1st & 2nd sections

The idea being that their baby would have an advantage over other babies. They hid food and spill-proof cups filled with juice and water in every place where these things could fit: the glove box, the center console, the coin holder, underneath the seats, along the rear windshield. They removed the maps and candy wrappers and overdue library books from the compartments along the bottoms of the doors and filled them with homemade zucchini bread and carob brownies and fruit they had dried themselves, all wrapped loosely in waxed paper. They filled the ashtrays with organic cereal, called Oaties. In the deep pockets on the backs of the front seats they placed mementos—a scrapbook with the earliest pictures and documented milestones, some small, soft toys, Marcus’s birth certificate, and their worn, pocket-sized copy of the Dhammapada. They taped photos of themselves to the windows and the rubber floormats.

*

The first telegram came before Marcus was born. Alex went to the door in a towel, but whoever knocked had left. A small pink slip was wedged beneath the heavy hinge of the knocker.

The meek shall inherit the earth. Plan accordingly.

Alex brought the note to Alex, who looked at it for a long time. She rubbed her belly, filled with movement. She stuck the note on the refrigerator with the magnet shaped like a fish.

“I think it’s a good omen,” she said. She knew exactly what kind of mother she wanted to be.

Alex got dressed and brushed his teeth with all-natural toothpaste. Sometimes, he wished for Crest. He wandered back to the kitchen, still brushing, and looked out the window over the sink.

“It looks like everyone is getting one,” he said, carefully, trying not to spray toothpaste. A man was walking down the steps of the neighbor’s front porch, and across the lawn to the next house. Alex could see a stack of pink paper, like a deck of cards, jutting from the man’s back pocket.

“Maybe he’s a Jehovah’s Witness?” Alex wondered. She was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, which was also the doorway of the kitchen, still rubbing her belly.

Alex spit into the kitchen sink and swished water in his mouth. He rinsed his toothbrush and laid it on the counter before answering. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think Jehovah’s Witnesses maybe ask to come inside.”

Alex went into the bedroom. The bed was still unmade and had small piles of baby things all over it. Seeing them made her feel happy, lusty. She wanted sex all the time these days. “I have to finish folding everything and find a place for all of it.”

She was thinking about how one appetite begets another. Sex made her want to eat, and eating made her want to sleep, and sleeping made her want to have sex. She wanted many babies, and a bigger garden to feed them all, and a giant bed for everyone and their piles to sleep in.

Alex was looking out the window again. The man was still in view, at a distant neighbor’s door for a moment, and then, again, walking briskly down the steps.

“Let’s go to bed,” came Alex’s voice.

“Now?” said Alex.

But he joined her, amidst the mounds of small socks and blankets. Her body felt ensconced in flesh.

what if nothing works out
what if nothing works
what if nothing
what if
what

one day she will be just like me, i won't be able to reach her, she won't know me, she won't be mine anymore, i will keep trying to catch her, she will keep escaping, i won't know what to do, i only know how to do this, i don't know how to do what comes next, what comes next, i don't understand how people do, live, are,

there isn't enough time
there isn't enough
there isn't
there

my brain is peeling

don't look at me

Whitman's Sampler

There's a woman at the coffee shop I'm sitting in who has a screaming baby. Screaming really hard and loud and persistently. I have my headphones on, music also loud, but I still hear the shrieks. She is walking with the baby cradled in her arms, and also looking at a menu, which she's holding with the tips of her fingers. The baby's screams are not going to come between her and some eggs. I'm impressed.

*

Some remake of "Under the Milky Way" just came on my Pandora. Why would anyone remake that song? It's just not a good candidate for a cover. It's the kind of song where, no matter what you do to it, it will still sound exactly like the original.

*

Yesterday I felt, toward the world, a throbbing tenderness. I wanted to hug objects, books. I wanted to become a foster parent. I wanted to hold everyone's hand, touch everyone's face, hear everyone's saddnesses. It was this strange, upward expansion, like the beams inside me had been lifted, the roof taken off. Today, I am getting hammered back into something. It's okay. Ongoing construction, etc.

*

Another woman has joined the woman with the screaming baby. The baby is quiet. The women are eating. Between songs, I heard the second say to the first, "...just call me, I'll come right over." And the first say, "Even just for an hour or something." And the second say, "Just so you can get out, yeah, for like an hour." A man across the room has just received his food and is taking a picture of it.

*

Thinking a lot about religion. Like why a sixty-year-old black woman's religiosity is more socially acceptable, or something, than a twenty-something's. Like how some religions are somehow more palatable, or aesthetically pleasing, than others. Like how religion is a form of indexing, imposing order. Books are so religious, in this way. No matter how they want to capture or imitate or create flux, they are, necessarily, stoppages. Two covers, pages sequential.

*

Baby screaming again, and second woman now walking with it.

In the house that is the mother's house

In the house of the mother there is the mother and all of the furniture. You visit. You sit amongst the furniture, amongst the mother. You are served crescent-shaped things made of meat and sugar. You begin to tell a story. The story hangs in the air, awaiting judgment. Ultimately it succumbs to gravity. Ultimately it is unimportant. You go to the room that is half of another room. There are rows and rows of books about god. You sit in the middle of this room that is half of another room and you feel god behind all of the spines, you feel god lodged in your own spine, you have become a book, also. In the house of the mother it is never too long before you become something that belongs to the mother, a book or a wrench or a passing idea. It's time for tea. The mother observes the time that is for tea. When crumbs fall from the mouth of the mother, the mother uses her finger to put them back. There is no finger more capable than the finger of the mother. It has indicated you. You await instructions.

Put a peach in it

I live in Georgia. Peaches are kind of its thing, I guess. Quiet down: for the time being, wherever you'd use tomato, except for things like pizza or pasta and probably a few others, substitute peach. Put some peach in your sandwiches. Put some peach in your salads. Put some peach on a piece of cheese and then put some basil on top of that. Put some peach in your mouth to make the words stop coming out.

Not worlds, words.

Used recently:

pianist
excruciating
parallel
adjacency
agency
solvency
sheetrock
gotta go
befabled
befuddled
draw (n.)
penguin
rape
lassitude
helium

Not words, worlds.

Also: I want someone to trap me in a fortress of arugula so that I can eat my way out.

Happen

First of the all, it's too fucking hot here.

*

There is a lot I want to say.

There is a book called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. People with small children probably know this book. It details, in abridged form, the life of a caterpillar. He starts out small and hungry. And then he eats and eats (salami! ice cream cone!) and then he becomes enormous and gets a stomach ache. Then he eats a leaf. Then he builds a cocoon. And on the final pages of the book, there is a giant spread of a colorful butterfly. The book was given to Beatrice by a dear friend, and she spends time with it often.

Last night we read it before bed, and I could see the words and images entering her consciousness in a new way. When we got to the penultimate 2 pages, which show the big fat caterpillar and the big fat cocoon, I asked her Then what happens? And I turned the page and revealed the butterfly. Happen, she said. Happen. She repeated the word no less than ten times, each time turning from the cocoon page to the butterfly page. Happen.

It struck me as a very difficult word to explain. Cocoon to butterfly works, as a definition. The word doesn't actually appear in the story. But the implication, the urge to ask, is intense.

I think it was near four in the morning when she woke up, as though in a nightmare. There was terror in her voice as she called me, and her crying was breathless. I held her and we both fell back asleep. Sometime around dawn, the room filling with shy light, she sat up.

HAPPEN. HAPPEN. Mama. HAPPEN. Fat. Big. Co-cone. Eat. Buh-fly. HAPPEN. Mama. Co-cone. Big. Buh-Fly. HAPPEN. Co-cone. Mama. HAPPEN.

This went on for a few minutes, at least. I sat up and helped her narrate the book from memory. She wanted to emphasize the happen. I wondered if some conflagration of these thoughts and images had created the nightmare that had woken her up. She tends to wake up talking about the things that make impressions on her (like when her ice cream cone fell a few weeks ago...she still returns to this: I-cream FELL. FELL. I-cream fell).

I got out of bed and got the book and in the pink and gray shadows we looked at it. The caterpillar's face has that Halloween mask/clown creepiness, and his swollen body and engorged cocoon nauseated me a little. The butterfly, though, is pretty. I'm guessing that's the point.

We talked about Happen and co-cone for a while, and then had breakfast and didn't mention it again. I'm sure it'll come back up in conversation before long.

*

I've decided, I think, that The Happen is a scoundrel, a bad boyfriend. I keep waiting for him to call, come over. I cannot see the host of happenings, because of The Happen. The myth of The Happen. The Happen that never happens, that holds me in its greasy thrall.

The only real Happen, I think, is the very ugly cocoon that lives in an undisclosed spot, mushed around my organs. It needs me. I have neglected it. I have been looking for it online.

I have wasted too much time.

I have become nettled.

So The Happen that needs to happen now is a retreat of sorts. I need to make a vow to myself, to the cocoon, to this old internet. I have to make the happen happen because the happen doesn't just happen, out of nothing. Which is what waiting is, which is what clicking is: nothing.

I'll report to this space because this space is mine, it's of the moment. I've tried hard to keep it that way. Minimal links and such. I'll respond to emails because I like responding to emails and because I'm obliged to do so for work. But for a little while anyway, maybe a week for now: goodnight, Facebook. Goodnight, Twitter. Goodnight, Bookmarks. Goodnight noises everywhere.

I need more actuals.

If anyone needs me in the flesh I'll be sandwiched between DFW and Clarice Lispector and Baudelaire. Club sandwiches have 3 pieces of bread.

*

I also want to say, and I'm about 398932 months behind (always): read Shane Jones's Light Boxes. It is a book of deep beauty, violence, and love. The love is what I like best. I read about the war on February as the days were starting to get warmer and longer, and it enveloped me that way, like a long, warm light.