To a Child

Threes are what I remember: back, side, more.

I still can cook, Julia. It is the only place where I admit
I don't know it all
but I stay close to it all, sleeping with the books piled around me,
vegetables on the shelves. Would fruits make a good pillow? (Like the one with the lace sham where we ate orange popsicles that August ninth before I had to leave for the first time and you had to say it back.)
The gear on my hindsight gets stuck in reverse so all I see is cannons of snow, bombastic on the sham turned gray and you're dead, Julia.
The threes folded together and the tree I won died on my back porch.

Am I nothing but a tied-up question, ribbons and
left-field allstars?

When I am all, I can picture the great
the great
the great uncle and
the ball going
through a loss and blame
and my dog
walking along.

The possessive of a future object can come from the past. Neither one? We still want you.

Shake and fumble on the rim. Can you
tell me
where to find the names or escape ladders like they have in those three hour films we would have escaped to had we been there in the first place but we were over here, not there, circular and first to fit our adapters to our convex somethings that can't help how much it takes -- all in either or either way.

ATTENTION


If you are reading this, tell me who you are.
Let's play. I know some of you are from Athens and New York and otherworldly destinations so tell me where, who, what, how, and when. Tell me all and then some.
PLEAse?

We are poor but We live well

We removed the red from our lungs:

-purple prose with a pomegranate core

-thank-you notes

-goulash with toast squares

All these mean to the lowlads stews strong inn the Transylvanians, with pulverized peppercorns instead of the noble & sweet pride of Hungary.

That same pride conquered the land, invading the fifteenth centurys’ palate to breeze from kitchen to couty. The very noble admitted the clandestined spice to their banquests (tables) (nostrils).

The housewife now uses the teaspoon or the countertop to measure for clay-like meat, rouged soups. Those who raise chickens have seared chicken (with paprika) or, if there is sour cream, paprika chicken. They have specialties but they are quite content with corn-meal mush or plum dumplings.

I can hear light switches and doors and dog tags that sound like sleigh bells but without the heavy weight and familairity, almost like a ball gown that isn’t gone, a grown up gown that used to be behind doors and behind doors only but Amelia Earhart started the trend of bloomers with her transatlantic nap until we all wake up to find dinner on the table, chinese again, extra tofu and hold the msg please, we have to make it ‘til Dog-Scaring Friday.

I eat a cookie before the road, a bus with strangers and others and sweatpants. Two auroras later and we meet up to hide under a neon martini glass, to hide from the First Avenue crowds until a full moon helped us find our way t Green Bay – this being a sign of warning but with friendly help, we found our way home to where my grandfathers’ name is embedded in the sidewalks, where his Mother found an occupied gallows knot, where we first met under a bridge until, full of pancakes and monkeyshines, where we parted ways with care packages



Ξthree rolls of film Ξhis shirt that he wore on our last night together Ξ

Ξ three flashlights Ξone pocketsized notebook Ξone nude photograph Ξlychees Ξ


But we wish for Minneapolis again so we can make champagne cocktails out of yeasty rivers, prosecco and seasonal bite size bottles of amaretto, butter on the side until we can go where? The No Name Bar? Into the cirrus clouds? A city named Normal? No, for now we will just stay in tangerine chairs until I know I have a heart because it’s breaking.

substitution lime juice

you taught she how to save lives under a wish tree full of spare change but you could never take away the cheeky laugh from the girl on the subway, claiming underground beauty would never hold up what little was left of you. the difference between she (the poet) and you (the writer) doesn’t make a difference anymore. we’re blending forms, turning the pink function into a ridiculous way of telling fortunes or an explanation that an octopus would find repulsive.

you takes no time to tell his own objections to this change, takes a vicodin, takes his time to wash away the sidewalk Van Gogh (crown royal on the side) you takes a breath, a line, align, a pause, an opposition, a sigh, assigning she to watch his thumb wrestle with her nameless finger: because she never pulled my hair as I stared up her torso, she never pulled, she just felt.

you (the writer) {or a writer} tells she (the poet) {or a poet} about teaching, blushing, getting caught in the bramble-branches of language, the art of lose and failure. she (the poet) {or THE poet} tells you (the writer) {or THE writer} how the girl on the subway was only being polite, was drunk, was buzzing like a welcome mat, wasn’t right to say it’s nice to see you. the girl was a stranger for a reason and should stay that way.

Fernando Pessoa

Also known as Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, Bernardo Soares, António Mora, the Baron of Teive, Thomas Crosse, Coelho Pacheco, Maria José, etc.

Born in Lisbon to sickly ancestors, Pessoa¹ jumped early from continent
to continent
swinging his hips wide, scrawling his life and their lives down
and away into a trunk that wouldn't be open until
his own attempts to raise Cain, full of virulent drink
and even more virulent worry, made him and his seventy-three tongues
fall silent.

He and they were one in the same, both too far ahead
and
lacking in enough hands to write with.

Can you imagine keeping track of all those lives,
all those wishes
all those demands
all those
thoughts
prayers
feelings
memories
stories
words
letters
sounds.
Who would win out in the battle of humor?

they
all kept talking
even if he wasn't even heard during his own being.
Even when his corpse was dormant, they shouted from the
trunk where he tucked them in each night.
Whispering Portuguese lullabies,
sleep baby
at grandpa's house
grandpa doesn't have a mattress
the baby sleeps on the ground.²

1. Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was a Portuguese poet and writer who used numerous yet incredibly detailed heteronyms. Most of his work is still unpublished due to his nearly illegible handwriting.
2. A Portuguese lullaby

I stole a pistachio once when I was seven years old.
Three months later, the summer of 1995 boiled over 600 people alive. I blamed it on myself.
Nana always said I aged quick, like whiskey.
Every night I would pray that my house wouldn't burn down. My routine was flawless.
I never look both ways, a habit of all these one way streets.
Listen, I come off as abrasive. I grew up admiring the Daleys.
You really should floss more. It feels great to look down and see whats left at the end of the day.
If I could afford it, I'd kill the days by baking.
Missouri never took to me but I still remember the sky after getting lost in a state park. I could finally understand the appeal of nowhere.
I don't understand aisles, why do we have to be so compact in life?
Kissing takes more effort than sex, all those chemicals get me all turned around - how can I be expected to kiss correctly.
Popular was never a word related to me.
I wish that everything I say could be recorded, available for playback whenever I needed. I forget too many birthdays.
I wish I could remember the way he said my name the first time we met.
I was the best narrator in the entire sixth grade.
Life has never made sense to me.

Hekla

Nature mimics the fridge when old volcanoes stench just like when I forget to clear the egg drawer. Sulfurous and salty, pungent clouds until you reach forward, expecting a shell but the texture takes over. Bumps that ooze brown, taut slime shakes like a geriatrics’ dessert table except instead of tapioca bubbles we have unlimited possibilities for creation through hot molten core that comes down hot, slow, fast, think, smooth, rough, away and toward.

Thomas knew the screaming, how sound travels during an ice storm up and into ear canals at warm human temperatures.

Bill wrote it all down-published in his prime but Ishmael turned it around – the mariner became the next big thing, not bemoaning but joking about his hot headedness as the two portals down to Purgatory, ironic since residents swore that at night the voices yelled hot, spewing forth cries, hawking up their glowing phlegm as a warning. Humans may understand the why of these pressure cookers work now but the magic remains when eyes look deep from the precipice to a reposed underworld.