Category Archives: Uncategorized

What Augurs, August?

Posted on August 2, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I always feel trapped by August, its thick cluster of vowels.  Clotted.  Lugubrious, made for a lazy tongue.  Made for  limbs given up to the sun.  If it were a kitchen sauce, it would need to be thinned.  If there … Continue reading →

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covid-19, summer-20

Posted on July 19, 2020 by jillbpearlman

—after Inger Christensen Covid exists.  Covid-19 exists, summer-20 exists.  High noon exists.  Heat exists.  Water in rivers, in seas, in showers, from fire hydrants exists.  Coves exist.  Hidden lanes of purple hydrangea exist.  Overturned bones of kayaks.  Smoothness of stones, … Continue reading →

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Of Oysters, the 4th and the Surreality of it all

Posted on July 5, 2020 by jillbpearlman

Prompt: Tie together the Fourth of July, garbage day and a sense of the possibility of renewal.   Make it spontaneous, so it doesn’t seem that the images preceded the prompt.  Don’t dwell too deeply on recent observations that  came … Continue reading →

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Flowers and Monsters

Posted on June 21, 2020 by jillbpearlman

“In recent months I have been intent on seizing happiness.”  So wrote C.D. Wright, my guiding star right now.  If you’re naturally happy, you don’t make declarations to be happy.  You throw out an idea, a wild proposition and follow … Continue reading →

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The Protests: Sprung from Moral Uncertainty

Posted on June 7, 2020 by jillbpearlman

What could be more dispiriting than a biological enemy, an invisible enemy, an enemy that has turned the morality schema upside down?   Yesterday’s bad guys — alienation and isolation  — are today’s heros of good health.  Those heros of … Continue reading →

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Vertigo, How Real You Are

Posted on May 17, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I saw the clarity of my eyesight turn to soft waves. You know the cliche about writers being sensitive flowers, taking into their bodies whatever is “in the air”?  How the external world becomes translated in various ways into their nervous systems? … Continue reading →

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Olfactory

Posted on April 24, 2020 by jillbpearlman

Olfactory  Flat and metallic, my tongue  like disinfected aluminum.  The scent conveyed from nose to throat,a sympathetic gag almost. Vapors wave before my eyes.Clorox, ghost of scents past,seemingly obsolete, you’ve come back. You were banned, like death,things we thought we’d conquered.The stink … Continue reading →

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On Missing People

Posted on April 17, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I miss people.  As a self-declared introvert, I’m surprised, pleasantly – I miss people badly.  The list of what I miss is endless.  I miss their clean smells, their dirty smells, their mop of hair, their prickly beards. The irony … Continue reading →

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A Sonnet for Seder during Lockdown

Posted on April 8, 2020 by jillbpearlman

Sonnet for Seder during Lockdown Nothing is new under the sun, not even confinement.  The sun is not new, narrow straits not new, the liberation story rolls like time in search of an ending.  With Passover we should be done but we keep … Continue reading →

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The Introvert’s Guide to the New Reality

Posted on April 5, 2020 by jillbpearlman

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Ludwig Wittgenstein Of course we introverts have feelings.  We know that real grief is sometimes too deep for words.  The Covid-19 plague blew in with a whiplash of emotional states, laced … Continue reading →

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