pallindrome

 cracks in the plaster don't solve themselves.

Her glasses rest on a bed of burst veins. Her eyes, too, are framed by red wreaths. Her cheeks, ruddy as apples, porous as winter pears, fold into neatly sectioned curtains. They rest beneath a sheer veneer of powder. Her lucky nose is shaped like ancient currency, falsely indicative of prosperity. She looks upward, and I see cross-stitches of crimson. Still, she makes a smile for me.

Her sponsor says she'll burst, soon -- a wrathful grape grown heavy. The vessels in her brain will pop and seep; erasing attachments to us, self, God. Like her tormentor, she'll live on a mattress, unfruitful and irritable, trapped in a tiresome cycle, watching the toilet leak and irritate the paint downstairs. But she protests. She shouts back to her critic-confidant, then takes a pill, the same ones prescribed to her centanarian father.

It's the weight of fifteen years that rolls her shoulders forward, leaving a thick boulder where neck should be. Knobbed fingers reach for the crack in the paint. Back arches, boulder cracks. Then she hangs from to the deep indent of the life-line cut into her palms.

Rewind. She hangs onto the deep indent of the life-line cut into her palms.

The canister of diuretics flies into the waste-bin. She seeks a plumber for the leaky pipes in her body, nimble needles to knit them back together, a seamstress to smooth over crimson cross-stitches: he who knit her in her mother's womb.

Volatility dwindles so swiftly that she feels emboldened to approach him. She kneels by the mattress, brushes some hair out of way. A whisper, a nod. A vow to wake, after a moment's more rest. Now, she argues, and tears the crier from the crypt. The pair plunges once again into a sea of code and connections, special skills and speculation. While the grapes are young, they guard; at the peak of ripeness, they reap. The cycle reverses.

Her lips are limber and limpid; her glance glows white. Time tastefully fulfills her nose's prophecy, never granting excess, but heeding her need. There's a glow, matte and steady, that inflates the cheeks. Her eyes tuck away the yuletide laurels gules, and peer through patient lenses. Those eyes that watched the paint peel and broke free from trance.       

pastiche

Poetry: the premeditated overflowing of questionable emotions recollected in test-induced haste. Listen as you read :)

Ode to the Fugue
from the author's hearing Vivian play Chromatic Fantasy & Fugue in d minor.

I dreamt of an Abyssinian maid,
who on a clavichord played
a chromatic fantasy by Bach.

All that's best of loud and soft
Met in its tempo and its form;
A venerable fugue which with every turn
Denied attention to Keats' precious urn.

Over arpeggiated mountains and figured bass*
Pulsed a song of mellow grace,
as steadily as my darling's chest palpates.

Each note, precisely placed
to provoke contrapuntal motion,
A sunless sea of sonorous sounds --
Abluted by priests into a mellifluous ocean.

The subject** wandered lonely as a cloud
momently stumbling upon a host of golden cadences!
Softly I sank into this bed of cadential joy.

The swell of every mighty chord
struck my heart like Bruce Lee's foot a board;
As consecutive notes ascend,
urging in the end --
I tugged the fugue from Time!

But alas, after three minutes' war
The maid re-folded her hands
And the music slipped beneath fleeting dream-sands.

*characteristic of Baroque music -- the clear notation of harmonic progression over which a soloist improvises.
**In a fugue, the main melodic figure is called the subject.

anatomy of a break

To commemorate the past few days of blissful breakage (of attendance, bread, and red-envelope bills, that is). 

Friday 

They see the sea. At the aquarium, she finds him seated, watching the otters blow silver bubbles. A ceiling of mackerel, a wall of water: the bounds of the monstrous mobster-tuna's patrol. Schools of children, likely on field trips, clot the exhibits. They flee the flood for fried shrimps and frizzled mushrooms, among other stolen frissons. Eighteen and eager, they sign their own waivers, and bike away the blue day. They find a shelf in the rocky shore and read, legs dangling into tide pools. Adhesive Dippin' Dots (banana was best) tide them through the evening's engagement. Festivities carry over from school stage to kitchen, as they bop to Crazy Indian Video, with zip-up sweaters for saris. Discovery: he can still fit into pink laundry basket. He gives her roses and salted chocolate squares, which her brother eats for breakfast.

Saturday

She sketches to the grating Song of Auntie S, which blasts up the stairwell: 

Verse 1: This house must sell! 

Chorus: 小咪, you are in deep [poo-poo]!

Verse 2: Escrow1031Exchange!

Chorus x10.

She gets a great deal of drawing done, though. Several hours later: she is startled from sweet slumber by a pair of fragrant arms, belonging to none other than Cat. An inebriated Cat, in fact. In a small, decorative hat (almost). And that was that.  

Sunday

The Cat feels better in the morning. After church, they take The Cat for a walk at the duck-pond park, which is drained due to drought. The Cat hops into the cement mire, flaps her elbows, and transforms into a duck. Her brother savors the scene with a Snapchat.      

Monday

Three women on a squashy yellow couch watch Joaquin Phoenix pseudo-snuggle with Scarlett Johansson. She is sandwiched by Auntie S and the Cat. She wonders if men of the slight future will wear high-waisted pants, and if Los Angeles shall take on shades of peach and bisque. 

Tuesday

A blissful morning passes at the piano bench. What begins as an innocent lunch-date morphs into an escape to the City with the Big Red Bridge. They face each other on the train, pocketing stares; they walk in circles, not minding. With the swiftness of a coursing river, [Shang and Mulan] sneak into a glossy office building and ride the elevator to the top floor, where they encounter a ping-pong table and a conference. A trip to Ghirardelli yields salted-chocolate samples (Valentine's Day loss regained!). On the train home, they face backwards.            

Wednesday

She cinches the working-morning with a dumpling lunch, then bounces out the door / up a mountain with ☃ and a young padawan. The hills, normally clothed in flaxen fields, wear shawls of scraggly gray grain. Cheery chatter distracts from distance. He is propelled by Hi-Chews; she, by he; and the padawan by that springiness eternal. Animal behavior studies: a boy gleefully spanks his brother. A quick visit to Oceania: the bunny is not in, though winter's chill is gone. Summer is coming (hai-yah, House Stark!). 

That night, she dines with Jubbly: a pot of melted cheese (not fondue, but fundidos) and banana pancakes. They sneak off to Target, sigh over Lindt truffles of every cocoa percentage, deliberate between Cadbury Creme Eggs or nail polish, and rush home to process purchases by way of pie-hole.

poems into pixels

Poems like these make standardized tests enjoyable. Had to share.

The world is a white bowl, the continents are carnations.
Finger-painted on iPad because stylus went into hiding :(. 

The Poems of Our Climate (1977)

by Wallace Stevens

I

Clear water in a brilliant bowl,

Pink and white carnations. The light

In the room more like a snowy air,

Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow

At the end of winter when afternoons return.

Pink and white carnations – one desires

So much more than that. The day itself

Is simplified: a bowl of white,

Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,

With nothing more than the carnations there.

II

Say even that this complete simplicity

Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed

The evilly compounded, vital I

And made it fresh in a world of white,

A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,

Still one would want more, one would need more,

More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III

There would still remain the never-resting mind,

So that one would want to escape, come back

To what had been so long composed.

The imperfect is our paradise.

Note that, in this bitterness, delight,

Since the imperfect is so hot in us,

Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

muah (ha ha)!

Yet another collaboration with my dear Julianne (woolianne) in Lit class! Today's exercise required us to churn out two sonnets in a half-hour. Sadly, we had barely finished the first quatrain of each before Madame Teacher collected them. In need of closure, I rushed home to complete the Shakespearean sonnet here (never mind Petrarch). Thus, I present to you Sonnet I, inspired by numerous after-school adventures at CVS Pharmacy, sub-titled "MAC Viva Glam IV" or "The Case for Lip Lacquer":

Within the garden of your pink visage,
The two-lipped tulip breaketh barren soil;
Though some would say it bare makes best corsage,
Gild them instead with hydrolyzèd oil.
Make no mistake, do not equate her to
Those ball-point instruments incarnadine --
The errant marks and quarks she does not woo,
Rather enhances character with shine. 
As pilgrims' palms and flushèd cheeks do meet,
A crimson cape seeks contours to caress;
Hark, hear her from cylindric bed entreat, 
Dost thou intend to waste her coy largesse?
When winter maketh lips Grand Canyon-shaped,
Ensure they be in blushing curtain draped.

... Our early Valentine's Day salute to you. XO 

Apron (adult to adult) (prologue to a new project)

In my world, cupboards are magnetic.

Mother and child.

My mom spends lots of time with suds. She was an accidental homemaker -- she did not expect to spend a quarter of her life cooking and washing. I reassure her, though, that her impact as a mother surpasses the one she would have made as an Oracle employee. To thank her for this sacrifice, I drew this on her birthday, filling it with things she loves: Pinky and Qiomi, her pet koi fish; Dizzy, the neighborhood cat; the sprouted onion project and porcelain pickle jar. My mom churns out new edibles every day, to the delight of designated samplers (me and me) of her Pesto Variations (from walnut to nettle!) and Tunisian tajine (my mom has mastered cuisine from every continent). There is no scene I love more -- a bag full of treasures from Trader Joe’s, some leafy greens awaiting the guillotine. The heart of our home is the kitchen, and my mom is the pulse, sending life to each extremity.

7:22 AM

The sun rises in Saratoga.

On the last dawn of 2013, I sat on a hill with ☃. It's a special place that we go to, hidden just a short hike away. From our perch above the fog, I can pinpoint every place that has meaning to me: the light-bedecked Safeway strip mall, assorted Asian shops along De Anza Boulevard, sprawling silhouettes of yellow East Bay mountains.

As morning matures, tips of trees puncture the woolly cloud blanket; constellations of crows soar across the sky, weaving between bay laurel branches. We receive the sun with squints, watch it gild the day. A new layer of light, fine as foundation (NARS Sheer Glow, to be exact. This is for you, Julianne!), settles into the concrete crevices and nettle-ridden notches of our hometown. 

I remember the old hymn by Folliott Sandford Pierpoint:

For the beauty of the earth

for the beauty of the skies

for the love which from our birth

over and around us lies

For the beauty of each hour

of the day and of the night

hill and vale, and tree and flower,

sun and moon, and stars of light.

If every day began this way...