The Spirit of the Season

by: Genevieve Palmieri

Day 4 of Across the Margin’s 12 days of holiday stories brings us into a piano bar for a little bit of melancholy…..

I should be home by now but I’m stuck- too much snow and a broken heart. It’s a little too Chandler when I think it, but I relish the romance of the sentiment. The truth is the restaurant is right downstairs and I don’t really feel like being alone.

There’s an old white baby grand in the middle of the room with an old timer just bent crooked as a tree branch over the ivories. Both he and the piano look like they came with the building; they’ve been here long before the reclaimed wood and New American menu. He’s just trying to sneak under the radar, praying no one notices–singing for his supper with old time songs in a bar that has long out hipped him– gentrified around the relic. He gives me Dixie-Land, the Blues, American Songbook and love by candlelight. I watch his fingers settle from a frenetic up-tempo rhythm into a hypnotic lull. I know the tune but I can’t seem to pin it— a melancholy mix of “We Need a Little Christmas…” and “As Time Goes By”.

Posted on December 15, 2012 by acro0390 in Life Leave a comment

Across the Seasons — Winter

Photograph by: Christopher Prosser and Shaun Schroth / Words by: Genevieve Palmieri

Across the Margin, in coordination with Washington D.C. photographers Christopher Prosser and Shaun Schroth, continues its interpretations of the seasons through both snapshots and words……

There’s a silver halite wash over the city-
I’m sure I’ve seen this movie before.

Light present for only a moment-
Hazy.
Distant.
The memory of an old lover’s touch.
Frosty hands reaching in
To steal the warmth from inside.
Each gasp a steady escape of the spirit-
Eviscerating.
Captured in dead air.

The street swells and sweats; surrendering its own
sweet hot breath to the naked sky.

A sacrifice to the heavens denied;

The gift disappears unaccepted.

Unforgiving.

Unfeeling.

I need something to warm me.

Posted on October 9, 2012 by acro0390 in Uncategorized Leave a comment

An Accidental Poetess

by: Genevieve Palmieri

For a long time, I was afraid of poetry.

It seemed to be saddled with a stigma of antiquity and structure. A brow so high, I dare not reach for it but with a scholarly hand. A form so stylized, it felt nearly impossible to me to keep the raw honesty of the thought. The stanzas. The punctuation. It all felt so on purpose – like dark-rimmed lens-less spectacles and jeans that are both skinny and saggy at the same time (Neither look is something that I can or have attempted to pull off.). I resisted its format. I felt lacking in the complete surrender that is required to truly pull it off. I classified any short bursts with a sprinkle of rhyme and cadence as “jump-offs” or pieces of writing that would somehow give birth to a bigger story, character or opus. It never did; they all felt incomplete. I was flipping through some pages: old notes, folded-up tracing paper writings and I started to dissect. The discovery: A poet—born through fire; however short her life may be…

Posted on August 8, 2012 by acro0390 in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Things Worth Mentioning

by: Genevieve Palmieri

Remembering Nora Ephron…

I knew Nora Ephron briefly. That is to say, I worked for her for a short time. During those brief days she afforded me the opportunity to share the experience of knowing her. Cooking classes, lunches I still salivate over, my first (so far only) trip to Paris, and a once in a lifetime on-screen appearance opposite a Hollywood legend (Thanks, Nora). When I heard of her illness and sudden passing I instantly flashed back to what have become major pins in my journey to date. I had just begun working on her final film, Julie & Julia, as a production assistant and I was going through a bit of a spell / quarter life crisis, maybe? I felt miserable and jaded and I could not seem to shake it. I started to document my day-to-day thoughts in the hopes that something would occur to me during transcription; somehow I would become self-realized. While trying to weave some sort of clever, anecdotal memorial last night, I came across an essay I wrote shortly after meeting Nora…

The perks of my line of work are limited. And by limited I mean there aren’t really any. None; In fact. I work stockbroker hours for happy meal wages. I eat too much, sleep too little, drink too much coffee, don’t exercise enough, occasionally smoke and constantly stew, all of it ruminating into a festering ball of woe-is-me type frustration. The kind that can paralyze if left unchecked with the healthy “snap out of it” slap that comes along with self-scrutiny. There are things though…things worth mentioning- things that if you didn’t say out loud you would have trouble believing yourself. These are the things worth mentioning as they have happened to me.

Posted on June 28, 2012 by acro0390 in Remember 2 Comments

Portrait of a Lonely Man

by: Genevieve Palmieri

He sits at the bar, a third full globe of pinot noir in front of him. It is only 12:30 pm. Everything about him suggests a cosmopolitan mystery. He dons a bowler hat, jacket, and tie. His French accent exposes him as a stranger; and plays the part of his wingman. He speaks loudly about his finances and deals to an unknown French cohort on the phone – spinning words lyrically into a new language…Frenglish, maybe. Immediately I give him a haberdasher’s appraisal. The shoes are expensive and Italian. The blazer, a subdued plaid, the lonesome half of what is undoubtedly a statement suit. His tie hangs loosely askew at his neck, revealing a small tuft of hair that waves the flag of machismo high above his bar stool.

He looks around, gesturing wildly and excitedly. He is alone. He is looking for an audience, an ear, a love—something. I take care to stay out of his eye-line while observing his every move. I am entranced. It feels as though I have stepped into a Goddard film and not into my local brunch haunt. I have never seen him before and I am certain I never will again. A young Persian woman catches his eye and he makes sure that this opportunity is not wasted.

“Bonjour, mon ami—come, please join me?”

Posted on April 5, 2012 by acro0390 in Life Leave a comment

Seduction via Syntax

by: Genevieve Palmieri

I have oft found myself among the ranks of the mad pencil scrawlers. Words strewn every which way, reading like blue prints— city planning for the blank page. Madness takes hold, a fury of ideas- fragments, pictures, and phrases. Book upon book filled—bindings broken from folding back the cover one too many times. A rubber band holding in bar napkins, place mats, receipts, spiral notebook paper, all covered and folded to fit in between the ear marked and already weighted pages within. It’s been the books and me for as long as I can remember—-until now.

Posted on February 24, 2012 by acro0390 in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Genevieve Palmieri