strange.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a poem titled "Interim," featured in The Complete Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay

(½) “When I was a baby my stepmother put me on a donkey and sent me to live with my 15-year-old sister. You know what was my toys? Bones and rocks and dust! Each day I got a bowl of water and loaf of bread. As soon as I was old enough I enlisted in the Iranian Navy. I signed up for life. And it was fun for awhile, but after a few years I decided to jump. I wasn’t going to waste my life on a ship. I waited until the perfect moment. We went to India, Pakistan, Spain, Portugal, but I didn’t jump. Then one night we pulled into Norfolk, Virginia. America is rich country. Very beautiful. So I decided to jump. The guards would shoot me if they caught me, but I was ready to die. At 3 AM I jumped into the ocean and swam the half mile to shore. I come out of the water covered in mud. I went to the train station and hopped the next train out of town. It was slow train to town of Miami. Stopped at every American village. When I arrive in the town of Miami the sun was shining, and everyone was driving convertible cars, and football game called Orange Bowl was going on. I walked to the gate of the stadium and said: ‘Please, I’m a Navy Man. Can I go in?’ The man says: ‘Sure. Take any seat you want.’ Oh my God. America, beautiful. Orange Bowl was a strange thing. Big guys hit each other, running ball. I had no idea what was happening. After the game I went to sleep under a bridge. Alligator watching me. Mosquitos eating me all night. In the morning I go to donut shop and wash windows for donuts. For six months I work like this. Clean windows, eat. Clean windows, eat. Then one man offered me a job in coffee factory. Big, heavy bags. No ventilation. Lots of dust. But I was happy. Much better than Iranian hell boat. America, beautiful. But one day big fat belly man come up to me with badge from FBI. He asked me for ID. But I have no ID to show him, so I thought: ‘They’re sending me back to the boat. I’m going to get killed.’ But when we got to the jail they made me pay a $20 fine. They told me: ‘Monday you must come back to court.’ I tell them: ‘Definitely, definitely. I will see you on Monday.’ Then I went straight to the bus station, and got on a bus to town called New York.”

Antichrist (2009)

— 5:00 p.m. (Please don’t ever think of me as a mistake)

“He was different. He was so sensitive to the pain of the world. There used to be these placemats at Wendy’s with the faces of needy children. And Michael would just fixate on them. He was only four years old, but he’d ask me why we couldn’t adopt those children. One time we visited an orphanage in India. It was just a quick stop. But he wouldn’t let it go. For weeks he kept asking me: ‘What can we do? What can we do?’ It was shortly after that trip that he was diagnosed. He’d do the most grandiose things during his manic phases. He’d invite complete strangers over to Thanksgiving. He got fired from his first job at a thrift store, because he was giving things away. I was so mad at him. I said: ‘Mike, there’s a system.’ But he told me: ‘Mom, the system is broken.’ When he learned about food injustice, it was all he talked about. He lectured everyone about food deserts. And food apartheid. He was too insistent, really. He tried to get all our neighbors to compost. He thought he could do anything, if he only pushed hard enough. It was always the mania that scared me the most. But it was the depression that got him in the end. Our friend Sally posted a poem on his memorial page. There’s a line that captures him so well: ‘He loved the world hard/ demanded we follow him hard/ in and out of comfort zones/ in and out of danger zones.’ Last September was the 7th anniversary of his death, and that night we saw an Instagram post about a community fridge in Harlem. I thought for sure it was a sign. We bought a fridge that night. The Friendly Fridge BX now serves thousands of people every month. I never realized how much hunger there was in our community. Michael would tell me. He’d go on and on with the statistics. But it was like: ‘Mike, please. I’m cooking lasagna.’ But now I see it. Now I understand. Sometimes we’ll move 3000 lbs in a week, and there’s still people waiting. One of the visitors reminds me so much of Michael. I’m not diagnosing. But he has all these ideas, and all these plans. He only wants the healthiest food. Nothing processed. Nothing canned. And he’ll always ask for extra, just a little box, so he can give it to homeless people under the bridge.”

anglerfish