PHAYVANH LUEKHAMHAN

I had agreed to move to Montpelier for a 3-5 year span, before we moved on—hopefully to someplace bigger and more metropolitan. I’d been living here for three years, always with one foot out the door the moment we made it big, or won the lottery, or [insert fantasy here]… After that time, I could no longer deny that we were here to stay for longer than anticipated. I started looking around for ways to meet more people and volunteer opportunities. I’d like to say this wasn’t a resignation. Once I changed my mind about my present situation, and accepted that I needed to hunker down if I was to be happy, I felt a lot of frustration lift from me. As I walked around town, I tried to find out where I fit.

Initially, I wanted to “do something” with literacy. Bookstores and libraries were my favorite places. But I didn’t really care to teach. Or do something as mundane as shelve books at the local library. I wanted something meatier. Most places I found needed ushers, ticket sellers, envelope stuffers or board members.

I had also thought about volunteering with Montpelier Alive (aka MDCA), the downtown revitalization organization. I’d had some experience with the Brattleboro group, BaBB, and thought at least, it would be interesting to see how this one operated. Plus, I’m a downtown girl. I didn’t know much about the organization or what it did. My own inertia kept me from approaching them.

So I was fortunate enough last September to be working at the shop when Montpelier Alive’s Executive Director Suzanne Eikenberry walked in and introduced herself. She’d come to meet the new owners and invite their membership. I asked her about volunteer opportunities. She mentioned something about selling buttons, and perhaps doing some mailings. I probably crinkled my nose. I know I shook my head.

“How about office work? Something I could add to my resume, perhaps?” That’s when she suggested helping her with the weekly e-mail newsletter that I now write. Once I was trained on the process, I was able to work on it from home. It’s now how I spend my Mondays, cutting and pasting and rewriting press releases and calendar items, so it can arrive in inboxes on Tuesdays. I love it.

I’ve been writing the newsletter since last September, and through this one task, I’ve learned about organizers, presenters, artists and activists simply from the listings they send along. The list has grown by a third, with open and click-through rates higher than the industry standard. I’m pretty proud of what I do, and receive compliments here and there.

Actually, I won an award. (more…)

To all the single women out there

A true warrior is always armed with three things:
a refreshing beer (we like it),
1000 year old bones (to be problematic),
and the patchouli smell—there’s no such thing as perfection.

He has endorphins coursing through his system,
is a foot and a half long crack in a field of lavender…

Whether you like it or not, we are interested in talking
louder than the scent of wild roses,
riding bikes on up to Rock Ridge,
looking for amnesty.

If I must, I will spend my whole life fighting.
Because every year blooms
from a battered stump that looks as though
it must be dead. Humans are just that: humans.
Move when you touch them.

People who have been hanging out with my monkey
will find out my new favorite feeling in the world:
embracing the sacredness of someone on the radio laughing.

let me touch your skin…
to forget what it was…
I’m starting to lose

…now that I’m f-f-fifty.

* a found poem of recent updates of my Facebook friends. Thanks everyone.

Not Many Things Are This Grand

I dreamt I watched an elephant give birth to 7 babies,
eating a Cobb salad and working on a pantoum.
What makes some of us survive trauma while others
keep drowning? Poetry is nothing
but the half-life fade, a merciful end.
When you lift your 80 pound dog into the tub,
the owl of Minerva spreads its wings,
half-awake, half-asleep and drowning.

Everybody is three years old, is breaking boundaries.
You know you’ll never leave
my adrenaline-fueled screaming, extended middle finger.
You blamed me with the falling of the dusk—a very eloquent thank you
where the “shoulds” and the “wants” (or something worse)
have met the enemy in a swimming hole, drowning in it.

I yelled out my window what I wanted
was a new bunch of poets, a journal of prayer. A brief thing.
My questions were not about the “cloak of invisibility”.

I apologize. More fun to say, “I wrote to a shipwreck”.
The truth is often a river and seldom a rock,
a strange, twilight zone, one half
doesn’t like the other half.

While this is sad & tragic,
a 9-year old girl wishes she was Amish
and in the future will be more careful.
She can’t have Dr. Pepper with dinner,
even on a holiday.

Earlier than we’d anticipated, the two separate again.

* A found poem of recent Facebook status updates of my friends. Thanks everyone!