(in Pennsylvania, reading my mother's "O" magazine)

"Who wouldn't" is a stupid question.

Your anger is a manifestation of frustration and fear. 

Constant sitting will kill you.

Shit.



Her process: Inspiration exists.

Raise the bar! The faster you reach your potential, the sooner others can reach theirs. 

a little fairy tale magic to lure people to her cause (step away from the stove).

How well do you know yourself?

I saw my ancestors calling, Come find me!, across the generations. 

I can always count on my husband to dance.

writing is the easy part.

it's the drinking that gets to me, all bottoms up and fermented cider. my uncle was an alcoholic, I think. the cigarettes killed him, I think.

what I know is he was magic. he could spin his tongue the whole way around his front tooth.





would she approve?

the oven grows warmer.

he is making beans, he is making tofu, he will layer them under red salsa, spicy hot.

I am drinking cider in the living room. 

I am writing and drinking cider in the living room. I am aware that you will read this.


Dostoevsky was an honest man, a smart man. I know nothing about him.

save that his words excite me. I recognize in him an honest man.


"she's a smart one," they all said, and my parents smiled approvingly. there was a time I resented them for it.

this oldness is new, is strange: I no longer blame my parents for my condition. I am blissfully responsible.



the headphones lie beside the binoculars on top of the quilt. "is this too girly for you" she said he does not remember. here I go devolving into vagaries and the routine run-on sentence. here I go trying to show you I am smart. that I have a heart!

now I will say something like, "it is beating."

(blue)

I click on the pencil. It is all yellow.

I don't even want to write about you any more.

(I am aware of the hypocrisy,
a biggest pet peeve).

Yes, I know. there can only be one.


~~~~

I ate a fig straight from the tree. Adam gave it to me.

It wasn't ripe enough. I ate it anyway; I had never eaten a fig before. Remember when we were in the Cloisters? 

Remember when I used to be a nun.

So many names people have called me how many have I answered to none.

Remembe when I was going to be a monk. That was a choice and I relished it. I rejected it.

I chose to be torn limb from limb.



I am alive and I savor it. It confuses me. I am calm that I am not calm. I am freaking out inside. Your mother was a horse and your father the butt of a zebra. Don't be crass.

~~~~~

I wonder if I will ruin it. I wonder if that's possible. It's not. I know.

I want to end I cannot end it. Like the labyrinth: we don't know where we are, or where we are going. how to get there.

at the moment when you need it the way appears.

I am scared of how quickly I change. I subscribe to belief systems. They say: all of life is change. Still I am scared. How quickly I change.

first the astringent and then the assuagement. rub your elbow into a lemon. have I been, here?

probably.

your mother was a monster. my mother, a goddess, of the highest proportion.

how quickly things change.

screws gathered loose in the sink, cold running water. clanking. my hands scrub them down. out, out. rust spots.

there is a store where they sell only containers. even its outside makes me nervous. I am scared of change and I am equally, if not slightly more, scared of never-- again-- changing.

we walk to the corner store. he buys me a vitamin water. we scratch our lotto ticket on the sidewalk outside.

we do not win twenty five thousand dollars.

decades-old pigeon poop compresses beneath my cold feet.

they say this is the city of dreams. I still want.

I nurse her words like they're growing inside of me. I mean really look and notice