a pineapple apart

tiny stories for you

If you’ve been meaning to get a $5 mystery pack of postcards or sign up for the last year of Keep Writing, you have until 7/31 to order!

Ten short paragraphs about the past week.

1.Dancing by not dancing.

I dreamt of an elaborate costume. I was tired. I simplified. No. Yes. Maybe. Yes. Simplified again then added a touch of sparkle. Sent a photo to Eli, who knows. Pineapple, she confirmed.
Hot. The end for many but not for me. I smiled. Greeted. Stamped. Conflated my rising sign with my moon sign. Released, I waded in, then back out, alone.

2.Write it down.

Recently rejected as a competent book arts instructor, though I never claim to be a book binder. Bound a book for the future. Skimmed the book of the past. A tome. A brick. A dead weight. A letting go. A compact container allowing everything else can be shed. This is what I carry forward. The perfect artwork.

3.Mindfulness as Commodity

inspired by a talk by Ocean Vuong.

What if the practice of presence is a tool for increasing productivity? What if mindfulness has been co-opted and altered to maintain aims of capitalism? What if you turn mindfulness outside, beyond an understanding of you, of an individual? What if you treat your community as your body? Who needs my attention? Where is the ache? Can we add ease to our neighbor? Can we be mindful of our surroundings? Can I reach beyond my own needs?

4.I Bleed. Chill out.

The first time I pass the test, they place an ice pack at my neck and solar plexus. They say you know this is a donation, your body only knows it is bleeding. Fight or flight tamed with cold. Is this why I seek swimming holes? Cold showers? Is this the override I have been searching for?

5. Garden Gifts

I say bring nothing but he arrives with tomatoes, a pepper. It is obviously summer. There is bounty everywhere. Berries. Lettuce. Flowers for birds, whose tiny hearts flutter at the purple blooms. Bring me your leaves, your scented blossoms, your fruit, ripe, bursting.

6. Equilibrium,again.

Fire signs seek water. Immersion. Again, the vagal nerve but also the movement. New muscles. Coping skills. Following the black line on the bottom of the pool again and again and again bored bored bored. Turn over, face to sky, drowns the shrieks of teens, open the mouth of sky, evergreen teeth, this is how you survive to winter.

7. Editing Process

I wrote a poem, a list of birthdays recalled in one line each. Why? Who needs this? No one. No one will be buoyed by this lackluster description of a flat tire. I cut out too much. Did not describe the dusty health food store with out of date packets of chocolate mint rice milk, chilled in our cooler to mimic a milk shake. Waiting with the mechanic, sipping a juice box, carrot apple? The warm blush combination of sweet savory. Holding hands. Making peanut butter and jelly at the campsite. I cut out everything else.

8.Waterfalls

Deep like a gorge like Georgia, like Florida, like Tennessee. Hot rocks for drying. Paddled back and forth across the base of the falls, pool-blue sky and tree tops in my view. Smashed my toe, again, third wrecked phlange within this state, a blotted purple mess.

9.Another Ocean

THIS IS THE PLACE TO MAKE ALL YOUR MISTAKES.

10. Hope Lives Here

A door. A book and a jar. A newspaper headline and crash with reality. A smooth stone. A plastic garden marker . An airbrushed t shirt. A campaign slogan. A cardboard placard in a window.

Why not me, motherfuckers?

notes

• paragraphs 3 & 9 heavily inspired by a recent talk by Ocean Vuong in Portland, Oregon.

• short paragraph newsletter inspired by Andrea Lewicki’s Abstract Pancakes.

• paragraph 6 inspired by Ali Liebgott’s latest post, which you know, becuase you already subscribe to it, don’t you?

• last line from a print gifted to me from Aubree Holloman