Ally Malinenko's Blog, page 16

Three “How to be an American” poems up at the Blue Hour

Hi.

Morning.

So the very awesome trio over at Blue Hour accepted a couple of my poems from the How to be an American series that I’m working on. It’s odd I was just talking to a friend about how I’ve never had such an easy time writing poems – it’s like they’re practically writing themselves. I don’t know – it’s just been a really fun project and I guess with being bogged down in novel revision, this is a nice change of pace.

Anyway – thanks again to the Blue Hour peeps. And without further ado…..

Peace, Love and Starbursts,

Ally

Three ‘How to be an American’ Poems at Underground Books

Hi.

This has truly been a crappy week. Truly. Truly truly truly NOT outrageous and NOT like Gem.

(good luck getting that song out of your head!)

But you know what’s NOT crappy about it?

It’s that the truly awesome James from Underground Books published a few of my new poems from the How to be an American series I’ve been working on.

So without further ado, here you go.

Thanks James, for taking a bit of the crap out of craptastic.

Also – this piece from Laurie Anderson about Lou Reed’s death is amazing. If I can face my own death or the death of people that I love with one third of this bravery and passion I will consider my life a success. And it also reminded me that one time I wrote a story about a girl who started a revolution because of a Lou Reed song. You can read it here if you want.

Peace, Love and Starbursts,

Ally

6 Poem Poetry Bomb

So I must have hit some sort of magical submission time jackpot because not one but two editors got back to me nearly immediately and posted the poems they accepted. Not that I mind long waits, but it’s so nice when it all goes in sync.

So here you go:

First up we have Boyslut and the always lovely Devlin with Do Say A Few Nice Things About People’s Homes When You Visit and Not to Be Happy Is Not Just a Misfortune, It Is a Failure

Many many thanks to Devlin for finding a home for these guys.

Secondly is Horror Sleaze and Trash (which is a wee bit NSFW so consider yourself warned) with But Americanism Means Believing America is a Special Nation Chosen By God and Despite Its Size the US is Not as Diverse a Country as We Like to Think and Even When We’re Relaxing, We’re Watching the Clock and finally When All Conversation Fails There Are Always Sports and The Children To Fall Back On.

(I’m so very excited about getting into Horror Sleaze and Trash cause they’re all such bad boys and I never get into bad boy places.)

These are all poems from the How To Be An America series I’ve been working on and it’s really great to see them get out there. This has been a really fun project and much different from anything that I wrote for The Wanting Bone or since.

So many thanks to the awesome editors.

Peace Love and Starbursts,

Ally

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween kids!

You want to know what’s REALLY scary?

…………………..

That movie is twenty years old. TWENTY! How is that possible? It’s not because I distinctly remember going to see that with my best friend and it was NOT twenty years ago.

Since I’m clearly far too old to go out, grab your masks, raise your pumpkin goblets and go harass your neighbor’s till they give you candy. And when you’re done, here’s a helpful guide for all your trick-r-treating swaps. I’m pretty sure my sisters always stuck me with the Brachs.

via Boing Boing

Lou Reed Like a Black Bed Sheet

Lou Reed Like a Black Bed Sheet

 

Because Jet Blue

stopped flights to Pittsburgh

unless you wanted to detour

through Chicago

which, if you think about it,

from New York,

means you really overshot your goal,

 

we rented a car

and I had driven

maneuvering us out of the city

because my husband hates to drive

and especially hates to drive in Brooklyn

 

so that now as the long stretches of

highway rolls forever before us

like an endless black bed sheet,

he drives

 

and that means it’s my turn

to be in charge of the radio.

 

What do you want to hear, I ask

and he shrugs, like he always does.

Doesn’t matter.

No indierock, he says.

No chick singers.

 

I scroll through my songs,

knowing that takes a decent size chunk out.

I offer Bruce and Petty

Ryan and the Beatles

and he shrugs, even to the Beatles

because it’s late and we’re tired.

 

Whatever, he says.

 

Because neither of us wanted to take this drive.

It wasn’t like the one five years ago across the country where everyday

would bring us something new.

We knew exactly where we would end up.

Exactly what it would mean.

 

I’ll find something, I said.

And as I hit play

Lou sings

 

It’s so cold in Alaska

It’s so cold in Alaska

It’s so cold in Alaska

 

I open the window

just as we reach the tunnel

and think about how long it’s been

since I quit smoking

longer still since I started

before I left that little town

that had little to do

and how someone

usually Wyatt

would put on Lou Reed

as I laid on the hood of a car

stoned

at the lake

and Maureen danced and laughed

back when I was just a teenager

and life stretched before me like a black bed sheet

 

and in this car,

as we pass through the tunnel

my husband places a hand on my thigh

warm

and says over Lou’s hard voice

this is exactly what I wanted to hear.

 

Exactly.

 

How To Be An American poem

Individual Liberty, in the American Mind, Became Synonymous with America, and Americans Consider Themselves the World’s Freest People

There is a crowd of tourists

blocking the subway turnstiles

at Union Square.

They can’t figure out which way

to swipe their Metrocard

and I’m thinking to myself,

this is why tokens were better

 

when the cop taps me on the shoulder.

I stare at him

a little confused

and realize that even though

I peed at the bar before we left

I think I might have to go again.

 

“We need to check your bag,” he tells me,

pointing to his partner

at the table.

At first I’m confused

and then annoyed

but I comply

because he’s a cop

and if he says he needs to check my bag,

 

It must be true.

 

I drop it on the table

and the female cop

glares at me,

her tight face

under her little hat

and suddenly I hate her.

 

“Open it. Remove the contest of your bag, ma’am.”

 

I sigh loudly

because now I’m pissed

and from it

pull the new jacket I bought

at Old Navy because it’s getting cold

and I don’t have a jacket

and the empty plastic water bottle.

 

“Good enough?” I ask

before ramming the contents back in my bag.

It’s a pretty shoddy search

as far as searches go.

If I had a bomb

I could have folded it in the coat

or slipped it in the pocket.

 

She doesn’t look in there

never even touches the jacket

because she doesn’t really want to know.

I’m just here to fill

the White Girl Quota for the day.

 

They’ve been doing this since 2005

and I’ve never been stopped.

Sure I’ve seen the police, standing like SS

hands folded, eyeing us from under their hats

but we’ve all just accepted it.

It’s the price of freedom, we tell ourselves

or those that control our freedom

tell us

and we agree.

Because we’re Americans and nothing if not agreeable.

Either way, you wouldn’t be worried unless you had something to hide right?

Isn’t that true? Isn’t that what they ask you if you protest?

 

“Everything okay, Osama?” my husband asks me

as I rejoin him,

now pushing past the tourists,

slipping through the turnstile

and catching the N train back to Brooklyn

just before they close the doors

thinking to myself

so help me god,

if I had missed this train…..

 

The Car Accident, 1995 at Pyrokinection

Photo by Jim Lennon. Old Mineral Springs Waterfall. May 2012

In 1994, when I was in high school, I fell off a waterfall and busted my head open.

A year later, I went back there, with my boyfriend and two other friends to see it.

On the way home, I flipped my ford escort over, totaling the car. When I saw the wrecked car in the junkyard the roof touched the ceiling. We all should have been headless and yet, amazingly, no one was hurt.

My mother told me there were certain places that certain people shouldn’t go. And if I went back there she’d disown me.

I took her advice and I’ve never gone back.

Thanks to AJ Huffman at Pyrokinection for taking this poem about that accident.

And also, RIP Lou Reed. I was talking to my husband at his yesterday and, while listening to his music, he said, “Poor Lou Reed.”

And I said, yes, but he was 71 (which is pretty good for a rock n roll lifestyle) and also, he was LOU REED. I mean, honestly, he had a better life than any of us poor shlubs will.

That said, we’ll miss you Lou. Thanks for the music.

Peace, Love and Starbursts,

Ally

cAlly-fornia

Hi

I’m back from California. We had an amazing time.

We flew into LAX, picked up our rental car (It was a Dodge Charger, as in DODGE CHARGER) and headed out to Long Beach, which was beautiful, by the way. This is my second trip to the LA country area and the first time I was sure I could never live there – I mean sure the weather is great and everything but I think I would go crazy if I couldn’t walk everywhere I needed to get to. There’s just SO MUCH DRIVING. That said, I liked Long Beach. You might have won me over Long Beach, you cheeky thing, you.

Course that’s also cause we met some really really great people. The folks who put together the Long Beach Poetry Festival were some of the nicest most genuine down to earth funny artists I’ve ever met. And that is saying a lot coming from me cause those “let’s-get-together-and-have-beers-with-total-strangers,-come-on-it-will-be-fun” parties make my social anxiety rear its ugly head. But they were all so great, I was over my nervousness by the time the first beer was gone.

And Jay did a great job at the reading!

In between poets we snuck over to the V Room which was hands down one of the coolest dive bars I’ve had the privilege of drinking in. It has no windows. None. When you first walk in you stumble around blind and then, you look like this:

So thanks again to the amazing writers who put this reading together. I’m looking at you Kevin, Clint, Anna, Donna, Tamara and Paul and all their little helper cohorts. It was a great day and you crazy bastards made it so.

We bid farewell to Long Beach and headed up the Pacific Coast Highway – California 1. We got lost 1.5 times which isn’t too bad since we covered about 600 miles or something. And one of the 1.5 times lost was only because the sign was blocked by hedges  so we got lost in a town and drove out to a dead end and realized the ocean was now on the wrong side. But man was it a hell of a drive!

Pretty right?

I love road trips. We stopped along the way too.

and look what we found!

Elephant Seals!!

They smelled lovely, trust me.

And then we headed up into Big Sur territory! I drove the whole way yelling TAKE A PICTURE! TAKE A PICTURE to poor Jay.

And we drove over the Bixby Cannon Bridge, which you Kerouac fans know is pretty darn cool. It went by so quick (and it was so high, oh so high) that we didn’t get a picture but it looks like this:

See how HIGH!! Ugh. Too high.

Sheesh.

And then we got to Monterey which was beautiful and Stein-becky.

And they did a controlled burn while we were there which was upsetting to see at first until you realized it was, you know, ON PURPOSE.

We went to Aquarium (HAMMER HEAD SHARKS! and PENGUINS!!! and JELLYFISH!!) and found a couple of Steinbeck’s houses and hung out looking at how darn pretty everything was.

Next up was San Francisco. My third visit to this beautiful city. The first was right after Jay and I got married 9 years ago and then again in 2007 when we traveled the country. Each time, it keeps getting sweeter.

But the one thing I had yet to do was walk over the Golden Gate Bridge.

So we did.

From our hotel in North Beach.

For those of you who don’t know, that’s FAR. It wound up being like 9 miles and I thought I was going to die when I got to the other side and wound up begging a lift off the San Francisco Sightseeing Company Trolley driver (the company charges $35/head but our lovely Irish driver took us both for $15) and dropped us off right on Van Ness. The man was a saint, I swear. But still, we WALKED THE GOLDEN GATE!

And then drove it back!

We even headed up to Berkeley and Oakland to find the place where Ginsberg may or may not have written Howl. First off the directions are a little vague. Secondly nearly every coffee shop in Berkeley claims that Ginsberg wrote Howl there. It’s a long poem. They’re probably right. But the main story says that it was written in a shack behind this apartment building:

So like good little lunatics we did a little investigating (i.e. trespassing. Sorry, Mom)  and around back we found this:

Could that be it?

Probably not. But hey, if it’s not, it’s at least where the shack once was.

Afterwards we went to Oakland to Jack London Square where they’ve got his cottage which was dismantled in Alaska and re-mantled in Oakland:

and then had a few beers at Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon. It was opened in 1883 and the name refers to the fact that it was sailors first drink when they returned or last drink before they headed out. In 1906, because it was built on swampy ground it sank in the earthquake so the whole thing is tilted. I swear, I had to hold onto my beer at the bar. I would have taken a picture of the inside but trust me when I say it’s not the kind of place you start taking pictures in.  At least not with the guys that were in there when we went.

Here’s the inside via wikipedia:

Added bonus, apparently it’s HAUNTED!

The rest of the time in San Francisco we found beat houses (but I’m thinking of starting another blog for that stuff and besides, this post is already too long, n’cest pas?) and drank tea/coffee each morning at Cafe Trieste and drank Dark and Stormies each night at Vesuvio and went to the Beat Museum where we met a great guy (who wrote this book!)  who gave us the low down on Vieni Vieni which was kick ass.

And we also climbed all the way to the top of the Coit Tower and wow, what a view!

And then it was time to go.

And have a miserable shaky “we’re going to die I’m never traveling again” flight home.

That said, within a day, we already started planning the next trip!

Bon Voyage!

Peace, Love and Starbursts,

Ally

Drive

Drive

 

I have to drive

I have my reasons

even with this Dodge Charger

and its big front end sticking

out that seems to go on forever.

 

It’s white

not orange

and there’s no 01 on the side

and I can’t imagine this damn thing

jumping over anything

because with my hands on the wheel

it feels like steering an elephant.

 

You want me to drive, he asks,

as we pull out of the motel

in Long Beach.

 

No I got it,

I tell him.

I tease him about his driving,

about how uncomfortable he gets

how nervous

when other cars

come too close to our lane

 

and besides Highway 1

is a long windy haul and I know it

because I picked it

from Long Beach to Monterrey

and then maybe from Monterrey

to San Francisco

 

We don’t know yet

because we don’t have an atlas

another thing we left at home.

 

It’s just one road he tells me,

how hard can it be?

 

So here I am in the cool California

morning with the mist rising off the road

driving

 

because I have to drive

because I have my reasons

 

just like when we traveled

the country

and I drove

through the long

lonely stretches of Texas

looking for bighorns

and stopping at the Cadillac Ranch

after we left the sweet heat of New Orleans.

 

We argued, tired from putting

half the country under those wheels

and ate lunch in the car in silence.

 

You drove in Utah

through the Basin

and I tried to sleep then

in the passenger seat

of our little Rocinante

as we called the Ford Escort

named after Steinbeck’s truck

that took us from New York City

to the west coast

and back again

 

But that was six years ago

and right now we’re quiet

older,

and a little sleepy

and you put Bruce on the radio

and he’s singing softly

along with the rumble of the road

under these tires

and I joke that I would have to be Neal

in this story

 

as you snap pictures of the mountains

rising out of the sea

like monsters

 

and I glance in the rear view

which is filled

with everything I drove away from

and the faces of the people I left behind

ghostly and golden in the early

California sunrise.

It’s everything that’s going to be waiting

for me when that

goddamn plane touches down

and I know it but

 

right now,

I have to drive.

I have my reasons,

dear.

 

What’s it Worth to Ya?

 

What’s it worth to ya?

He asks, his Scottish accent heavy.

He’s older, squinting in the violent

San Francisco sun

the same sun I’ve been baking under

for 8 miles of walking.

What’s it worth to ya?

and I laugh

because I don’t know how to bargain.

 

See,

we walked from North Beach down to the Golden Gate Bridge

and the whole time,

my husband kept saying

that bridge,

and then he’d sigh, that bridge

and I’m thinking

Yeah it’s beautiful,

look at us baby, walking over the Golden Gate bridge

 

And he sighs again and says,

That bridge, goddamnit

it just isn’t getting any closer is it?

 

And he’s right because we’ve been walking

for miles

following older women in yoga pants

who seem like the type

of spry ladies who walk this bridge all the time, just for fun.

But 5 miles later,

they got into their cars, laughing

we knew we were on our own.

 

And still that red rust goliath was just swinging out there in the bay taunting us.

I walk five miles a day back in Brooklyn

but we’ve got clouds back there and here, over San Francisco

it’s just so much open sky, so much blazing sun

you could go dizzy staring into all that blue

 

So that by the time we got to Sausalito and realized,

there was no way back but to turn around and do those 8 miles all over again,

I said

No,

I can’t

not in these shoes

not after driving the pacific coast highway

not now.

No way.

 

And walked right up to the old guy sitting on the brick wall

next to the parked sightseeing trolley

and said, pointing to the thing, is this yours?

 

Aye.

 

How much to get a lift back over the bridge?

 

The company charges $35 a piece.

 

Steep, I say.

 

And he nods. Steep, he says.

What’s it worth to ya? he asks

and I laugh

because, I’m not good at this.

 

But we settle on 15 for both of us, and my husband hands him the money

and we slip down into those hard wooden seats

that held so many fat lady asses

so many old men with their bum knees

and Chinese tourists with ipads

 

and he drives us over the bridge

and I think to myself,

my god, there isn’t a prettier city in America

than San Francisco.

Look at her shine.

From this wooden seat

the wind blowing my hair crazy

and the ocean

just laying out

waiting for you

like a beautiful woman

lying in your bed,

and right now,

I’m as golden as the coast

I’m driving over

thanks to this wooden trolley

and my Scottish hero

pulling her home.