ALICIA MOUNTAIN

Maple trees are such fine trees. They’re the trees of my growing up. And Oak trees. Now I live near beautiful London Plane trees with thick smooth gray trunks like a giant mammal’s leg — something the cousin of an elephant or a rhino. This is what I prefer.

Paperback nonfiction, sometimes my GQ magazine, poem drafts from students, subway advertisements, search results on my phone about how to be better.

Unexpected butterflies, to be sure. Lightning bugs, if they were butterflies.

Pornography? What movie do you watch in secret?

Oh the impossible questions. These days, most all literary works are under-rated. Perhaps banning a book is a way to under-rate it, but isn’t it also a sinister tip of the cap? An acknowledgement that the work could do truth-telling.

I like it when the sun is still in the sky after six p.m. The longer before setting, the better. Dusk makes me blue. The colors of a good sunset do a lot for me. In Montana, aching hours of forest-fire sunset colored electric cantaloupe, strawberry concentrate, every undiscovered orchid, the throat and wing of a hummingbird.

Whales.

 

When I start out reading fiction, I worry about whether or not I will like the narrative— which I think means whether or not I will feel invested and moved by it, but also hoping it will feel real to me. When reading history, I don’t have this worry because I know the narrative to have actually happened. This may be a flaw in my character or in my brain.

The sound of someone breathing with their open mouth on a cold winter window to fog it up.

Would these be bird wings or mammal wings? Would we still have arms? I don’t want feathers and I want to be able to hug. If the wings brought with them the knowledge and skill required to fly without fear, then perhaps a bat wing. I like the fly-squirrel design, though that might not count as wings.

Road trip playlists, WQXR classical at 105.9 fm in New York, whatever house-y remixes accompany my little fitness videos, the soothing meditation-y tracks that loop on my calming app.

Audre Lorde and Pat Parker; they were friends and they were missing one another at the end of their lives.

Very short basketball shorts on male athletes.

I don’t quite have an answer, but I do love Quaker meeting houses.

The size in which housing, food, childcare, healthcare, safe outdoor spaces, freedom of movement and expression, can be provided for all the people.

Trick question— essentialism ain’t the thang. 

I’d like to have written Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

A letting go, I think a relief, I hope. I like the idea of being  a part of the plant world, soil world someday.

Sled dog-in-training; slap some wheels on the sleds and we’re off!

 

Golf courses. Ew. And also bad.

An oracular vibe. Go Tygers!

I’d like to hear about respondent’s ideal pies. I’m thinking fruit pies, but cream pies, tarts, quiche, savory pies, and pizza pies are among the enticing subjects we might cover.

Alicia Mountain tries very hard to understand feelings and sensation and to live without shame. Alicia Mountain is one of three sisters. Alicia Mountain wants bright eyes / like wet stones for you, and deceit only that / the stones are slick small frogs in disguise / for you, admitting truth in that they rustle and / breathe. Alicia Mountain wrote the book Four in Hand (BOA Editions) and she also wrote the book High Ground Coward (Iowa). Alicia Mountain lives and teaches in New York while missing the mountains.