Poem for Tuesday

Grater
By Ales Steger
Translated by Brian Henry

You remember how your mother, Jocasta,
Returned from the pigsty with a gaping palm.

Inside the madness of pain a window opened.
She stepped out and stepped out of her body.

You remember how your startled father was changing a bandage,
How, mid-escape, the edges of the bandage turned red.

This time the grater’s whisper is yours. The world is being whittled away.
The apple wedge is getting smaller, but who is there for whom?

Are you merely an instrument of the apple in your palm?
Silently it grates you, a ripe Buddhist, Idared samsara.

When it vanishes you, you open your eyes, like your mother
That time, on the other side of the wound.

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From this week's New Yorker.

On Monday I did the laundry and vacuuming I never got around to over the weekend, so I don't have a lot to report. It was a gorgeous day, which made me lazy, plus I didn't sleep well -- couldn't fall asleep, was still on non-daylight savings time, and then of course couldn't get up in the morning -- so I didn't get nearly as much done as I should have. After school I took Adam and his friend to tennis, where I had no choice but to overhear a nine-year-old complaining that all his friends had cell phones so he should too, and four women considerably older than myself describing a revolting symptom of the flu in decibels that, had they come from the nine-year-old, might have led me to consider requesting "inside voices."


The view from the upper deck of the Newseum, the Hank Greenspun Terrace, looking toward the Capitol past the Canadian consulate and East Building of the National Gallery of Art.


Here from the same vantage point is the original building of the National Gallery of Art...


...and in the direction of the National Mall with the Federal Trade Commission, National Archives, Old Post Office Pavilion, National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian Castle visible across Pennsylvania Avenue.


This is the Newseum itself from across Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the National Gallery of Art. That's the First Amendment writ large on the side.


A former working news helicopter hovers over the main lobby of the Newseum just outside the Interactive Newsroom. The orange ticker runs up-to-date headlines (this is where I learned about the soldiers shot in Northern Ireland and how much money Watchmen made.


The Berlin Wall Gallery seen through the huge glass elevators.


A collage tribute to journalists who died while pursuing the truth. It depresses me how much space has been left for additional photos.

My mother came over for dinner for her birthday and the kids regaled (?) her with various Rickroll videos and Facebook penguins. After she went home, we watched Heroes, which did several goofy and predictable things involving Nathan and Claire, but made up for a lot by having John Glover as Sylar's father (I am operating under the "no one ever stays dead on this stupid show anyway" philosophy of recurring characters). Not even an extended Star Trek Reloaded preview which looked excruciatingly like Starship Troopers could ruin that storyline for me. And Jon Stewart was hilarious tonight! "He's not the president, he's Macaulay Culkin!"