Moon Memo: Living In the Mystery
Moon Memo-April 19, 2024
Hello from Portland Oregon, where the weather is beautiful and the trees are still doing their sex in my sinuses. I'm back in the sterling writers room, for my weekly time over the keyboard, writing a Moon Memo. This is for all of you. I'm so grateful you exist.
The Work of Art
Getting up every morning, doing the work of art. Scrolling through the morning feeds, bored as can be, trying to glean something that I can use as the thread to follow. My standards are low at the beginning. I want the starting point of the poem to be something simple, and easy. But like Kim Stafford said about his father William: "For anyone afraid William Stafford’s standards weren’t high enough, I find clear evidence here that his actual standards were stellar. He is approaching his task as a Wordsworth, a “priest of the imagination.” What other writing teachers ask if the poem under discussion is good for the universe? For my father, this was fundamental."
I want my poems to be good for the universe. When I'm writing, when I'm doing the work of art, I am trying to create something beyond the negative, beyond the violent, beyond the bombs and starvation and greed of the world. I'm trying to do the one good thing.
Utah Philips said that when he became a pacifist that he realized that he was not disarming from guns and knives and fists, but from the weapons of privilege: racial privilege, gender privilege, privilege as a member of the riches and mightiest military in the world. I know that poetry is a privilege, that this time in the morning is a privilege. But I am finding that the work that I am doing in the early morning is one way that I disarm. I am letting go. One less white person buying a gun, or using her privilege for violence. At least that's the goal.
In the early morning I eventually come to the keyboard, or the phone, write in light. I haven't used a notebook all year. Lately, it's just been easier to get into the word without pen or paper, with my fingers going at the speed of thought. Something comes, and I follow the string. I spend a half hour putting a world together. And if I'm lucky, a poem comes from it. It's been coming 129 times this year. I haven't missed a day. And I'm grateful for it.
In the mail, a new book: The Work Of Art-How Something Comes from Nothing, by Adam Moss. He was the editor of a bunch of magazines, gave it all up to become a painter. Started interviewing artists of many kinds about their process. The book is illustrated with the process of their work, with notebooks and sketches and half finished work. I love that so much. That is where I want to live.
I focus on process because it's magic for me. Beyond being a transexual woman, a nonbinary person, a human being, a person who is autistic, a teacher, I am a poet. Being a poet is how I see the world. It's where my ethics lie. It's where I live.
I hit command-P, listen to the printer etch ink into cheap paper. I put the poem on the tray. The work is done for the day. Everything else is illusion.
Why Taylor Swift Bothers Me
I think it was Gretchen Felker-Martin who said that the art that will save you does not come from the mainstream but from your friends and community. Part of me worries that this is a kind of snobbery that hip people use as a weapon against those that love what society gives them, that decry the folks that just love something. I guess I don't take it as prescriptive, but I do take it to heart. Mainstream art is beautiful, and has a shared lore behind it. But it's often not for me.
Taylor Swift is a total mystery to me. I know nothing about her lore, who she is dating, what her writing process is, what her songs sound like. I may have caught fragments of her work somewhere out there, but it probably sounded like what beige would sound like to me. She is like a lot of artists that I've lived through, the Mylees and Britneys and Celines of the world: music that's not meant for me.
And that's fine. There is so much music out there. There is more than enough music out there. But sometimes when someone asks you "have you heard the new Beyonce album", and I say no, they get really really offended. Like I peed all over their god's face without consent. Like I am uncultured or missing from the world. To those folks, I say I'm sorry. I am an uncultured woman in my mid-40s, who listens mostly to ambient music or stuff that is recommended to me by friends. I like what I like.
Same thing happens when it comes to movies or tv shows. I don't watch a lot of episodic television. I don't have a lot of patience for it. I don't have the desire to keep up with monthly comics, or with all the marvel shows. I never have. I'm a child of graphic novels. I read or watch my media in big sweeping chunks. And lately, I've been really selective about what chunks I put my attention to.
I read poetry. I read books about the creative process. I read grimoires and huge chunks of personal nonfiction, of books about queer shit. I watch youtube videos. I have an unreasonable love for daily vlogs, or people making things, or cooking. I love pro wrestling, because it changes every 15-30 minutes. Because it's simple. I love weirder and weirder music and movies. I like movies in movie theaters, because it's the only place where I can focus on something without a phone in my hand.
So while Taylor Swift has a new album called The Tortured Poets Department, and you would think that would be my jam, it probably isn't. I appreciate it has made poetry relevant for a second. But it's not for me.
This section was brought forth by me asking Sabina what I should write about, and she said "write a feminist take on the Backstreet Boys." Sorry, Sabina. I can't. I've heard one Backstreet Boys song. They live in the mystery for me.
Sodomy
My tits were out. 70s disco music was playing. Men were dancing, or grinding against each other, or playing pool with twinks 30 years younger. "I like to play with my food," a silver haired man said, lecherously looking at the younger man he's losing at pool with. I smile and nod like I know what he means. I know what he means.
She comes in, another barrel chested femme. She's wearing a tight tank top, knee socks, booty shorts that say Sodomy on the bottom. "Yeah, I saw them, and I just had to have them! Gotta advertise to the guys!" She slapped her ass while she said that.
Here's a poem:
Belief
She wore booty shorts that said sodomy,
shook her ass in the company of men who
saw her as fresh meat, as what dangled
like a participle, as novelty in this sweat
and vodka cranberries. Saturday night so
thick and steamy my glasses fogged as I
sat alone, tits out under leather jacket,
watched her grinding out a gender, ass
swaying against hips on the dance floor,
moving hands from hips to tits, accepted
lips of gay men now unsure as she stroked
her way around them. This is holy, I said
as we shared a cigarette, our lipstick stains
delicious on the filter, her sure breath ring
hanging in the air like an offer, my cough
showing my fraud at the party. "I wish girls
treated me with lust not worry," she said,
broad shouldered and sweating, curvy in
the wrong places, "didn't avoid my smile on
buses, didn't act as if I was a sign of danger,
a brick to be thrown at them. Men see an ass
and a mouth, and at least that's pleasure, not
the cold ways of the pretty girls puddled in
their apartments." We nodded together, girls
who knew the double rejection. When she
pushed me against the wall, searched me
with her tongue, whispered I was beautiful
I could believe her, I could believe again.
Outro
Jade just came in, said hello. The fact that they work at the library gives me so much joy. I'm heading into the weekend triumphant. I am ready to relax. I am ready.
Love you all to bits.
Misha Lynn Moon