Accumulations

I watched CNN and thought I was watching ESPN.

And then I thought there’s not much difference, just a slight

gap. And I was thinking about all those men who have

explained to me the scientific reasons why women

are worse at sports. And I do think Don Lemon’s the most

attractive man on television. But I didn’t want the play-by-play.

I wanted the big picture, the 60-inch widescreen, high res

account of how we got here. How it is that we always have

oddly neat, parallel choices in a world that must be a bigger mess

than anyone can imagine, let alone discuss; all that recycling

waiting to be taken out of the ocean; all that edible food in 

dumpsters behind grocery stores; all those people waking up in

pools of blood one day, between jobs, with no health-care; a

father tells me he wants his kids to be winners. We are sitting

next to each other on a bus. He is telling me that his boys are being

set up to win. I want to know what their mother thinks of all this.

But I don’t ask, and neither does he.

A detached gutter

how, I don’t remember

but I know you pulled it off

and threatened a boy on a bicycle with it

I’m not sure what he wanted from us

but I thank you, nonetheless

because I was scared

I am remembering this as I am

thinking about our differences now

irreconcilable

it is a hard thing to realize

the relationship between friendship

and one’s fluency with a language

I have promised myself to write about my favorite memory:

sun coming in through the west facing window

in our dining room; we are eating dinner,

each of us in our chair, the places that were never decided,

they just fell into place, and I am eating meat and not eating

my vegetables, and my father will make me sit there and he

will wait there with me and eventually I will say something about

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and something will happen to the

vegetables but I don’t know what. My sister is doing her home-

work, my brothers are watching T.V., my mom is reading,

and I am just sitting there, and the light is shining through

the panes of a window in a house that I’m afraid

I’ll never see again.

Productivity

They asked us to move the fence another inch.

Neighborliness obliged us, but later I left a note

on their garage door, asking how they liked living

being already dead? They took it as a sort of threat

and somehow suspected it was me.

I asked if they’d ever read, when the police came,

Schopenhauer, or other works of philosophical pessimism,

and they said no. I’d never hired a lawyer and didn’t

know where to start, so instead I cracked open

Robert Frost and thought about how much

I’d like to know his opinion on all this.

On fences, that is

and how many inches it takes to make a legal separation.

Ninety point nine percent.

That’s an alpine ski slope

on a sunny day.

A blindingly bright percentage

of blonde people.

A whiteness that reflects

so much light it

reveals new shadows,

like vitreous floaters

in front of your retina

you never knew were there

though they were, always.

Mon cerveau est un fleuve

and again and again and again

I’m trying to direct it

like someone who’s always on the phone

who I’ve never not seen on the phone

who still talks on the phone

anymore,

anyway?