You’re like a moon that’s full,
Across a sea of foam
I’m the sky you’ve been burning.
Category: Uncategorized
Write Back Soon
My mailbox,
scraped white tin
red flag
settled on the slim limb
of two-by-four
will
someday
possess
your letters
when you
write back soon.
Will the Real Sick Lady Please Lay Down
The first thing I hear every morning is static. I never bothered to properly tune the radio, and I never cared much for the music it played; come to think of it, I never cared much for waking up. Then there’s the daunting task of taking a shower, of liberally applying layers of cosmetics, of finding my car keys. I do not like mornings.
Maybe my days get off to bad starts because of this curmudgeon-inducing static. If my alarm crooned ‘Here Comes the Sun’ on vinyl, I bet I’d thrust into a jovial world sunshine and roses. Better yet, if Jack Johnson or John Mayer or someone slightly dreamy (Waldo might even qualify for this) would sit at my bedside and softly, gently, and oh-so-tenderly brandish me awake, I might actually roll out of bed with a smile on my face (my ex-roommates and best friends can tell you that this is, indeed, unpossible).
Perhaps the worst mornings are those when above all static, coughing prevails. Sickness! Hypothetically speaking, I’d continue to lay in bed, and scrutinize if there was any possible way to rise. My bedside stand, serving as an outpost for all sorts of danger, would be stacked with candles, bottled water, and the codeine syrup that I’d swigged generous proportions of the night before. And twenty-eight minutes into my attempt at sleep that night before, after plugging my nose and chugging codeine syrup, I’d realized that there were no pillow cases on my pillows. So I’d ascend to my closet to sift through last month’s laundry, stuff the dimwitted pillows into their sacks and call it a sick night, and later a sick morning. Then I’d skip class and wallow in sickness.
I wish I could say the previous paragraph were false.
Bygone You
My good man, you are eloquent. You wear the tears of society’s cares quite nicely, and with class and a lovely rage. I do believe you’ve got what people pay for, pray for, work all day, every day for. Dear man, you didn’t even have to contort your style not ever, never, all the while you were right on the money, right on.
Right on wrong, long ways make for lousy pay in together’s game. Each day we’ll wait in a bitter state of inexplicable debate and wonder, curse ways we made so-called mistakes before shifting, drifting, I’ll call late, listening, what-in-Christ-sake are we doing, what kind of race of distaste, what a waste, what a waste.
Just wait! Think of all the ways we could negotiate: you, I, me, we, none! A punishment worthy of a crime none, walking a tree-lined boulevard in sun, believing in one and love, vanquished leaves and yesterday gone, done away with bygone you, bygone done.
The Shop
There’s something about being covered in sawdust. The thin shavings and their tiny spirals of wood grain clinging to cotton, speckled on denim, peppered in my hair. The productive hum of machinery orchestrates with the exhaust overhead as I drill, slice, tighten and glue, then set my work aside in satisfaction.
Confessions
Dear Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
It’s me, Jenny. Remember? Alright, you probably don’t—I didn’t go to church last Sunday, or the Sunday before that. I have a legit excuse! The people of Fargo, or at least the ones that live right off South University, needed their fried chicken, Baby Swiss, and Genoa salami, or Sunday dinner would be an utter disaster. You know? I know you know.
I guess I’m writing right now to catch up a little—you know, TALK. I’ve got bones to pick. First of all, let me get this off my chest: I’ve been using far too much toilet paper for my own good. I know, it’s rough, but it’s cold season and I’ve got to blow my nose with something. You understand.
I suppose I’ve some more ‘fessing up to do. Well, okay. My bread says “Best before Oct 9” and I’m still eating it. It’s easy, you just pick around the little green fuzz. You’re cringing? You’re cringing. Please. It all tastes the same to me anyway and I’m still trying to compensate for tossing out an entire package of tofu. Also, I drink straight from the orange juice bottle, and the gallon of milk, for the love of not dirtying another dish. But only when no one is looking. Forgive me, Father.
There’s more. I raid my sister’s closet three times a day and often wear her nice perfume, because my old stuff is starting to reek like pollution—which is funny, because I always thought that Ralph Lauren was classier than that. I also thought my sister was clever enough to catch on, and I’m sure she has. Matter of fact, she’s probably been raiding my closet, too. Possibly even wearing my underwear (which, in my book, is totally unforgivable, but then again I’m not high and mighty).
Lastly:
Of course I practiced my techno robot dance moves in the mirror last night. I always do.
Take care and be well, Y’all.
PEACE.
jc
Climbing
There were only two hundred feet before we reached the top of the leviathan cliffs. Sweet surrender to the mountains was all that fell ahead, while thousands of feet below there was nothing beyond trees. I felt a placidness resonate as the wind took us higher and the sun, now less distanced, swept over our backs. It was alone in it’s finest, rawest, most belonging form: three thousand feet up, and there you were.
There we were.
Raking with a Broom
This yard, this newfound, leaf-infested, sticky, wet and blundering brown, yellow, green and poop rectangle of halfhearted grass: This is my problem. This is the new responsibility that has fallen upon my garage and my fire pit that’s filled with rainwater, between the fences and outside my window. This is bitter responsibility that tires my right arm, on a Saturday afternoon in October when I should be…being elsewhere.
I say that I’ve other things to do when in fact, raking the leaves with a broom on a Saturday afternoon is all that I’ve got going on. The cars will pass and I’ll hide the end beneath the rather impressive, sopping pile of fall that I’ve amassed, so as not to let the passerby know I’m raking with a broom. And this broom is blue, and its screams ‘SHE’S RAKING WITH A BROOM’ to the tune of ‘Heigh-Ho, the Merry-O!’; she’s raking with a broom.
The pumpkin on the porch is laughing at me. He’s not quite a Jack-O-Lantern yet, but I can feel his beady stare upon me as I rake with a broom. And the neighbor is looking out his window, I can feel his eyes shifting through the blinds and over the bushes covered in faux spiderwebs and festive Halloween lights. There’s an afternoon get-together on the other side, I see the cars lined along the street and trickling to the curb in front of my house. Maybe, perhaps, and with any luck at all the world will think that I’ve got a friend over, and that I’m not outside, here, today on this Saturday afternoon, raking the leaves with a broom.
The mail is for the old tenants, not even a Macy’s ad with a good-looking fella. The afternoon has taken a turn toward ‘I’ve-got-to-go-to-work’, so I put on my black pants and meaty smile. Today I’m going to slice a dozen types of cheeses and fondle turkey, corned beef, maple ham; all the usual suspects. The Havarti cheese on the bottom shelf boasts Denmark’s Finest, and I contemplate a suspecting vision of this place: sunlight, green grass, windmills. Everything that I don’t have and didn’t see today in my yard, as I was raking with a broom.
Then I washed, and rinsed, and sanitized the polluted surface of the slicer, brazen with beef and provolone alike. The clock hit my number and I punched out, went home.
Two candles were lit at the kitchen table. In front of me were reheats and apple slices, one of them smiling at me. The music flowed in a dull clamor—something depressing, like Dashboard Confessional, Death Cab for Cutie—and I watched the shadows from the flickering flames. Down to my smiling apples, up to the dancing contours on the wall, down to my apples. It’s Saturday night and I’m done raking my yard with a broom. Now I’ve created this sappy, romantic milieu—willingly—and it’s making me feel downright pathetic. It’s Saturday night. There’s a four-pack of Seagram’s Fuzzy Navels in the fridge, actually a three-and-a-half pack now. I’m drinking milk.
As I walk out the door, on my way to do homework at school, I see the card I started writing to my 94-year old boyfriend. I see my sister’s boyfriend’s shoes. I see my work shoes, caked in grease, and beef, with a giant, nerdy tongue. And I see that my landlord as mowed over all the piles of leaves that I swept today, every last mound that I raked with a broom.
I continue to walk sideways.
approximatelyes.com 