Under My Bedside Table
I’m due to leave for south India next week with my husband
of not yet a full year. Twenty-three hours on a plane to visit
my 4’8" tall grandmother on her rubber tree plantation.
Twenty-three hours for my husband to meet her for the very
first time.
Twenty-three hours until the first mosquito bite.
Since we both teach at the same college, in the same department,
and have offices just down the hall from each other—it’s
an unwritten rule that no “school stuff” passes
the threshold of our bedroom door. Since this is early May,
this is especially trying because we are in the middle of
grading final exams: for me, this involves over fifty “Greatest
Hits” student portfolios of fiction and poetry and about
thirty papers on Frankenstein and Greek myth. At
parties, our co-workers often ask us how do we avoid bringing
our work home with us. The answer is: we don’t. But
what is on (or under, in my case) our bedside tables enables
us to at least never have to bring it into the bedroom.
Just recently, we used some gift cards from the wedding to
buy not one but two nightstands. Matching! Such extravagance
for someone whose most recent furniture finds (like a chartreuse
velvet couch in mint condition) are a result of well-timed
stops at garage sales and thrift stores. My nightstand is
a lovely dark teak with a wheaten canvas basket nestled in
between the legs. About every two months, the contents of
the basket changes. Right now, Villanelle, our geriatric dachshund
(perhaps sensing we have begun to pack for India and are about
to leave her—so each moment is scrutinized even more
closely than usual, which is to say: she is staring at me.
Then at the basket. Then at me. Then the basket), has tucked
her red snout in the basket since I have pulled it from under
the nightstand. This is what she sniffs:
1. Poeta en San Francisco, by my homegirl, Barbara
Jane Reyes, who just won the Laughlin Prize: tough and full
o’ heart and sweat and candor, these are haunting poems
that will zap you if you read them just before bed. Zap you,
I say.
2. the latest issue of CutBank—a hip hip hip
poetry journal from the fine folks at the Univ. of Montana.
3. Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, by Daniel Mannix—my
threshold for pain stops at the odd paper cut. Perhaps that
is why I am completely fascinated by this memoir of a guy
who seems to have the highest tolerance for pain I’ve
ever heard of and who traveled with a sideshow in the 1940s.
He tells all of his secrets (well, maybe not all) with such
precision that you will never look at your kitchen knives
in the same way. Yipes.
4. the latest brochure of Ladera (www.ladera.com), the “green”
resort in St. Lucia where we honeymooned last June. Ah, Ladera.
The resort is such that each room is situated on the side
of a mountain so the fourth wall is completely missing and
you have a floor-to-ceiling view of the Piton mountains (that
Derek Wolcott so elegantly painted in Omeros). With visits
from the occasional honeycreeper or bananaquit bird. Right
there. In your room.
5. The Far Mosque, by Kazim Ali—lush honeypoems.
Dream-like and full of sadness. Dream-like and lovely.
6. What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison,
by Camille Dungy—girl hits it out of the park with the
title alone. I got this long-awaited book at AWP (along with
a nifty candy bar from Red Hen Press) and have been dipping
into the poems ever since. The candy bar didn’t even
make it home.
7. Dirt and All its Dense Labor, by Gabriel Welsch—okay,
full disclosure here. This poet’s daughter was the flower
girl at my wedding. But these poems (written by a former garden
designer and nurseryman) make me want to slip on my gardening
gloves—no—forget about gardening gloves entirely—and
get my hands down deep in the vermiculite and topsoil.
8. Duties of the Spirit, by Patricia Fargnoli—There
is a poem called “Pistachios,” in here that is
so chewy and crunchy worth the whole price of the book and
this whole collection is the perfect summertime reading with
a icy glass o’ lemonade.
9. The Private Life of Plants, by David Attenborough—this
hardcover book is full of creepy and wonderful tidbits like
how plants can move themselves and its full of color photographs
featuring lacy orange patterns of fungi, the ghost orchid,
etc. The pictures will thrill and delight you, even if you
don’t remotely like plants. Lush and the chatty, amiable
descriptions makes you feel like summer is already here and
that plant sweetleaf is already in your hand. Or that you
are already in a place like south India: green, greeny, greeniest.
A place where bats and banana trees thrum if you listen close
enough. Exactly the place I want to be when I turn off the
lights.
