Poems from Field Guide to the End of the World: “Martha Stewart’s Guide to the End Times” Plus Some November Cheer
- At November 05, 2016
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
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Yes, it does feel a bit like the apocalypse out there these days. My last post was a little heavy. So, to add a little levity to your political/life/strife and time-change/SAD-ness, here’s a poem from my new book, Field Guide to the End of the World.
Martha Stewart’s Guide to the End Times
Of course you know I love those little drones, so I’ve stockpiled them. Those and lemons. I’ve learned the hard way that life without lemons is barely worth living.
Animal husbandry 101: Fill your own organic pantry. Which breed of chicken will give you the best eggs under stress? Pg. 13.
Leave the fondant til later. You can always do a ganache topping for your cupcakes in a pinch. So simple!
Evacuation map for New York City, Boston, the Hamptons, with scratch-and-sniff icons: page 24.
Survival skills are just like hostess skills: a little preparation, a little spying (with the drones,) a little determined defense-driven hedging of the grounds. Razor wire goes beautifully with your holly thicket.
Guide to storing munitions in attractive wicker boxes: page 52.
If your water isn’t as clear as it should be, use up those charcoal filters first, but after, try a solid iodine tablet in your home-dug well. In these times, it’s a good thing.
Culinary tips for after the mega-store raid: mixed nuts have a long shelf life. Throw in a little rosemary and toast them over an open flame for anytime elegance. More ideas for those family-sized tubs of popcorn: page 68.
Now’s the time to get out your hurricane lamps! They create a lovely glow in these last days.
Here are some more cheerful thoughts – we had two straight days of November sunlight, so we went out, did some gardening (very Martha Stewart-ish,) baked cranberry-apple muffins, checked out the Bellevue Botanical Gardens where I captured some still-blooming white fushcias and Glenn snapped a pic of me with the leaves still turning. Plus, our cats Shakespeare and Sylvia decide the weekend is for sleeping in on – not reading – magazines! It’s a struggle not to smile when ragdolls decide it’s time for you to pay attention to them!
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- White fuschias at Bellevue Botanical Gardens, November
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- Glenn and I sharing some rare November sunshine at Bellevue Botanical Garden
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- Ragdolls on magazines! Mom, you didn’t want to read these, did you?
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- Me in Bellevue Botanical Garden
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
