February 18, 2012

Pym on a Saturday Morning

Pym is in the yard, in the bright February sun, looking up to the porch with a gentle rebuke for the wasted booty—all the hydrangea branches and the peanut shells that failed to compost—he must enjoy alone. He sits like a sparkling pin affixed with a jaunty angle on a gown of moss and raw umber. His effect is to heighten, to focus.
     His is the worst kind of loneliness: pleasure that is not shared. He returns again and again to the ground, always finding something to lift with his mouth and toss into the air. Even Franklin naps inside a trapezoid of sunlight on the kitchen floor. We all ignore his bliss.

February 3, 2012

Windex Etude

     My mother had to have the radio on.
     It popped out of her luggage before the Sea Breeze, when we traveled.
     She entered any room as a surgeon or a teacher might have, her hands always busy pinching and shaping the space, modeling the clay into a stylish busta perfect room. Music and ashtrays. Milk glass candy dishes and plastic flowers. Side tables and throw pillows.
     She progressed across the floor picking up dirt, bent like the Negroes in old plantation photographs. I remember her in white cotton pullovers, the sleeves jacked tightly up her forearmsthe better to accommodate scouring the bathroom sink.
     Her slippers, always parked beneath her silvery velour swivel chair, napped the weekday afternoons away like a pair of cats. The placement of her cigarette pack and lighter had an enviable formalitya neat, happy decision: a couplet.
     She wipes the phone receiver, flips the calendar, and disappears into memory.
     Quietly, I rotate a philodendron's face toward the sun.