dirty projections

Selling various antiques on Etsy…

Hello, so I’m selling some of my various antiques and other things that I’ve picked up that I do not want/need/have a place for.  I only have a small amount of my things up so far, so keep checking back.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/thecommunistdaughter

Also, I have a Rogue electric acoustic mandolin for sale for 100.00 with a hard case and a strap all in perfect condition.  E-mail me at roskowskim0562@my.uwstout.edu if you’re interested. 

ALSO, more poetry to come soon, I hope.

seaaaa

it’s still light for awhile,
the sea is swimming gently near
a northern isle-
ships dock and go back
out again. oh! great russian
seaport! your wharves so
perfectly constructed! it is
you that marks the precipice of my
endeavors! to travel through
light, to comfort the universe with
a tongue so polite! the breeze
floats in up my sleeves, the
cracks between my teeth, it is
the salt i taste that reminds me
always of you! and alexandria,
between trains,
smiling, 
birds with
parachutes careening in and
out of her peripheral tattooing themselves
on the horizon. 
a sanguine complexion,
unwilling to part with the fauna of the
great russian northwest, 
she comes to me between trains,
cold and 
dusty with
blue mountains in her hair.

hello,
i hear-
hello.

i forgot what i dreamt
(her)

so it goes
(me)

her backpack slips off one shoulder,
then the other-
then the sea is at our feet, 
ankles,
stomach,
chest,
etcetera

cold mountain

Lovebug (St. Petersburg)

I’ve moved to the far end of Russia-
the one way on the other side of the other.
It’s here I’ve found what had been
bothering me then-a freckle of a
larger whole constructed of toothpicks 
and glue that the kids didn’t eat-
When I reached across your lap and
tapped the shoulder of the ghost you were
so closely holding. He was the
blanket that covered you to your
collar bone.

Winter came rushing then.
I could feel it by the pool. It touched
our shoes and scarves. Russia is
so pretty though, I recommend it to
everyone I meet-“Hey, did you hear
about Russia?” I think I’m caught in
its teeth. The land of one-hundred and
forty-five million cold war survivors.
All wearing finger-less gloves in case
the radiation comes so they can die
with the earth melting to their
fingertips.
How wonderful it is now, though!
The air is blue like you’ve never seen!
I’ve been hired by a postcard company here
in St. Petersburg. No one sees Russia like me,
they say.

It’s here I met her on a train. The lovebug must 
be going around. Her eyes looked like
plums, I don’t know what to make of that,
but it is what it is.
The tracks stayed in place all along the
coastal area-
The backdrop was white and watery grey and
a child had just pulled the front tire of his 
bicycle off the ground. This frame repeated itself
over and over and we just rolled along side it.
Someone must have bumped the projector,
I thought. 
Her toes are splendid, 
I thought.
I hate toes,
I thought.
Over and over and over I thought.

It was so dusty on the train.
Outside, taiga forests.
Foreign Russian insects.
A coat someone hung on
the antlers of a reindeer.

Her eyes were like plums, I say!

“I saw a
fox the other day and smiled. 
Very few things can do that to me.”
(her)

“That’s nice.”
(me)

I’d take a fox as a pet.
I took her home from the train (Eleanor).
She had no ghosts or
anything. 
I made tea that tasted like
cement. Russian cement though, which,
in my humble opinion, is the only decent
tasting cement.

“I don’t mind.”
(her)

Last winter you blew a fuse.
When I came over to fix it he was
there and he smelled like raspberries.
That’s the only reason I didn’t 
ask for him to leave.
I’d just like for that to be known.
All I did was flip a switch.
You offered me a tip, all I wanted was
raspberry tea, but you didn’t have
any.

“Good-bye!”
(me)

Eleanor slept that night in my bed. 
We both wore clothes and her hair
hung off the side of the bed nearly
touching the floor. The ceiling hung
low near her tangles. I turned off the
light and then the fan. 

“Good-night!”
(me)

Good morning,
morning breath.
Pitch with me a tent where we can
sit in rest, waiting for Russia to come
calling and tap us on the chest.
I’ve no need for crested teeth!
No! No need for traffic music or
air conditioning or scratched CD’s!
Winter has come at last, you see!

“Life is better spent asleep.”
(her)

_x _ Strongly agree
___ Strongly disagree)

Last night the moon fell asleep atop
her chest. 
No smell of raspberries in the
air. 
Only Russian snow-
in my mouth,
nose,
everywhere.

Thank you,
St. Petersburg.

Lament (re-post)

another feeling betrays this
passing season, the development of
human dentition, the decline of 
the soviet union, i’ll write a 
book about them all and call it
winter. i’ve the sea chained to my
pocket watch, when it crests it looks like
men with white mustaches trying to
break the surface. leave em’ to the
whales. leave em’ to the jellyfish and
sharks and coral. i’ve no use for them,
for apples that aren’t green, teas without
honey, moons i can’t climb and
mountains i can’t see. for christ’s sake,
let them be. leave them to their own
devices, as they do with me.
let them sleep inside my piano.
let them rest atop my typewriter keys.
i deserve a ghost. one scared of it’s
own reflection and kittens and spiral
staircases. don’t take that away from me,
st. petersburg, what is it i’ve done to you?
i keep your snow in my teeth-
i keep your cold in my sleeves.
i’ve no message to november, 
at the top of this hill sits another hill, 
and atop of that another, we make
pencil marks on door frames to mark the
progress made and remaining distance until we 
touch space. i want to know where you are,
december, i made a map of your dreams-
i’ve followed streams and estuaries.
i stitched my past to my future and 
found only the present-
merry christmas,
i guess, to you and
to me.

Sea-sick

laps

i stand to take a
delicate position-
your lap is only the
surface area your
legs create when you
sit down somewhere.
don’t tell me that’s
something that you knew,
i already know.

ghosts-1,2,3,4.

listless wishes on white evenings hidden in the pockets of
winter coats stitched and restitched, lined and re-lined with
leaves and twigs and whatever i could find. the quiet
conversations in different corners of different rooms leaves me
blue around the edges, yet i patch the sky with limbs i hide,
soak the snow with tales i tie to memories created in the
most mysterious parts of my mind. 

sylvia, you are not a ghost,
though i wouldn’t mind if you were. i’d wear a white sheet 
over my head to make you feel less alone in your mysterious
ghostly world. 

the lighthouse is just a lazy ship inhabited by a
lazy sailor. the one on cape calahanda, you know, where i once
cut my lip on someone else’s fist, where i slipped my hand up
into your slip, where other things have happened over and
over again. 

near lantern light there’s a 
shadow of outer space,
the clouds are just the skirt hiding the navel of the sky, 
you say,
it’s a blue, blue moon,
it’s a midnight afternoon.
love-less is the sea, 
no mistress, 
no misery. 
i want to tell you my secrets in a
whisper so quietly, 
i want to forge an invitation to your 
celebration of life after childhood. 
i’m sorry for telling you all my dreams.
how boring that must be,
but the sea air hurts my mind all of the time,
tell me, what does that mean?

-

I can’t write good poetry anymore, but, when it returns, those who still read will hopefully be rewarded.

anywhere-

sylvia said if we get hungry,
we can just peel the freckles off her
face; it’s been done, i thought,
by someone somewhere, but okay.
in her dress she
led the way,
i forgot where we were going but
i knew it was somewhere under the
moon and
somewhere not where we were-
good enough,
i thought,
as i ran to catch up to 
tap her on her left shoulder and then
shift quickly to her right-
it gets her every time,
and i can never blame her.

twenty-three

in high school i used to
brush my hair to the left but now i
brush it to the right-i didn’t know
what i was doing back then-
i used to smoke enough pot to
make me not want to do 
anything else, and then stop-
if life at the age of twenty-three
is just foreshadowing for life at the
age of twenty-four, then i can’t wait to
celebrate in 357 days-
someone will get me a cake,
someone will get me socks,
someone will get me a card,
someone will get me pajamas,
someone will get me a cd,
someone will get me another cd,
and so on and so forth,
the anticipation is killing me,
so much that i almost just now forgot to
breathe-imagine that! me at twenty-three,
just learning again how to breathe.

White Nights;

White nights are just outside. 
It should only be weeks now-
maybe days-
before the letter arrives.
The one you said you’d write when
the time felt right. I haven’t heard since
July, how are you feeling? Are you
feeling alright? That pain in your
neck, did that go away?

The steps to my den are covered in
salt. I slipped and nearly fell, still,
in the light of the night. The floral
chair you used to covet, nights you’d lay in
slumber under covers, sleeps near the
desk where I type. I hung christmas lights
everywhere. I mean everywhere.
Even around my arms, legs, and
stomach. The mailbox and the antlers of a
sleeping deer in the backyard forest.

I found a map of Michigan and
circled all the towns with names that
began with vowels. I’d like to 
drive through them all. There’s
something about small towns in
Michigan that begin with vowels that
just makes me want to drive through them
all on white, wintry, November nights.

The doorstep in Minnesota, where you
wept and held dearly to your can of
cola-It was frozen when you got up to
go inside. That was the day that
Kennedy got shot, but years and
years later. People still celebrate, or,
commemorate, hang ribbons and
balloons. It was my birthday,
and no one came but you.

A ghost walks me home. If I stop
breathing from my mouth he
leaves me alone. His name is
something that you’d name a ghost.
He drinks blue moon and plays
scrabble real well. 

I mailed you postage stamps in case
that’s what was keeping you from sending your
letter. If not, sorry, and enjoy the
postage stamps.

a day

october 9, autumn something, up at the hem of dawn, sylvia, blissful young fawn draping blankets over a cheek and jaw, rosy; not; or pale and clawed from kitten claws. make tea in pot-check-honey and milk-check-eggs sunny side up like how we made love between dusk and dawn-

the school is a bit of a walk with oxfords on, sylvia drags along struggling with her slip, mumbling about the underwear she doesn’t have on-we are not too old for this, i say, as we share cigarettes-

i wonder if the moon is self-aware- if the ivory billed wood pecker still exists in a tree somewhere- if so, come out already, christ, it’s been years and we just want to take pictures of your face-

sylvia moved to the apartment down the street, a better view, a single room, an ice cube tray someone left by mistake- i told her i had nothing to say, but asked if i could stay-

a mountain is made of smaller mountains, that’s what i told my nephew when he asked what mountains were made of- smaller mountains are made of smaller mountains, is what i told him when he asked what the smaller mountains were made of-on and on this went for an hour or so- he seemed satisfied-

life is about finding ways to waste time, i think, or, life is about finding ways to waste life, there we go-

sylvia licks an envelope and then a postage stamp and then gets up to put it in her mailbox, i follow her out into the day with a beard and glasses on my face.

the sky is out

sylvia would you like to live inside an apple?
you said that there are things you like and things you
love, well where in that scale do i fall? there’s
very little time to do everything there is,
i just ate the seed from the core of my
apple and spit out a small sapling for you to
pick leaves from and weave sweaters with.

the porch step is warm, fall was somewhere
and now it’s here, hallelujah! let’s share thoughts like
cigarettes and when they’re dead we can just
stomp them out and move on to the next-

the ants in the sidewalk cracks,
the frogs that swallow firecrackers,
let’s give them all proper burials-
no one deserves what they deserve,
luck is a good meal and sex afterwards,
that’s all. you tried to tell me otherwise
and i just smiled and put my hands
in the pockets of my pants-
the sky is out tonight,
hey look,
the sky is out tonight.

pumpkins

your hairs still orange, sylvia, that’s a 
good thing if you want it to be, i say it is.
let’s walk to the forest and pretend that’s
all there is-i just want to feel good, and 
i just want you to feel better.