Unsent postcard: Julia Child in high heels
Dear Fleur,
You are a
plump poet cat, reading about your mother, which sounds like a dull insult in
the tiny perimeter of the poet world that’s six degrees of incestuous but also
My People, such as they are, and you, Poet cat but also Jazz cat, in your high
heeled very good ankle boots
of which I
am jealous, and about which we talk, after the reading, most likely because I
can’t find the generosity to be honest, to tell you I do
not expect
ever to write such direct poems again yet I so admire your slippery metaphoric
tonguing way, drawing us like a witch holding
our hands
as we walk into the forest getting lost, my story too
after all,
us witches, cooking in order to survive, so I appreciate
the poem
about your mother’s Depression Cake and want to give you
in return,
my mum’s failsafe recipe for Crazy Cake, but instead
we talk
about your boots and your cool older girlfriend’s shoes
and you
admire my torn but Parisian dress, leaving aside the entire discussion of
sanity or healing and maybe we should just admit the most important details
come back to footwear so we are prepared
for
wherever we must walk.
* the unsent postcard as poem is an idea cribbed from poet CECILIA WOLOCH
Unsent postcard: Italian espresso pot in black & white
Dear Heidi,
When I walk
into Café Envie, a stranger holds open the door.
My lover
never opens a door for me. He knows I can open that door myself and you would
agree, such belief is more pleasing than any performative gesture. At the
counter, a middle-aged straight white
man is
buying his two mocha bichon dogs little cups of whipping
cream,
Puppachinos, he says, delighted with his life and why shouldn’t he be? I like
working mornings, you say. Making sweet coffees
and
ordering big fried breakfasts by calling to the kitchen staff, you’re bringing
us reliable and specifically attainable joy. This is what I would write on a
postcard while sitting here at the fake-mahogany ledge: you’re midwifing our
small happiness and cumulatively, isn’t that a tangible bit of peace in fractured
times, while the ink bleeds onto my hand.
* the unsent postcard as poem is an idea cribbed from poet CECILIA WOLOCH
Lisa Pasold grew up in Tio'tia:ke/Montréal & currently lives in Bulbancha/New Orleans. She has six books, one of which, Any Bright Horse, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. To develop her book-length works, she has been writing daily poems for two decades; the resulting poems have appeared in magazines such as The Los Angeles Review, Room, Fence and New American Writing. She is a storyteller & a flower enthusiast.
