floorboards are split where the roots <br />have come through.<br />And both the sunlight<br />and the moonlight <br />make their home here together.<br />They do not argue<br />or vie for attention.<br />They bow and wend up the stairs,<br />polite,<br />with bent heads<br />and gentle words.<br /><br />There is music playing<br />softly<br />something on violin<br />and it wavers in the air<br />like a memory<br />just about to surface.<br />There are also mice<br />and bent blades of grass,<br />there are flowers,<br />dew to drink.<br /><br />But also<br />and most importantly,<br />inside this house<br />there is you and I,<br />untouched<br />by everything that is happening<br />outside<br />where I am lost miles from you<br />and you are thirsty<br />with the straw bent in the water,<br />slowly<br />too slowly <br />dying.<br /><br />Inside this house<br />is the night that I made up,<br />the day that I pretend,<br />the you I didn’t know,<br />and the me I should have been.<br />I remember the day you almost died but didn’t<br />and the feeling that came with that.<br />I thought it would last longer.<br />Longer than this night, at least.<br /><br />Inside me there is a house,<br />and we wait.<br />We touch, lightly<br />and we wait.<br />We do not speak<br />and we wait.<br />And I want this house<br />to be real,<br />the way the song is real<br />the way your voice <br />used to be real, higher than mine, thicker.<br />The way <br />I am still painfully real.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-88781401457077641862011-06-07T03:09:00.001-07:002011-06-07T03:09:58.856-07:00DreamsI am collecting memories<br />like souvenirs from a recently dead man’s room.<br />I will take the chair, the lamp,<br />the baseball t-shirt<br />and the trip to Madrid.<br /><br />You can have the sweater,<br />the shoes, and our time in Paris.<br /><br />I take the ballpoint pen, <br />the one that doesn’t scratch the paper<br />because I believe in the tools.<br />I will take the memories of the funeral<br />You will take the pencil<br />and the birthday cards<br />your mother’s letters to your father.<br /><br />We are scavengers now, crawling <br />through the landscape of a life,<br />crawling over our own history,<br />trying to keep what we can.<br /><br />You pile things on your back.<br />Steady.<br />Steady.<br />I reach for the tickets to our first play.<br /><br />Leave it,<br />you say. You pull at my hand<br />Leave it. We’ll come back.<br /><br />Here is the story:<br />Your life is a molecule,<br />stretched over a vast space<br />and time<br />the way the river runs down to bigger water<br />always bigger. <br />You need to know this.<br />There is so much the body cannot contain,<br />so much it cannot carry.<br /><br />That is the life inside you. That is the real you.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-79257438955761503172011-05-26T08:13:00.000-07:002011-05-26T11:13:35.947-07:00Es Mi CulpaIt is 10:00 in the morning in New York<br />But my watch says 4:00 in the afternoon<br />because it is 4:00 in Madrid.<br /> <br />This is my fault,<br />I know that,<br />trying to carve something <br />out of nothing,<br />trying to keep some part of it with me<br />because back here,<br />all the news is bad and<br />there are moneylenders<br />inside our temples.<br /> <br />The sun in Madrid doesn’t set<br />till 10 or even sometimes later,<br />when we waited at Finnegan’s.<br />Where the bartender told my friend<br />that my husband <br />has a good kind face. <br /> <br />I think it must be easier to fall in love<br />in Madrid, with it’s language and it’s laugh,<br />with the way she tosses her hair and says <br />excuse me and goodbye.<br />She hates Picasso and for that,<br />I love her with her sunglasses and her beer mug.<br /> <br />Maybe it is just that there is more time,<br />in Madrid, more time to sit and talk and be told<br />We are not Americans. More time to make them understand<br />why the poor choose leaders that abandon them.<br />Why the poor believe the lie. More time<br />to teach them dirty words in English and <br />learn them in Spanish.<br /> <br />Maybe time is slower there, a lazy winding river<br />so that when he pulls the waiter aside and <br />orders more beer,<br />we are saving second, minutes<br />we are keeping them in our pockets<br />we are storing them under our tongues.<br /> <br />And the days are not doorways <br />we pass through blindly,<br />they are things we eat and keep<br />and carry with us, onto that plane,<br />and over that ocean.<br />It is 4:00 pm in Madrid,<br />the sun is high<br />and it will stay that way<br />because I know that at 10<br />or even later<br />that sunset, better than any sunset<br />I have seen over Staten Island,<br />that sunset in Madrid,<br />will break your heart.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-52746874771405313552011-05-25T02:44:00.001-07:002011-05-25T02:48:55.421-07:00The Flight to MadridThis is the life we have written.<br />We chose carefully, drawing second by second,<br />as we move through the airport,<br />our luggage in hand,<br />our eye on the clock.<br /><br />We stop for beers<br />and food. And then another beer.<br /><br />We walk down the ramp, <br />our ticket scanned,<br />the flight attendant says <br />hello, with a wide smile <br />but she doesn’t look at us,<br />as we inch<br />slowly<br />though<br />tight <br />aisles<br /><br />and sit down, prepared for this journey.<br />This is the life we have written together.<br />The buckle snapped, <br />my water and journal with me.<br />We line up, the plane rolling for so long<br />I wonder aloud, are we driving there?<br />You smile, and take my hand<br /><br />and then the worst part,<br />the speed and wobble and pressure<br />and I think to myself<br />most accidents happen during takeoff or landing<br />and then I try not to think about that. <br /><br />This is the life we have written<br />and I say to no particular god<br />if it is going to happen, please <br />let it happen on the way home,<br />after I have already laid a hand on<br />the crumbling stone of an ancient church<br /><br />after I have already tasted and drank<br />and kissed.<br />After I have laughed and talked for hours<br />with old friends, now real.<br />After I have already watched from <br />the train window that city leave me <br />and the country find me<br />after I have already climbed those stairs<br />and fallen into bed exhausted.<br />If it is going to happen,<br />let it be after,<br />I pray<br />to no particular god.<br />And no particular god<br />doesn’t answer<br />but later there is a hot sunrise<br />over so much blue ocean,<br />that I don’t care anymore <br />about anything else.<br />This is the life we have written.<br />What will happen next?Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-12759381725899276772011-05-24T03:13:00.003-07:002011-05-24T03:15:46.970-07:00Saying GoodbyeChrist, he said, I’m so sad.<br />So very sad.<br /><br />And he’s right,<br />there will be no more<br />toasts, no more sitting<br />on the little hard stools<br />of Finnegans, his favorite<br />Irish pub in Madrid,<br />no more “What did you do today?”<br />as we tell him about<br />seeing Guernica<br />and the dibujos<br />madre con hijo muerto<br />and the one with horse,<br />his tongue like a dagger,<br /><br />or when we went to Toledo<br />and told him about the winding streets<br />that belonged to el Greco,<br />how we got lost even with a map,<br />but found a little cerverceria and had a caña<br /><br />or when we tried albondigas and drank wine<br />back at Cerverceria Alemana<br />where just days before we had all <br />sat outside, <br />our skin getting redder, our laughter getting louder<br />as Oscar grabbed the waiter and ordered another round.<br /><br />Christ, I’m so sad, he says again, shaking his head.<br />I hug him and don’t want to let go.<br />This is goodbye.<br />Keep writing, he says, pointing at us, <br />before he walks through the gate<br />of the Biblioteca Nacional.<br />I watch him through the iron bars, his shoulders slumped,<br />his head down and think,<br />this can’t be it, this can’t be the end<br />before running down the sidewalk to the next gate,<br />and calling his name,<br />Oscar!<br />Oscar!<br />He looks up, a small sad smile,<br />Adios, I yell,<br />waving frantically,<br />because I don’t have any other words<br />Adios!<br />Adios!<br />because the ocean is about to stretch between us<br />Adios my friend.<br />Adios!Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-54923606674483532462011-05-23T03:03:00.001-07:002011-05-23T03:03:41.501-07:00Literature-for Aida<br /><br />She asks me to say the word again,<br />watching the way my tongue touches<br />the back of my teeth and then the pucker of lips<br />the open sigh, then the kiss again.<br /><br />Lit-er-a-ture.<br /><br />It’s my favorite English word,<br />she tells me, tucking her hair behind her ear.<br /><br />It is late in Madrid, but still<br />early enough for more drinks.<br />We are standing on the street corner<br />as her boyfriend rolls a cigarette<br />ducks his head down to light it.<br /><br />I love that word, she says again<br />and I think how much I love the word<br />love when she says it, the heavy A sound<br />as if here, on this side of the ocean, love is stronger,<br />something that will take hold of you<br />and drag you down.<br /><br />Yes, let’s go, her boyfriend says, his teeth holding down<br />the thin paper cigarette and we cross<br />the street, weaving our way through the warm night. <br />I reach back,<br />taking my husband’s hand in mine.<br /><br />Overhead there is a plane,<br />and I try not to think of the people,<br />seated in the little seats, <br />reading or sleeping,<br />covered in red blankets, their heads tilted<br />to the side,<br />so high above us,<br />that we four, on this street,<br />are only fiction to them,<br />only temporary<br />because I want this night<br />and this week<br />and these stories we have shared to last <br />much longer than I know they will.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-63934372193890394322011-05-10T03:26:00.001-07:002011-05-10T03:26:21.914-07:00Being AliveThis right here, <br />this is<br />everything I know about being alive.<br /><br />You stack dishes, like luggage,<br />you lock doors,<br />you lean against them,<br />push<br />push to make sure they are closed.<br /><br />One day your friend will die,<br />and it will leave you sad and weary<br />with thousands of tears still inside.<br /><br />One day you will realize you never<br />got what you wanted<br /><br />or you will get it<br />and that could be worse.<br /><br />This is everything I know about being alive.<br /><br />You will walk through Monday to Tuesday<br />and then it will happen again.<br />You will dream – those long late night dreams where the egg is in your hands<br />and the ocean spreads before you separating you from the land and you wait<br />on this little raft knowing the water is safe but you don’t climb in.<br /><br />You will fight and talk,<br />you will hold hands and remember the hand of the man<br />you held 20 years ago<br />and then you will stop thinking of that.<br />You will remember the days that passed<br />and then try to forget them.<br /><br />If you are lucky you will see another country,<br />or create something. <br />And then you will sit in the chapel,<br />waiting, your hands together,<br />waiting. The casket up front will shine, just a little.<br /><br />This is everything I know about being alive.<br />Tomorrow I’ll tell everything I know about living.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2396013728152835472.post-62521304983646779662011-05-03T03:36:00.001-07:002011-05-03T03:38:07.582-07:00Bloody OceanIt comes in buckets.<br />It comes in rainfall<br />dotting the sidewalk.<br /><br />It comes in the tide,<br />the blood in the ocean.<br /><br />It comes out of the faucet,<br />the tap,<br />out of the drinking fountains.<br /><br />Our fingers and faces, <br />and also <br />their fingers and faces<br />stained pink<br />and red, the color of the desert sky<br />the color of the sun setting<br />over this broken city,<br />the color of starvation and hate<br />the color of the blood on the cross<br />in every clapboard church<br />in this country<br />and every temple in that <br />and every mosque in theirs,<br /><br />and here<br />now<br />again<br />dropping <br />one more body<br />into the ocean,<br /><br />like <br />a stone <br />down <br />a well<br />that <br />has <br />no <br />bottom.Ally Malinenkohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11481077682362351048noreply@blogger.com0