anecdotes: a poetry collection

from Costa Rica, with love

lauren tindle

grams

I’ve been going to mass lately, cause it feels good

I love the peace it brings me, love how it greets all my senses so

lovingly.

Like the natural morning light that filters in through tall, stained glass

windows and huge wooden doors flung wide open. The same doors that

bring the breeze, playing with my hair across the pew

I love getting wrapped up in the sound of a room full of voices. Children

and elders, all singing the same hymn;

I love how it’s in another language, but it all feels so familiar.

I recognize the prayers and the responses, the intonations

all the same, like my childhood

wafting in through the open windows.

The smell of incense and holy water,

the same earthy, mineral scent no matter where you are. I can close my eyes now

and walk out of Nativity, or mass in Slidell where my grandmother used to sing.

Here there’s something new, the added aroma

of Latina mamas and abuelitas, their perfumes mingling around me

reminding me of so many things I can’t pinpoint just one.

I love all of these smells laden on my tongue, mingling with

the fresh breeze bringing in the taste of mountains and grass

and Barva.

I love how it feels to sit in the quiet

of myself, in a room filled with sound and

still so soft. I love that I can reach this place

no matter how far I go, in all the corners of the world

filled with cathedrals and mosques and temples,

to all the corners of myself in soft and quiet places

There Are Afternoons

Inspired by Lisel Mueller’s There Are Mornings

When I think I’ve faded

too far beyond recognition

and there is no place

the sun can find me.

Some afternoons, the gold

filters through the iron

and I think now

‘s a good a time as any.

But the sun demands

I stray from my cracked head

feel the burn, feel the heat

feel it all, or

feel nothing

I step into the light.

A Fucking Cricket Lives in My Kitchen and at Four-Thirty in the Morning When It Starts to Chirp, I Lie Awake and Fantasize Your Body on Mine

It dies tonight.

tamagotchi

I’m twenty-six and a half. Almost.

I’m in shambles. I’m a dud firecracker; I’m a typo in a bestseller. I’m a Starburst for breakfast; I’m freshly brewed coffee gone cold—the first sip much easier than it should be. I’m a longing for a 90’s cartoon never watched. A nostalgia for a nostalgia never known. I’m the dull weight of too much sugar in your belly and the singular cool breeze on an oppressively hot day to leave you hopeful and wanting. I’m the wear on nice white shoes, a yellowing signal of faded novelty. I’m the sun behind a dense haze, browning at the edges in an attempt to burn through. I’m a heavy sigh from a young body. I’m twenty-six and a half on Sunday.

the zucchini in my burrito

the full belly, the smell of citronella, the zucchini in my burrito and the sunburn on my ass; not to mention the hair on my legs, the Nicaraguan coffee and the flickering, strobing, spazzing, light in my bedroom that needs replacing, which reminds me: the haven’t gotten around to it, the first time I’ve seen it, the ‘I’ll just buy it and leave it here, I can’t bring it on the plane’, and the time to brew another. can’t forget!

the mess, the ball cap, the beach towels and the bell jar, the plastic money and the flip flops and the damage to the dining table. The signs of life, the bug bites, the afternoon light and the evening flight; overflowing with caffeine, hot sauce, wherewithal. alive, impatient, clear, and anticipatory and undiagnosed and over-oxygenated and sun-kissed and lethargic, all the gratitude, threatening to burst from