April 3: The Spiders of Iron Roads and the Garbage I Walk On

Everyone cheered. Really, that’s how it happened. I don’t quite remember what anecdote I was reciting or creating for the first time, but it undoubtedly ended with a moment of solemn repose followed by a jarring torrent of praise for my work. I, of course, sidestepped it and humbly credited the whole verbal excursion to the One Poet Storyteller I am still not convinced is still alive somewhere out there, but I tried my best to not let it overfill me. I’ve been overfilled before. It’s a sadsadsad state to achieve. You think you’re going to finally earn fulfillment—full fill(ment)—and the token you end up with in the quavering, still desiring palm of your hand simply says You’ve done it. Put this on. You’ve done it. It’s over. But like Bauby’s Diving Bell, you can’t physically strap on the emboldened crown you want everyone to see. You’re immobile but it’s the line you painted long ago, before you set out on the iron road that spilled over the horizon, destined to be Murakami’s Strongest Fifteen Year Old Ever and the small heat between all of Hers’ legs. So try not to smile too hard when you think of the pop-up trophies formed like stalagmites along the road in the Cave of the Sky, because there are plenty of intricate webs strung between each and a lot of garbage tearing them apart, finally crunching underneath the slippery soles of today’s new shoes. And look! You can see my new shoes.  

April 2: Days Are When

I’ll keep this short: The most pathetic

time I’ve had

was when I entombed hours in pity. There’s an idea: time I’ve had.

I’ve had so much time so far, yet all I’ve really hunted

and gathered is now. I’ll keep this short:

Now Is a Filter at the end of the Tunnel of the Future’s stream,

filtering out little particles that stay with us and wear down

before being eroded and passing

through to the Pool of the Past. So don’t really try

and ever think you can live in the fictional Stream of Now—it’s not real.

Imagine how hard is must be for a filter to pretend to be a fish!

April 1: He Could Still Be Right in Romanticizing Smoldering Paper

I’ve been thinking a lot about the trite adages that I call pollution to the way we, as you and me and anyone else who these words are cared for by, frame the world. Like neat little pictures laminated and clipped and bound to become Our Book of Thought of sorts, I resign to sigh and admit that we have really rounded up the cattle of meaning, meaning the lenses I’ve become accustomed to and grown too large for—even this! I haven’t grown, just changed, again like a lens, and now I see things a little differently, but I’m really much the same and I haven’t outgrown my old corrections—are found fresh daily for others. I drift into dichotomies, somehow believing without a foundation for belief that in this world we either have glasses or we don’t, but the truth of this limited analogy could be somewhere here: you don’t know of my old revelations drying with the rest of my neglected laundry, and I will really never be able to distinguish between your old, shed perspectives and the delicate under garments you routinely pin up beside them. One of them that will draw me to linger a little longer than I should, though, and I sort of wonder if that’s something I will ever outgrow, or if that’s just a pane, too.

This Is Bear Country

            My friend Caroline is a dentist. She owns all the tools and rents from some people down the street who own this little spot on the side of a bank. She's been a dentist since before I met her, so she was a dentist before she was a friend.

            Her little shop opened up about seven years ago, about the time my niece and her dog died. See, they were both the same age, and it isn't ever okay to let a small child the same age as a dog be in charge of one. My brother and his wife learned that the hard way, but you live and you learn and you move on and make use of what you know.

            So Caroline meets all kind of people. Dentists, believe it or not, live a very social life. After they get done poking at teeth all day they sometimes go to a bar or so to mingle, even when they have a family back at home. This isn't a necessarily dirty mingling, but they mingle and they do it well — just like a cowboy smoking one of those cigarettes. Sometimes dentists even have a dentist-only mingling at one of their houses, which is usually when someone wants to show off something new without seeming conceited.

            At one of these little minglings, the one where Sharon Rawsburg invited everyone over for some croquet and fried pork chops, Caroline broke her ankle. Caroline knows the surname of every molar and the layers of skin involved with gum care, but she is as dumb as a dead bat when it comes to fibulas or whatever ankles are made of.

            Here she was, trying to walk it off. Paige, her friend that helped her start her practice and whose husband drinks until he's supersaturated, ran to her side and tried to calm her. Caroline, however, would have none of it and just laughed and laughed. See, Caroline has always had a pride that swelled up when it shouldn't. She's even her own dentist.

            Paige, in her blue and purple knit sweater, tried putting her arm under Caroline's arm in an attempt to help. But Caroline snapped at her as if she were a mosquito trying to suck her marrow:

            “Get offa me, Paige. I don't need your damned arms around me. Not now.”

            Not now? people would whisper to one another. You think they got some lesbianing going on?

            Turns out they did. But, see, Caroline was unabashed by the turn of events and of her ankle and pretended to make pretty the situation. She laughed, her face red with signals from her brain, and continued on with the night, unafraid of the truth that lay beneath her socks. She busted her ankle quite badly and walked it into a stump that night and now stuffs one of her shoes with the sock she should be wearing.

            Sometimes the dentists go golfing. They don't invite Caroline because she — like a bear on a tree — marks the ground so much that the dentists are unwilling to jeopardize their memberships over one person's pride.

            Since Caroline's been kicked out of golf club, she's been hanging around my living room a lot more lately. See, it's prime golf season — I guess the grass is the right height and the ground isn't too lumpy — so most of her socializing should take place beyond the gates of the Palmetto Country Club. Instead it's executed by her at my house.

            One afternoon I came home and, lo and behold, Caroline was surveying the perennials on my front porch that I invest so much time in pruning to perfection. Not only was she looking at them, she was rearranging them based upon her opinion of superior colors.

            “Caroline!” I said at her, “What're you touching my flowers for?”

            “Hell, I'm not touching your flowers. I'm just moving them.”

            This puzzled me.

            “Still. They're not your flowers so don't touch them. Anybody ever teach you to not touch a man's flowers? What do you want, anyway?” I was unlocking the door at this point.

            “Oh, nothing,” she said.

            “Sounds about right,” and the door opened. Being the gentleman I am, I said “Would you like to come in?”

            “Oh God yes. This weather's been hell on my hair. Can you believe the humidity lately?”

            There really wasn't much humidity. Caroline's hair has always been boisterous and full, like what I imagine a sheep in a flood to look like.
            "Do you mind if I leave my shoes on?" she said.
            "That's fine," I said, setting my jacket down on the back of one of the stools at the counter. "Would you like something to drink?” I set my keys and bloated wallet — full of receipts, mind you — next to the sink, where they always are. She hovered around the kitchen, poking at my mail.

            “Well, are you having anything? I'll have what you're having.”

            I handed her a glass of water and started the stove. Tonight was lasagna night and frozen lasagna doesn't cook itself.

            “Can I tell you something?” she said, wanting to tell me something.

            “Sure. Tell me something.”

            “Do you remember Jodi? Jodi, the girl you dated who had asthma?”

            “Yeah. I remember her.”

            “Well, Jodi was Scottish. You remember that?” I nodded. Why the hell would I remember she was Scottish?

            “So, you see, Jodi and I used to go to the bar a lot. This was before Pat's was around. God, must've been only four years ago? Well, anyway, we used to go to the bar a lot. We'd get trashed, plastered beyond what you'd believe. You wouldn't believe it.”

            I set the timer and put the meal in the oven.

            “So, you see, we'd go out night after night. Jodi could hold her liquor but I would have a hard time keeping up. This was why I had to sell my son's turtle after he moved out. It's not like I got a lot of money for it — it was a turtle! You can catch those near the park — but I didn't like having to be home for it. I don't like having to be home for things. You know?” She took a drink.
            “Yeah?”

            “Yeah. Too much pressure. Hell, way too much pressure just to keep that damned thing alive. All I did was drop lettuce in there and dump a glass of water over those stupid rocks, but I didn't even want that. What if that thing died? It was already older than it should've been but I would have been responsible if it just rolled over and shriveled up. I didn't want that on my shoulders. Not now.”

            I was thinking about was how great the cheese would taste nuzzled between a slice of pasta and ground beef when I noticed her glass was half empty. I filled her another.

            “Thanks. Lord knows I need this, especially with the weather out there.”

            “Don't mention it.”

            “So, Jodi and I would go out. Most nights it would just be us and whoever else was out there. A lot of the time we'd find a couple of nice young men and play pool with them. They'd order us something to sip and we'd sip. Sooner or later we'd be walking to their cars, laughing at someone's stupid joke about tits and whatnot, and then we'd find ourselves somewhere else. Next thing you know we'd wake up in some house with shitty blinds and a T.V. on mute. We'd find some cereal and wander off together, getting picked up somewhere and brought back to our cars. You know, not once we got robbed, would you believe that?”

            “Really? Not once?”

            “Nope, not once. And you know the chances of that? Hell, one in a million, I'd bet.”

            She talked until the timer on the stove interrupted her.

            “—oh! Damn. Thing's already done, huh?”

            I put on my kitchen mittens and delivered the bubbling lasagna from the oven.

            “You're like a doctor, handling and cradling that meal like you do. You know, for school, we had to practice on people who really couldn't afford regular care. We'd get volunteers in who really needed their teeth cleaned a good two to three years earlier. Sometimes I'd be afraid to use the explorer because I could see through the enamel. Surprisingly, only half of them would be due to meth — the other half would just be lazy people with no one to kiss. You could always tell the people who used to use meth because their gums were dried up and the scabs. God, let me tell you about the scabs—”

            “Hey Caroline—” I said.

            “You know, that reminds me of when I was at Sharon's that one night. I know, I know, you weren't there, but I think you'll get a kick out of this. See, someone — I forget who, really — was getting more ice from the freezer. It was one of those big deep freezers that go in your garage, you know? So someone was pulling ice out from the freezer and I could tell they were having a hard time because ice is slippery and all that. So I grabbed my gloves from my coat pocket in the closet near the door and rushed to help them out — you know, give em the gloves and whatnot — and, as I was walking down the stairs into the garage, someone's hellfire boots were sitting on the steps. Could you believe that? Someone just left their damned boots on the steps. Little things, too. I wouldn't expect anyone to have that small of feet, but someone there did.

            “Well, anyway. I tripped over those boots and landed there against the wall. Glad that was there to catch my fall, because I was due for a long tumble at the rate I was going. Paige ran up to me but I was doing just fine standing there so I told her thanks but everything's alright, just a little trip. Everyone looked at me and then I said, 'Boots are made for the snow, not the stairs!' and everyone got a kick out of that. Those gloves didn't end up fitting whoever it was getting that bag of ice out, so I just slipped em on and did it myself.”

            “Yeah. So, Caroline, I don't mean to be rude here, but I was sort of planning on getting around to reading while I ate.”

            “Oh, of course. Don't let me bother you. You know how I get with stories.”

            “Yup,” and then I scooped some of the food onto the plate. I love the way it stays tethered to the tray, holding onto the rest of the meal with a thousand arms of string like it was the last thing that mattered to it on earth.

            “Well, it's been real nice. Thank you for the drinks. I'll see you tomorrow.”

            I led her to the door and we said goodbye. I went back to the kitchen and filled myself a full glass of milk. I had the knife and fork on the plate, so I took it and headed into the living room. I sat down on my green reclining chair and turned the T.V. on. The news was next and then a pleasant night. I took the first bite of the lasagna — God, that crumbling cottage cheese and melting flavors mixing together. Perfect.

            Behind the blinds, Caroline changed the flowers.

we fell the tree

I found my brother folded
in two, his arms holding close his knees. Beside him, self
portraits portraying a man much younger
than he, eyebrows pressed. An orange blanket
fell across his hands and feet, turned to paper—his eyes
closed, covered in slow air
from his nose. There was a time
when he would be the one awake, patient
for me to join him in the sand littered
with drying weeds. Small trucks, enduring
each storm hidden beneath the slide, would be pushed
across and intro each other. Hornets
and their nests, we knew, were full of honey to stir
with milk worthy of a broken knee if slipped. The new
neighbors brought a fileted lawn where once
ideas of mystery hid the pathways leading to caves
we never found. But here, with the door unlatched, the fridge
left gasping, drooling on the scarred wooden floor, the milk
is warm and you lie asleep in humidity.

Movement and Repose

On paper, a joyful mouse with a Christmas stocking for a cap, holding above
its head a star on a string, stood in front of a wobbly
tree dressed in the season. Every year, like the year before,
snow would fall and Mom would help me put on my boots.
“Remember the bunny ears,” and I would. We'd walk
to her car with the rusted shut passenger door and I'd sit
on the back seat. She drove bus and at the station was a quarter
run Ms. Pac-Man and I always wondered where
Mr. Pac-Man was and why he wouldn't wear a tie. After I turned
seven, on the nights before we'd open presents, Mom would hand me a card
marked my name. Inside I would find the picture-- a mouse, a stocking,
a star, a string, a tree-- with a fifty dollar bill signed “Dad.” I've seen
two pictures of him, one him informal and young, standing on a deck surrounded
by trees and people. His hair was the color of my hair and his face was as much
a baby as mine is. The other, sent two years ago inside the same
card, of him standing next to his dog. Her name I forget. The title
“Dad” scrawled across the back. “I hope you are well. Please write me sometime.”

---

Near Everetts Foods, where good Polish sausage
is sold at $3.59 a pound and soggy nests
of bread cross the second t, a man pulled beside me.
At first I thought he'd like to turn, so I pressed less
on the clutch and inched ahead. He stayed
by my side. I waited. And when
the light turned green, he must have kicked
his foot down the full three inches,
because his tires noisily slipped around on the asphalt
and he plowed ahead, placing himself in front of me
as we drove.
Something caused me to be upset and then,
with the same something, sorry
for him. He was alone in there and the paint
was brighter than the Minnesota Fall's leaves where
Marshall meets Lake and the waxy red reflects
up at those willing to look down.