Poem for Saturday and South Mountain Creamery

Self-Portrait as the Changeling
By Halee Kirkwood

           after René Auberjonois 

Wet, where all I had longed for

was the determined touch of softness. Wet,

           I watched the solids come and go.

           I counted feet, that ache 

and echo of planets, became 

the prosecutor and defense

           of my own heart, that red-tailed escape

           from the struggle to represent 

the shapes required of love. 

A rose bud, briefcase

           or snarling mutt, pea soup,

           blood blister—I knew hate most 

not as these but in my 

formlessness, poured into a coffee cup 

           my keeper mimicked to sip.

           I could not honey my clay. 

The shape of our star days, 

a hum in the rookery of birds

           I'd know, and never be.

           And when I found my people— 

when my people meddled 

with me—they opened a hole

           to home in the punch-clock

           of deep space I was destined 

to fall through. 

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Kirkwood told Poets.org about being drawn to Odo from Deep Space Nine because he "can mimic the shape of just about anything, yet struggles to become an entity unto himself" and "when he finally finds the homeworld he longs for, he must reckon with his people’s tyranny and hostility towards those he loves," an experience familiar "concerning queerness and mixed-raceness, of a hometown that doesn't love you back and which you can't resist returning to." 

Friday was warmer than the past few days and really smelled like fall, probably because the neighborhood service people were vacuuming up the leaves on the street. I goofed off most of the morning reading SPN finale reactions online, which is pretty silly considering how little I've seen of the show (though today at Jessica's suggestion I did watch the Groundhog Day episode "Mystery Spot" which is pretty great). We took a walk to enjoy the weather, I caught a shiny Sandshrew, and we had poutine and veggie sausage for dinner, which was great. 

Evening TV started with The Mandalorian, which finally has some momentum, then The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, which starts slow and juvenile but then turns into one of the most fun things I have ever seen; it's like Robot Chicken wrote a Star Wars script with Red Letter Media and the execs at Disney and Warner Animation agreed to film it! I don't want to spoil anything but one cameo is funnier than the next! Afterwards, we put on The Princess Switch: Switched Again, which I found only bearable when Evil Vanessa Hudgens was onscreen! South Mountain cows: