Wednesday, March 19, 2008

pining

I do the best I can for the boy.

But ask me to pull from my days beauty? From the trip to the doctor's office, where a babe asleep over his mother's shoulder goes into the room next door, is awoken by cold instruments, screams and screams, the walls so white as to blind? From the rooster my neighbor keeps, raking the grass, crowing day and night, the poor bird pining for a barn, a field of dirt marked with grain? I cannot make beauty nor sense of this.

There is nothing to speak of here, just a mid-afternoon nap if I'm lucky, just a moment to pour the tea. His blonde curls undo me, his questioning why. I am only his mother and tomorrow is like today and I don't know, I don't know.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Pavlov's bitch: An ode to sea salt and vinegar Kettle Chips

I hated the giant seminar class in college.

All the talk about behavioral psychology coming towards our slumped figures wedged into auditorium seats – mice made to do this; people made to do that. No, I'd think, you're leaving something out. This isn't the whole story.

And of course it wasn't. I didn't have to know what the “else” was to know it most certainly was. It would happen over and over again in my life, people presenting “the” way while I shuffled to the left trying to see what else was hidden behind their backs.

“People work in offices 9-5.” Freelancing from your living room? “Educational research requires statistically significant results and empirical evidence.” What's an ethnographic case study?

Lies of omission.

But still, here I am, PMS Diva. Just the thought of turning down the chip aisle sends my saliva glands going. Then, when I see the bag, I am all animal and remembered patterns.

It's science like they kind they sell in undergrad seminars, food like the kind they sell at the 7-11 down the block from your dorm at 2 a.m. while you're studying for your midterm on Skinner.

And I'm okay with that. It means at least something I learned stuck.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

wanna-be writer approaches the literary journals on a recent bookstore browse

Even before I get close enough to touch them, I sense their disapproval, covers closing tighter around their pages.

I'm at the door of the clubhouse trying to read the list of rules hung on the branch outside.

Their back covers read like inside jokes I don't get. Their tables of contents dare me with a smirk. The fresh, new poetry dances this way and that on the pages, never stopping too long in any one column, on any one thought. But more, the bright white leaves are heavy with prose, glossy with art, the verse ducks and weaves as I flip through, so as not to be fully discovered.

The only reason they are letting me sit at their lunch table is so they can make fun of me later. And I tap the books once, twice, on the heel of my palm, thinking, miserable, awkward, before replacing them in their slots – all the prom queen's court lined up on the float – and walk away. It is my only chance at salvation.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

everything he needs to know...

Check off another lesson learned.

Mike was cleaning out the garage yesterday when Isaac grabbed an empty plastic container and while simultaneously demonstrating announced to no one in particular, "You take junk, and you put it in there, and you close it up!"

Saturday, March 08, 2008

books

So it needs work aesthetically, but what I want to say is there. To the left. My newest bit on my sidebar. "What We're Reading."

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