My Friend, Kim, Plays the Harmonica

Kim Addonizio is a poet

...and by "friend" I mean, at the end of a party in a Houston art warehouse, I once stood next to a woman who smelled like roses and Marlboros, who turned-out-to-be-her, and a table, which earlier that night had been loaded with hors d'oeuvres, and on which during the height of the evening, someone had rolled, making a point in a conversation. Smashed - really smashed - pastry, bunches of exploded black grapes, their skins spewing guts and seeds, and the green grape cracked, and pineapple chunks and carrot shards like shrapnel, and tiny pink crab quiches dumped in piles like girls with their petticoats up - pink kneecaps and cream.

So, we were standing there staring at the wreckage, she-who-turned-out-to-be-her and I, and I was embarrassed to be associated with it, and I didn't know what to do with my hands, so I said to her, this woman who smelled like blossoms and leather, "Crab quiche?" and she looked at me, or sort of probably at my chin because she was small, but even standing beside her, she didn't give that impression, instead, she said, ".......don't mind if I do." So I leaned over the table, curving my body over the juice and pulp, shoved through a mound of broccoli floret with my palm, and found the last, battered crab quiche, pink, frothy, kind of oozy, and I brought it out holding it by its crumbling buttery edges, carefully, like a old compass or a lens, placed it on a soggy paper napkin that said, "Starlight" on it in gold, and wiped my hand on my dress. Then we went to get mojitos.

Green Turtles Dive Down

Here is a poem - I'm afraid it clunks like an old mill.

I told you, "Yep, the Equinox," yet not the Equinox at all,
It's the Solstice
when Earth slides in place like a socket cups a ball.

Flying through the universe, our hipbones and our hands,
We dive down with green turtles, then the sun warms hips in other lands.

Crystal, carapace, and bone,
On the pendulum we sway;

Til at that instant, long nights dissolve,
We turn and swim the other way.


It's all in our heads.

Summing Up: Women My Age

"Women my age are not as young as I am."

This morning it's autumn and drizzling. Chill as a crisper drawer. I can hear a field cricket stuck under the throw rug (hand-knotted by the criminally insane in Stanton, Virginia)calling. Thighs gleaming and clicking glossy as black eyes - all dressed up and trapped in my family room.

He sounds like ghostly Morse code from lost explorers, or the buzzer for summoning the nurse. But the connection's loose and she won't come. Buzz...zzz...god where's the nurse?...buzzz...

Good god. It just makes you want to fish him out from under there and tell him "Oh give over, mate." and fling him in a gentle arc out into wet poke, the smashed fescue, and the last of the clammy and slug-bitten tomatoes calling, "Cheer up! Go find a girl." Which brings me full circle, I guess. Go for a run. Have an apple. Don't panic. It's autumn.