Law & Order

We ripped the bong and my mouth was unbelievably dry— I needed water but there was only seltzer. My throat was flesh on fire. Passing the church, I saw Mary on the half shell. Her stone fingers sculpted into a strange sign. An ancient fuck you or a signal to steal third. I don’t get sports. The fog was thick. I think we smoked up the whole town. We had a fire in the back yard. Green flames devoured junk mail—an electricity bill and five million dollars from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. I was high, and my contact lenses bonded to my pupils. I think my eyes changed color recently. There was a tiny boot on the sidewalk, a doll’s shoe. Jesus Christ, Barbie’s been raped and kidnapped and murdered and they’ve left her boot behind! “We have evidence that Barbie may have been turning tricks.” “That doesn’t make it right.” I ring the doorbell and slide my badge out of my coat pocket. A dreamy dirty blonde answers the door. His jaw is strong and his ensemble is impeccable. “Excuse me sir,” I hold up the Ziploc bag containing the evidence. “We found this and we think it may belong to your girlfriend.” I rattle off a list of questions, standard procedure. He is our number-one suspect right now. “When was the last time you saw her? Could she have been using drugs? Weren’t you concerned when she went missing? What’s in that deep freezer?”

Actually, it may not have been a boot.
It could have been a leaf.
Television has poisoned my brain.
I’d never join the force.

A Dirt Road, WA

She dreams of climbing to the top of a silo. An ancient structure protruding from uneven dirt and field. One can be in a valley and not even know it, she says aloud. She gives no thought to the silo or its function. Later on she looks back and remembers. She wonders whether it had been empty or full at the time she ascended it and stood at the top. As I gripped the aging later, she thinks, was there a winter’s worth of corn inside? Was there hay for all the cows? Was there simply nothing? What is space when it is enclosed, enveloped by matter? What is space when around it there is a shell? That is emptiness. Once at the domed top of the silo, she looks across the land and feels the way one feels when in a place that shows no signs of being what it is. She knows she is in a valley but cannot see it. The neighbors only pick up static. A woman in a trailer ages considerably in only a year’s time. The father of two small children across the road brings her Epsom salt. The two will die in the same week. All this she sees as she looks across the farm. The river. The falls. A vast expanse of memory. A fabrication of thought that defies the laws of space and geography. It is day but the harvest moon sits heavy in the sky. Suspended conveniently in the background of the scene. The world collapses neatly and folds itself into a tiny square. She places the folded piece of space into the silo, fills it to bursting with one flat scrap. She shoves the silo into the ground with her thumb. The earth does not resist. She fills the hole with the father’s books and clothes and then covers it with some dirt and leaves. She wakes.

To Mrs. Laurenzie, Whose Red Lipstick Was the Brightest Thing I Saw On the First Day of School in 1998 When I Moved to Haddon Heights, New Jersey

I write out “remembrance” and it looks
like Rembrandt.
I recall in the fourth grade
looking at
a book of
his paintings.
At one in particular,
my art teacher exclaimed “how beautiful!”
Rembrandt had painted light caught
in the slick muddy side of clay on a wheel.
To me at the time
it just looked like a white band
of nothing that had found
its way to a potter’s hands.

I am on Friday, but the world is on Saturday. Let us not argue over it.

This evening we danced. I mean "we" as a collective "we," rather than a shortened "you and I." I realize that this is solemnity, though not loneliness. This is detachment, though not isolation. The seasons are changing and the days grow colder and eat up the warm ones, and soon the summer is outnumbered by infinite dehydrated brown leaves. When the color leaves- no, exits- our faces, we are whiter, sometimes sallow. I mean "we" as a collective "we." Not a "you and I." Do not take this as fact, but consider it as truth.

Latin American Politics: 11:40-12:30, MWF

In some dreams I am a lioness and alone I trek through the jungle among rustling waves of green. As I explore the dark steaming depths, I stumble on a clearing. There are things I recognize but that should not be there, and I know the names for them though I am a beast of the wild. There is a table, an old typewriter, a box of necklaces, a pile of clothing, a string of colored flags with strange writing on them. I know what all of these objects are, and I am suspicious it is part of another consciousness hidden somewhere in my cerebral cortex. Cerebral cortex? I must have heard that on television. Television? How do I know about television? I paw at the typewriter, a clumsy attempt to record this scene, these thoughts. But my paws are too big for the keys and the letters are curved symbols I cannot read. The paper is damp with wet air, the ink won’t stick.

The air cools, the green fades, the leaves blur together and fuse into flat darkness. The clearing clears and the musty smell of wet earth becomes the stale smell of unwashed laundry. I awake on all fours scratching at my typewriter.

Refrigerator Magnet Poem

he is so silly
following spring
glad that his
once magic light
yellowed for good

The sun comes before I wake and leaves too soon before I sleep and though I implore it to stay (I say, "please stay, please stay, don't leave me") it goes without a word, without a wink. Not a nod. Nothing.

Then the air cools with the approaching evening, I breathe it.

There was a time when I favored the moon but that has long since passed. It went out with my singing. Night singing beneath stars. Singing out the blues and grays, cast in the jaundice of streetlamps.

Morning came &
hit her over
the head —
hard.
The afternoon
devoured her headaches
with hours to spare.

Please enjoy this throwback from just over a year ago.

I woke up at six fifty.
Scraps of morning light
draped themselves across
the floor and ceiling,
the walls
and a pile of dirty clothes.

My eyes burned and were dry.
What the hell is this place?
The apartment was almost empty—
Finally.
It looked so much bigger
without all that useless stuff.
I was only there for the night.
I dreaded showering,
and shaving my legs
and washing my hair
and hating my stomach

We got to the funeral home,
an old Victorian house—
the inside a blur
of aging flowered wall paper
stiff carpet
and pastel accents
the color of easy listening music
on very low volume.

The door to the room
folded like a brown,
creaky accordion.
I saw the giant spray of flowers
somehow resting above the open casket.
I picked those out, my mother said, smiling.
They remind me of Hawaiian shirts, I said.
They really did, and I liked them.

Somewhere, PA

Between two pieces of glass collects a condensation that cannot be rubbed away and so she pauses to watch it dissipate beneath the sun. “There is no resolution” she reminds herself— a wait with no foreseeable end. A weight so profoundly heavy in her chest. This is grief and it penetrates her dreams, permeates the waking day as well as the retreat of sleep. She believes that with time the skewed silhouettes of the world will appear clearer, will hold pronounced against the recurring picturesque sky of summer mornings. She looked upward the night prior and saw stars, and underneath them she slept. She thanked the universe for reminding her that she is small.

They sat on a bench kissing. He bit her lip.
"Want to go back to my place?"
He bit too hard to be sexy. 8 hours at work had brought them to the bar & 2 hours at the bar had lead them to the park. Now from the park they would go to his apartment. Really, it was his friend's apartment. He had been staying there for two months. She was curious if he paid rent. She did not ask. He slept on a fold out couch with no sheets. There was a book of CDs under the pillow, a discovery she made while he went to the bathroom. They kissed all night & into the morning & it was awful. She slipped out at 8:30 a.m. & rode her bike to a bookstore & then through that same park, then to her house. Her hair was windblown when she got through the front door & she realized she had left her hairclip next to the makeshift bed. At work three days after she asked him for it. Weeks later he still had not returned it. It was a black ellipse with pink & blue flowers on it. She imagined how it would be when they made the subtle exchange at work. She imagined it must feel strange for a man, to have a ladies' hairclip in his pocket.

Day One

Today was long but went
like hotcakes. The weather was
not so extreme, after all.
But oh, the sun did shine brilliantly.
I got lost for awhile, beneath
pages and pages.

Plots

Grief distorts her vision
she sees everything in
the backward light
of the past. She stands at
the edge of her father’s
grave and wonders
what makes these plots
so beautiful? To one side,
a yellow field
leans, willed by the wind.
A forest wraps around
the left perimeter, a right angle.
The road to the place
is small, and winds around
the curvature of the landscape.
Two brick pillars announce
the location of the entrance.
Perhaps it is because she often visits
in spring, but she swears
she always feels the sun out there.

Orange Lady

Today I sat on my stoop and had a smoke. I had an anthology of American Literature in my lap and was reading Daisy Miller. A few bugs bit me. My room is on the first floor, the window to the right of our porch if you're looking at the house. I heard a crash come from my room but thought nothing of it. Later on, I came inside and saw that my wall hangings had fallen down, cause unknown.

There is no way to know, but it probably went something like this:
The cheaply framed photo of John Lennon in front of the Statue of Liberty fell off the wall. As it came crashing down it took out an orange statuette of a woman's face (I think she may be Indian) that was hanging directly below it.

I found a whole mess in a confused pile on my desk upon entering the room. I've hung everything back up now, but I'm a little concerned as to how long they will hold.

Otherwise, today was somewhat uneventful. This entry is meant to serve as an introduction to myself and my writing. I hope to use this blog to make my work accessible to anyone interested.