Do You Want Cheese On That?

“Reliable Sex”

I am turning 21 soon
it would be nice to have a friend to celebrate that with.

On peut jouer en français &
can get down and funky too.

Not heavy druggie
sexually excited by confined spaces

Thursdays are not a requirement!

We find each other attractive and sexy
We follow each other around in the store and get closer as time goes on.
We start to pretend that we are a couple.. holding hands, being close and even maybe kissing.

How exciting.
aroused
in this naughty and innocent public encounter.

-by jessica jejacissa co-ox (I'm changing my name)

If I Had A Soundtrack It Would Announce My Return From A Place Of No Posting

Geography of Hope Conference: A Conference Between Myself

“He did was he said he was gonna do.” –Carl Brandt on Wallace Stegner

I was about five or six, and had begun braiding my hair in the hopes that it would look like Sacagawea’s. I very pointedly removed my shoes before running outside through the grass, though ours was a very yellow, very prickly variety. I’d hang in trees and sing to the flowers and never, ever pick them. As most children can, I talked to plants and animals and if I didn’t know what they were called, made up my own names for them. I was a little tree-hugger in the making.

Then, as the story goes, teenageism hit, and the pigtails got lost in the mess of trying to make my hair look like the girls in the magazines and my bare feet were covered by Converse All-Stars. But that little girl who held bake-sales to earn money for saving rainforests was still there somewhere. Gradually, that girl is rising again, bowling through the cement with tiny furious fists so that the grass can begin to poke through.

The Geography of Hope Conference in Point Reyes pulled me inextricably back to the call of the wild. Set in a town full of cows atop rolling hills, marshes and ocean, bookstores and feed barns, Point Reyes seemed like the perfect setting for discussions on conservation and writing. Under the soft motivation of Robert Hass, panel members recollected vivid memories of Wallace Stegner’s life and works. Being in the midst of so many good writers was enough to reduce me to a smiling bubble of jelly, but I was actually able to pay attention too. From the general panel discussions I learned more about culture, civilization, wilderness, and environmental concerns than I would have had I been in class all weekend.

Before coming to the conference I knew little about Stegner, less about Point Reyes and nothing about literary conferences at all. Because the stories the panel members told were about life, not just Stegner’s life, but life in general, giving hints and tips for how to live that life, so they were fun and interesting simply because we the listening were alive and would have to keep living (for a while at least).

Carl Brandt, Stegner’s literary agent, taught me something about life in the thinly veiled excuse of ‘the work ethic.’ “He would do what he said he was gonna do,” Brandt said. Stegner turned manuscripts in on time and in good shape, and carried that ‘Frontier Mentality’ where hard work paid off. The thing that Stegner was so concerned about was the Western Frontier. He was concerned that without the frontier the American man would go soft and the American culture would go soft. So he remained hard and strict in self-discipline to get those manuscripts in. And this reminds me of my father.

Most panel members at the conference said at one time or another, “and this reminded me of this,” though perhaps phrased otherwise. Hass said of Angle of Repose, “[it] taught me something about my family,” and other panelists recognized their family members in Stegner’s characters. What I saw in Stegner’s works was myself: that wild-girl child running barefoot in make-believe woods, writing poetry about all the little live things. My earliest poem is one that I look back on with mixed feelings. Imagine a horror-face along with this poem:

“I am thankfull
for all the animuls,
even the spyders and terrantulas and centipeds.”

Horror not for the content, because that is a nice sentiment, but because now I shudder to think of being thankful for spiders, oh horror! and am glad to have learned that Stegner was an adamant exterminator of pests (though I do feel for those poor gophers!).

After the last panel, which was held in the Point Reyes National Seashore Park, where deer sauntered in the background as the speaker spoke, Cameron, my boyfriend and I were talking to Hass. Hass said that what struck him, was that while “they” were out getting stoned and protesting the war, Stegner was out in San Francisco arguing with corporations. This is a bad rendition of what was said, but eloquence and memory are not my strongest points. The fact of the matter is, Stegner was a powerful force for ecological conservation and what remains important today is not attending rally’s that fail to achieve anything, but to get out there and do. And Stegner did. And now maybe I will too.

My Thoughts At The Irish Poets Reading

• Holee shit, the microphone looks like the tip of a finger on a black cord. Or a penis.
• The emcee says "MmmmmmMmm" instead of "ahem".
• What if I laugh? I won't stop. Why drunk. Oh god why forty minutes of being drunk.
• He speaks so quickly, so fast, so so fucking fast. Hilarious, he stumbles once but so fast. Too fast. Can I handle this?
• I have to read read or keep writing because I might loose it. He's only the first reader, Can I do this? Let's pay attention and see? Or am I too scared? Of course, drunken laughter. Watch out.
• My breath is dead. So stale in my mouth.
• Oh dad, I'm dancing. No, no, I'm dancing.
• Outside is really black. Really, being trully, or truly or the spelling of that. But not the spelling of that. We know spelling doesn't matter-- comprehension remains without spelling and what matters when the sillhouette of trees shines, or the window lighted up behind the trees shines on their silhouette. Is the reason for the shadows and I -- in the lighted room across.
• I have to pee.
• I have to brush my teeth.
• Can I keep this up for another hour? I might run out of ink. Out of paper. Out of words. I might die.
• Cameron writes sense. I know he can handle, can pay attention, to this. He looks, avid, absorbed, ignoring, biting nails. I write feverishly. I lick my lips to wet them. Breathe to clean my breath. He knows how good the last/the first poet was/is. I applaud. I write nonsense.
• A new poet. I have to pee.
• He has funny hair. It's dryness pulls it up, off his high forehead like he pulled up with his fingers and it froze there. Floating, in vertical planes off his head.
• Can I listen? I will listen.
• BLÁH BLÁH, BLÁH BLÁH, BLÁH BLÀH.
• One word, one word, some words.
• I may die. I may pee my pants.
• Black moth, white butterfly, oh, form a cup, that I may pee freely.
• His poetry is too slow for my thoughts to flow. And the pressure in my bladder is growing so that it becomes more difficult to think and write, as I focus on the fullness behind my belly
• Can I read? I may read or reread.
• When he's finished, I will go. Slowly walk to the door, exit, quiet, go through the stone hallways, find the wooden door, sit down after unbuttoning my pants, and pee blissfully pee. Yes, it's like a treasure.
• To Cameron:

I have to pee, I'm going.

When he's finished, I'm going.

• I did it. The women's restroom was breathless and eerie. Eerie and breathless.
• She, this one, is Norwegian, and plays the fiddle. I can listen. I am light.
• No, no, no. The man, the hair is talking explaining again. I grow tired. There are deliberate pauses. I may still, loose my composure. Silence, what are you thinking? Does Cameron care? He breathes a laugh. If he looses it -- I am done. Oh done. I may be done already. You are interesting man, this poetry, this crazy pause. I do not know what you are doing.
• What are you doing?
• Shhh, I will bring you in my home, lay you down. Do not talk. I will cover you with a blanket. I will cover your face with a blanket. Do not talk anymore. Lay, with this blue softness over you. Blue that will look black in the dark. Your children of slaves, of hard labor, put them to rest. I will cover you. Will take your breath.
• I am captured by my physical sensations. I want food.
• Tear. It's not the tear. It's the hot, swelling, burning behind your eyes. Or that sour fire in your stomach that threatens your throat with madness.
• Be still and play the fiddle.
• Her voice is so heavy, so full of 's'.
• We're almost done. My breath is hot. The air outside, cold.
• If this chair lost the strength, to hold my weight. I would fall back, and lay there, until it was time to get up.
• This poetry reading. The beer. Your birthday. Happy Birthday.
• I heard it too -- that secret sound that mimicked his snap. It is why I love you.
  Go-ing, looks like going, like goying!
• Going. It is over. We are going. (I have to pee again. It's been ten minutes. No more.) I like his poetry, the first one, the last one.

Red.

Bones.

Land of Beer and Accordions

Sometimes things just express themselves better in video.
Old videos.
Of when you were in Amsterdam drinking beer.
And sometimes those videos look like low budget commercials that were not edited even a little bit.
And sometimes they come out nice.

Amsterdam

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Dream Poetry

I wrote a perfect poem in my dream.

I wish I could remember it.

In the shower this morning the first line came clearly, and I asked for a pen and paper and scribbled it down against the wall where wet drops ate away at the paper.

I stood in a parabola of light.
I was in the garage with my father, with whom I have an awkward relationship. I wasn't actually in the garage, because I was in a writing room with Robert Hass and Melanie Abrams, but the poem took place in the garage and so I could see the action playing across the page like a projected movie.

His blue eyes were glossy and welled up behind his glasses like a fishbowl.

I think that I read this somewhere and I remember debating about whether or not to put it in my poem, since it wasn't mine, and did, so I could remember the sentiment.

He was sad about my leaving to go to college, which was when the awkward turn in our relationship happened. He said something so perfectly encompassing the change and the sentiment without being obvious, but that was either unimagined or forgotten.

I thank the room.

I Also Create Magnificent Works of Art

"The Jimmy Street Tangle"
or
"The Bird That Flew Too High"

Plastic birds on pipe cleaner
Jessica Cox 2007

I Didn't Drop By to Say Hello

On Sunday Milke Thompson walked over to the Bart station, entered the train and sat down. He read a newspaper in a top hat. People looked at him funny because of the top hat. And the cane, and the purple chiffon gown he wore on Sundays. Milke liked to put yellow crepe paper in a duffel bag and walk about the station outside with the yellow bits of paper poking out. He said he liked canaries. The blue lockers were on the left of the ticket machines and he would stand there with the paper until the train rumbled overhead. Calmly, he would purchase a muffin from the vendor on the sidewalk, and slowly unwrap the chocolate Costco muffin from its saran wrap coating. After the train departed, he would move toward the escalator leaning heavily on his cane, tapping the ground twice with the metal end before shifting his left foot in front of the right. Milke Thompson is a millionaire. And he spends his Sundays thus, in an endless repetition of crepe paper and chocolate muffins.