Beautiful Women
–Stephen Dunn
Photo by Christophe Ferron on Unsplash
beautiful women
Month: April 2020
sinking to brightness
Metastasis
–David Baker
Then the breakers turning back to brightness, if the light’s
opaque ocean-blue sameness in the sky can be said to break,the way the waves themselves, blue in back of blue
like a color in the eye, fall back to the wall — sea wrack,driftwood, or the inner optic shelf behind the lens.
Then the gulls and simple cirrus strands turn back to light.Then to inland sparrows, drifting under blue Ohio’s sky —
it’s a work day and the heat is the heat of the colorof your clothes, wash day, and hands hurt from the swinging of a scythe.
Then it’s day into night at the heart of the seedsthat fell from your hands breaking open, strewn in rows
like water along the ancient seabed floor of the farm.Someone is standing at the door. Someone is waving from the car.
This day and that one sinking to brightness and the blueevening wall before that, and a seed that fell from a star
becoming, as you will say, one day, all we will become.
Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash
oculus
Oculus
–Sally Wen Mao
____
Photo by Meagan Carsience on Unsplash
snow in april
grey century
Grey Century
–Éireann Lorsung
On the first grey morning of the grey century
spiders have put webs on the windows.By the time you wake up the morning procedures
are going on. A tiny forest of cyclamensin the backyard. You can’t say, Did I sleep
for a hundred years? You know that’s ludicrous.The milkman looks at you funny.
The century wants you to enjoy the little plantsthat flower in the shape of ghosts. It hates
to remind you everyone you used to love is dead.
Photo by Nicolas Picard on Unsplash
airports
MSP PHI LGA ALB PHI MSP
–Neil HilbornHow miraculous that we all
keep our shit together. How miraculous
that no one has a premonition of flames
and tries to open the cabin door. The airline
pilot next to me keeps his eyes closed
during takeoff and landing. He does not
drink anything. I have an orange juice
with no ice. I want to watch the horizon
as it gets farther away. This man
might just be smarter than me, but he is also
flying coach and reading the sports section
while I do crosswords, so he is probably
still smarter than me. Pretension
can look like intelligence if you squint
hard enough or wear glasses. There are,
for some reason, always Buddhist monks
in the Philadelphia airport. Buddhist monks
rewrapping their robes. This is my sixth time
in this airport. My sixth time because of two
different women. I have paid probably
a couple thousand dollars for the privilege.
Five cheesesteaks. Surprisingly good caramel
popcorn. Maybe thirty hours, five just trying
to find outlets. How miraculous that I can go
basically anywhere. How miraculous, the doors,
the wings, the recycled air. How miraculous,
flight is just a fall that never finds the ground.
Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
caramel popcorn
Caramel popcorn is something my mother has made my entire life. She joked with her colleagues that most days she’d serve popcorn for dinner, but caramel corn was for payday. Later I made this for all the birthday/slumber parties and the like.
The recipe came from a cookbook one of her aunts published. Since leaving home, I never make it because it’s too sweet, I can’t easily find white popcorn in Sweden, didn’t have a hot-air popper, and the original recipe calls for corn syrup.
But suddenly I had white corn, a hot-air popper and golden syrup and the ability to give the finished product away.
It’s not difficult. Here’s the recipe.
Caramel popcorn
Preheat oven to 125C
Pop about 1/2 a cup of popcorn in a hot-air popper directly into a baking dish/roasting pan
In a heavy-bottomed stovetop pot:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup corn syrup or golden syrup
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon vanila
(You can also double this recipe, as my family usually did – and use a very large roasting pan.)
Melt butter, add the brown sugar and syrup on low-medium heat. Bring to a boil, stir constantly. Let boil 5 minutes without stirring.
Remove from heat. Stir in baking soda and vanilla. The mixture will get very foamy and lightly caramel colored.
Pour over the popcorn and stir to coat. Bake in preheated oven. Stir corn every 15 minutes, turning pan halfway through, for about 45 mins to 1 hour. It should be crispy once it cools off a bit.
april snow
Clouds
–Jared Carter
I would like to rise within one
as though unbound –
Bodiless, but not withdrawn from
the endless roundOf circumambient winds. I would
be vaporous, yet
Show textures clear, as in driftwood
or empty net.My shadow, far below, would seem
content to go
Across the green fields like a dream
of April snow.
Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash
Gubbinal
Gubbinal
–Wallace StevensThat strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just what you say.That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.The world is ugly,
and the people are sad.
Photo by Luis Graterol on Unsplash
death of robot
The Death of Robot K-456
–Sally Wen Mao
