10/29

Today I was struck by a number of sights that perhaps would not normally arrest my attention. However, I feel as though with each passing week I have become increasingly inspired by simplicity, exceedingly distracted by that which is considered common. With a change in seasons as the backdrop to the mornings and afternoons, I imagine most anything can be beautiful. Yesterday it rained, it rained hard. I pedaled to school, musing about rain-related idioms. My hands were freezing, my legs soaked. It took some moments to for the blood to restore feeling throughout my body once I finally entered a warm and dry room. Today I pedaled back from school and it was then I saw a mangled upside-down and inside-out umbrella, the handle sticking straight up from the street as if it had taken metal root in the hard black pavement. I remembered yesterday; I thought of today. My hands froze again, dry this time. Winter is upon us, and soon the sky will not expel cats and dogs but rather blanket the streets in snow. The wind will howl and the cold will be bitter as a woman scorned. I hope to have gloves by next week, perhaps a heavier winter coat the week after. I will try to dress for the weather.

Miss Hazel

Miss Hazel sleeps
with two eyes open:
one out the window
one on the cats.
She's lived on N. Gratz St.
her whole life,
attends church
every Sunday.
Wednesday, too.
"S'long as y'all be good
an' behave yoselves,
we be fine," she tells me from
the second floor.

Our street seldom sleeps,
Miss Hazel knows best.
Cats claw into the night,
ignitions won't turn
over as darkness
submits to the day.

We don't need cans and strings
or telephones.
Just a voice and an open window
to poke out the head,
check the scene,
shout a hello or profanity.
A "how you feelin'?" or
"Shut yo' mouth."

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.