I haven’t written in a long while, but it’s never a bad time to start up again on this thing.

I’m approaching the point in mid-summer when the days join together
in couplets, depending on my changing work schedule. Fall semester
seems so far away, though I’m already reading the material for my
textbook heavy classes. I had opted to buy the cheaper online and used
textbooks earlier in the year, and hadn’t realized how arduous
scrolling the photocopied version of The Bedford World Literature
Anthology could be. The process was like reading in a dim light, which
doesn’t make any sense at all to me, considering their differences.
It seems I can’t set or reach any goal in this damned season. Days
are too hot and sticky to wake up and run, but I’m too restless to
sit at home and read. I spend most of my days at Shane’s apartment,
watching Allen drink his little bottles of honey whiskey and turn into
a blunt blob of funny. I could sit in the same position in his
unfinished living area for hours, watching different guests walk in
and out of the front door. Some of them stay, and some leave because
they didn’t find exactly what they were coming for, to find some sort
of thrill that wasn’t watching a drunken fool. But to me, it is the
closest feeling to pure bliss at this point in my life.
On this particular night, Allen was already passed out, lifeless on
the couch, with his hands still reaching for someone who had moved
after he closed his eyes. A few other people were in the kitchen,
drawing figures on a chalk board and smoking something that made the
place smell damp and musty. I decided to follow the smell, and see
what I could get myself into before I went back to my dark, empty
house.
“Are you going to take a hit of this?” Shane was offering me an item
that looked like a hornet, made out of glass. “I call it yellow
jacket, or sometimes Goliath, depending on the setting.”
I sucked in smoke, and didn’t think it smelled like the usual bad
breed of marijuana someone brought over every other night. I was coughing
and immediately spilled into my shoes like a piece of taffy. I laughed
a bit and brushed around into different conversations until I
mongered up the courage to drive home. I always drive straight through
Main coming home, because I don’t know the right direction to South
71. The long drive always gives me time to enjoy Kansas City. That
night, the police were out full force, roaming the newly paved, wet
streets, and each time one passed me a knot tightened in my stomach.
Goliath the yellow jacket’s haze followed behind me into my house,
making me remember my actions an instant after I completed them. I
flung my keys onto the countertop and picked up The Bell Jar, which I had
read earlier that day in one sitting. It was that book, and two other
films I had completed recently that fell together the same way with
leading girl character, put upfront as a clouded heroine, of whom the
audience  is wrong to sympathize with but right to like.  Each holds a
crazy woman, who is easy to identify with, and who drags deeper and
deeper into a catatonic state. Mostly, the women are sexy but
shameless, and appear in scenes with bright red lipstick more so than
those with their children. I know the “hidden message” in these. I’m
supposed to join the side of their opponent, whether it’s the welfare
of the children, or the morals of a trustworthy, family-driven wife. I
see a movie in which the wife commits suicide, leaving her family
behind, and I cry for her. Until I reach the lights of the theatre
lobby, I don’t recognize that other audience members were tearing up
for the children, or for the Leonardo Dicaprio husbands. All of this
is running a marathon wildly in my head just as I’m fingering the
cover of the book, and so I toss it along with my keys and pour myself
a glass of orange juice.
Just then, I remembered the home videos my dad converted to DVD’s and
gave to me for Christmas, so I pop one in before bed. The video screen
turns on with me opening my presents, and looking cross-eyed into the
camera hogging the attention from the other kids at a party. I stand
up, push and shove through into the opening lens of the
newly-developed contraption, and I stand up straight as if someone had
just put a ruler up the spine of my back. My brother steps in front,
and I can hear my mom mumbling behind the camera for him to get out of
the way. I’m not offended by this now, but it does seem strange that
every video is mine. My life was documented so precisely, and my
brother was a side character. He played a dopey older brother swooning
girls with joke house pranks and loose-fitted clothing.
I think of my last two serious relationships and how badly they
ended. I was always ending things with no warning sign, but also
dragging the endings out like the drawn out death of my leading
heroine. I then think of Goliath, and his 40 days of fighting. I imagine
myself being fitted for battle, in a bronze shield, with my hair,
newly washed and pulled back into a loose pony tail. As I’m standing
in front of my opponent I start to think I’ll let David kill me, just
so I can pretend my surrender.

The light becomes so strange when you move too close.
You become the buzz around the porch lamp,
bothering the swing, the trees, the porch itself.
But I know the feeling, standing near you especially,
when I am being drawn into fluorescent things.

Although, this light makes your skin bored
while the color inches off of you.
All the crevasses of your skin darken.
Color hides underneath the creases in your clothes. 

And you stand beneath white lights in a butcher uniform.
You tell me you do not eat meat. I don’t either,
but I’m still standing here buzzing because

We are drawn to dangerous places.

“Old Enough”

Paige Lockhart

I once read that the DOOR CLOSE button on elevator keypads is merely an illusion. The button marked with two equilateral triangles with their points facing inward towards a plotted line is only a pacifier. The sole purpose of its existence is to place people as pilots. We have to be in control even when we are much further from reality than we could believe. The button isn’t even attached to wires.

I’m walking down the sidewalks becoming embedded into the traffic like a seven layer dip. Me, Bicyclists, drivers, produce stands, then me again all evenly distributed for the perfect city-like appearance and mass produced taste. I only cover the smallest fraction of a taste-bud. I only matter for a decimal of a second. Walking down the sidewalks, I blend in.

Today, unfortunately, I am walking slowly to the dentist’s office. I haven’t been to Dr. Teeth in 42 years and I’m not joking. Doctors, all doctors, freak me out. Thank God I haven’t even reached the realm of a gynecologist. The purviews of those metal sticks haven’t reached me and I’m glad never will. Fortunately, my teeth aren’t rotting out. In fact I’m thinking soon auditioning for a Crest billboard will be a must.

The last few steps to the unfriendly building are the most difficult. Each step is shaking the levels of ground until my perception feels like a circus mirror. My hands are cold, collecting sweat, and all that is running through my brain are clams and fluoride. I’ve opened the door for at least 3 people, one even tipped me. I know this ordeal is ridiculous, but it’s my ritual for anxieties like these. The elevator is in view. The dentist is a normal routine- clean, rinse, dry, and repeat- it should be on every sixth month of refrigerator calendars. I’ve come to the realization that it’s the dentist’s poking around that bothers me. Dentists seem to play with teeth like they are the human marionette wires with each group attached to a major artery or nerve. Dentistry is an art-form, and I am a template.

I’m waiting until the business women and men file into the elevator so I can make my own way. As I’m walking in my shoulders drop back to my normal height; it’s their way of thanking the fact that I am alone and I won’t have to interact in the intensity of the tiny elevator. Turning around, I (out of habit) jabbed at the DOOR CLOSE button not noticing a woman sprinting in. Goddamn-it, she is opening her mouth.

“Hey, thanks for waiting.” -I couldn’t stop staring at her tits.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“What’s your name?” – I cannot stop staring at her.

“Helloo, really? You only have to deal with me for 3 more floors.”

“Oh, sorry it’s Steven.”

“Okay, Stevey pleasure to rise with you, my name is Emily.”

We both hadn’t noticed that the elevator wasn’t doing its job. An elevator breaking isn’t as dramatic as I had imagined it to be. She’s sitting down.

“Shit! This is no fun. Sit down. Come to my level.”

Kneeling into what could potentially be a sitting position, I can see that her cheeks are red, and I am staring again.

“How long do you think we’ll be in here? Should we find a way out?” – I’m not really worrying about getting out of here. This elevator is way better than a thorough teeth cleaning. I just want to know if she’s panicking, there’s a certain charm to a girl who’s in need.

“Someone will notice eventually.”

She is taking short breaths pulling out a magazine. She examines magazines like anatomy books, not even reading. She is just letting the words blend in with the diagrams.

“Really, you think someone will care?”

“Everyone cares about someone, even someone like you Stevey.”

I am becoming annoyed with her nicknames and false presumptions.

“But we are so miniscule. Right now cooking dinner is more important than us.”

She is flushing.

“You sound like an idiot Steven, completely. Don’t talk like that.”

I am really staring now.

“Emily, if you don’t mind, we are only nuts and bolts. We, you and I, are bacteria. You replace someone in the ground, who replaced someone growing into tree roots, who replaced the leaves. We are cheap fertilization.”

She isn’t even looking at me.

“I know someone is going to notice that I am gone, I can see why nobody notices you. I wouldn’t want to notice you. God I hope the doors open soon.”

I’m not sympathetic, because what’s the point? She will forget, and I am already asking myself what I’m going to eat for lunch, but I can sense by the way she’s glaring that she isn’t going to let me off soon.

“Okay, I’m sorry, but we disagree. I just think that I am the older model. You know? You, for example, are new enough, you get the job done. I, on the other hand, am constantly being reminded to train new employees. I have grey hair, therefore I am obsolete.”

She is beginning to stand up, using the wall for support.

“You sound like you need a new job.”

Jerking forward, from the elevators sudden movement forward, I am standing close to the door and almost heaving myself onto the door open button. Stepping outside, I’m noticing that my shirt is penciling my stomach sharing my ribcage with the office. Sweat is repulsive, and I didn’t even notice it was hot in that container. Thank God that whole ordeal is over.

The office is wide I’m trying to reach my entire vision around it, but I can’t seem to pull in the sides. I forgot how many file cabinets are packed away in these places. I want to turn and leave but what the hell-I’m at the counter.

“Sorry I’m late, the elevator was jammed.”

The secretary looks like a lunch lady from a late 80’s sitcom. She’s smacking her gum and I’m zoning in on her facial hair.

“Down the hall to the right.”

What an awful sounding voice. Her nasal passage sounds blocked.

Down the hall stacks of identical rooms fill my periphery. I reached the end of the hallway before noticing I had missed the room. Entering this room is teleporting me back into my childhood in a manner that I’m not feeling attachment to. I’m sitting in this leather death chair listening to smooth jazz and all I can think about is metal tools and sex. How fortunate that there are metal tools within my reach and my dentist’s ass is two feet in front of my face bending over the X-Ray machine. I didn’t even notice until now and I can’t hold myself from staring. Turning for a second I forget the face, but only a second. She flips through her legal pad and her eyes are widening.

“Steve! looks like I’m your dentist, and I’m in control now, huh?”

I cannot even begin to grasp this. This is more of a reason now, as if I didn’t have enough already to never visit the dentist office.

“Your mind is so polluted I wonder how bad that mouth of yours will look.”

“Hurry.” – No really, Hurry.

Adjusting my chair up and down, I think she is having too much fun and this is stretching out far too long.

“Higher? Too high? Lower? Too low? Neck rest? Too soft? I’ll go get you a pillow.”

Christ! She is doing this on purpose.

“Look, I don’t care.”

“You haven’t seen a dentist in 42 years. I just want to make you as comfortable as possible.”

She’s smiling. I want to change rooms.

“Can we just get on with this; today has been a long day.”

“For the both of us, I’m sure.”

Her new approach to our disagreements is obnoxious. She is the dentist, I am the patient and I know this, but I am old enough to be her father. I was pulling out my own kid’s baby teeth when I was her age. The poking is making me twitch, and I’m certain I saw one corner of her mouth curl upward. The rolling wheels on her chair haven’t moved since she approached me, and I want to know if she holds a legitimate concern. Finally, it’s over.

“Welp Steven you need a root canal.”

“Why?”

“Because you do. It’s the result of negligence I’d assume.”

She’s not being the least bit professional.

“Here’s the cut, I can do it now. I am free, and it will be free, but only if I am the one who performs it. Only me, and you have to do whatever I say.”

“Door two…”

I hate the way she is rubbing her hands together.

“Or you can let someone else do it. There’s money involved in this option, and you won’t get to stare at his breasts.”

That’s a valid point.

“Door three…”

She isn’t speaking.

“Isn’t there a door three? There is always a door three which involves a car and a beach condo, right?”

“no.”

“oh.”

This is tricky, This is the worst day I’ve had in a while. For some time I’ve thought that it could be impossible to live a day that isn’t mediocre. She’s throwing off my balance. But, I am retiring soon, and I cannot pass up a free operation.

“One.”

“What was that?”

This bitch…

“I want you to do my root canal.”

“Oh, okay then, lean right back into your chair here.”

After drawing out her words as long as possible she puts a mask over her mouth which makes me slightly more comfortable. Her eyes are grey, and I don’t have to associate them with that large gap below. Her eyes are surprisingly relaxing. I can hear her prepping machines and sterilizing something. She’s shuffling behind me. Emily is trying to be secret, but this day nothing else is sneaking up on me. This day is just a glitch, a mechanical malfunction. I can see her stretching latex gloves in the reflection of the lamp on top of my head.

“Ready?”

“I guess.”

“I want you to do three things for me. First, I want you to turn off your brain.”

The light above me isn’t on anymore and I have a mask on my face, which is better for the both of us.

“Second, I want you to think of yourself as a tree.”

I cannot stop laughing, and it’s not anesthesia. I’m certain this Emily character is a nut. Emily is the biggest nut I have ever touched.

“Steven, I can charge you for this.”

Tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, tree, got it.

“Relax, you are roots, you are trunk, you are leaves.”

I am laughing, I didn’t even realize it.

“Steven, one more time and this deal is off.”

At least she’s halted the throwing of nick names, so I’ll play along.

“Okay, I apologize.”

“It’s okay. Now, you are being fertilized by the retired. You are the retired. Think Steven, goddamn-it for once in your life just think. You are them. You are the malfunctioned. You are in the ground unable to move. But your purpose is clear, you have to breathe. This system depends on your skin. Cheap fertilizer is your caviar. Just eat and breathe. Deep breaths, that’s it Steven, breathe. Now, the third.”

———————————————————————————————–

Walking out of the office, all I remember is signing an appointment card in heavy black ink. Under the column “Date of next appointment” I have written Soon.

I’ve decided on taking the elevator back to ground level, as I’m breathing, surrounded by everyone.

An epiphany is not your 43rd vision
or the fusion of new cells.
The rewind, playback, loops of fuzzy film isn’t cinematic.

You can only ask for raw bacon so many times until
your server starts to wonder why you’re eating ecoli.

Experimenting with your hands in different packages
doesn’t make yoru childhood something it should or shouldn’t be.

Focusing your big eyes on the LCD screen instaed of crying isn’t insensitive-
it’s insensible. 

Somehow the wiring of your brain detached-
recoiled into a projector of worldly events.
You’re the human CNN,
the SherlockHolmes of first action news.

The hinges on my mouth are lined
with soft syllables
coated with your favorite vowels,
coaxing your harsh consonants.

My head is an evenly distributed passageway
through the ears and mouth,
fowl words inclued.
My round head-the center orbit of sentecnes.

The words erupting from the hole in your chin
are breaking up the aligmnent
of is and were

of fair and balanced. 

is a school of thought that is directed towards expression and preciseness of visual images.

It is a type of thought that uses exact words to clarify, not decorative ornamental extra words-just direct precision of poetry. 

Ezra Pound wrote “In a Station of the Metro”

“The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.”

I experimented with Imagism for a class and this is what I came up with.

City-
A skyline emerging
from whispering
to bustling
in the rush of an hour.

Storm-
Deracinating roots
into circle retreats-
while something light as grass
stands its ground.

Goodbye-
No other conjunction
could contain
so much range.

School-
Fingernails to chalkboard
textbooks to the ground
ready, set, gone.

Love-
Repeated through lips,
pens,
scented notes.
Though useless unless felt.

Hate-
One syllable
of fingernails dragging forming fists.
though necessary to contempt
the action at firsthand.

Truth-
When heard
it can mend
seven years worth of mirrors.

Co-dependence-
The couple
everyone wants to met,
but cannot-
looks comfy,
but smug

Leader-
Wearing wolfskin-
writing war notes.
They don’t
show their faces
in candlelight crying.

Pretty-
Her coffee filled
incase
her manager calls.
She sits sketching so someone will see.

Safety-
No bulletproof vest
can protect
the decaying atmosphere.
Buckle upwards.

Wise-
Is not old
nore young
nor bold
nor shy,
but aware. 

                                           Start enjoying the weather!

                                                        -Paige

Hello everyone, this is Brad. Paige was kind enough to let me write for her little blog here. Here’s a story I’ve been working on for a while.

By the time I’d scrambled almost a whole carton of eggs, toasted and buttered half a loaf of bread, and fried a package of bacon, my husband finally stumbled groggily into the steaming kitchen. His newspaper, which I’d fetched from the front porch, slapped down on the table while he poured himself a cup of coffee that’d been warming on the burner for about an hour now. Just as I placed a plate of breakfast on the table in front of him, a massive cacophony of screaming, door-slamming, and fist-pounding. I jogged upstairs to find two of my kids, Jordan and Bailey, pounding desperately on the bathroom door.

“Sydney’s been in there for like an hour!” Bailey whined, crossing her arms over her High School Musical pajama top and huffing out one of those classic adolescent sighs.

“I’m almost done!” a muffled scream called out from the bathroom. “Just give me a couple more minutes!”

“First off,” I began, “I know for a fact that none of you have been up for an hour, and second off, just be patient.”

“Moooommmmmm,” cried Jordan, clutching his crotch, “why does this house have only one bathroom? Sydney and Bailey just hog it all the time. I really have to go!” He did this little hopping dance that young boys love to do when they have to go to the bathroom.

I knocked on the door just as the handle turned. A cloud of steam drifted out, and along with it a haze of hairspray and cheap department-store perfume. A screaming fit erupted between the children, which I figured I’d let them work out on their own. I went back downstairs and finished putting out plates for them on the table. My husband stayed absorbed in the paper.

“Hey, Anna, just letting you know,” he said, pausing to take a quick nibble from his toast, “I’m going with the guys from work to The Elbow Room tonight to watch the game. Do you think you’ll be able to pick up Sydney from volleyball practice?”

“I thought her practice was cancelled tonight,” I responded.

“No, that’s next Tuesday. Or at least that’s what she told me last night.”

“Well, what time are you going?”

“Right after work.”

“Would you be able to pick up Jordan from piano then? It’s right on your way.”

“I’m going right after work, I don’t think so.”

“Joel, come on, we have this argument every time you want to do something like this. Please, just run him home, bring him to a friend’s house, I don’t really care. It’s on your way.”

“Why are you suddenly so busy you can’t do it yourself?”

“Because I have to pick up Jordan from school and take him to his lesson, then go pick up Bailey and take her over to her Rachel’s so they can work on their science project, or something, and at some point I have to go pick up dinner, and we all have to eat it – together, you included.”

“Why don’t you ever cook dinner anymore? You always bring home that take-out stuff. It’s starting to get a little old.”

I didn’t fault him on his infuriating circular logic, but instead responded, “I’ll fix whatever you want tonight if you just go pick up Jordan.”

He got up and straightened his tie. “Grill up some t-bones,” he whispered in my ear, “and I’ll pick up all the kids for a month.”

With that, he pecked me on the cheek and I ran a hand along his shoulder. Just as I watched his sedan pull out of the driveway, the air filled with the thumping of the kids clambering down the stairs. Per the norm, chaos erupted with the children attempting to shovel as much food as humanly possible into their mouths in as little time as possible. Sydney dropped her fork first; it clattered against the plate, like a bell reminding the other children that she’d beaten them. She was just in time to run out to her bus to the middle school.

Before sprinting out the door, she asked, “Are you picking me up from volleyball tonight or is dad?”

“I am,” I responded, hesitantly. “At least I think I am.” I trailed off.

The other two kids were still plowing away at their breakfast plates, competing to see who could clean their plate the fastest. Bailey won, slamming her fork down to the table triumphantly before scampering out of the kitchen. Jordan was soon hot on her tail, chasing her through the living room.

“Hey guys,” I called out to them, “the bus will be here soon, are you ready to go?” I got no answer, so I sat down in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee. It wasn’t very good. Looking over the newspaper that Joel had left on the table, I noticed in the entertainment section that Hannah Montana was starting a new concert tour, and would be in our city in a few months. I made sure to throw it away before the kids saw it, although I was sure that they’d find out one way or another and make me drag them to see it.

The sounds of screams and feet-pattering amplified as Jordan and Bailey tore through the kitchen, whipped around the table, and then ran back into the living room. Without dropping the paper or coffee, I yelled, “You’re going to be late!” With that, they dashed to the front door, backpacks in tow. The bus coughed up to the door, and the kids split as soon as I could get the door open.

“Have a good day!” I called out, but they didn’t notice.

Before I even had a chance to start going stir-crazy in the house, I decided to pick up stuff for dinner at the grocery store. The place was surprisingly packed for nine o’clock in the morning. I wandered down the aisles, not searching for anything specific, just gazing deep into the heart of rampant, necessity-based consumerism; all of our suburbanite woes answered in increments of two for five dollars, buy one get one free, save fifty cents by joining our club. Here I was buying love by the pound, standing there at the meat cooler like some horrendous peep show. I picked up a package of t-bone steaks. I ran my finger along the cool cellophane, edging along the bone. I poked into its firm flesh and watched the watery blood – or maybe it was bloody water – ooze out from its pores and fill up its little styrofoam casket.

The cars rushed past along in their little circadian parade on the six-lane road outside the grocery store. I watched them, slightly envious of that overarching cyclical control they had in their lives. I secretly wanted to be a perky little secretary behind a big oaken desk plastered with photos of my children, swiveling around in my big padded chair with the little lever that went up and down underneath and startled me every time I leaned too far back and felt like I was going to fall. I could almost feel my hair falling gently over my shoulders as I released my tight chignon and whipped my glasses across the supply closet as my beet-red, sweaty, horny, sixty-something, overweight, gray-haired, cheap-suit-wearing boss thrust his tiny, half-flaccid member up my short pleated skirt. I could hear him wheezing as he thrust into me and my back slamming some filing cabinet against the wall. I could feel his stubble scraping my cheek, his clamoring hands groping me like an octopus, squeezing my breasts like tubes of toothpaste as I clawed into his back.

A car pulled out to make a right turn too soon, and another coming from his left smashed into the front end, shattering the headlight, the offending vehicle wrapping its fender around the front corner of the other. Airbags burst open, windows crashed to tiny glass pebbles, drivers whipped around, and a vicious sound filled the air. The sound was soon replaced by that of a chorus of honking horns of drivers too impatient to ignore the damaged vehicles in the middle of the road, the drivers of which had proceeded to begin a shouting match. No one was dead, nothing was in flames, therefore this accident was nothing but an inconvenience for everyone involved.

At home, I put the groceries in the fridge and slumped into the overstuffed recliner in the living room. Joel would kill me if he ever figured out I sat in his throne of chauvinism while he was out. I flipped on the television, which was tuned to home shopping for whatever reason. I watched some fifty-year-old women shill bad sweaters for roughly half an hour, and began to develop Stockholm syndrome. The more I watched, the more I became transfixed with these gaudy fashion abominations. Perhaps it was the grating, incessant voices of the hostesses, or perhaps the flashy, tessellating patterns hypnotized me, but I had this uncontrollable urge to whip out my credit card and dial up the 1-800.

At this point, I realized I’d become the most stereotypical housewife in history. Is this what I’d become? So complacent, such banal feminine figure, willing to buy into the collective desires of those with less willpower and taste than me. Is this what those first-wave feminists fought for? Did they march on Seneca Falls, bras aflame, for us women to enslave ourselves to our commercialized, societal-based fever visions of true female equality? What would Susan B. Anthony say?

I sat on that thought for a minute, trying to remember exactly what Susan B. Anthony did. The only thing I could think of was that there used to be a dollar coin with her face on it. I kept trying to use them to buy Diet Coke from vending machines thinking they were quarters.

-brad

What bust size is Earth?

A Double D or maybe three need to be placed-

to circumnavigate her Breasts.

What section of a store would you look to find,

in petite or plus, possibly maternity?

Looking through the rack-

reasoning small,medium,grande-

grimacing at unorganized racks.

And her stomach, what shape?

Is she insecure after eating, polluted and gassy;

which circulates in the blue matter of her brain

How does her tongue move

when french kissing

to make the meteors melt

before they even hit the surface?

-I would really like to know-

I would assume she is alright with Antarctica’s end-

not too big, not too small, accentuated with pocket emblems.

I would guess she has bad hair days, but reaches inside her mouth-

fingers picking up spit slicking it back.

When two regions don’t communicate-

Her exterior never portrays.

Earth has the confidence of 365 days.

-Paige 

10 lines between a tic

4 hours in a shift

Sand through two slabs of glass-

Not near enough time in a day.

—

“I’m tired of feeling old.” Margaret was the center piece of women at the Old Tea Room in Eudora. Every Thursday was the same, and she was halfway in the cabaret dress up station at the novelty tea joint. Pointing with a boa towards the ceiling, Margaret was being dramatic.

“If a tree is allowed to count its age by rings then by god, I will count mine by wrinkles, and I have twenty four wrinkles if you were wondering.”

“You missed one.” One of her audience members leaned over.

“What are you talking about, I check every morning.”

“Your mouth!” They were all shrieking with laughter. Margaret was not.

“If you think that is funny, you are so clearly undeveloped. Wrinkles are a sign of maturity, not gained years. Each one of my wrinkles is filled with ideas you wish your feather boa caboose could dream of, and if you say my mouth is one than it’s the smartest of them all!” She took a sip of her tea and pouted out her chin. 

“Say, who’s going to pick up the check this time by the way?” Margaret had been left with it the past three thursdays.

“The girl with the lowest birth date… Margaret?”

Margaret looked down at her watch and smoothed over the feathers with her hand. She took out the money in her pocketbook, ruffled through it and left a coin dated 1931.

What a proud year for a new loud wrinkle to start branching out. 

—

Squirt, fold, squirt, fold, squirt, fold “I hate my job.” Jackson was whining in his accidental nasally voice.

“I’m working right next to you, I know you hate your job you tell me every day! I know squirting refried beans from a watery pump isn’t your idea of big bucks or big times, but you’ve been here for two months so either get out or every other squirt should fill your mouth.”  Rick was barely there and concentrated hard on the task underneath him.

“Move down the assembly line?” 

“Uhh, Hello? I’ve been working tortillas for fifteen years, I will not move my position just because you want to exercise your freedom of speech. You are refried beans. I am tortillas. I win by default. Now please, I like pressing tortillas they are easy and I do not need a college degree. I do need hands and you’re lucky I don’t need ears.”

“Well I am younger than you, you know what that means?”

“You still get money from your parents?”

“I will live longer.”

“You call this a life? Squirting beans into a taco shell is one hell of a life.”

Jackson had recently dropped out of college. straining for four years is a decision he reconsiders after 15 squirts. Who knew commercialized mexican food was diluted? The same who know college texts, oratories, and money all too well. Next semester couldn’t come soon enough.

—

The bell rang in medias res of Professor Delone’s lecture and the students choreographed their escape. As the figures in front of him scoffed and dragged up the stairs he put his handkerchief to the sweat droplets surrounding his brow. “Not enough time in the day.” he sighed and joined his thumb and index finger pairing around his mustache. “The time in my two hour class is no time at all. I need countless Mississippi’s, I’ll have to get on that.” Still mumbling he carried his head to his chair and started to sulk. Thoughts exhaled and moved out as his posture got worse.

“Ephemeral class bells, ephemeral students. College is great. Youth is forever.” His voice had become taunting to nobody in the room but himself.

The computer desktop displayed a foggy mountain template on the projector above his head, where his thoughts started drifting.

“Life and beauty are ephemeral, and rarely grown into. My routine is unhappy, my class is lacking, I am lacking; but what?”

Driving to pick his wife up from the tea room he counted the folds in his hands, each one telling a short story worth telling. His wife hurried to the car.

“You won’t believe today! Frank, I’m afraid I’ve grown old.”

“I know dear, isn’t it wonderful?”

“It is fast, all of this, and you get as slow as a slug.”

Science Sunday sounded with the air conditioner.

“You don’t shrivel at salt do you?”

“Ha, me? My cholesterol could wipe those things off the earth.”

“Than be quiet and hold my hand.”

The car accelerated, Margaret let out a shrill laugh and Frank traced the lines of her palm.

—

On the swings during the day’s second recess Carla pushed her legs forward and felt her stomach bounce for an ounce of a second. Staring over at the eighth graders with their made-up faces she sighed.

“I wish I could be all grown up.” The boy next to her was carefully planning the direction of his feet so that he wouldn’t have to face the embarrassment of swinging the same tempo as her or “getting married”  as the kids say.

“Why’d you like to be like them huh? They are no fun at all.” He was higher than Carla now, and proud of the fact.

“Being a kid is no fun. We can’t walk to the Dairy Queen by ourselves, or walk to school, or even get married or nothing. Being a kid stinks.” Her legs pumping and her mind jumping she stared at the circle of girls and overheard their conversations.”

-“So, did you like hear what Trey said to me? He was like you have the sexiest waistline and I want to take it to prom!”

-”What did you say?”

-”Yes!!”

Giggles and hair-flips and clothing adjustments ensued.

Clara looked at Trey who was higher in the swing seat than before.

“Trey do I have a cute waistline?” 

“I don’t know, I mean you’re okay. You like swings, you eat ice cream with me, we go to the pools in the summer. You are a girl. I am a boy. We are kids. It would confuse me if we were older right now. I mean c’mon don’t you wanna play Harriet the spy for another year before it’s boring?”

“Can we play it now, Trey please please please please please please can we play it? Please? Can my code name be red? Can yours be spider? I’ll go get my Talkgirl. We can make ourselves sound like chipmunks and fat people…Please?”

“Okay, I’ll go get my notepad.”

The two didn’t notice that they were talking face to face, swing to swing, pump to pump.

“Hey Trey?”

“What?”

“We’re married.”

“Nu-uh, too soon!,” and the jumped to the ground and walked towards the pavement.

— 

I don’t necessarily believe in time. That was my basis for writing these, but they didn’t turn out the way I expected them to (not in a bad way). I’d much rather count my life with feelings or light or something. It’s so weird because we all have that sort of digital clock changing in our head and sometimes I’ll be counting 1 mississippi 2 mississippi, which is just weird. I guess time is effective for it’s purpose, people aren’t late, unless fashionably. I just can’t seem to feel like time is just a dumb concept stronger than people but I’m probably really wrong, because without time would just be weird. I just hate always seeing 9:32 on the clock all the time. See! you can’t even talk about time without using time in the context of a different sentence in which you aren’t actually referring to time itself. Okay so I wouldn’t have won the prosecution of time case, but time really isn’t real but life sort of is sometimes so I’d rather have a personalized internal clock than a neon-bulb digital alarm clock playing A.M. radio every time I go on a fishing trip with my father. The clock is telling me it’s 12:10 and I should probably get into bed so I can wake up in time for work, work my four hour shift, and then leap back into my rhythm, my tics, and my on the dot 4:00 hiccups. I might tell the hour by the hiccup, but the big hand will be on the 12.

ByeByeByeBye-Paige 

Because I hate hippos.

Ode to Hippos.

or quite the opposite.

Resting kins in the sub-saharan nuclear.

Hip, shake, decaynine.

Something so fantastical, someone so wet. Some Things…

are allowed to hold grudges.

The chameleon sea horse,

barrels down the mud,

only to blend in.

Only to pig feed.

A good reputation

for the unreachable speech.

Feet-too-big,

for ballerina shoes.

Impostor, oil salesman, fraudulent

Whatever you’d like to call it.

The hippopotami is too far gone to be congenial. 

I haven’t been able to write lately mainly because I’ve been so unbelievably busy, but it could be the melatonin I’ve been taking.Lately I have been on this weird sleep schedule that doesn’t seem to coincide with my actual schedule so I started taking this sweet sleep aid Melatonin. Awesome dreams.Me, shooting Ron Paul…Me, zombie, lysol spray?and a lot more lucid dreams than I could want.And as long as i don’t take 100 a day my ovaries are doing just fine (well rested).But, I’ve been working on some poetry here and there.dotdotdotdotdot. 

“An elegant not-so-fun Dinner party”

I use Thyme to counteract this taste lathered on my tongue.

And rosemary could be used to carry the look

This dish dishing on plates doesn’t taste to die for

But all of my effort has been poured into the sauce for my dinner party.

I constantly pour glasses half full.

And place the forks towards the precise.

Somehow the clinking of the crystal glasses gives me giggles.

Napkins creased till they cease to crumple.

I am the happiest I’ve been in years hosting a dinner party,

to hear babbling of towns I once knew.

Although traveling would be nice,

I wouldn’t serve others

The way my dinner parties serve you.

“4/4 Measure”

 The circadian rhythm

The beat beat and yawns.

The turning of a light switch

Is sometimes interrupted

The gap is bound to be placed

On an inconvenient date

Because the events in the lives of our own

Will become a broken morass.

It wasn’t a good day to bomb Pearl Harbor

There was a slight overcast.

If it would have happened any other day

I could’ve been prepared.

I could have stored canned foods

Hide them in my cellar.

And I would be aware of this change of tempo.

I can change it into the climax of this poem.

The circadian rhythm

Can’t be accurately depicted

As a rhythm

But more

As a

                        Progression. 

 Those are a bit old, but I needed to update…

PAIGE.