Poem for Friday

Phases
By Michael Redhill

Ich glaube an Nächte

Watching the garden winter under the moon,
we think of the brown animals
under the earth. Or the bulbs
of the jonquils frozen there
with their orange eyes clenched in coils.
White and silent night, the air cold as iron
and the lake like an old woman under a blanket.
We gave your grandma marijuana tea
to lull the cancer clenched in her like fists.

Our legs are weak after making love
but we walk across the solid lake.
We're wrapped in the husk of a Bay blanket,
the air smells like wool and our heat
billows around us, animal. The lake
clicks as we walk, a photograph
curling up at the edges. Far under
hibernating fish drift in the current,
their bodies curving back and forth,
while above them the moon
glows on the snowless patches--
a white heart expanding under the ice.
And in our blanket, our bodies
hold the shapes of the people
whose cells we slept in for generations.


Friday Five:
1. What is your most prized material possession?
A novel, written and autographed by someone I know, about someone else I know. Critically acclaimed and worth quite a bit of money on the antiquarian market as it's out of print, but that's not why it's valuable to me; I was insanely in love for ten years with the person who inspired the main character.

2. What item, that you currently own, have you had the longest?
The stuffed rabbit that was my very first toy (a.k.a. Big Bunny) is still in my mother's house. But in my current home, I think it's the silver baby rattle in my jewelry box.

3. Are you a packrat?
A photograph of myself and my house could appear in the dictionary under "pack rat." Though I don't save empty bottles, old envelopes and that kind of thing, just every piece of junk I ever got from a McDonald's Happy Meal, all the 45s we can't even play on our turntable, etc.

4. Do you prefer a spic-and-span clean house? Or is some clutter necessary to avoid the appearance of a museum?
The only way I could live in a spic-and-span clean house is if I were a multimillionaire with an enormous house wtih tons of storage space and a staff of five people to keep it that way. Forget that I don't mind clutter; I don't even notice clutter unless it's blocking my path through the living room. and can attest to this.

5. Do the rooms in your house have a theme? Or is it a mixture of knick-knacks here and there?
My bedroom houses most of my Star Trek collection, which has been ongoing since the 1970s and includes numerous action figures, model ships and a couple of heinous Franklin Mint plates. Lately some of the Trek figures have been hidden behind Lord of the Rings stuff, though. (A photograph of myself and my bedroom could appear under "geek" in the dictionary as well.) The basement is where the kids keep the Nintendo and their old trains, but it's also where we have 17 double-layered bookcases and my husband's collection of board games, so I don't know that one could say it has a theme besides "stupid popular entertainment." There are thousands of books, videotapes and CDs all over the house, so the few classy items we own are pretty much buried.

* * * *

Here's my "Future Tense" review. I wish Enterprise could get its shit together, because sometimes I really enjoy it -- in fact I could watch it for Trip alone, if only they'd write him consistently.

points out that Neil Gaiman has written Smeagol/Gollum fanfic! I'm not a Gaiman fan and didn't follow the whole rant-fest about whether he had dissed fan fiction except inasmuch as my Green Man Review friends were involved, but I did get a kick out of this.

Take part in the Virtual March on Washington -- e-mail, fax and phone your senators to oppose war with Iraq on February 26.