Alex Goldstein: A Memoir

Phase the First: I was born at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City on January 16, 1989. I weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces.

My Tear it Falls

Birth and scare,
Tare a bottle
Poor Céline.
Dazed,
Could
Any fill?
Muster,
Dig it tall sea-mints on daughter-puller diaper
Toast.
Pacts stay on
Pink,
Charred cool
Bath tight.

Phase the Second: I rolled over, I sat up, I smiled, I laughed. I learned to speak, I learned to walk.

Bill Mourn (after Sylvia Plath)

Thespians donut live: it’s ass at diagonal or sis.
They Krueger to sand finger swell in off,
Their lit tell, for heads bulged cons and nation.
If famous atom wall king a boat-like people
It was stint a knee lag of my thermal.

Why can knot ex-pain what had pinned to them!
The yard prop her in shape and numb her a free part.
That’s it so mice lean in the tickling flu, id!
They smile hands mile Ann defile acme.
Hands fill dull hung want for land the art won’t start.

They are moppings, they are no teething dish,
Though they half up icky hand half ashy year –
It wood be but her if they wore a hive, and hat swat they wore.
But they art head, and thermal ne’er dead with this traction,
And they stoop in the stairs a donut speed cough her.

Phase the Fourth: I went to a New York City public school, P.S. 199, and played on many playgrounds, ate chocolate-chip muffins on the fountain in Lincoln Center, read books, and rode the carousel in Central Park.

I remember plucking purple sequins off my fireflies around us, but wanting
desperately to braid the tail, I remember
loving to
look anything and everything
I could get my hands on who I only talked to
earlier than all my friends, I remember
loving a green playground
confusing by
the fence during recess in kindergarten getting
so homesick at day camp baby heart (me) and a big heart (her),
being stoned and accidentally feeling unnaturally guiltless about it.

I remember wishing
I remember searching
I remember crying

I remember deciding to being so
scared running across campus always being
scared of falling, and being amazed that I wasn’t
scared of falling off of it, I remember thinking that
I would buy cigarettes driving around aimlessly to The Shins dreading the
moment my favorite plastic Aladdin plate, I remember drinking
a vegetarian for a year
wearing a gauzy, rose-covered shirt
wear red lipstick every day, I remember giving my mom
a kiss on my cousin’s remote control into a
little suitcase dragging my baby sister.

I remember forgetting
remember wishing.

I remember when Ilana with Brianne on EJ’s
kitchen floor container with Jocelyn wanting to be a hippie.

I remember drinking, I remember driving with the windows
In my room at home, at camp

I remember coming home
not being able to tell if my mom was pretty or if my dad was
handsome being afraid
that everything cool, I remember peeking to go to
school even when unable to
fall asleep on a Sunday night crying, I remember being
unable to fall asleep crying while listening to
certain boys I liked without
acknowledging their presences.

I remember always being
bored with my hair but just barely sitting
in the bathroom in the middle of the night with Girl Scout cookies, I remember
lying out in my backyard the first day in March learning plastic water bottles were bad for my liver and drinking
not remembering if I really remembered things

Phase the Third: My younger sister, Caroline, was born at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City on March 30, 1992. She weighed 7 pounds, 4 ounces.

all in icy (after e.e. cummings)

All in icy went my petal dancing
on a slippery cake of sparkly
into the lonely blink.

real boiled whispered plastic and
the decadent dream before.

fake be they than iridescent tongue
the shallow simple dream
the simple decadent dream.

real simple party at a curly wrist
the tantric neckline before.

grain at sun went my petal dancing
dancing the feather down
into the lonely blink.

real boiled whispered plastic and
the kinky pearl before.

bold be they than silver simple finger
the boiled curly dream
the adjacent plastic n dream.

real adjacent scratch at a sparkly Alex
the arbitrary beauty before.

cave at Michael went my petal dancing
dancing the Danielle down
into the lonely blink.

real boiled whispered plastic and
the arbitrary spiral before.

testy be they than gold sticker
the sunny sneaky dream
the creepy pixilated dream.

real pretty Caroline at the icy Danielle
the pixilated band before.

All in icy went my petal dancing
on a slippery cake of sparkly
into the lonely blink.

real boiled whispered plastic and
my porcelain sob cave before.

Phase the Sixth: I started dancing in Westport, taking tap, ballet, jazz, and hip-hop classes, and lip-synched Britney Spears songs in my bedroom mirror.

This is why you should never kill a black snake. Move over Jackie and Audrey, there’s a new fashion force and she’s topping the best-dressed list of every fashion editor I know. Cartoons are basically the visual manifestation of all the twisted, derailed trains of thought of their creators. We are listening…to the edges of the universe…having travelled across time…. Founded in 1929, Town Food Service Equipment Company is the premier manufacturer and supplier to the Chinese Foodservice industry. The Rijksmuseum presents a major new acquisition: the painting ‘The square man’ by Karel Appel (1921-2006). The saying, “What’s in the past, should stay in the past” - doesn’t work here. “I was inspired by Lake’s classic waves,” says Mark Townsend, who styled Mad Men actress Jones for the 2009 Golden Globes. The oddest things get immortalized sometimes. Illusion design works that look like op art. Please note that this page could make you feel sick. AIAIAI produced a unique range of products inspired by the contemporary culture that surrounds them. Ever thought you might need to slip quietly off the radar? How many times have you said this to yourself? Photograph taken by the Hubble Telescope shows a nebula dubbed “The Eye of God.” Here are some extremely creative uses of billboards. I hold the starlight in my hand while I weep. In a modern world where traveling between destinations is viewed as a waste of time and resources, it is hard to actually comprehend the beauty of some of the most spectacular rides on the planet. This is Japan! The geckos of Hawaii have earned a great reputation rooted in the earliest history and the first migrations to the islands. Every day trucks pass us on the highway and we are completely unaware of what they may be carrying.

Phase the Seventh: When I was in fifth grade, I spent my first summer at Trails End Camp because my mom went there when she was a kid. I hated it for a while and then loved it.

My mom is seventeen, sitting at her kitchen table
giggling with my aunt and drying pink nail polish
on her splayed fingers.

My great-grandparents are glaring at them from across,
across the room and my great-grandma’s
viscous Yiddish accent drips down the walls accusatorily –
“Why you put all this paint on yourself?”

“It’s just for fun, Grandma Belt” my mom replies
hesitantly. She calls her Grandma Belt though her
real name is Berthe with an “r” that is too thick,
like peanut-butter on the roof of your mouth,
which is why her granddaughters call her “Belt.”

Grandma Belt snorts like a cow, yet her
anxious glances towards Grandpa Solomon
belie the way her voice rings
like a confident bell.

When Grandpa Solomon doesn’t respond,
because he is not listening to anything she is
saying, Grandma Belt smacks his arm
with her purse that she insists on holding all the time.

So Grandpa Solomon starts yelling at Grandma Belt
in Yiddish –
a voice that usually sounds like freshly cut diamonds
and dark chocolate when telling stories and jokes

but that turns into the
clatter of horse hooves
on cobblestone
when Grandpa Solomon yells at Grandma Belt.

Phase the Ninth: One day in middle school, I wore red rubber flip-flops with purple-striped toe socks, just to elicit reactions from my peers.

Pickle pickle, try to stay free it’s really hard. Mommy, how do you draw ice-cream? Can you help me draw ice-cream? Headphones are a disgusting concept, ear waxxxx. Zig zag hip-hop tip-top shape, shapes circles squares triangles, red blue yellow, primary. View fall 2008, view summer 2008. The record plays to the beat of my heart…like a metronome. Painting is so optical, so translucent and delicate and wet. Eyeballs wet, paint is wet. Waoww, Waoww. The kind of sound that you’ll never know. Weird how songs sneak into your thoughts. How can a song get stuck in your head? Sweetie, you need to eat at least half of your bagel. I should get paid to eavesdrop. Oh God, it’s almost HER birthday, THAT should be fun. Is this worth anything? Is anything worth anything? Let’s try descriptive phrases. Daydream dizzy daydream, purple clouds and silver. Petals fall, glisten cascade roll. So loose. Change this song nowwww please. How do you record thoughts? You can record what you hear, but what is a thought? Meta meta meta. I should do this without music on, but I can’t. They are a part of my thoughts…maaandarine. If it was summer time, I’d probably take you home and we would smoke and rhyme, but now you’re through. That wasn’t me, that was john gold. He’s great. Simple soul, tingle fold, mean it glean kick team lick. Blank – really? I wonder if Weeds has downloaded yet. You can’t do this, because it’s too meta. Dammmmmit. Paradise is not so far away – really john gold? I beg to differ.

Phase the Eighth: I went to London for the first time with my family when I was 11. My sister hadn’t gotten glasses yet, and we found out when we got home that Big Ben was just a blur to her. We returned to London a few years later, and she said, “Wow!”

What
We
See
Is
Not
Real
It
Is
Like
Kant’s
Theory
Or
Pluto’s
Cave
There
Is
A
Screen
Door
A
Pair
Of
Raybans
A
Silver
Smoky
Haze
A
Drunken
Stupor
Separating
You
From
You
From
You
Or
Maybe
It
Is
Just
In
The
Fact
That
You
Can
Touch
Someone
And
Not
Feel
A
Thing
Not
A
Tingle
Twitch
Tickle
And
So
You
Wonder
Where
The
World
Is
And
Who
You
Are
In
It
And
If
It
Is
Real.

Phase the Tenth: I had my bat mitzvah when I was thirteen, but I also had my first kiss at camp, which was really more important.

Hydras Part II

Messy raw primitive
Holes look inside
Two bases.

Lion vomiting a chain, GAG
Chains chains bondage pain
You’re trapped.

Lumpy touch, mold and squish
Top it off like a flower, feathers FLY free, but chains
Bite bite tactile.

Rings and chains, dress you like a doll
A porcelain doll.

Three bases! Granite and wood.

Bubbles shiny, mermaid maiden hidden
Treasure FOUND
Possession.

Bulge pregnant rings, holes and
Scales. Dark blood, earth,
Each thing is itself, but
She’s in chains.