We
make direct eye contact. He asks “is there anything I can help you find”, and I
have more-or-less five seconds to answer before my pause is awkwardly long. Is
he being polite? Did his customer service instincts kick in on auto-pilot? Or
does he want to spend time with me?
I
had been avoiding Barnes & Noble since my sister told me he moved back home
and was working there. But things were different now. His hair was insanely
long, and I was in a relationship. His hair covered his name tag, making him
simply Mic. It had been two years
since he spent most of his (and my sister’s) college graduation turned around
to glare at me.
“I’m good. Thanks, though.”
I
could’ve said I was looking for the lit mags five paces from him, but I kept it
simple.…
Britain
Evangeline Pursley announced her presence by arriving late to the first day of
my father’s class, The Ethics of War. The
door slammed shut behind her, with her poise like a sail that caused everyone
to stare.
Her
voice came defiant, as she told him, “Sorry, big building, small minds and a lot of people who think they own the
hallways.”
My
father didn’t appreciate tardiness, and really wouldn’t from her if he knew why
she were here, but he didn’t know and wanted to keep his reputation as the
“cool professor.” He told her it was alright, “Take a seat right here up front
beside my daughter.”
A
wave of eyebrow lifted her face. “No problem Dr. Orrico.”
Most of my friends, even the ones who share many of my interests, hate the books I recommend to them (at least for the first fifteen pages). Probably because I have an unconscious addiction to the trauma of being dropped into a confusing situation. Something about replicating birth. When I first meet a book, I like it to make me feel out of place. I like to feel the structure or language push up against me and be totally unsure about its rightness or wrongness. Andrew Weatherhead’s latest book of poetry, $50,000, has made me feel what all my favorite books do. What begins with jarring confusion over form transformed this reader into a believer in the pace and texture of the mundane.…
Children thought the birds were falling off the buildings, and they thought the birds were on fire. ―from an article in the Washington Post, September 12, 2001
The first few leaves are falling now, our smiles and laughter echoing in memories, or how we were caught on disc or in a photo.
The unanswerable never stops— there, at the edge of the idlest thought: to jump from molten towers before both dropped as though just sprung from dust. While
looking up, children had begun to weep, thinking we were birds on fire miles above. Now grown, some bolt from one sleep: upon a ledge, narrow as a tightrope,
I sit on a pink lace sofa underneath the glint & hum of poorly lit chandeliers. Tucked away in the curve of a cellar cocktail bar, hidden in a one cathedral town, far from Manhattan. Sipping gin with lemon, pretending the tonic is turpentine or cyanide.
I watch a white wild haired man engage in conversation at a table for one— thumbs up, eyebrows raised, chuckles, & tears. No reciprocating smiles. He. Is. Glorious— in his storytelling to the vase of white oleanders; much more content than the couple setting two tables left, trying to find their reflections in martinis.
Billie Holiday’s “Take all of Me” is being sung out of tune by a faded blonde-haired, blue-eyed fool— you took a part that once was my heart… but it soothes me.…
Immediately subsequent to
my 31st birthday, everything went to shit. I remember the exact sensation of
the shrimp choking the life out of me; the almost tender way my throat began to
massage itself closed, little wiry threads of pain radiating out like a sun
coronet.
Just a few hours before,
I’d been in Versailles, in a pannier and a corset that gave me unimpeachable
posture for the first time in my life. I’d shook the confetti of a night
well-spent out of my big hair, piled high with costume pearls and real, cut
roses. I smelled like sweat, and the kind of sweet drunkenness that comes from filling
up on champagne. Kristine was asleep when I got out of the shower, collapsed
onto the bed in the next room, face down.…
