2 Hide your ugly children

thecurtainfell — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:23:01 -0400

Blood Milk Ink

thecurtainfell — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:21:40 -0400

Rate Times Time

thecurtainfell — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:44:17 -0400

Instruct me by saying nothing

thecurtainfell — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:42:55 -0400

Self-Care

thecurtainfell — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:42:15 -0400

They Figured God was a Cop

thecurtainfell — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:41:33 -0400

Short Round #2

thecurtainfell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:34:40 -0400

Sweetheart Don't Start

thecurtainfell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:33:48 -0400

Four Stomach Nausea

thecurtainfell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:33:02 -0400

the sublime is inextricably linked to a sense of loss

thecurtainfell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:32:11 -0400

the warning, the blessing, the subsequent blessing

thecurtainfell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:28:37 -0400

Two-headed Monster with Respective Bird Friends

thecurtainfell — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 09:26:11 -0400

What in Tarnation?

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:15:13 -0500

We leave Fort McMurray and hitch a ride to Fort Mackay, Alberta, a Native community 40 km north, where we stay for three days.

What Happens when you Stop Traveling?

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:14:19 -0500

I packed my bag again two weeks ago. Not Godzilla, the 45 liter pack that’s carried my life in it for years, but two pieces of square, well-wheeled luggage. Then I hopped on a bus, to get a life, get money, find stability away from bedbugs, old men looming over my bunk, drunk kids passed out in the stairwell, and meals of bread spread with the local goo.

Mecca for Hindu-Philes

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:13:35 -0500

I cringe at the thought of writing one more travel essay about Varanasi. Many say Varanasi is a sort of Mecca for Hindus because more than one million pilgrims visit each year. But I cannot say with certainty that Varanasi is a Mecca for Hindus. No Hindu scripture requires a pilgrimage to this city. I can, however, say - with absolute certainty - that Varanasi is a Mecca for foreign India-philes. Lovers of India believe that Varanasi magically holds the answer to this vast, diverse country’s secrets. In all honesty, I am no different.

The Lizard and the Harpsichord

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:12:55 -0500

You sit, at the party, in a mansion on Mallorca, owned by a landed aristocrat from Ireland called Pablo, after a Mexican forebear. You are about fifty: soft makeup, soft, slightly flabby features. You seem fatter than you are, quiet and gracious, high-piled blond hair, a blissful smile. But when you speak, your voice is like a harpsichord; laughter scatters like dew around the room, causing the just-visible point of the livid scar on your chest to shake with mirth.

Santa Fe, NM

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:12:13 -0500

You twisted me down your streets Santa Fe,
But I left you cold after twelve hot years.

You were coffee stains on plastic tablecloths,
Bright colours and dollar store crucifixes;
Broken prayer beads scattered on blue tiles.

Saint Francis looked down on me from every corner,
Sadly judging from beneath his cloak of bird shit and graffiti;
The patron saint of stray dogs that died in ditches.

I’ll wink once more into the kaleidoscope
That sucked me in with a trick of light;
Sticky orange glass and bits of tin foil,
Spinning my eyes into my stomach.

It took too long

On Leaving Prague

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:11:44 -0500

“Prague is mad, so it is. And everything is weird,” you sing,
all hyperactive and sweating with the DT’s, pasty face

turned ashen, pink-grapefruit cupid’s bow growing blue mold
before me. Because for almost an hour you thought you were dying

as we sat in the square in Lesser Town,
sun burning the back of my neck between braids on this,

our last day here. Then thoughts of this month, this place
and the man who fell in the Metro – warm blood on my hands,

palm-sized sliced scalp, a flap at the back of his head. I still see

Usurping the Story: Travels in Rwanda

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:11:13 -0500

Travel tales come in many forms. If asked to define the genre, one might first think of guidebooks. Or Jack Kerouac. Archaeologists and anthropologists out in the field. Pico Iyer jetsetting between airports. Emancipated Victorian ladies. Dusty stories of roads and romance; voyages into the unknown; brave adventurers returning home triumphant.

Let's Talk about Sects

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:09:44 -0500

Imagine getting married and knowing that your vows will eventually expire. After a year, a month, three weeks, maybe just an hour, you will part ways with your spouse, no strings attached. It has nothing to do with irreconcilable differences and everything to do with nikah mut'ah, or "pleasure marriages," a rare but still prevalent 1400-year-old Shi'a tradition of marrying temporarily, sometimes just for sex.  

Land and Water in Britain

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:08:04 -0500

Pea-soup waves boil in the English Channel. 
The three-hour trip is a five-hour ordeal, 
As my daughter hurls in a sea-green stall.   

I cool my head on a light-green panel,  
Eyeing the seasick who stagger and reel, 
As we sail pea-soup waves in the Channel.   

The high-pitching corridors rise and fall; 
December weather shipboard ill-appeals, 
As my daughter heaves in a sea-green stall.

   Green décor is more than I can handle! 
Why some sick lout chose sea green, so unreal, 
When pea-soup waves boil in the Channel?   

That Time in Tangiers

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:06:50 -0500

I remember falling into a k-hole
– you and I stuck together blind
two shrinky dinks melted into one another spinning
like a top

decay burns the back of my throat
and i open my eyes to see me
back in Tangiers but you’re gone

midday in the medina
vegetables grow fur
fruit rots in every stand and
juice
seeping into the street
cooks to a froth at the side of the road

here I know to slow walk
without purpose faced forward
no
eye contact
with the other gender
do as Muslim women do – i’m told

the weight
of my jelabah and the burden

Hush

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:06:06 -0500

Silence has always come naturally to me, but in Korea, the inability to communicate effectively has made it an essential part of life. If I am upset or annoyed, no good will come of raising my voice—nothing will be accomplished. My protests, however eloquent they may be, will not be understood, but instead, laughed away with an apologetic shake of the head and, "English, no." At work, I speak constantly to my students, and by the end of the day, I am rather hoarse and wonder how many of my words were lost in translation or even listened to at all.

sangre vital

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:05:11 -0500

He stumbled upon me like he stumbled over his own feet: just another part of the landscape. The strong odor of human shit overpowered the alcohol emanating from his sagging mouth and gaping pores--wide open in the dead, wet heat. The kind of heat only possible in a city situated in the middle of the Chiapas jungle.

“Daaaammeunnpessso,” he slurred, nearly falling over from the effort of emitting these few indistinguishable words.

Greece

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:04:13 -0500

We are leaving
the sun does not have to try any more
to sweat mixing oil and honey
over the blue fire of the sea
Instead it rests behind a cloud
and sometimes dribbles watered lemon juice
onto the stony hills

When I arrived
eager to clutch my way up cliffs and plunge
like breathless Icarus into blue bays
it was a different Greece welcomed me
A land bright, hard and humming
with the heat of a thousand cicadas
rubbing their wings

But now
these hills rest easy
in the mist and silence of a closing day
like a sleeping lover
when all familiar curves of muscle,

Customs

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:03:35 -0500

Somewhere approaching daybreak,
I am sitting in the grass at the Hungarian border.
All I have to show for my day with rushing French and German scenery
are two unfinished poems.
I have courted sleep in contrived poses
and dreamt about beds and being so half asleep
I was unable to tell you something,
also about looking from a bus window
at huge birds
with saucer eyes and equally enormous fish
in their beaks.

Sky lightens over your father’s native land.
The countryside is truck and bottle strewn,
we wait to cross
from Clean Toilet Territory

Corunna

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:03:01 -0500

this little side street in Stanmore
off Paramatta Road
up from Victoria Park
across my paper tongue
the names march on
stolid for you without the memories
But Corunna goes down
with roses on one side
and my hands,
picking the last of the honeysuckle
before the marauding roaches get to it
The street arches a little
as I run sunshine over its back in the morning
it turns from me at night
into the darkness of flowery front yards
it hangs yellow porches
and a stained glass door or two
clicks tile walkways into place
the patterns all similar
(though my one is best)

To the Bone Church

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:02:20 -0500

It’s raining on the capital of a former communist country and I’m attracting attention because I look like a walking gumball machine against a sky the colour of burnt books. My white umbrella has broken out in spots of pink and red, orange, purple, green. I hate standing out, being mistaken for a tourist. And though Prague is full of them, I resent their being here and have long since decided that they don’t belong. Prague is a living, breathing sort of city, one that politely mandates being surrendered to.

An Inch

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:01:34 -0500

My face betrays me, openly reveals confusion as I scan the Lucknow train station trying to figure out the next logical move. Dodge checkmate. A fleeting delusion of confidence causes me to smile at Rebekah, my confidante. She gifts my obvious condition with words.

“Our train has arrived in Lucknow three hours late. This affords us roughly three hours to reflect on our assumption that connecting trains are possible in India!”

I scowl. Will these dry gems be appreciated when we reminisce?

For Many Women, Alberta's Boom a Bust.

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:00:55 -0500

Driven by the tar sands, Alberta's white-hot economy continues to make headlines. But the gendered repercussions of the province's boom are often neglected, understated, or altogether denied.

The Surfboard you Left Behind

thecurtainfell — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:58:49 -0500

“You'll never fall in love like this again,” I tell Evan. Maybe it’s true, and maybe not. It doesn't matter. I've been running for so long that I can only hope to be remembered as The One That Got Away. He curls his toes against the soles of his flip-flops and squints out at the ocean. He's been bare-foot for months; I still am.

“I wish I could stay here with you,” he says.