#2 – 26 Things Emotionally Strong People Do

 
Today DMC is Three! We are celebrating by publishing the top-ten most-read posts from the last year!

 
1. Emotionally Strong people are less discouraged by the stresses and discouragements of life than people who aren’t Emotionally Strong people.

2. Emotionally Strong people are able to unemotionally express their emotional needs.

3. Emotionally Strong people don’t focus on the hurdle itself, but on the nourishing Light near and around and on the hurdle.

4. Emotionally strong people eat correctly and exercise the right, and correct way.

5. Emotionally Strong people are able to recover quickly from the emotionally harmful nature of emotional wounds i.e. rejection, failure, or when Whole Foods is out of umeboshi paste.

6. Emotionally strong people get the amount of sleep they need, and understand how to best navigate their own specific and Loving sleep patterns.

Three Poems from “Dear Sal”

 

Dear Sal,

Plopped on the bus stop bench, my father’s phantom & I are the consummate expression of a rich & inherited solitude. I stare ahead, cross-legged, fists in pockets. He pretends at the perusing of a paper. The Plymouth has given out again, this time with a foul sputter like blood bubbling in the neck of a cow. Revelers flow in & out of a bar across the road; the sort where men go to feel as if they’re hunting on a close friend’s private island. In & out they swagger, sabers of Cossacks, analyzing strategy, plunging, glinting, back into the pursuit. The quarry? Women so existent I feel like a vacuum. They smoke thin cigarettes in shimmering clusters, the smoke doing imitations of their necks. Do not ask if they are beautiful. These are the women you look away from quickly & try to focus on where you excel. For me: the dignity of numbers, the absurdities of horror. My father’s phantom asks what I think they talk about. I shrug my shoulders, remain silent. I do not know how to look at anyone but through the lens of my undesirability. A woman runs across the street with hair like a collapsing fire. Her body is a country, My body is a small blemish on the bottom of the ocean. My father’s phantom says, Tell me, boychik, tell me about this woman you love. What can I tell him? The fog hovers around a street-lamp. Look papa, I say to the absence, you can see the hem of her gown.
 
 
 
 

26 Things Emotionally Strong People Do

 
1. Emotionally Strong people are less discouraged by the stresses and discouragements of life than people who aren’t Emotionally Strong people.

2. Emotionally Strong people are able to unemotionally express their emotional needs.

3. Emotionally Strong people don’t focus on the hurdle itself, but on the nourishing Light near and around and on the hurdle.

4. Emotionally strong people eat correctly and exercise the right, and correct way.

5. Emotionally Strong people are able to recover quickly from the emotionally harmful nature of emotional wounds i.e. rejection, failure, or when Whole Foods is out of umeboshi paste.

6. Emotionally strong people get the amount of sleep they need, and understand how to best navigate their own specific and Loving sleep patterns.

Sixteen

 

“from what we cannot hold the stars are made”
	- WS Merwin

In writing the definitive text on the state of the body
in rooms I must include you Belinda & the half-hour

phone call during which you described in hushed 
& lurid detail the jacuzzi party to which I had not been 

invited it commenced as this boy or that made a proposal 
& through their nervous giggling the other boys agreed & so 

the night's agenda had been set & soon as the requisite 
protests were charmed out of the way it began unrehearsable 

ritual kiss & kiss & on to the next you let me in 
on who over-employed the tongue who turned 
 

“Jabba the Son” Speaks

“Fat III (Child)” (2010-2011); Richard Pasquarelli

“… Oh look. It’s fat family. And ‘Jabba the Son’ sits right beside me. I just lost my 
shit. His fat was on my lap. It was actually on my lap.” - Nicole Arbour, comedian 
 
Of course the stewardess sits me beside the slender blonde. 
Eyes bluer than mother’s heart medication, hair streaked pink 
as my cheeks must be. I can teach you to apologize using only 
the air around you. Of course this row has just two seats. To see 
the expression on her face, I don’t even need eyes. If I shoved 
my hand through the swamp of my chest, snarl of sweat & hair 
& fine, something approximating butter, wrenched my heart free 
& showed it to you, two things: 1. Finally. 2. The Expression On 
Her Face. I carry it like some top-secret badge. Soon we will be air-
borne. Soon I will not move my arms for three hours or five or ten, 
I mean, if we’re talking about willpower. I will fold myself smaller 
than a choice. So okay, I’ll feel the sweat spreading, suffocating 
the tunnels beneath these breasts. Dumb breasts I have because
yes, we’re talking about willpower. Each day I wake up & make 
choices. Maybe I should say each day I wake up or make choices. 
Maybe I should say each day my choices wake up. Today I foist it
upon her, this aggregate of choices, this burden of a body, body 
of frantic decision. Certainly she’s made her little choices as well - 
hers leading to appropriate airplane size, mine to inappropriate air-
plane size. I don’t know what language she speaks - I wish I knew 
I’m sorry in all of them. But best to be silent. Perhaps she’ll forget 
the circumstance of you, or better, perhaps she’s taken a pill for sleep 

				

After Botching the Big End-of-the-Night Kiss You Drive Home Over Mulholland Drive, Listening to Leonard Cohen & Weeping with Relief

Blessed Idiot. Anointed Know-Nothing. 
	What was it you said? I feel like I’m going 
to kiss you now. & Valentine’s Day. & stars 
	sawing their violas. Even in Los Angeles 
		the hushed beeping of frogs. O, tender
	beeping. The night unreasonably warm, 
like the atmosphere around a pot of tea. I feel 
	like I’m going to kiss you now. Sanctified 
		Moron. Hallelujah Shit-For-Brains. & then 
	the weeping. Leonard singing like a jaguar
chomping a fossil. Had to be people I hated, 
	he sings, had to be no one at all. Ghosts
		licking honey from your heart, a light
	lifting like dust off the city. I feel like I’m going 
to kiss you now. Glory, the screw-up. Numb-
	skull, glory. Unsnarling her cardigan from
		your eyes, one cerulean thread at a time. 
	Lost in the night-hair, winding through its braided 
sheets, & braided into your own body, tighter,
	tighter, until you don’t know the difference
		between your body & the curses you’ve
	braided into it. I feel like I’m going to kiss 
you now. Divine doofus. Sainted schmuck.  

				

A Former “Nice Guy” Considers His Failings to the Tune of Taylor Swift’s 1989

 

For the women of Why I Dance: An Uprising

Recently I was commissioned by my friend Sascha Alexander to write and perform a poem for the release party of a short film she co-produced (along with several other extraordinary women) called Why I Dance. It’s a moving and powerful look at a group of women claiming their own bodies, their own space, and their sexual autonomy through the practice of pole-dancing. The film explores this art form as a radical and political act of praise, healing, conjuring and unconjuring; an act against what is expected of the bodies of women, and a reframing of the relationship between women and their own bodies in a way that is wildly celebratory and deeply, deeply magical. 

The film was released as part of One Billion Rising (a global movement to end violence against women) and so Sascha asked me to write a poem examining moments of misogyny in my own life, using Why I Dance as a springboard. The good folks at Drunk in a Midnight Choir have been kind enough to present both the film and the poem in one place. Thank you so much for watching and reading.
 

#8 – Three Poems – Jeremy Radin

 
This week, Drunk in a Midnight Choir celebrates our One Year Anniversary! Since we launched on February 6, 2014, we’ve had the great privilege of publishing a whole lot of amazing work, from a wide array of talented contributors. All week, we’ll be catching you up on some highlights from the last year. Here we present to you the top ten most-read posts of the year, counting down from ten.
 

CHAMPION
after Wislawa Szymborska

I champion silver.

I champion ferocious dunks.

I champion pumpkin everything.

I champion divinity unadvertised.

I champion terror over numb.

I champion all of the donuts 
over some of the donuts.

I champion &.

I champion Portland & its grieving weather.

I champion my sister slutting it up in a slutty dress
over her modestly emptying her lust into the toilet.

I champion Brent’s Deli to Jerry’s Deli & if you don’t, I champion a swift education.

I hope to champion survival
over pretending to be alive.
 

Three Poems – Jeremy Radin

 

 

CHAMPION
after Wislawa Szymborska

I champion silver.

I champion ferocious dunks.

I champion pumpkin everything.

I champion divinity unadvertised.

I champion terror over numb.

I champion all of the donuts 
over some of the donuts.

I champion &.

I champion Portland & its grieving weather.

I champion my sister slutting it up in a slutty dress
over her modestly emptying her lust into the toilet.

I champion Brent’s Deli to Jerry’s Deli & if you don’t, I champion a swift education.

I hope to champion survival
over pretending to be alive.

I champion Yiddish. 

I champion more work.

I champion Shakespeare disrespected & vibrating
over Shakespeare awed about & still.

I champion the everything of doing nothing.

I champion a God that takes you up into arms
over a God that asks you to take up arms.

I champion the ocean at night & a blanket over my shoulders & hot black coffee 
& not having to try to feel holy.

I champion my anger at my mother over my anger at my father.

I champion a warm bed in a cold room.

I champion listening over politics.

I champion sex 
over whatever I’m doing right now.

I champion haunted windmills.

I champion the image of a beast swinging through the trees
over the image of my father staring straight ahead in a chair.

I champion open.

I champion Johanna, those freckles just left of the center of her neck.

I champion saying when it rains it whores when my sister tells me 
she’s courting three men over saying nothing on the floor of her closet
as she tries to court whatever gives her power to continue.

I champion continuing.

I champion continuing over everything else.