Birthday, Nebraska City


A light jacket does nicely. 
See the red brick school, face white clouds,
Blue sky: this is robust America.
Sixth Avenue yields to the Missouri.

Lewis and Clark were here.  I make a discovery:
Beer can in riverside thicket, unopened.
Pop!  Two quick, grateful sips.
There’s a cop car not far off.

On the sandbar, an older man fishes.  Beside him,
A spare rod, cradled in a limb’s crotch.
Offer to join.  Ask to.  Dare.
Share your English like a slice of cake.

Another draw of air-cooled Coors.  A party, unplanned.
Maybe I am here for a reason.
Water touches everything.
I cease to age in repose on the bank.


PUTTING A FINGER ON IT

Two nervous, excited people:
A:  Oh, hey, hi, how are you?!
B:  I’m good, how are you?!
A: Good, good, how are you?!  [shit]

The "family movie" didn't explain why our family is so difficult.  Not that I actually expected it to. It's just what I was wondering while we watched it at the megaplex on Thanksgiving with my little second cousins whom I never see and can't tell apart, between thoughts of wanting to spit in my sister’s face.

The good guy rode in on a white horse.
The bad guy rode in on a black horse.
The real person rode in on a zebra.

Rick asked my sister, “were you jealous that Becky was popular in high school?”  She didn’t respond.  I peeled paint off the walls with my eyes.  He continued, “Becky went to parties and boys tried to get her drunk.”  Lisa snapped, “I went to more and got drunker.”  She hasn’t detected that he was being disingenuous, that he came from the perspective of being an outsider in high school, too.

I was walking down the street and I got converged upon by a boys’ high school track team. Weird.  Kinda Hitler Youth-y.  Kinda hot.

I wanted to be on my scooter this Independence Day, and am miffed it’s in the shop instead.  My scooter, the thing I didn’t really have the money for but bought on credit anyway.  The thing which is designed for one rider but upon which you can fit a passenger as long as they’re attentive and slim and attuned to your rhythm and okayed by you.  (You know that it’s not gonna be an easy ride and that they’re going to slow you down but it’s worth it to have ‘em holding you around the waist and beaming.)  The thing that saves the environment, sipping a cool 80 mpg.  The simple thing, with four or five straightforward controls.  The cute thing.  The unique thing.  The second-hand thing.  The thing everyone told me not to buy.  The thing that might hurt me one day.

TRANQUILIZE.  You add the ‘z’ to form the adverb, and it becomes so hostile as to obliterate the meaning of the root word.  You can’t force someone with a 'z' to be tranquil, or make him have fun – FUNILIZE him.

Oral surgery dreams.  I am a Vegas showgirl who shakes her stuff in a dance routine.  Lots of feathers, but they frame my breasts, not cover them.  Probably because a few weeks ago I was in Vegas.  Great-aunt Sherry, who works in the pit at the Mirage, spoke so romantically about the owner-tycoon, Steve Wynn, and about the ‘gay spirits’ everyone has when they’re busy and humming at the holidays, taking people’s money and what not.

At the gym:  A middle-aged babe-lady next to me.  She had a short but stylish hair cut, a bare but striking heart-shaped face, a square bottom in black palazzo pants, and large, long breasts lounging in a white tank top.  As she used the treadmill she spoke to a young man.  Then she mounted an exercise bike and I identified him as her trainer.  He read her clues from a crossword puzzle while she biked.  She knew all the answers.  One of them was “a den mother starting with ‘h.’ “ She thought for a moment, then responded, ‘hully-gully.’  He was like, what?  She spelled it for him, then sang a snatch of a song in which it was used (it sounded sixties-ish).  He was like, okay…  She gloated with such grace.  Sweat gathered and trickled slowly over her collarbones, then sped through the flume of her cleavage.  She got the next clue, too.  I couldn’t hear it properly but he was like, I don’t even know what that word means, but it fits.

Rick told me that yesterday he almost asked me to marry him.  I should ask him when yesterday was he going to.  Because the first thing I did when he got home from work was pick a fight.  I assume it was gonna be before that.

Do you ever feel like your life is a novel?  For most of us, just an easy beach read.  And then one day comes the sense that things are drawing to a close – the important parts.  The climax is over.  You can see up ahead that there are few pages left, and you know, like most good novels, the last pages will wring you out to dry, wrench your insides, show you the past and shine light on the future.  Well, that’s now.  It’s gonna hurt.  We’re gonna cry.  And then breathe.  It has to end.  No matter how slowly you turn the pages.

Rick answers the phone, “Some office.”
Me:  What are you doing for lunch?
Him:  You gonna lunch me out?
I laugh.
He laughs awkwardly, like he just realized how dirty that sounded, and in his office.
Me: Did someone hear you say that?
Him: Yes, probably.  (Pause, I laugh.)  It’s ok.  You can’t censor yourself.
Me:  I know.  It’s just that everyone else does.  (Pause.)  You know that right?
Him:  Yes.  It’s bothersome.
Me:  I know.

Maybe The Thing will be resolved in a dream – quickly, completely, flamboyantly.  Life lived in dreams would be free of the sense of justice and entitlement that dulls waking life.  In dreams there is no time-wasting feeling that sense should be made, circumstances apprised and mastered.  Dreams are a diorama of dimensions and eras and geography and company.  Go with the flow.  Find your light.  Absorb the colors.

L.A. is the end of the earth.