In the Earth

Time to write something new. But there is nothing new under the sun. What I have done today, a thousand have done before.

Today I dug a square in the grass to plant in. I blistered my hand. I sewed my wedding veil. I spoke with my husband to be. I fed the dog, I cleaned the kitchen. I poured rum over raspberries and baked it into a strudel. I smoked a cigarette, I smoked five. I remembered when I played the piano, I made the bed, I read a page of a book. I booked 117 nights in a hotel. I tied a bow around my brain and gifted it to science. I hung clothes in the closet that he built. The dog snored. I drank water. Some days I do not. Today, I am happy.

Yesterday I dug in the ground, I sewed my wedding veil, I spoke ill of several people, I thought ill of several more. Yesterday I was tired. Yesterday I sat with an old woman; I sat with two old women. Yesterday I drove my car, thoughtful, in the rain.  Yesterday, I was happy.

Tomorrow I will dig in the sand, I will wear the wedding veil, I will remember to brush my teeth, to tell my daughter I love her, to make promises that I will keep to my husband. Tomorrow I will sleep on the coast, near the whales, near the underwater cities. Tomorrow I will be happy.

Out of the Rain

There were those peach trees somewhere to the left of memory, or to the rear. She run around in and through those trunks. And I helped kill her.

“What can I get you?” she asked. I looked passed her to the mirror on the other side of the cafe and then focused beyond it to the winder behind me. Behind me in the mirror I watch slim raindrops hit the windows then break into a million pieces like fine china later to reform into pools of oceans again.

“I want something so good,” I said. “Like nothing I've had before.”

“I don't know about that,” she said. “Possible conflict?”

“None,” I said.

“Bad men cutting down trees?”

“What kind of trees?” I asked.

“Apple trees,” she said.

“I was just thinking about peach trees.”

In the gathering gloom in the cafe dinning room commenced in laziness. Everything dimmed in the room but her. The room, all chairs at tables, and the stools at the counter began to fill up. Roasted coffee like acrid oil festooned in the air and it mixed with the revolution leading cigarette smoke of college students. I had a vague understanding that classes were just out or shortly to be out for spring break. I lost track of the days. Twenty years of losing track of the days.

“Peach trees?” she said. “Wild.”

“And do you think,” I began. “That if our lives were different long ago that we wouldn't be here?”

“Yeah sure,” she said.

“Really. If I had a loving family growing up, I wouldn't have strayed so far from home.”

“I'm really Russian, you know?”

“I didn't,” I said. “Far from home? Unloving family?”

“Adopted when I was three,” she said. “Why peach trees?”

“They remind me to be a good person,” I said. “Like scars.”

“That's weird,” she said. “Let me get out something to drink, I'm about to get my ass handed to me.”

“I think I'll just have some coffee. I just wanted to get out of the rain for a while,” I said. I just wanted to get out of the rain for a while.

Invented Introductions

The Letters of Wallace Fisher King

With an eye to the sun we ran to the sailors. We begged them to take our children, they could not stay here with us in this land of fire and destruction and we watched them leave. Our grief is impalatable, the bitterness of unripened persimmons on our black tongues. We are subscripted to follow the laws of this place to the letter.

 - From A Letter to Samuel Johnson Forward by Jane L. Jorgenson

Wallace Fisher King is widely known to be the foremost doctor of science in the 20th century . Awarded a posthumous Doctorate of Science from Harvard University, King brought us the most in depth discoveries of literature. He was unappreciated during life, and discovered only after death.

His papers are currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most apt description we have to this day of the life of Wallace Fisher King are his own words uttered shortly before death, which I will render here. We are fortunate in that King was a prolific letter writer and loyal friend, many of his letters being preserved in our institutions of higher learning.

 I was born a white slave, shouldering burdens not my own. Escape was paramount; returning home was a reality that existed only in my head, always longing for the land of my birth, dreaming in my own tongue. - Wallace Fisher King, Mt. Albane, 1818 to Maurice Capelli Samuel L. Johnson

Shooters

Todd tucked my hair behind my ears as I was leaving, with his nose scrunched together. Why do you have to look like Medusa he grumbled. He’d prefer the girl next door, come to find out. Put up, shut up. The Medusa hair draws em in. The Medusa attitude sends them running. He resented my Paparazzi status. He knew all the big hitters from the work he did and from growing up on the Hill. I used to be the subject of the Paparazzi and now I was one of them.

Colorado Boulevard was a hot mess, parking on 15th was a hot mess. Denver loves its Paparazzi. We’re just short a few car chases. We love to see our pictures in the social section, or read what our local Gossip Columnist is saying about what we wear.

Hanging out with Denver photogs is a unique experience in inside news of the social sort. There’s Bob, who has shot everything under the sun in Denver for 20 years. He knows all the big guys. We both do. We were both braving the one of the worst blizzard days in a year to go shoot people drinking wine at the Art Museum from diverse international and local and far flung U.S. Region.

The Friday evening tasting leads to the subsequent Saturday evening of wine, with an exclusive dinner and auction by Christie’s, complete with Italian winemakers flying in from the Adriatic coast of Italy to provide wine for the Saturday night dinner and some of the biggest banks in town supporting diversity of distributors, vineyard owners, museum patrons and wine aficionado’s alike.

Not a lot of take at the beer table, huh? Bob had sidled up to me, laden down with cameras. God forbid he only bring 2 cameras. Some of the other photogs were carrying around their umbrellas to put better light on their subjects, like some kind of random modeling gig gone wild, old women in makeup posing wildly.

I liked the shots of a woman in a beautiful shawl in her own quiet space under the DAM stairs, alone with her glass of wine and contemplation, a table of 500 empty glasses in front of her, so many bells to be played by so many absent monks.

My mind wandered at these things. Nah. I said, jerking myself back to Bob's question. I was cleansing so I didn’t taste anything. I’d come here from the coast, I was familiar with this schmoozing from my time in the financial industry. I’d tried on some Bagdley Misdha gowns in the certificate vault of a firm one day before the big Christmas party, we’re about the parties here in Denver.

You know, I gotta talk to you about something. 

Whats that? 

Bob paused.

I find you very attractive. I snorted and then paused at the look on his face.

I have a boyfriend, Bob. Yah. I know. 

We both raised our cameras at a woman passing by, laden with a giant wine glass and stilettos.

Hope she makes it back down the stairs I said drily.

No kiddin, Bob said enthusiastically.

While he may have found me attractive, there was no shortage of attractive women to admire.

You wanna get a drink?

Nah I said grinning, boyfriend.

OH yah, boyfriend. Bob looked bored. Not one for extended conquest.

I had found the fine art of managing the boys at the firms I had worked in since age 19. I took it in stride.

Gotta run man. I had taken to talking to men like one of them, it kept them at bay. Alright Dude. See ya later.

Driver

When she signed her maiden name, I felt the chains in my throat tighten.

She looked puzzled. "I don't know why I did that", she said softly. "It's like I can't remember my last name."

It was a progression of loss and in that moment I felt that it was beautiful. I felt wrong, I felt exceedingly fucked up, for thinking it was beautiful, but I had known her in her older years. Watching her regress, I felt that I was knowing her now in her younger days.

She was going backwards, growing younger. I was terrified to watch her go back further than 1985, 1972, 1950 and knew that one day, I would watch her return to the day she was born.

A Piece of Ass

Crowded around bridges and streets falling acid snow and gloom, we ask, why are we here? This is not an existential question. Monet sings quietly to herself, it's fucked up she says mid-melody. Sometimes an extra hour would be great, other times, not.

Why are we here?

It's all about a nice piece of ass. Really, it is.

Groomed around hovels, a century ago it was called a Hooverville, it's about sharing. If I give you some today, I say, tomorrow it will be your turn. But it's true Monet says, I like a nice piece of ass. How can you just say that? I ask.

Across the channel the young women sat quietly. A piece of ass? The luck of drawing the short straw. Incas and Aztecs produced ceremonies like this. Mountain gods, fire gods, slaughter for more than mere food but for ambrosia. Now, that's a loftier goal.

But it is all about a piece of ass.

She did something terribly human. Reaching across her back which was covered in sores, she touched a sore spot. It;s all about a piece of ass. The sores had been growing daily: white, pasty, pale and dotted with clotted blood.

She touched those sores and looked across the river to the barreled fires and the meat cooking and the bones burning. Burning waste, cooking tainted meat, she touched her sores and her eyes were to dry for tears. Perhaps things were different once before her time. It is truly a piece of ass, that is not the question. It's the answer. A piece of ass. A piece of flesh. A tasty morsel to eat.

Coffee Shop Intellectuals

“In the 9th grade I met the brass knuckles” he said, tough to the other guy. I had brass knuckles on my mind as they walked by in the snow, too late at night for it to be innocent while the panhandlers from the other side of the street crossed over to meet them. The barista threw them all out, DC style, she claimed - meaning, I suppose no counting the cost of ramifications.

I was growing tired of the pleasantries and the hipster hats, they had all been wearing them for so damn long. They all worked in the same place, year after year after year and they switched girlfriends like it didn’t matter.

I suppose it really didn’t matter and that was what was boring about it. They paid for trips to Europe and expensive dinners and young girlfriends with the tip jar money. They all wore Woody Allen thick rimmed glasses and they all drank at the same bar, with the occasional adoption of a stray cat to pacify a wayward, bored girlfriend who realized she was too young and their coffee jobs and beards were bound to grey.

I walked the thrift store and categorized the community service helpers in their temporary aprons in my head as robbery, sex assault, petty theft and watched three of them lean across the clothes hangers discussing their cases. The music in my ears sounded like shattered glass. Planes were delayed due to snow and still they kept making coffee.

I drank champagne out of protest and regretted my defiant headache the next day.