Hello

Feb 27, 2022

Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle

Hello,

The past few weeks I have been trying to rest, and my favorite way to relax is to be near the water. Last Tuesday I missed the last light rail of the night on purpose so I could walk through Pike Market and the waterfront instead of coming straight home from J.’s apartment. I had Alacrán, who was excited about the adventure. He jittered and sniffed around for a few seconds while maintaining stride, then stopped just for a few beats before I snapped my fingers to remind him that we were not on a casual stroll.

He looked up at me, stuck his tongue out, and jaunted on while pulling the end of the leash. We passed the sky bridge to the Pier 66 Overlook (me and C. hopped the gate over at 2 AM once to sneak in the view), the Irish restaurant (I ate with U. while the boat my ex worked on was docked directly across from our window), and the fountain at the entrance to Olympic Sculpture Park. Up the road, I can see a blurry version of the Space Needle.

Feeling the water calmed me. I wished I didn’t have to see the land on the other side of the bay. I’m a little bit sick of looking at land and want to look at nothing but ocean and sky. To the left, over the boardwalk railing, the particular smell of this water was unmistakable. I couldn’t be anywhere else.

I’ve been working on a series of seascape paintings. They come naturally: I use whatever paints I notice laying in the top tray of my toolbox first and incorporate them in an intuitive way, spreading unmeasured amounts of different colors. I use stiff brushes or a rubber comb to spread the paint in long strokes, trying different directions until I arrive at a texture I like. The colors mix in an unpredictable way that begins to remind me of the ocean in different types of light. When I painted these pieces on oaktag, I left a white border around the color that reminded me of the metal edges of portholes onboard a ship.

Seascape Paintings

I hung the paintings up next to each other in my apartment. When I walk past them I feel like I’m ~underwater~

I was very excited last week when I showed up in the studio to see where the paintbrush took me and a new seascape painting came out. It’s called “light pollution.” It’s about sitting in the grass at the University of Hawaii Marine Center in the middle of the night. I would return to the ship after a long walk down Nimitz Highway to Kaka’ako, where I would drink three beers while doing my work for the online poetry classes I took as often as I could [this was before Zoom blew up so there weren’t many options to study poetry (lofl) remotely while I was at work, but I grabbed every one that I could]. I walked back in the dark thinking about words and ideas, but wouldn’t want to go back onboard just yet. I sat in the still-wet grass (the sprinklers just turned off) right in front of the bow of the ship with my headphones in, blasting music and typing Instagram captions or Notes app poetry fragments. The lights in the parking lot were very bright, so my eyes were almost blinded even as I tried to look past the land into the dark water.

Last Quarter

for Jettison

.

Parking lot lights, high sodium in the dark

night. I don’t know what I want but I’ll keep

drinking. This song isn’t the mood for this poem

but I’ll keep it on. I have only known two Sag-

.

ittarians, is that called light pollution?

I’m laying in the grass right after the sprinklers

turned off, the grass next to the harbor. One texted

“I’m gonna suck yr dick im gonna suck yr dick im gon-

.

na suck yr dick yr dick —” I didn’t know what I wanted.

Some moons I write tight little poems that don’t say

anything but sound the way I feel. Today I’ll say

my body doesn’t belong to you even if I let it.

.

I’m going to lay on my back. The green in my shoulders

and the evenly planted trees reach crookedly. Poems

don’t tell you I was drinking when I wrote them but I am

saying it now. I can see the clouds grey even though it’s

.

much too late. The other messaged me on Instagram

“I’d wanna give you head af” and I know to tell

them I’m not interested. The inlet was dredged, the lawn

cuts off suddenly. I don’t care. I can see some of the stars.

In the sunlight, an hour before my ship left Honolulu for the last time, I laid in the same grass at lunch and cried intensely. I both wanted to leave and stay. I wrote this poem about that feeling because I couldn’t describe it any other way.

Postscript to Lust

I thought that the poem was finished

but the poem is never — living keeps going

.

— complete. I am back here again, I am

thinking I texted you for no reason.

.

Honolulu, I mean. How much a city

changes and stays the same in two years.

.

I was wrong, it does rain and nothing is crumbling

yet. I am tired of writing to you because

.

there was nothing. Lust. I am walking

the docks again displaying obsessions

.

in public. It really does look the same, the night

sky but too familiar. We are leaving this place

.

tomorrow for good and when will I be back?

I am leaving you here. I am leav-

.

ing this poem. I am always leaving.

Once I asked if you’d ever seen the ocean

.

from the ocean, nowhere else. I knew you hadn’t.

You tweeted taking a bath and texting a poet

.

about the sea but writing vaguely

about water on the internet is not knowing.

.

Now I mistrust your small words and elusive

poems. I don’t hate them, but

.

I no longer love. Our bodies. Always

using ourselves. I’m deciding.

.

I won’t think of you from the horizon.

I am closing my lips. The end only comes

.

when we leave but you were right.

It is always, always there.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. Anyhow, I hope you’re near some water (even if it’s only in the bath) & I hope you can get some rest.

Woof,

Joe