A sparkling operatic voice emanating from the 7-Eleven — strong soprano notes.
A woman passing, stunned, looked around her as if someone called her name, or like something she lost long ago was suddenly within walking distance.
Category Archives: prose
A Study of Orange
She had a bright yellow pen and a fat hardcover book with a lime green dust jacket.
Her yoga pants were red like pomegranate, and her spa socks were slate. Her black and white cat played with a ribbon that was thick as Asian flat noodle. Her coffee was black and sat just so. It filled an espresso cup the color of steak bone.
Soon she would be eating a banana that matched her pen, but she was unsure she liked the color. The pens also came in a very citrusy orange that made her heart skip. Continue reading
Weekend
The workweek has passed like a stone in the night. Happy reading & writing, everybody.
Describe espresso
Dark liquid, as if derived from near Earth’s core. Bitter, hard-hitting high notes, lingering long after, like an aroma carried by smoke.
Bird Man
The Bird Man is on the move. He’s wearing a sweat jacket and a ball cap because it’s cold. It’s 38 degrees this morning, and typically, such as during summer, the Bird Man will wear only an old white T-shirt that you and I might demote to rag status, as well as jeans that no longer can stay put around his pot belly.
Today the Bird Man looks more dressed up than usual due to his navy blue jacket. It seems to be in fine condition and looks warm.
The Bird Man is removing the rocks from the small plastic Tupperware lining his cement wall like battlements. He is emptying the backwash and refilling the vessels with a cheap plastic pitcher of water. Continue reading
White lies
Sugar-coated almonds at a wedding. You bury the bride in her white dress. While they are nice to look at, you cannot bite on pearls. For instance, I do not need to see an ivory piano on which Mozart played. Or if the piano were situated in a jewelry box, raised up as if on a dais, the otherwise dreamy notes would sound contorted, as if reflected in a funhouse mirror.
Numbness and flying
I’ve always thought it would be nice to be placed under anesthesia before a plane ride. That way, you don’t have to fret over the prospect of crashing or face the slow-moving hours of flight.
Before you know it, you’re in Thailand.
Flying is like having surgery, anyway. After liftoff, the matter is out of your hands. You must rely on a tiny crew, with a single soul at the helm, and you must pray that they know what they’re doing.
You feel woozy at first (when gaining altitude), but then you just go numb, due in part to boredom — and maybe also desensitization. Meanwhile, the wings cut through the air like blades.
Hours later, you descend from the clouds and back to cold reality. Most likely you are feeling groggy and hungry. Or perhaps nauseous. As soon as you land, you call friends and loved ones to announce that you’ve made it through.
Some notes
Schubert’s notes softly coexist. Variations like an energy field. Potentiality, then sonata eighth notes. Piano — universal life field. Bionetwork notes. I am a C major w/ tendencies of D minor. Do C major and D minor exist beyond the piano or any other instrument. If a note rang out in the forest and no one was there to listen.
Hanging to dry
My favorite blue towels hang to dry, and I see they are next to threadbare. Over the rack, they seem to have personality (or at least life.) The upshot is there’s still some drying left in them.
After a shower, I get dressed and go to work. I walk across the long street to my office, tired. Back at home, the towels dangle over the rack.
I had mused earlier that the scattered, solitary threads clung to the fabric like jungle animals avoiding a fatal tumble. The threads reminded me of monkey tails. There was also the more disquieting notion of worms on a membrane.
