imaginary cola

What you make is a portrait of the melodramatic band.

2010-09-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

What you make is a portrait of the melodramatic band.

Beach House, on a beach. It's dark there.

The band, (a woman and a man), in robes.

They are surrounded. By all your ex-girlfriends.

In robes, tending tall burning candles.

When you show the piece you say,
"Beach House is surrounded by all my ex-girlfriends."

You then take questions:

A thinking man askes about your use of Beach House.
This stops your thoughts, makes sand of yourself.
You have to sit down.

When you get back up you say,
"It's not the band,
it's just that they are surrounded
by all my ex-girlfriends."

Positive Curvature

2009-04-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the guy is a little more than eccentric, blah blah badly pronounced German phrases in a high-voiced whisper, intensely, in psst bursts at the barista, (she knows this one). He has a cappuccino, or something in a round cup. He makes enormous small talk about lovely German things with a bearded everyman, who used to have a lovely German girlfriend (his now-wife is sweatshirt-clad, disaffected and sits next to him) and who once spent a German Christmas with her family which entailed card games at the pub, beer at the pub, card games again, you wake up and her mom is making pastries, and then not long after, she's making soup, yeah, soup, and then not long after that you have a sort of brunch thing, and then it's back to the pub, and that's where you'll have playing cards all through into the night, with the drinks too, the whole time, just marvelous. And you should really see the countryside there, oh yea I have, incredible.

A photograph is hung on the wall and the man spies it and the other guy is off and gone by now, so he lifts himself up and takes a peak and sees himself in the picture, facing away from him, at a moving train, it's in black and white. He's wearing the same black suit! The same shoes! He has a hat on...and it's just too much now, or it's just...incredible.

He's found out something, the guy is transfixed. He exists. Someone took his picture when he was alive somewhere by a train. He leans in over a table. The passion they have he gasps in almost a frantic whisper they must go seventy or eighty I'll take any car I can get! coal in all of them- gosh - all of those trains they have there, coal trains, down there, coal inside of them.

He's not the man in the photograph staring at the train. And he knows it.

He's looking at the back of his head. Okay, it's time to back up and sit back down, carefully, he doesn't break it, the gaze at it, he adjusts his suit coat his hand trembles as it brings a cup to his lips, and over the edge of the cup he can still see it in open-eyed wonderment from the other side of the universe, the back of his own head.

Windgods

2009-03-25T21:05:00.000-07:00

It's true, Jakob has not said a single splashy word since boarding the catamaran, an amount of time that now weighs in at well over an hour, and understandably, Emilie has on a sour face as she pulls taught the rope and guides the windgods to the south-west.

Now:

You, being a gentle, perceptive person, could perhaps imagine the specific cramped feeling in the throat after being silent for well over an hour. You could also, being a thoughtful person, with a tickling tinge of sentiment in that same body part, perhaps recall a particular evening at the cinema, soaking over a movie, a saturated-sunset film-part, the camera is either placed inside a moving vehicle, or on a swaying ship scanning as the frame-spread of orange alternately drapes the entire scene, and then, intermittently, dips behind a trunk or telephone pole or ship-mast, a temporary eclipse. It then returns with the force of a semi.

This is difficult for me. Because if I were you, hovering beside these two young Britons in spring, pale but getting tanner, tense yet slowly relaxing, white wavy patterns of water spritzing their wet emotions, I would feel not only intrusive, but as a hovering camera, also somewhat uncalled for.

So, for the purpose of marrying view and viewer, (follow me closely now), we'll assume the form of a saltwater droplet which mid leap from its oceanic home, has split wholly in two and landed one each on the cheeks of our counterparts.

The couple are kissing madly now.
Don't feel embarrassed.

I'd now like to dip the camera, (I've brought it back in), below the meniscus and do some coral-watching.

At this point you're free to do as you like.

Fotes

2009-03-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Let's Think This Over

2009-03-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

I breathe mostly
expansive, spread out
rosy sundips…look:

Having been on the telephone (love interest)
I popped corn for work
at the baseball-plex

Bats crack and sizzle late on
into Saturday’s warm darkening—but the air there!
He’s also about to thunder-spread (through opened windows)

because I can breathe in
that mint-rain, I mean deep.

I’m trying to get at
why
okay, why the soft chick

when the key undid the cardoor (having clocked out)
and I’m breathing in a rose-dip—slowly
with my eyes here

why this air is
suspended—concentrated—flash-lit
The piece of candy. The only importance.

Even now to a warm key in a pocket downtown
It’s something to do about a girl’s shampoo
Eh, write me the short story and I’ll live in it.

Habits

2009-02-27T08:45:00.001-08:00

Devin bought his first drag that day
said muh green shirt's tumblin' in
a wheel wash again--muh feets is some iceblocks
puddle drop walkin' to
get TOMATOES and stick a quick one
in winter: I want wine in my
mind, a nouveau sky diver,
doin' the tandem...I've
never rubbed wrists together
stripped eagles bald about
nine seconds to confirm
the better reservation

2009-02-26T12:14:00.000-08:00

Ling/Anth 321

Telephone Discourse Mini-Project

Introduction: Regrettably, the first real concert I ever attended was one given by the one (or was it two?) hit, teen wonders Hanson, in a shopping mall parking lot. Admission was two cans for Harvesters and the bass hurt my ears—what’s relevant here is that that hit of theirs, “mmm-bop”, is a phrase strikingly similar to one my mother (Christine) uses on the telephone with excruciating frequency. I tend to notice repetition in speech, especially hers, in the same way a waiter recognizes habitually grumpy regulars. The phrase is “mmm, buh-bye”, percussive and mumbly, and she has been using it to exit telephone conversations for as long as I’ve had ears to hear it.

Purpose: to determine the precise use and effect of the phrase “mmm-buh-bye” by Christine for exiting telephone conversations. It is observed and assumed that she does not use the phrase when speaking vis-à-vis, the difference between telephone conversation and real-life discourse will be explored.

The Experiment: I coached my sister, father, and of course myself, to call Christine and carry out a normal conversation about whatever topic was natural. We were to pay attention though, to the exact way that my mother exited the conversation. I observed the other seven calls while at home over a weekend as my mother was using the land line. If some sort of setting is needed for the land line calls—she sits at a built-in wooden desk in the kitchen. Two dogs sleep at her feet and the sky is a speckled winter gray. She doodles incessantly while talking.

The data: # of calls (person calling/called: “exit phrase”) 10 calls total.

GROUP A

4 to/from coworkers/parents of first grade children she teaches: “mmm, buh-bye”

1 from a friend: “mmm, buh-bye”

1 from her sister: “mmm, buh-bye”

GROUP B

1 from me (her son): “bye”

1 from her daughter: “goodbye, love you”

1 from her husband: “okay, goodbye”

1 from her mother: “bye, mom”

Interpretation: The results show distinctly that when speaking to her coworkers and friends she used her trademark phrase “mmm, buh-bye”, while to her immediate family and mother she used other, more common exit phrases. It’s also interesting that she used the studied phrase with her sister. This is probably due to the fact that she feels somewhat distant with respect to my aunt and, (being her son I can attest to this), generally disagrees with everything she does (but we’ll get to the implications of that later).

Relevant also are the reactions elicited from my father and sister when asked to carry out the observation. My father didn’t immediately recognize the phrase, but after a few moments concluded that he did in fact know of it, and furthermore, felt that she didn’t use it when speaking to him. My sister recognized it immediately, and also suggested it was not used with her. Both of them were proven correct in their individual calls.

We’ll start by naming the most obvious dimension absent in telephone discourse—physical proximity and then at the end of the interaction, physical separation. In lieu of this billiard-ball effect, my mother employs “mmm, buh-bye” as one would a hand shake or wave of the hand. She uses it always as a finality, an end. If it doesn’t promptly end the conversation, she’ll use it again soon after.

Why then, does she not use it when speaking to her family? Wouldn’t those phone conversations require the same solution to the same problem? My hypothesis is this: she doesn’t use it with her family because she doesn’t feel the need for things to be final. She feels that conversations with them are ongoing, fluid exchanges. They are less formal, non-business-like. Four of the six calls in which she used the phrase were either to coworkers or a parent, both instances where small bits of direct information were exchanged, having primarily to do with work related topics. She felt less emotionally attached to the people and topics, less sense of constant contact. With her family, she tends to call again soon after, or later in the day to talk some more. Or, in the case of my father, she sees him soon after the conversation. She may also feel that this sense of finality is required in a business or more formal setting.

The intonation of the phrase, (it starts off hesitant, then drifts doggedly downward), also suggests a sort of emotional detachment that is not present in her other exit phrases. The only time that she used a more friendly intonation of the phrase was with, not surprisingly, her close (yet physically distant) friend. Perhaps I should feel lucky to be in group B. My aunt, on the other hand, isn’t quite as lucky.

Side Note: I did not interview Christine directly about her usage of the phrase as she tends to be quite defensive (possibly even in denial) of her time-honored personal habits. Also, the doodling could be another area of research, used as a way to occupy hands that would normally be making all sorts of gestures.

2009-02-20T08:57:00.000-08:00

My French teacher makes a noticeable effort to pronounce the names of everyone in the class in an extremely American fashion. This included my name, Andrew, for the past month or so, until today, when she curiously addressed me by the (very) French equivalent of my last name, Frederick, so: (Frédéric).

IT'S WEIRD.

Lawrencia, I know.

2009-02-19T12:17:00.000-08:00

"The Pig is the intellectual center of Lawrence"-someone at the Pig.

"The Reserve Student Apartments. "Isolate Yourself!" "

I've been buying recently, my tomatoes only at the Merc, even though there are plenty of red ready tomatoes at the Dillon's two minutes away from my house and those tomats are less expensive. I realize that this is a very egotistical thing to be doing, it's prejudiced and fearful and in that sense I'm isolating myself from the TOObluejeans and AMERICAN saggy faces and PICK UP trucks and all that whateverness. So yes, for the time being I am a hypocrite. Could I possibly rationalize it by saying one can only purchase a Wheatfields baguette (other than at Wheatfields itself) at the Merc?

More of those photographs...

2009-02-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

This is my every morning stair-climbing victory view.
There's a light inside of that drum. People get happy when they drink fancy beers.
In color this would have blues and pinks and greens and squirrels.
This is as if the camera was actually in their heads.
This photograph has too much contrast, but that was really my decision.

A Breakthrough

2009-02-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

Eduard is counting in his sleep again eight nine ten. I'm worried about him, it's not good for him to be counting in his sleep like this. Bessie is on the verge of a breakthrough: she's at the desk. Her pen is moving like a spider. Eduard is in his bed, he's up in the thirties now. He's really worrying me.

--The Terrifying Ones!

There is a grunt and a flurry of scribbling, sawdust buzzing all over, metal bars clanking, vast sheets of aluminum foil ripping apart to dust.

--Huh!...that's it...shift this...and...some room...pink ribbon...yeah...ugh!...that girl, that girl, her shoes, Jesus!...in there!

Bessie has successfully rearranged her memory. It took too long, it took years. She's slumped over, unconscious like a candle spilling its wax. Eduard is up in the sixties now. Things were misplaced. Things were forgotten. Eduard is still god-damned counting in his sleep.

Lil' Tim

2009-02-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

I had a sort of watermelon-windy tropical dream nap two nights ago.

My friends are at the peak of thier cleverness-absolutely brilliant.

This is a story that I wrote yesterday:

Lil' Tim [has]
skewered a frog on a drumstick
[he is] a red wooded area [ ,has]
stacked some sticks
[and] can't get the matches lit
the sun fizzles out [he]
fails
cries.
[for] the lake where frogs come from
[ ] brother's stick
[ ] light-up wristwatch

[he] buries the animal in dead leaves
sits warming his hands to the
sound of multiplying cicadas.

Suspension

2009-02-02T14:51:00.000-08:00

It's every-so-often that a pile of toy boats is suspended from the ceiling by fishing line, given room to breath, (spread out) : Dan positions each one like an acupuncturist. He has a cord with a button-switch on it that runs deep beneath his bed and up close to his pale moon pillow. He can push the button, it turns on the fan. Dan's black eyes water as he does this.

Dan chose a blue light bulb for the table so his skin looks like dead water. The boats creak and sway like icebergs.

Dan doesn't know that we're watching him with the miniature boats and the sea breeze and that's just as well. If he did he would get upset and stuff them away and with his hand sort of on your hip like family, he'd shush us blind down the hallway of the abandoned hospital. If there is a green exit sign that is still dimly alive we would see that mold splashes the walls like paint.

Then Dan is gone and something is dripping—we can't see shit.

I like to think of Dan and his boats, wonder how he's doing, when I see the light go on from the highway.

While Setting a glass of icewater on the table

2009-01-30T09:00:00.001-08:00

Her body will feel
as a pumpkin who,
having been plump once
before keeps up
a lusterous look
with which to fool, the goop
of its insides. Or:
more presently, importantly
she says, as honey, golden
in a clear-bright jar.

These are some photographs that I took with my mom's old nikkormat.

2009-01-23T13:14:00.000-08:00

Arrangement

2009-01-22T21:46:00.001-08:00

Coury, suddenly, gracefully, got splashed up in a midnight-mess of what must have been quite the store-up of colored crayons. He likened it at the time to a sort of story-book Halloween-in-spring effect, and the scene: (his kneecaps awkwardly absorbing impact, the bare swish-swoosh of the winter trees, and the curve of the garden’s eggplants), seemed to possess a clear-coat of unfamiliarity, splashed like cellophane on everything, that was wildly reassuring. It happened to be, to his quiet astonishment, Coury’s first formal realization of the inexpressible.

It had to do with the source, birth, and explanation of the whole episode on the staircase, an episode that Sasha would later characterize as over-blown, pathetic, and altogether unnecessary.
But this was the nature of the multitude of people, who prefer poking at the un-cracked egg quizzically to smashing the thing with her fist and giving it some (at least half-way) creative fate/night-gown/etc…

The episode was this:

Sasha, in some sort of uncaused, impulsive mood, tossed her nondescript messenger bag, (of the green variety), half-way down the back staircase.

This, occurring at around 6:40PM, in no way an agitated or aggressive act, severely startled the dark, ugly-ish rodent who occupied an opportune crevice beneath a certain stair. His near heart-attack was, in fact a direct result of the bag not belonging to her, but rather to her brother, who we have met previously in the garden, and the unfortunate event that it happened to contain, not a striped cotton skirt, hairbrush, biology textbook, and empty nalgene bottle which she believed it to contain, but no less than three samples of Coury’s recent ceramic work, (arguably the most technically impressive and visually affecting pieces he had yet accomplished).

The bag, as she could not see the objects within, did, in the imagination of Sasha make a sort of kaleidoscopic, stained-glass splash as it first busted with a loud gasp of sudden bodily detachment on the poorly carpeted hardwood.

As a result it must be said that Sasha, directly in the choppy wake of the incident, emitted from her lips, not with the pleasure of harming her brother, but with a more rounded, abstract sort of poetic pleasure, a gasp—a swift, feminine, non-directed but ultimately hurtful, gasp.

The gasp, as it went, was not the direct stimulus to which Coury would react, in Sasha’s opinion, implosively and irrationally; it was in the fact the smile, barely recognizable as such, which arrived mysteriously and seamlessly as an after-effect, that did it.

Coury was, simply incapable of accepting the smile.

He voiced this inability with a churning, distressed, (though somewhat endearing), distorted burst of human expression. The painful noise, best illustrated by rubbing two coals of charcoal together along with some sort of gurgle, was delivered to Sasha from the bottom of the staircase.

There was a passing, but impressionable sincerity in the look that he gave his sister before Coury turned, bent, stepped out the door, and with a sharp intake of air, shut it behind him, but Sasha, even if she had seen it, was not equipped to correctly interpret it.

Coury had, before departing in that passionately defeated manor, unzipped the bag in order to inspect his work with the understandable, though illogical spark of a hope that he would find there, something un-touched.

From the uppermost step, where she now sat calmly, Sasha could see that Coury found nothing of the sort in that bag.

She made, in her mind, what we’ll call a composition with the speckled, oblivious shards. She remembered, acutely a childhood fascination, or borderline obsession, with the spreading and scraping of designs within the cylinder of bubbles in her morning glass of milk, compositions which were, shortly after birth, consumed with habitual gusto.

2009-01-11T16:56:00.001-08:00

A few dusty chairs, patiently burning in the afternoon sun, sit idly, with a cocker-spaniel on one, and a young girl wearing a yellow sun-dress on the other. This particular arrangement, this veterinarian office, doesn't so much reek, but noticeably smells of animal piss covered up with gratuitous amounts of Lysol disinfectant spray. A nurse, or whatever you may call her, behind the counter, lets loose another spit of it near the scale used to measure the weight of primarily unwilling puppies. The girl chews gum and pets the dog, obviously anticipating a quick visit--i.e. ice-cream or a car ride or whatever comes next.

At this time, the hanging door-chime rings unexpectedly, and with it, shuffles in Grennadine. She's dressed in a no-color no-texture window-drape of a costume, as if from a blurry black and white photograph or more precisely, from an unfinished sketch which despite it's current appearance, was originally intended to be rendered in color. The sun-girl regards her apprehensively as if from a great distance, stroking the spaniel behind the ears now with a slow, deliberate movement of her right hand. The older woman's tight, bunned hair is gray, her pinched skin is gray, her slippers, yes, slim, cracked slippers are gray--and most noticeably, the pursed, yet flappy lips--a positively dismal gray that even the normally flattering light-scheme only serves to intensely neutralize. The sun-girl is called into the examining room by her mother and the nurse-lady and awkward photograph-thing are left alone.

Grennadine, there for a purpose, gingerly hands over the sleeping lahsa-opsah, which was apparently hidden within the grainy folds of fabric, to the nurse-lady (it's too soon to tell if the dog was there all along or if the woman made her up on the spot). Now the chime has rung again, as in the woman has shuffled out for automobile or train or to die peacefully, and at this point, the nurse-lady reads, with an understandable amount of disbelief, the handwritten note left on the counter with the dog.

"Yes, yes, it's so easy, you see. The dog needs you, as yes, the dog, it needs you to hold it by the front legs, up to your face, her chest to your face, every day for a good three minutes. You are to listen, listen now, to it's heartbeat...for three good minutes each day. Listen hard for its heartbeat and let it think about you and your breakfast and your paycheck and then it's done, it's happy, see?"

The nurse-lady is now occupied with ringing up the balances of the cocker-spaniel girl-and-mom and doesn't have fully the time right now to ponder the woman's note, though she suspects a hallucinatory quality of the interaction and furthermore, who gives a damn about a lasah-opsah.

Richard

2008-12-26T12:53:00.000-08:00

Richard, the collector

Creaks his weathered head out of his tollbooth.
Winds blow, lights dim. His gray hair glitters.

Says: TURN RIGHT.
His eyes dialate, expand, fixate.
Turn right.
Proceed short distance.
TURN right.

There will be so many ways to turn left.
DO NOT turn left.
TURN RIGHT.

Here, take this slip of paper.

The window winds up, the tollbooth is left in the misty whatever.
Wichita sleeps awkward in the distance.

Play it cool.

2008-12-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

"Sir," I said " I have a question."-(I wanted to sleep it out in my bedroom)
My grandfather immediately hushed me, scolded me "Sir?! That's the Last thing you say to someone who is holding you hostage in your own house!"

This meant we were going to fight. Slowly.

The brightly-dressed, glitter-fool kids were setting up card play shop in the other room, bringing in drink and all.
I dropped the p'tit plate on which sat my cake crumbles.
"They're fools!" It burst out of me. I was pointing to them.
Sir. Heard it. I expected a reaction.
I didn't get anything.

So I ran like a bandit when I saw Kate running out, anywhere.
There was a guise of going off with her friend who had made prior arrangements, keeping the cool, making it seem as if all was right.

Though shit, we ran. Her friend was gone now.

We smashed, glided, disintegrated through three sets of garage doors.

Landed on a green hill.

"You made it!" She said, "I didn't think you would believe it!"
"I just went with my gut." I was breathing hard.

We must have been close, but far enough away to consider it an escape.

"Come on, I'll show you the lookout tower...."

"everything tastes right, permanent daylight"

2008-12-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

Cars have body parts and catch colds or die.
Friends are often temporary tattoos.
Snow melts depending on latitude.
A lot of girls snore as they sleep.

Do you have to be in a sort of exclusive club to be a music blog?
"Women" by "Women" is nice and messy and has little sweet spots and cold spots and secret spots and closets that you'd rather not open, and bits of stoned/happy things, a narrow flame in a broad room, bells, oh boy...and for such a small album covers a lot of ground. I was really down on the guitar as an instrument lately, but these songs make me think about electric guitars as being more spread out, textured and spacious than narrow and boxy. In fact Women is very much a guitar band, but they make it delightfully hard to figure out how many people are making sounds at any given instance.

Women has the same sort of structure that I'd like to explore with a small album. Pushing very different types of songs up next to each other and telling them to get along, maybe share some coffee, but of course, if they don't want to, move on to the next one.
-------
I used to be deadly afraid of reverb. I think I'm ready to go out for a down-town drink with it, granted it wears a big coat. Maybe that's too deliberate. I think now that I'd like to take this very straight-forward-melodically, type music that I have, and for the album, throw some fuzz and reverb and difficult things on it....not too much, but in the certain right spots. I also want specific, tangible, physical, human sounds on the album, things that instantly remind you of houses and forests and that sort of thing, without being extremely direct about it. It's more important to be able to TOUCH the sounds than to see them, for this music. Devin Mills talks of TEXTURE. We all pick up Mugs and touch the handles and weigh them and feel the ridges.

reebooting/buffering

2008-12-16T20:49:00.000-08:00

During the winter people start smelling better.

"I'm not a good conversationalist like this you know..."
"What do you have?"
"Oh, it's a sinus infection that went to my ears and then my eyes."
"To your eyes?"
"Yes, isn't it weird? Did you like the oranges I sent you?"

Soop.

2008-12-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

"No, no, there's cream in it, but it's not a cream-based soup. Don't tell customers that it's a cream-based soup, they will freak out and not buy it."

"Yes, I'll have a half order of the salmon "nee-koys-ie" and some pommays freetays"
"Oh, you mean the salmon nicois and some pommes frites?
"Sure...is that european?"

"Don't ask me about wantons, I am not involved in any way with wantons. Ask Rosie. Not me. I'll do croutons, but wantons...I don't know anything about wantons."

"A glass of wine to-go? Really? Let me ask someone...No, no glass of wine to-go. Sorry."

Grant's Place

2008-12-14T18:29:00.000-08:00

Grant’s place was either a library or a bank, one of the two—for furniture, people, an orange rocking chair for example, who by nature was a concierge. This room is blue or then yellow or the next is green (your) seaweed with trim of crème. For instance, Alex’s room was where I slept, or passed out, or woke up in, ok maybe three times—it was green. A likable green. There was a keyboard with no power cord and a cactus. These are the things that made me feel at home, not my home, but Alex’s home. Alex had a girlfriend from some western town and tended to visit her on the weekends.

Grant’s place was also falling apart in-to the ground if there was quicksand or mud or a swamp. So in that sense Alex’s room is migrating or vanishing or it’s a piece of a space station that’s falling off, but not back to earth really. Well it could be. It’s a frightening room in which to rub the sleep out of your eyes. Regard as I shake off dream remnants and jump out of there quick for a glass of water.

But there is a screened in porch at the tips of my toes at this point, which is the anchor. It’s steady because Grant put all the recliners there and people smoke their mouths and shirts there in the chairs and ash all over each other, but politely. It’s not something to yell at like the birds making noise or a jackhammer outside because if you do you disrupt the ecosystem, the beer cans and the disappearing garden tools. This is all very fragile, and fleeting anyway. It’s currently in the process of signing leases and packing boxes, in the future, which might as well be now. So one shouldn’t be a jerk.

Grant lives or lived with Kat. I first saw her being whimsical on a bicycle. I knew she was Russian because I asked, “Who’s that?” and the answer I got was “Kat the Russian”. Of course, I spoke with her later that evening and confirmed it. Kat and Grant are both equally European. This was confirmed by the summer I spent in France.

Devin informs me, while taking a drag on his cigarette and flipping the windshield wipers, “since you’ve been out of the country”, adjusting his black hipster glasses and squinting into the sun, ‘they have been having fights because Grant is obsessed with bicycles.”
This is logical. Bikes are wheeled puzzles and can be disassembled into boxes and cleaned and painted and replaced and reconnected and then ridden to the grocery store or maybe for coffee. One can spend a lifetime messing with bikes.

Today there rest three complete bicycles against the slanted porch railing, paint chipping, eating itself. Grant wears a white button down shirt, sleeves rolled up, Kat is wearing something distinctly Russian and decidedly cute as she leans against her man, his shirt practically unbuttoned now in the heat of packing and rearranging. Devin and I approach the couple near the front door and sweatily exchange some greetings, bob our heads to the songs, watch the screen door slap the frame…

And so it happens that later today Grant’s place is now not Grant’s place at all, but someone else’s place. Whoever they turn out to be, they have a new job— to tie ropes to Alex’s room, securely tie them, and pull together deep into the night resisting the schism. I myself have packing to do.

.

2008-12-09T13:17:00.001-08:00

Thin girl talks flies,
Bats her arms
Like flying. Spins
Pen-circles
In th’air.

Thin girl talks bristles,
Spits snow angels.

Squirrel flurry scatters
Snow flies, soft boots
Shuffle in, make snow cakes.

Honey feather on a hoot
Owl twitches, shuffles
Like a card back
Into the feather-fold.

Dog
Eats cake crumbs.
Coat’s dark
From rolling up candy.

Tree will shuffle
‘fore it dies. Dog will
scurry ‘fore it keels over.

Thin girl talks
About all this,
Spins snow angels
Into her feather coat.

Space Heater

2008-12-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

SPACE HEATER bleeps for its light to be lit
Or lights up all alone.
At four A am.
And turbines to a plateau, presses on, cools off.

Air dries (knuckles) with a whip-crack.

A zigzag folded cover is drawn.
The sun is shut, tossed out, rolled over.

Space heater bleeps itself and turbines to a plateau.
A telephone ringer goes unanswered.