Outside it is silvery like a side of fish. Books are spread before me and coffee. Both are oxygen. I sip, trying to stay alive in this muck. My cat has had it (already), asleep at my feet. I’m trying to respond to my environment by writing this poem and then it’s off to work. I’ll have to save these Scarlatti keyboard sonatas, too, for later in the day.
poems
The Dealership
The salesmen are tall & talk on cellphones
They pace & trade jokes; one is holding forms
The showroom floor, meanwhile, looks slippery
It’s gleaming & white like a smile w/ flawless teeth Continue reading
Yogurt
I am taking forever and ever to eat my yogurt. The creamy substance is something to stir and stir with my teaspoon until homogenized and then remove gently with my mouth, using no teeth, only tongue and lips.
The pomegranate seeds are a bitter, crunchy counterpoint. Still, we must bear the unpalatable in order to be more present during the blissful — even if it is, in this case, bacteria that somehow rivals Reddi Wip
With the yogurt, the bottom of the cup is something to scrape and scrape — the spoon something to leave in my mouth as a I carry the cup to the kitchen and drop it into the trash, comforted by the thought of another and then another waiting in the fridge to be eaten.
There had been times
There had been times
There had been times
There had been times.
Wednesday Evening
The smell of the workweek is fried fish —
on the verge of burning
and flaccid green beans —
pushed to their limits.
The sound is of arguing & stomping —
the clinking of dishes
the television sparks —
a war in Tel Aviv
The setting off of lawn sprinklers
The smell of moisture on concrete
upstate lunch
What Doris was
was sandwiches & mustard
husband Joe drinking cold Michelob
Him with a bottle & belch at the table
beat up dungarees and missing teeth
Feral cats squatting his gutted & rusted bug
and his decrepit mitt in the shed
that smelled of cigarettes Continue reading
homeostasis
I’m thinking those pot vapes
might be an idea. What happens
when you rouse me with a strain?
Jubilance is not what i’m after
Just knock me out of my homeostasis
Not quite a kick to a cardboard
box down a spiral staircase
but giving me amazing flight.
food
the rump of a loaf with butter and an egg
then an entire book for lunch:
Sylvia Plath’s “Ariel” with steamed tofu
another way of looking at it is
i used chopsticks to eat an hour’s worth
of standing on my feet or half a trip to the hair salon
then i paid my tip in a cup of americano
blue tongue
Ms. Nancy’s perfume meant homework, a big jar of glue and loose leaf scored with a ruler on the folds. Threats of adhesive in the mouth to punish a blue tongue. Crimson checks and the blunders specified with crisscross marks.
Ms. Nancy’s perfume smelled like the front office and phones, notices to home and the executive nun’s pressed cotton tunic and veil. The carbon monoxide fumes during the trip to school. The churning of my stomach in her classroom.
