giving myself an ulcer

so it's not months until i find out about graduate school.
it's weeks.
less than two until i start hearing back.
it's really hard to concentrate
on anything
especially school work
and i know i'm way too stressed
and should just calm down
but that's proving
easier said than done.

oh, ani

they say that alcoholics
are always alcoholics
even when they're dry as my lips
for years
even when they're stranded
on a small desert island
with no place in 2000 miles to buy beer

i just spent far too long
looking at picture of cats
up for adoption
in madison, wisconsin
and checking out apartments
and freaking out about money

even though it's months
before i find out where
i'm going to school next year

i am taking a poetry class again, finally

"From my mother's journal"

I threw away the plastic bag you had clutched, that soft-sided world.
The fish breathed heavily, sides heaving, after you'd poured him into his gallon tank.

I had just read you a book about First Nation traditions--
children growing into names
and then out, like snakes and skin.

I spied as every morning
you pressed your ear against his tank
and whispered--What's your name today?

When, the first day after we'd brought him home, I was packing your lunch,
you demanded I leave out the goldfish crackers.
They look too much like him, you told me.

After a week, he grew tiny white spots
like blisters over his scales.
Ich, you told me, It's a fish disease.
So we bought medicine.

Your breath, when you watched him, fell into the same rhythms.
You both sighed.
You both gasped.

The woman at the pet shop told you,
when he'd died after only two weeks and we brought him back,
that there wasn't
anything you could have done.

You told me we couldn't bury him, because--
What name would we put on his grave?

Portia,

Please stop freaking out.
Just imagine you're at the farmers' market.
Beets, broccoli rabe, apples, sourdough bread, almonds, quark, salty mozzarella, carrots, nasturtium salad, garlic, white onions, fingerling potatoes...

Just imagine you're at the farmers' market.

Love,
p