Milk As Cereal Juice
The First Poem of My Creative Thesis, Pt II
Summers in Durham
There were too many well-marked and paved roads
For it to be Small Town America it was wanting
The antique store with the ribboned-off rocking chair
In which the very Martha Washington once perched,
Or just something easily identified as quaint
By the camera-ed slung and tube sock-ed visitors.
For redemption, there were mom-and-pop diners,
Bottomless cups of coffee, boys drinking
Blue Moon on back porches, and, in the summer,
As if imported by the tourism council, the insects
Sawing nightly at their violin legs.
Rained sometimes, too: the weather clearing
The accumulated dust and boredom of late July.
But what I remember best were the women out front
Hal’s Sandwich Shoppe – the last two letters of which
Were tacked on stupidly by his son, Harry, years back –
And the women out front in shawls: real good
At gluing their judgment to anything
That they thought deserved it and a lean tongue.
Each year, one girl grew fat with the warming months,
Her boy always long gone or off to the war.
Poor Lily last August, Stephanie with the midriff. Fates
Of this small place, the porch bound woman
Honey-stuck their eyes. Forcing each girl
To endure the creaking chairs and swinging signs, the sounds
Of expansion in this New Hampshire heat.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-ca-pico-iyer-20120108,0,2137466.story
“Enter (I hope) the long sentence: the collection of clauses that is so many-chambered and lavish and abundant in tones and suggestions, that has so much room for near-contradiction and ambiguity and those places in memory or imagination that can’t be simplified, or put into easy words, that it allows the reader to keep many things in her head and heart at the same time, and to descend, as by a spiral staircase, deeper into herself and those things that won’t be squeezed into an either/or.”
Cartoon Physics, part 1
Nick Flynn
Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know
that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies
swallowed by galaxies, whole
solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning
the rules of cartoon animation,
that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries
will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down — earthbound, tangible
disasters, arenas
where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships
have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump
you will be saved. A child
places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows
the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn
that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall
until he notices his mistake.
Obligatory End Of Year Post
I don’t think we change as much as we all think we do: we just re-prioritize and highlight different parts of our surroundings and our selves. This next year is going to be wild. I’m ready.
Or, do I buy heels for my future 9-5?
Maybe shit will hit every single fan across all seven continents on January 1st. Maybe the Mayans weren’t just lacking extreme foresight and actually did chose to end their calendars at 2012 for some reason the universe only divulged to them, you know, because of all their hot cocoa inventing and human sacrificing. And those dank ass pyramids they built mostly by themselves (thank you very much, Egypt, and your generallyjewish slaves). But, call me crazy, I think there’s going to be a January 2nd. And when it comes around I’m still not going to have even the haziest idea about my future. I’m applying to jobs. Internships. Mostly unpaid. Fuuuuckkk.
WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? I had all these plans. I have all these plans. I still haven’t joined the outing club! I was going to become outdoorsy when I moved to Maine. I was going to breathe in the cold, crisp air and smile whole, wide smiles at the pine scented dawn. I was going to read an entire DFW novel, like, not a collection of short stories. Or, at the very least, something dreary and satisfyingly Russian; Anna Karenina? The Brothers Karamazov? I was going to heft tomes. My glasses were going to get thicker, damnit. Not the point. It’s safe to say everyone I know is tabby-cat-level satisfied with where they are. Or they’re good a faking it, which, honestly, might be more beneficial in the long run.
Here’s the rub: Do you, or do you not, fuck everything you’ve been told and just (as someone I know would say) follow your heart? How much longer can —-“It’ll work out, because, uh, I’m smart and have inarticulable skills, uh, I just invented the word ‘inarticulable’? So yeah…” —- work? Will the universe tell us, like it told the Mayans, what the hell is going on and when we should throw in the towel? Because, dear universe, dear long gone Mayans, dear family, I think I’m ready to make some new kinds of irrational decisions. I now know I can’t drink two 40s but I might be able to juggle two jobs.
And, hey man, there are eight days till California floats away and fireballs rain from above.
Ahem, my prose thesis is done
The final first & last sentences:
There was a goat, scrawny, all haunches, that wandered about the back hills behind Rigoon proper, and, when the other places has roosters, all comb and wattle, we had a featherless thing.
But all the kids felt was the hot sun baring down on the backs of their necks and the dirt grit on the soft parts of their skin that seems to attach itself to all of us and never truly wash off.
