things that are cool!!!

So, I have this weird fascination for things you don't expect to be true. Like, ice hotter than boiling water - doesn't that sound like an oxymoronic statement? But apparently it can happen; water actually turns into multiple kinds of ice, depending on conditions, each kind with different properties. I'm not entirely sure why this is so cool to me - maybe because up here, ice is almost a constant presence (just when you think Spring has come -- snow! Agh); but probably also because of what it means, that even with something like water, there's still more to discover. I like knowing that there are still secrets, even if I don't know what those secrets are. Sometimes the world should be a mystery.

In other similarly awesome discovery news, I went on a book-buying-binge a few days ago (not that I'll ever have time to read what I bought, more fool me, putting objects of temptation right underneath my nose), and have fallen in love with a poet: Lola Lemire Tostevin. The book: site-specific poems. I kind of doubt the legality of me posting a sample poem of hers onto this blog, and so I won't; but if anyone wants to borrow my copy, they're welcome to it.

I'm currently sitting on three essays. All of them are due. Man-yacks. It's time for me to get cracking; though I've consumed enough caffeine that it's more likely that I'll buzz, instead of crack.

.

i don't think i'll ever forget the way you smelled. like something rotting.
which was familiar. i smelled it every year
on butchering days. where dad would gut chickens
and turkeys and ducks w/ his exacto, and pull
intestines out in long purple clumps
of wound-up tubing. their bodies reduced to machinery.

your body reduced to machinery. blinks
of sound
that dizzied me in your hospital room. white walls. heartbeat
monitors. and you pale. with your veins extended
to ivs. transparent plastic tubing. & your words lost
to an oxygen mask
fitted over your lips
which were pale and cracked.

when you moved you moved in pain
like someone split your skin
from throat to sternum to hipbones
and pushed their hands
inside& pulled

and i'll always remember how you smelled
for weeks like you were already dead.