My Boss has Karaoke in her office

My boss is really fun. She's full of creative ideas and always has chocolate kicking around her office. There is unflattering speculation regarding her level of productivity. But I have few doubts.

But this Karaoke machine in her office--sober karaoke is therapeutic. Possibly cathartic.

The trick is, I think, turning off your self-censor and feeling okay about public buffoonery, especially if the place you work is unkind to your gender and makes you feel rather demoralized but strong.

In fact, it is just this delicate recipe of conflict that allows me to feel as though Karaoke in the boss' office is something that I will grow to use as therapy. There is something so freeing and mood-elevating about belting terrible early-90s soul, doing both the boy and girl part badly, in the midst of would-be-business.

I faced the wall and the skinny black window and watched the screen and thought about nothing but me, in the moment, being anything that even resembles competent when it comes to the vocals. Belting, swaying, dancing. My throat got raw.

It was exhilarating like driving too fast crooning loudly to Green Day.

The non-present-just-a-wall-away audience empowered my noise. I let it hang in my throat. It felt rich like stout. Perhaps for the same reason marginalized populations assert their presence with noise, or ruckus, or passive-aggression; I did not apologize for my warbling. I did not even feel shame (once I got started). I just sang. Into the mic with the echo-box built in. With the volume way too high.

Damnit Jim!

1. I didn't even need to watch the show, "How to Look Good Naked," only see the ads to know that it isn't anything at all how I critiqued it.

2. I am a bad friend who is apparently incapable of making phone calls.

3. I still don't want to watch "How to Look Good Naked," but I somehow feel obligated to do so in order to engage intelligently on the matter for the sake of you, Jim, and for the sake of my devoted blog readers (you know who you are).

4. I have better things to use my marvelous brain on.

5. For example: ending sentences prepositions in: edit: "I have better things on which to sic my marvelous brain." Indeed. Occasion for much more interesting adjectives. Oooh goody.

6. Isn't that word, sic, interesting?

Being a Grown Up Sucks

Because it means that my life constantly exists on two planes: excellent and nose bleed.

These are the excellent things: I threw my first body shop party solo this evening. I did well, with cards. I am not a script-follower generally. I got a solid, positive, promising lead on some consistent freelance work today. I had two decent prospects at work today. I entered the body shop order in record time, and figured out how to order some stuff I didn't know how to order before. My sisters' friends' mom, Cathy, is a very, very cool woman, and I chatted a bit with her this evening. She is inspirational because she gets paid to do art. My dearest friends in the world, Noelle and Feike, will be visiting next weekend. I have been holding myself to New Year's resolutions and being proactive in doing things that will make me happier.

These are the things that cause nose bleeds: I am broke. Poorer than I've been since moving home. Patience, I keep telling myself, Patience! I need to buy new underwear. My cat, Oolong, is [in heat, retarded, sick???] and she keeps peeing on things. She has been living in the basement for 3 days. I want to take her to the vet, but i can't afford it. She needs to be fixed. I haven't had the time to write e-mail or update this thing in 5 to 7 days. All words for numbers ten and under should be spelled out, and I have screwed that up at least 5 times today, once in the e-mail to the promising-freelancing-work-guy. I am terribly sexually frustrated. The laundry is piling up, and I have more food in the fridge than I can consume before it spoils. If only unspoiled food could be traded for cash.

Often, when I am seeing the hardest edges of my adulthood, both planes are going breakneck.

I have no philosophical mental spew to soften these edges. I have no real idea of what to do except for to keep doing.

I get that Beatle's song, "Help!" for the first time, ever.

Look Good Naked

On the TV Guide Channel, I learn more about the ways in which I am horrified by current TV offerings than I learn about what I want to watch.

My least favorite listing is Look Good Naked. Presumably, this show has a how-to format. I would also suspect that its demographic is heterosexual females aged 18-25. I have this suspicion for a number of reasons. I suppose I could watch it and find out for sure, but I am fairly certain I would be disgusted. I would probably feel bad about myself. It would also take all the fun out of this blog post.

1. Men don't care how they look naked, their partners will usually accept them unconditionally.
2. If men do care how they look naked, they probably don't need any tips on the how to.
3. Fact: men have higher metabolism than women, their bodies are designed to retain less fat.
4. I like to hope that people of substance over the age of 25 have realized that looking good naked is at the bottom of the list of necessary attributes in a partner. Or, if it is important, it is less important than it was before the age of 25.
5. There are many, many more depictions of nude or nearly nude women across cultures and publications than there are depictions of nude or nearly nude men, which is how we can guess with fair certainty what exactly they mean by "good."

Here's how to look "good" naked if you are a normal heterosexual female ages 18-25.

1. do not, under any circumstances, have a baby.
2. always do it with the lights off.
3. if you must eat, eat only things that say protien, vegetbale, fruit or water on them. No more than 1 lb of food daily, fewer than 500 calories.
4. Drink lots and lots of black coffee.
5. Smoke 4 packs of cigarettes a day.
6. Never engage in activity that may cause bruises, if you do get bruises, you should do it in the basement with the lights off.
7. Wax everything, every 3 days.
8. Save your pennies for 2 words: Gastric Bypass.

Here's how to look "good" naked if you are a filthy rich heterosexual female ages 18-25.

1. Hire a personal trainer.
2. Hire Oprah's cook.

Here's how to look good naked if you are me,

1. be me
2. don't worry about it
3. have pride in your stretch marks and hips
4. eat well

But here's the thing.

Looking good naked is totally subjective.

The TV program Look Good Naked is one of the many symptoms of the ways in which we have committed, as Americans, to a particularly unhealthy desire for sameness, narrow ideas of attractiveness and resisting individual thought.

Fried Dill Pickles!

I'm making some!

Recipe to come.

I Bought Shitting Tea!

I was at the grocery store with Pearl, right? And anybody who knows knows that shopping with a 2-year-old should get people nominated for Peace prizes--the 2-year-old and her intense social and physical discovery, the umpteen million shoppers who believe that they would do a better job being a parent to your child than you're doing, the dimwit 13-year-old cashiers and the Senior Bagging Clerks.

So I find myself in the tea/coffee Aisle. My colleague, bastard-who-did-not-create-myspace-url, has been talking up tea. But the tea at work is the dime-store variety and frankly, I am a bit of a snob. Coffee is drugs, and I'll drink tepid bathwater if somebody writes coffee on it, but tea--tea is like English or something, right? Should be savoured (see what I did there?) and enjouyed (again, less artfully). And I'm thinking, gee. I could go for some decent fruity tea for work. I wonder what's on sale!

Why I didn't just stick with Stash, I shall never understand. Oh wait. It's because I'm a cheap-ass single mother with too much to do and not enough time.

There's a beautiful red box. It has a marvelous Eastern pattern on the front. It says, "licorice," "individually wrapped," and the best, "slimming." The combination feels right and a tantrum and 15 minutes later, I own the beautiful red box. [Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that I purchased 2 red shirts and a red scarf at the Old Navy a short 2 hours later?]

I am feeling rather proud of the purchase, I am thinking, "even with my toddler, I make savvy and attractive impulse buys!" Wrong. For so many reasons.

I get home and the toddler monster is napping. I think I shall have a cup of tea. A trial run.

I read the box. I notice that the fine print looks awfully fine.

As it turns out, the tea is an "intestinal cleanser" made as a "dietary aid" during "weight loss programs."

I thought slimming was a word to get monkeys to buy stuff like coffee is a word that gets me to drink stuff. Slimming always has fine print, like, must do 500 50 lb curls daily in order for this to actually do any slimming. Right?

Not only does the tea seem to intend to deliver exactly what it's promised, there are about 4 box-sides worth of instructions. I am too afraid for the trail run. All I wanted was pomegranate or raspberry. Licorice sounded good, too!

Don't drink more than 16 ounces of this tea daily.
Don't use if pregnant or nursing.
Don't consume next to a fella named Ron.
Brew two minutes during initial doses. Eventually work up to personal taste.

I'm not making this up. (except maybe for ron.)

I took the pretty red box to work anyway.

I made a cup of tea.

I did not, as is my tradition, allow the bag to steep during the entire tea consumption. I brewed it fewer than 2 minutes.

The tea tasted a bit like warm dirt.

The tea did, in fact, make me shit.

A lot.

It also gave me gas.

Moral: check tea boxes more carefully in future. Understand implicit oxymoron in "savvy impulse buy."

This Dream I had

First, the major players:
1. A boy I know, have slept with and know I shouldn't talk to anymore. We'll call him Dilbert.
2. His Girlfriend. We'll call her Angie.
3. A boy I know, have not slept with, and to whom am not sure I should have stopped talking. We'll call him Aaron.

Cameos:
1. My dad. We'll call him my dad.
2. A swell girlfriend of mine.

So Dilbert, Angie and I are conversating. That's right, conversating. As one often does in dreams. Angie is cool. She is talking about Dilbert's later-life circumcision (In life, Dilbert is Jewish). She says, "oh, he needed it. Like drawers need bottoms." I am listening with earnest intention.

Spontaneously, Dlibert breaks up with Angie and announces that he would like to do it with me. I argue and resist, since Dilbert has behaved so badly. And I am--in real life and the dream--in utter conflict over whether or not I should like him. at all. even as a friend.

My swell girlfriend calls and tells me that her physician has told her that she has every kind of flu virus in her body, and that that is very unusual, but he has not prescribed medication.

Then as suddenly as the conversation about Dilbert's circumcision began, Dilbert and I are having [very good] sex. (In real life, Dilbert is not much of a lover.) But the whole time, I am--aware of conflict and irony in a dream in ways I have never been before--pretending that Dilbert is actually Aaron. In my dream, that is how I explain the sudden transformation of Dilbert's skills in lovemaking. Aaron is almost certainly a very good lover.

This is when my dad appears. Somehow, there is nothing at all perverted about his appearance, just odd. He comes into the room where Dilbert and I are screwing and asks me to make him a hot sauce cocktail with the two bottles of hot sauce he's brought with him. He says, "take your time." He says, "don't mind me," and means it.

Then Dilbert begins to interview me about Aaron after my dad disappears. He tells me that he loves me because I love someone who isn't him. He asks a thousand questions that I am happy--and even more greatly aroused--to answer.

I wake up just after Aaron, as a floating head, has appeared to Dilbert (Aaron has no awareness of my presence or of the nudity) and Dilbert asks him if he loves me.

Aaron, of course, does not answer before I wake.

And now I puzzle over whether or not to break my fast from him and tell him about this bizarre dream. I think I shall'nt, for I fear rejection, and his fear.

Another Busy Day at the Car Dealership

I did the Cryptoquote at work today. I often play the word games in the Harrisburg Patriot and the York Daily Record.

The quote was, "I hate the Pollyanna pest who says all is for the best." Franklin P. Adams.

The quotation is divine because it adequately reflects my rare mood of misanthropy and laziness coupled with fatigue and genuine malaise. It is also divine because it rhymes a bit. It's quippy and clever, like Constance Crawford's poetry. Constance is a member of Pennsylvania Poets and a retired English teacher. Her poems are wry and feminist and they remind me of Ogden Nash.

Sadly, I can't find anything online that could link you to info about Constance Crawford or the Pennsylvania Poets--at least not the particular PA Poets with which I am allied.

The most annoying thing about Blogging is

That I formulate these marvey ideas when I'm away from this face-color-sucking screen.

The places I often come up with these brilliantly conceived mind candies are:

1. On Test Drives
2. When my hands are immersed in soapy water
3. While Driving

Why don't I get a voice-activated dictaphone implanted in my shoulder? Good question. My answer: I am not Bill Gates.

And Speaking of Bill Gates--I am most-aggravated that none of my particularly acerbic political rants have wound up here. They always seem to get wasted on my dad. Not that my dad's a waste. It's just, well, my dad is not the whole world wide web. He's just this one guy who always tells me "[I'm] tough" when I start to follow the logic of my politics of choice (libertarianism) to its nether regions. Being a libertarian is distressing and frustrating in today's political schema because it'd be like what happened if we got Hillary all dressed up in R. Limbaugh's suit and made him wear her panties.

I had this lovely little sauna-of-mind the other day about Marcy Playground. You remember them, right? That weirdo band from the early 90s that had their little pagan/wiccan/fantasy-readers'/trendily-retro songs. I mean, that's some complicated music! It's a little self-indulgent and overdone in spots. I think it came up at the wrong time. I mean, Radiohead hadn't reached its peak of pop-saturation yet, and I bet MP got accused of riding band wagons (man-oh! I'm a pun-ishing machine).

So I was sort of involved in one of those cult-like events of football fandom recently. As you probably know, Cathy Day is publishing this book Comeback Season, and not that I've been actively setting out to get into football or something, but I guess the notion that it might be kind of cool to be a girl who likes football seems a bit less offensive to me in my old age. I mean, I am softening. My ideals are getting all squiggley around the edges. Anyway. So I went to this restaurant with some of my colleagues who were watching the big Green Bay and Seattle game on Saturday night. And I wore green. On purpose. Because they were rooting for Greenbay. ?! I know. Who's eaten my sense of self respect and irony? Is this what happens to a gal who finds herself in a part of the country that baffles her? Am I so bored? Am I so desperate for peers?

Anyway, Cathy's MySpace made me remember the only good joke I've ever heard this blockhead I work with tell:

Q: Whats the difference between a BMW and a Porcupine?


A: With a Porcupine, the Prick's on the outside.

So I'm going to be updating my little linkeys over yonder. ------->

If you want me to link to you, I will. Please return the favor. If you've already linked to me, please e-mail me your proper URL.

Columns 2

on birthing

My friend the nurse recently became a mother. Becoming a mother is a beautiful, scary thing. I became a mother two and a half years ago. When I was pregnant, I read everything I could about the medical practices and procedures surrounding childbirth. I was terrified and knowledge is power.

I asked my friend where she planned to give birth. I'd toyed with the ideas of a home birth or a birthing center and relished the thought of a lively discussion of alternative birthing practices and the risk of commonplace medical interventions like epidural and episoitimy. She said, matter-of-factly that she would give birth “in a hospital with an epidural.” She stopped me cold. I do not dispense unsolicited advice, and it was clear by the definitive finality with which she spoke that the matter was not up for discussion.

But why? I thought. Aren't all matters up for discussion? I am not denying that some deliveries present serious medical risks and require intervention. I question the idea, however, that every pregnancy requires intervention. I question the purveyors of this thinking's motivation. I wonder why the fact that Labor and Birth were a women's affair, sans medical intervention, for thousands of years never seems to arrive on the table when such is up for debate.

My thinking is, why mess with a good thing? Any medical procedure, even the most benign, comes with its share of potential side-effects and risks. When a nine-month pregnancy has gone off dazzlingly, it is maddening to me that so many women embrace the notion that a doctor has something to add—especially when that thing comes with a laundry list of potential dangers and requires a knive, needle, I.V. or anesthesiologist! To me, even a one in a million chance of injury is too high.

We live in a culture that aggressively judges pregnant women who consume a glass of wine or anything caffienated in public. There have been court verdicts demanding that a pregnant woman act in the best interest of her baby. Why then is the same pregnant woman encouraged to get shot up with drugs or narcotics when she's in labor?

My daughter was born without the assistance of narcotics, knives or needles. But my physician was so intent on sticking me that she insisted Pitocin be administered to birth the placenta. I was too pooped and blissed out to argue, but several hours prior I might've argued that I know somebody who hallucinated on it and mightn't we try it without? Fortunately, I experienced no side effects with the Pitocin. But the next time I have a baby, I hope he will be born at home with a midwife attending. I hope to stay as far away from a hospital as possible.

I am by no means dispensing medical advice. Nor is my mind narrowed to exclude an opposing view. But my friend's ideas and unwarranted trust in the procedures seems to be pervasive enough that someone should say something. I am that someone and this is that something.

On blogging, for print.

I made a resolution about it and I began a blog. The third to be truthful. But this one's gonna stick. I hear blogging is a good way to get attention. Blogging is something I must do. Everybody I know has a blog.

Everybody I know has different literary savvy, so the blog content is as varied as my friends are. Carlos writes about his new son. Sharon writes about infomercials and pet peeves. Mike writes letters to the people of Brazil. Carolyn reviews books.

Still, each time I sit down to add to my blog, I can't stop thinking about how incredibly vain it is. I typed in all of the poems I've recently begun tinkering. I added links to my other online presences, my daughter's website and to my side job. Who cares? I ask myself. Why? What's the point?

The point is that it's now. It's here. And what's that old adage? Misery loves company? So does company. A blog is a way to do something you're not ready to do. A blog is proof that cosmic feelers seeking camaraderie will not return empty, it shows that other people like the same stuff I do. A blog is affirmation for my narcissism.

We got Cable

Yes. We did. So far, my brother watched most of Mission Impossible. I have watched one episode of house, and now am watching The Office on tbs. This show is pretty ridiculous.

Our Cable Guy, however, though terribly sweet, was utterly inept. A VERY nice fellow. But hopelessly stupid. Kind, but bad at life.

Bruce McCulloch says, "never trust a man who repeats himself." In this case, never trust a woman who...

Anyway. Since you're not supposed to trust me, I'm going to tell you now about my Cable Tech's Mac Faux Pas. Apparently, my cable tech is "not real familiar with Macs." He actually gave me the tippy-top-secret IP address, login name and passcode to allow the techs to register each new user. Then, he called at least 4 people to try to figure out how to configure a Mac with the system. I have a Gateway wireless modem. But because we set up a security protocol (or maybe for some other reason), the password for Airport isn't the same as the password for comcast. soooo, my inept Comcast tech went away saying, "I've done all I can do." Which, of course, he had.

So I ran an errand or two and returned to try something that it seemed that my Tech couldn't figure out how to do: use the actual WEP passcode to log on to the april line network with Airport. I did. It worked. And now I'm wireless. So are you.

We've got not strings.

My Mac is Durty and so is my mind

I need to dust and clean my computer. This is madness.

Pearl and I need to settle in to some scrubations.

The oil man is here, filling the tank. Very good, methinks.

I have filthy, filthy dreams far too often. I think I shall scrub my synapses.

I recently read an e-mail that I wrote to someone some years ago. Back when I thought I was stupid and a failure. I used the sentence, "it feels like someone is knitting with my synapses." Ooh I am a clever devil.

Ohmigod! I totally lost my Robyn Hitchcock CD

Have you seen it? Cute. About 4" in diameter, green.

I have several copied Robyn Hitchcock CDs. A buddy in Connecticut made them for me. But now I'm missing the only one I own legitimately. I thought it was in its case, and when I went to play it yesterday, it was MISSING.

It was the one called I Often Dream of Trains, and it was this groovy "special edition" with extra tracks.

Losing Robyn Hitchcock is like losing friends. I've lost friends before. But this week, I'm all finding them. In The Patriot News (Harrisburg's Daily Rag), I've been reading a lot about my friends in Horoscope. Yesterday, it said one of them might be braver than I am. Bullocks, I say. Nobody is braver than I! But I have relocated 1 old friend, and had satisfying correspondence with two others. These humans are all brave, true. But I am braver. The reasons are too many for enumerating. You'll have to use your imagination.

Maybe you could also use your telepathy and show me where I put Robyn Hitchcock.

My Ugly, Shitty Job

Today, my boss said, "You gotta sell thirty cars in three months, or else!" He said it in his usually perky, utterly unoffensive & wildly approachable tone, so I bit. I said, "Or else what?" Then he made a little spit-in-the-air and shoved his thumb over his shoulder. It was exactly the same thing my Grandma Flo did late in her life when moving, especially out of chairs, became difficult. As if the sound could somehow decrease her inertia. I think Gary Larson notates it thusly: pfffffft.

Anyway, so these boys are sitting in the show room talking to a very pretty woman who used to work here (gathering from what I overhear), and I'm here sending letters & working. Except for when I got angry and decided to make a blog entry. I spoke with my friend, Deanna, yesterday. She recounted, "Oh of course women are equal with men! Just look at Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But Ginger did it backward and in high heels." I'm wearing high heels today and a skirt. One of the mikes looks like he dressed from the laundry chute.

I think I'm going to get a job waitressing. Maybe I can do the lunch shift over at the Hamilton. Five hours a day, fifty bucks a day, five days a week. that is what I want.

Here, I might just as well sit in silence. Answer phones, make xeroxes, direct traffic. That is what women do in the automotive industry in South Central PA. This place has leapt across the threshold of chauvinism and landed enthusiastically in misogyny.

A word on those Orson and Edna ones

Poetry really isn't my thing, folks. But I dig these Orson and Edna people. They're just so weird. And they have a really rich life inside my head. I know Edna a bit better than I know Orson, he can tend to be reduced to a stack of stereotypes. And poetry is where they should live. Truly. Like, what would have happened if Barryman had tried to put Henry or Mr. Bones into prose? Um, He probably wouldn't have been the poet laureate, or be renowned for insanity.

If I want to be noted for something after my death, or late in my life, I want that thing to be massive eccentricity, insanity or substance abuse. I think Orson and Edna are more-likely to get me there. But most of what ends up here in blogland will more-than-likely be prose.

Poems, for me, are easier to fit into my retardedly busy life, and I find that they're also easier to work on in very short clips of time. Like blogs. Hence this self-indulgent pile.

The Feelies

Has anybody ever heard of the Feelies? I got this CD a few months ago at a tag sale, I think. Of course, since a lot of people who deserve recognition in the music industry don't ever really get it, I'm in the habit of testing out music I've never heard of before--especially if the price is right. I believe I Picked this up for about $0.25.

But this is seriously, honestly, the WORST CD I've ever heard. It's like what would happen if the younger, half-retarded brothers of Velvet Underground, Weezer and The Beach Boys all got together and engaged in a 10-track project full of too many totally boring bars of repeating licks. I should have turned it off after the first track.

It is self-indulgent.
It is boring.
It is non-memorable.

At this point, finding out the title of the album would require too much energy. But I'm pretty sure this is their only one. YUCK!!

Anyway. If you find it in the Wal Mart bargain bin, leave it there.

On Opening a Passion Fruit

The fruit was black tinged magenta, waxy outside like ink.
it felt hollow if I squeezed it. like dried orange. It weighed 2 grams,
two paper clips.
I pushed the knife into the fruit, dented before sliced, jaundice juice bled on formica.
When I halved it, it yielded to me sections the color of bile, seeded like pomegranate nestled in a golf-white hemisphere of rind lined rind, a perfect separation between white and dark: tangy, sweet, minty, tingling, each with a black pit like termite's skin or beetle's.
There were three prickled areas where the seeds attached their membranes. There were fine purple veins inside.

I teethed the seeds in one half, they juiced my ivories. The pits slid down, gathering to a knot like players on ice at a puck: in a place just below my uvula.
I saved the other half.

Orson and Edna epistolary poems

With Love, Your Raisin Muffin

Those years since then
when you smiled
down across your flat
brown nickel-nipples and
into me, when we broke
our fast with love-sausage and salt-muffin,

Have dreamt me imageless:
her in your mirror-eyes
when I look for me.
I am a steak of you that
offends your vegan.

I am a raisin of who
I was when I teased your
nickels warm, and you
trusted my safe
with your roll,
our mutual fund,
our fidelity.



Dear Raisin Muffin, It's Not My Fault


You know I love you,
simpering twit!
We swung once, remember?
I said I would love you,
we could fuck them.
I still love you, fuck them.

You're what's changed,
muffin. My two dollars is
still invested.
But I don't get my apples-peach-pear return.
You guard them love.
You stopped letting me see.

So I stopped eating meat!
You stopped cooking.
Stopped serving.
Stopped being.

Edna spent an hour in the bathtub.

she floats in the tub, her breasts erect, nipples islands. she feels her bladder shift, full, and press against her uterus. it is odd to hold her pee underwater. last time was ages ago because an older kid told her there was a chemical that turned pee red to catch pool pissers. she remembers being afraid of getting sucked down the drain as a child; compressed, tubular, and spat out into a world of mome wraths and scum monsters who dealt cards. now she reads a romance, watches the pages crimp under her wet touch. giggles at the thought of a wet touch. wishes for her own plastic lover, like fabio-on-the-cover. hopes for warm palms to cover her tits: submerge them in water and love.

Dead: haiku

Orson ate poisoned
chocolate chip cookie and he
almost choked to death.

Edna inhaled, deep,
blinked once: smiled, danced and whooped
boots are made to walk.

Orson spies on the neighbor in the shower

He bleats like a goat
when she takes off her
clothes, steps -- toes first --
into the mildewed tile box.

He streams like the Conodoguinet
when she lathers up under
the water's massage, hopes
she'll never realize he can see
through the sky light, thrugh
the fog, her dark layer of hair
trail like seal skin down her back,
pink roses bloom on
her cheeks and her shoulders
under the hot water.

he liquefies like burning tallow
when she opens her mouth and
it fills with water, spills over the
corners, down, over the crowns
of her breasts, converges
below her naval, drips down the drain
from a beaded curl at the vortex of
her thighs.

He hardens like brick when he
remembers that this is not his wife,
this is not his house, his skylight, his
soggy toilet paper: that he has to
return to Edna, queen of a chill
aimed at him.

Orson Likes Eggs Benedict

The way the hard-yolk-colored
hollandaise joins
the shiny canary of the soft-yolk

Pink slice of pork, tastes
vaguely copper, blood-like as the
muffin soaks it and he sucks it
off the fork at the diner.

The perfect fusion of flavors,
colors like cotton candy, like
babies. His Edna doesn't cook.
He can only be satisfied like this
away from home.

The Weekend Edna Turned Out to be Elvis

At the Casino, she glided
between islands, tossed
ones in the air. Met the hands
of a dark stranger, kissed behind
his ear on her toes. Whispered
come hold me tight, kiss
me my darling. Be mine tonight.

Tucked in her bra strap,
a wad of ones to fake-
out the dealer. She read
how in a story once. Thought
It's now or never.
In her garter, a Russian self-
loading 7.62 Handgun, no
bigger than her palm.

Thought of Orson only once, when
in the elevator, her garter slipped,
dropped the gun by the stranger's feet.
He thought it was sexy, gripped her
waist, toothed her ear, Orson hates
Blue Hawaii.

Edna's Id

Id was perfect until
she took that course
at the Community college.
Id is everything: the sticky
perimeter of morning's
mocha, Orson's
bald-spot-wink in sun,
her garter's red seam after
twenty-odd years, cellulite.

After that class, all of id
changed, moved up and
down and left her at the
bottom on her bottom,
wishing she still wanted
Orson's bottom
always cold and rough in her
hands at night, afternoon,
morning. His impotent sting,
vacant song. Id is what she
wanted. Knew she couldn't
get id back.

Edna's Brick Feet

Edna actually wears
a seven, but she buys a
nine-wide. She mashes
her archless, heavy meat-pods
into pumps and sandals,
the sides gap, reveal red rub.

At night she can smell
the day's wear like over-salted
cashews,dusts them with
Gold Bond Medicated and
remembers how grateful
she was when Orson, her
husband, was charmed y her feet.

He'd peeled her knee-highs
said her feet were
tender, womanly;
pulpy red toes, stale edges of
callous notwithstanding.
She believed him. He rubbed her
feet until she was cooked spaghetti.

Edna's Miscarriage

She sat on the seat,
felt pain like cinderblocks
scrape her innards,
let some of the mess out
of her mouth to splash
the floor.

More, she let spill
into the pink toiet water,
sound like state-fair
ping-pong balls in goldfish cups.

She stood, wobble-kneed,
looked down, thought she
saw an arm, leg in the black
clotted mess. Wept.

The pain ended like punctuation. What is
left are the cuts under her heart
from the cinder block, gashes
in her iron stomach's wall
that will puss, ooze, take
years to bruise.

The Costume Party where Orson and Edna First Lied to One Another

In 1977 they were young,
Edna did aerobics, Orson ate
Wheaties and yogurt. They had
matching tuxedo-striped sweat
suits, hers canary and his azure.

Maria, their literary friend,
invited them to a party.
They could dress as Billy Budd,
Ishmael or Bartelby, as Thoreau,
Whitman or Hawthorne.

Orson was Dimmesdale.
Edna was Hester, he grasped
her waist as they danced. She
whispered hot breath in his ear,
promised the unmentionable.

As if the ghost of the old-young
reverend breathed through Orson's
nostrils, he palmed his chest. Fluttered
his eyelids. Slicked his forefinger's
tip with waxed vapor from his ear.
Pressed it to Hester's cheek,
I'm Sorry darling. I need space.

A hundred years' indignant rage flushed
her cheeks. I'll not attend your sick bed,
Arthur. Nor any of your beds. She slapped
him. Removed his arm from her waist, picked
up her gray skirt and absented herself.
The guests applauded.

Orson's Schwinn

Dented metal
in the garage each
spring, when he gets his 60-
grit sandpaper and
buffs rust. Buys
paint the original olive
drab.

Remembers the first time
he waxed anything
was with his father, summer
of '66. put yer back in it, boy!
with a thump there, for
emphasis.

Thirteen, the Schwinn
sparkeled down the street. A
perfect tick of chain-in-cogs.
He saw Edna on a corner,
in her pink sweater, new
points in polyester bra. He
asked her to a cherry soda.
Sure she smiled. He walked
the bike beside her.

When he returned too late,
his father'd locked him out
so he slept curled in the space
between the rims of his felled
machine on driveway asphalt

Edna finds him
each June 7th morning,
resting under the
workbench, can of
wax open at the wheel
of the bike. She remembers.

Draft Pages 2 (ugh, very rough)

My most-recently-bethrombosised colleague was addicted to gambling. This is another symptom my colleagues view as weakness. But it looks to me as though the self-delusion in which one must engage to become addicted to gambling (an affair that is always stacked miles against the player) is of a similar sort to the kinds of lies and half-truths we must all erect to ourselves, our customers, and those that our employers actively shroud us in.
This particular colleague was so convinced that he would hit the jackpot—any jackpot—that a myth circulates here about his one almost win. Sal, this colleague, bought a Powerball ticket one day. He was is not a man who does research, or who plays odds smartly. In fact, his skills at assessing risk or income-potential are so lacking that he does not even attempt to penetrate the market the way the rest of us do, carrying with us a stack of business cards, writing letters, dreaming big of a day when we work by appointment. In the eleven years he has worked for this company, he has sold hundreds, hundreds of cars. He has never once followed up with a customer, instead prefers to skate those who “belong” to others. He bought a ticket of random numbers, picked by the lottery machine. And the next morning, as all sucked on coffees to ease our hangovers or our depression or perhaps just to increase the odds of having a heart attack and getting to retire early, Sal whooped with such vigor that everyone (not me, this tale predates my employment) thought he was having another heart attack. Rushing to his red-faced side, the smile that had paralyzed his face was broken by five words, “fuck you all, I quit.”
True, however, to Sal's unparallelled ineptitude (and simple bad luck), The Pine Times later issued a statement that there had been a misprint in the paper. Sal hadn't, in fact, won the lottery. His numbers, 24, 13, 46, 18, 9 were off by one digit. The winning ticket was 15, 13, 46, 18, 9. A sad sack Sal returned to this ugly building to beg for his job back. Since

Orson and Edna Holiday Poems: The Tree, The Eve

The Tree

A Stick of a thing,
they fought. Edna's fingers
drummed harsh on Orson's cheer.
She said, "Lover, let's be so Charlie Brown."
"I'm chilled. Let's eat." He said,
thinking how she'd forget and sleep.

Turkey hours later, he unboxes
ornaments to the hum and scrape
of her snores, weaves spare branches
to bloating with tinsel, bulbs. Hums Barry
Manilow so low he can barely hear.

Then a final injection-mold plastic Santa
in royal blue (makes Edna cross annually).
Orson decorates Edna last, he
lays a sprig of milstletoe near her chin.



The Eve

Edna slogs nog. Orson brushes
oil on something oven-ready.
He sips holiday microbrew.
Does not consider details.
Slurry, she asks, "What's your
resolution?"

Orson swells. Choked, he mimes
he cannot say. Edna serves
beers, studies hers without
noticing, waits. A timer breaks
her wait. Orson moves about
the stove.

He forks prok, a bit of kraut
points it in offer to Edna,
"For Health." While she chews,
she considers Orson's two full beers.

New Job for 2008

Despite my absurd ignorance about all things involving feminine-self-care that involves creams, make up, or other things commonly called "products," I have become a Body Shop At Home consultant. I have a website. Via The Body Shop At Home. You can go there and buy stuff that I'll get paid a commission on. It will be delivered directly to your house, just like any other online shopping.

http://www.thebodyshopathome.com/web/aline

That's the URL. Go there.

I guess since I'm not getting any younger, and as much as I wish it weren't so, people in the professional real world do often give a ?$*# what I look like, and since The Body Shop has really good company "core values" and are about the business of empowering people and women worldwide using fairly traded ingredients, recycled materials for their packaging wherever possible, etc. It's a good company. Nice to the world like Starbucks is. It is one of those companies I'm proud to be affiliated with, even though (like Starbucks) the potential to become an empire.

Stay Tuned for more stuff on the novel, and I think a poetry project I'm going to attempt to revitalize that I started a few years ago.

Yay!

Poem for 2008

Resolutionary

This is the year I'll divine with rods
get better at love, worse at eating
I'll make beelines for honeydew.
Won't touch Snickers. Won't snicker, either.
I promise I'll be good good good,
especially to my minister. If he again tells
Lorna Miller not to get divorced, I will
drive the highest road. We won't scoff over
bonbons.

Also, I will make a fish tank. The fish at
Walmart are sad. Their mouths say,
"home home home." I will spend
more time at home. No more two dollar
coffees, maybe once a moon. Cock Full o' Nuts
in the pot I own. For sure no four
dollar coffees, Vicki's Secret, Quizznos,
Gray Goose, Claiborne tops (even though she died)
or those Paige Jeans I've been dying
not to live without.

I will keep a journal: self-tabs. Next year,
I will know what I ate thought did on March 2.
Ride a unicycle. Make a marionette,
Volunteer, candy stripe, read to teh elderly.
Eat more elderly cheese,
Bleu. Try caviar, switch to skim When Maria
asks me to be her wing woman, I won't
say I know flying already.
Do what hurts. Use Fewer Band Aids.

I'll read The Unbearable Lightness of
Being and remember how daily how light
it is to be.