The tall from the onto the hospital building over there, antenna and I am in between two eucalyptuses, two antennae perfectly ligamented. I am trying to remember a conversation I never had with someone I have yet to meet. I am trying not to remember a conversation I had with someone I have recently met. There are three open mouths on the wall.
What is there to report? The students are on strike. There is a fight at the bus stop, two dykes, one inside one out, shouting through the open doors. On the radio they voted Yes. And the war, the genocide goes on. On the walk to the canyon two men stand in a cypress tree, a chipper on the street. They hold tools, the tools have mouths that make noise. As,when the noise grows louder the ends of branches fall to the ground, they are cutting down the branches so they can see farther, further,
A man walks into the cafe,
More fighting now, and they say on the radio that 20,000 babies have been born in Gaza since 7 October.
Up and down and up again crucified upon rock, and I wasn’t even thinking really about easter sunday, though I suppose I will now, the neighbor upstairs is roasting a lamb, a little death as world reborn.. “Re” born….”
“We” solemnly “re”quest all the contents of “re”search done in service of the “re”semblance to the “re”solution, “re”ached at this very moment..Quiet now, the mayor is speaking. The window needs to be fixed. There is something wrong with the structure. Walking around and looking for me, as I walk around and look for you.
When I lived somewhere else we picked them and boiled them to blanch them of acridity and pan fried them with lemon and butter and capers until they tasted punitive, like a riverbed, and I remember sitting next to that creek where they all grew with a you that will never read this, as we will never know one another again…they receive their name from the instrument they resemble, the ferns,
I will tell you a story now. A woman walks into a restaurant, it is a restaurant and not a café, there are mugs on the walls, or really on shelves, for the shelves are screwed into the walls, and they don’t sag at all in the center, they are good strong shelves made of hardwood, like walnut or maple. She sits at the counter and orders a coffee. The mugs are the sort you buy at souvenir shops, with the names of places printed on their faces, there are three, no four, that read Don’t mess with texas, and a woman wearing lipstick (coral) is opening the cash drawer, and over her right shoulder is a picture where a woman who looks like her, only much younger, is smiling next to someone seated at the restaurant, and it is framed, which usually means they are a celebrity. I like when you are happy.
Hey, wake up. Three four square…is it two or three? Red square blue rectangle blue rectangle, hey wake up, blue rectangle red square blue rectangle blue rectangle blue rectangle, red square, blue rectangle blue rectangle blue rectangle, Hey, wake up. And so on
How are you feeling before, how will you feel after? The doves are crying, they are outside. Perhaps they would like to come in, but the window is painted shut, or not painted shut so much as painted on, painted onto the wall you are seated in front of, your legs are crossed into a strange pretzeled shape that scares the cats, the man next to you is watching the big game on the television that is the computer that fits into the pocket, you are both on a bus that was made for tourism but has been repurposed for public transit purposes, so it looks now as a sports bar, haunting the blown out warehouses,
Everyone in the rust belt is waiting for the end to arrive. I am looking at machines larger than I am able to imagine. Another house has burned down. I am knocking on wood. I see someone who knew me as a child. We are happy to see each other. It is remarkable that we are in the same place. We used to be in the same place every day, we are never in the same place now, There is an evil movie on the television, one that depicts women in grotesque ways..and I can feel the stone in my heart, the one that hatches, as if an egg, when i am met with the place that held the self that is no longer the self that is contained by the body that is mine in the time that is currently now..I couldn’t tell you of the news these days for I’ve lost signal, they are only talking about the blocking of the star, or they are playing what they are calling ” rock ” music,, though it seems more so that they are playing music for people who are very angry, or for people who,d like to become so..and it is a coleslaw weekend, at the chicken barbecue the firemen are standing over a pit of open flame, the smoke standing in the parking lot with the midwest butch wives who hold orange tickets in hand, the river is muddied with the renewal, and there is a barrel to be turned round, there are paper plates with sugar cookies enclosed in ziploc bags…I am mourning the loss of another empty lot to the gaping maw that is the dollar general megacorporation, everyone in town is walking around waiting for the mormon bookstores to open but it is a sunday, only the vape shops are open, and tomorrow, the tomorrow that is today, all businesses operating in the state of new york are letting off for thirty minutes so everyone can stand in the parking lot and see the shadow fall…
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