They drive the company car on back roads through small towns and established pastures and baron’s estate turned boarding school and old colonials with carriage houses while barns line curving country roads or represent upon the hummock. Cellphone’s company courtesy, with career intact recreation weekends. Not like when you were younger. She drives because he’s not on the insurance. Recently rained roads wet here dry in spots, steaming. Trees their first green. Woman gets five days paid vacation. His car dead for months. Good thing she got the job. Across the Connecticut River stretching farther west. They travel to the highest and most beautiful waterfall in the state, in all the guidebooks, every resident homage. Week before Memorial Day villages fly flags on approaching and departing telephone poles, civic buildings, banks, bar flies. “Man, this is going to be a great weekend.” Gear in back, free-standing tent stove candles tarp been-a-wet spring and a book of short stories. Food packed right, water bottles hiking boots. They’re going to the grandest waterfall in the state, then climb the highest mountain, tucked into the corner of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. Cruise past homes that demand desire. Dream share aloud her dreams and he couldn’t agree more. “Look at that one,” they stream past hilltop mansion with boulder meadow views. “That’s where I want to live,” and they kiss. You reach the tri-corner region and climb to Mt. Washington township, into the state forest, through wide valley mist, sign looms out of nowhere the height of land Bash Bish Falls. Fast alertness fog stirs, now allowing the ridge, now-enshrouds, thin veil moisture turmoil. But you peer into hatcheted hills, hear the roar, and find the stream. Soon wet granite and fantasize about diving into that clear, inviting, cold, liquid. Spray powered by falling water; rumble surrounds tossing white. Removes glasses; places in his pocket; leans over carefully. Before lights’s fade they set up camp on the New York side, in Taconic State Park, neighboring diving platform and ranger wears a large-brimmed hat, tanned face, skin wind-worn outdoors in that way. She builds fire in stone and they situate under drizzle. Read by candlelight. Of course the next day they hike Mt. Everett, no one else around, trail beyond brook meets the Appalachian. Alone early Spring mountain.
foundationless hope
She aspired to illustrate children’s books. No art in college counted lucky her education, back then even Smith trained you to become proper keeper, upright hostess for gatherings husband held, gracious family diplomat, mother and wife. Educated, but you were a wife and you ran the household. And she managed. Didn’t think twice; graduate, find a man, married, create life, properly grow old. She held her dream. Raised creative children. Ran an entertaining, inventive household, games, gardens, crafts, carrots, raisins, grapes. In her sewing room she kept a drawing board where time desperate time allowing inked elves and angels, meadow flowers, speaking trout, worm escapes dangling hook. Her husband supported her, claiming cocktails, “Grand to have a hobby. And the kitchen’s clean.” This of a woman who studied philosophy, wrote novels in notebooks, played field hockey for the team. Did what you’re supposed to do; context inherited; we smile. Collection-burgeoned, filed neatly in the corner of her room, impressive accumulated mass. Her children healthy, intelligent, productive adults, proper, mainstream moral members, community: daughter a physician, son journalist for the Times. Everyone knew they would. Began sending to publishers, rejections, no word at all. “Due to the volume of submissions.” Knew people in the business, husband’s boy published, girlfriend married man famous. “Not good enough to uphold the conceit.” One wrote: “caricatures too simple, forms inconsistent, not worthy of a seed catalogue.” Still the world, slowly, casually. When her youngest was twenty-five she divorced her husband, the lot shook, friends grappled family disbelief. She’d been so wholesome, well-bred. Moved into her own place for the first time in her life. Small cottage two dogs edge of a meadow neighboring state forest mountain range. Raised goats and an emu, painted barn purple, years making cheese, ignoring noisy. Never listened to podcasts, avoided television, disregarded computer-generated deep fakes, bailed social media robots. Her own universe, fantasy existence, reality on the marginal confines of her small thatch, imagination’s fortune. Continued to draw and write, formulating ingenious stories for children, piled in her study, cabinets, four on the floor, shelves next to her quilted bed. Still rejections, nothing at all, cold impersonal, silent harsh. One particular illustrated story, “The Gargantuan Lilac Cat,” she sent a hundred times. You never know, she said, while she drew her god’s breath.
Books Go In The Dumpster
Old man waited many years to make the phone call. Always knew the time would come. And when he finally called had to convince book buyer come down and look at his barn. Entice with goodies he’d find. Seventy boxes, he said, the best possible. Cheap. A lifetime, off my hands. Reluctantly Theodore the buyer of books, proprietor of used bookstore some tumbling mountain river hipsters fly-fishermen and readers love, agreed to drive to New Haven and inspect this archaeology. The old man lived alone. Perhaps sophist of the old school, amateur intellectual kept to his room. Books imprint mind. Ordinarily Teddy wouldn’t drive distance to see no darn barn of books. People think they have refined collections. Teddy must explain, make excuses and it can get ugly about personality, price and time. The old man, though, insistent. Regular calls for more than a year: Down to my barn check out my books. Lifetime, best you’ll ever find. Couldn’t argue with the titles. Any spelunker would ever require. Seventy boxes, cheap. Curt Teddy agreed to hit New Haven, adding New York to visit a cousin. Arrived at the old man’s barn. Haggard, grizzled, unstable. Teetered and Teddy thought he might die right there. Rasped and spoke lovingly of his books: “Been with me forever, every single word. Find them a nice home, always loved your store. Hours. Seventy boxes.” Floor to ceiling the barn. Teddy good thing he brought the truck. Investigated the boxes up front: excellent titles, university presses. Opened them; smelled them; quickly calculated a price. Twenty-five-hundred. Opened more boxes, inhaled, fingered, plumbed and poked. Looked all right to him. Old man fidget, rasped loudly damn wheeze-keel. Exclaimed he really didn’t want to get rid of them. So long to his life. Teddy get out of there, said to himself. Loaded the truck and the seventy boxes only forty. Already paid, attempted renegotiation. Old man held the cash and refused. “My life,” he said. Teddy didn’t want the guy to die in the barn so he decided to cut his losses and get the hell out. Closer inspection revealed not all the boxes were full. Worse, the books were underlined with yellow and orange highlighter, streaks on every page, table of contents and introductions and covers. The old man marked everything, pencil margins, first edition hardcovers motherfucking crayon. Began weeping, thought of lawyers, court case and feeble old man. Cut, friends told him, and so he forklifted the entire load into the dumpster and filled the dumpster and overflowed to the gravel and he took a snapshot and thumbtacked it to a beam.
Chess On Death Row
Gray stillness in the halls of concrete and steel. Three incandescent bulbs hanging fifteen feet apart. Not enough light for the long corridor. After supper in the penitentiary in Texas, where the state kills, rapid pace, watch out down there. Fred Douglass isn’t a guard he’s a prisoner. But not in a cage. Not yet anyway. He wears blue denim too-long pants almost cover his black work boots. Calm aged. Been on the inside for all of time. Fred wields a broom, ancient rhythm, practiced and ingrained, smooth graceful habit like a retired dancer. Starts at the far end of the hallway, near the thick metal door that slams solid, and he lolls slowly, moving his pile from there to here. Pile quietly grows, patient. Dust and dirt, candy wrappers cigarette butts wasted packages torn papers condoms even a white chewed lollipop stick, broken pencil, and more paper. Mound at Fred’s feet, unhurriedly, boots his cuffs bristled braid of broom. Whether deaf or not listening to occasional catcalls you cannot tell. His fellow inmates have given up cajoling. Why would you? His grim features, staring down, thick brows and thicker brooding lips sometimes a toothpick, doesn’t flicker eye when you say anything and he likes it that way. Has to step and sweep in front of every one of those cells. Cages for human beings. How we do things. Down on the concrete, at the level of his black boots and worn denim, hand moves a pawn two squares. Hand black arm black. The same hand, down on the concrete, reaches through bars and slides the chess board until fingers stretching from another black arm from another cell drag the board away. Moments of considerable ponder. The second hand jumps the knight, poised to strike. No remarks. His opponent can’t see the move yet. The second set of fingers slides the board and it- the board- retrieved. Men on their stomachs inside their prison home. More silence, contemplation, more time. Fred eases his collection past the chess match moment captured on the gray concrete floor, musty corners and odors of men, container living, broom deftly snatches feather. A hand caresses the bishop then decides against it, settling instead on castling and push the board away to the next cell his friend, his move, and their fellow inmate curls reality toward the far end of the hall, to another steel door, under dimming light.
Tennessee
The old gentleman gray trimmed beard da-da-da keeps his hair short like Ernest and he, like Ernest, writes at a typewriter in the bungalow edge of rock cliffs. On the ocean in Jamaica, much like Fleming, the three kings come from New York to visit the poor sucker. You are one of the three kings. You arrive from the airport in a limousine and approach his cottage on the water. He starts, feigning shock to see you, and then off a mile a minute, flapping those lips, and you suppose it’s because he hasn’t socialized in months. It is evening. There are stars. He wears a straw hat. You feel like a haji. Sexy haji man come from the holy land. The three kings. And he’s off! Leading you down the steep staircase to the thin dock and it stretches out a hundred feet. There a dinghy tied. There a rowboat. Farther out in the blue water properly moored a sailboat called the Magic Storyland. Water laps rock cliffs. You had been told of a beach, and you protest, “Where the fuck’s the beach?” He stops the three of you, holds one by a lapel, and whispers, “If you were here, say, with a date in a fine dress, or your mother, you would row her out in the boat with oars to the beach. We, however, will wade.” He wags a finger and jumps in the water. To his waist. You follow. The gang of four hip-deep moves slowly toward jutting stone. Walk through dark water; swells reach your chest; your cotton soaked but that’s the adventure. He, your guide, secretive. Round the cliffs and sure enough there’s a hidden cove. The promised beach. The coterie ease to shore. Sand white, friends smile the evening air warm. Still bluffs, and they descend to the sand, and there’s no apparent escape. But then you see a rope dangling from above. Who does that? Must be tied to a tree. At the base of the scarp a screened-in pagoda on stilts. Deck surrounds pagoda. Chairs of great comfort. A chest contains a Frisbee and other beach-time playthings. Inside the pagoda more chairs. There’s no electricity, oil lantern and the old-time typewriter standing free at a small antique desk. Stack of unburdened paper next to it. A pet door down there, also screened, swings with the entrance or exit of a cat or dog. But there are no cats or dogs. What, you wonder. You take turns reading from great works, a chapter each, lantern light. You hear liquid murmur. A breeze only the Caribbean conjures. One, the cynic, softly says, “This is paradise,” and you suppose he is for once sincere. You open the second rum and more toasts, bursts of eloquence, a fine night. Then the pet door swings open with a sharp knock. You stare. A three-foot iguana struts in with temerity, your host holds a sack of goodies; he strokes its chin. He named the iguana Tennessee.
Driver's Seat Stabbing
Can barely predict the mutable Aprils up here. Nobody can. The day warm, in the sixties, without a cloud and if you sit by the stone wall, on that bench in the nook, you’ll soak rays warm and peaceful. Here that tales of love laced with beer take place with Dave. He sits with that poor schmo who works in the gift shop. Ritual with the two: meet at the bench equidistant between their two stores and drink ale until the sun sets. Never mind public alcohol consumption laws, open-container policing. A fine day and their stories are regular. Except for the odd-looking and over-lipsticked helicopter pilot in Vegas. Now, the wind tells anybody who notices must be a storm coming. Be here tomorrow. Front moving through and April sunshine turns to April showers and showers snow. Freezing cold, in the twenties. Enjoy it now, Dave says. Meanwhile, inside his shop, Karen sits and reads a book and sips her coffee and she wins patron of the year. Dave remarks that he should hang a picture on the wall patron of the year. This woman Karen enters everyday and everyday she drinks coffee and eats a brownie and posts in the corner by the window, above the river, and reads. All kinds of books and that doesn’t matter. She minds her own business and you can barely coax a peep. Every now and then the caffeine takes hold, in unison with synapse, and she’s off and running and you can’t redirect anything but you wouldn’t want to. Wind toss blow and it’s maddening; it’s insane; not a cloud in the sky. A wooden chair falls over and rolls once. Papers fly and spin, hold for a moment suspended, then careen to the wall and stick. A window slams. Dust, dirt and leaves dance into the shops and both proprietors close their doors. Damn, stronger than we thought, one says. Then the sound. Dave holds up a finger, “Stop, did you hear that?” What? He doesn’t hear a thing; maybe a cardboard box skidding across the road. No, a tree just fell; I heard it; a tree just fell. No way. Let’s investigate. Dave leads the way, fast, stairs to the upper parking lot. He says, “These locusts, anyway, brittle: they can bend, but at a certain point they just go; should have closed this lot.” They don’t have to walk far to see it. Massive limb from one of the mature trees fell. The windshield of Karen’s car- patron of the year- smashed a hole and the spiderweb crack. A side rear window also shattered. Glass on the hood; glass in the parking lot dirt; glass all over her seats. Limb punched through the window. Speared into the driver’s seat at an angle. Karen sits behind the wheel and clutches with both hands, fingers white, face pale. Eyes wide, expressionless, facing the two men as they approach.
Best Bookstore in North America
On the Sawmill River. Skinny dip below the old dam in a cold pool near the prayer circle and labyrinth. Lovelace read his poems there, Bill Monahan read his shit, too, and a bunch of now-famous writing motherfuckers from various MFAs. Tiny Tim played a show on the upper floor. One older woman published a book and held a reading - one person showed up: Precarious Birch. He gave her all the love he could. Lovelace wrote a memoir in the cupola. There’s still a desk up there, but nobody knows how to access that spectacular writing space. Pilgrimage, the thing, stop by The Raven on your way, Harvard Square or Northampton. Every single time there’s a book divined especially for you. Spectacularly, as mentioned elsewhere, Precarious found Erik Erikson in Maine. But that particular book belonged on Somes Sound. In Massachusetts, escorted by a painter, Precarious and his partner entered, and, faced up on the New Arrivals table - Gandhi’s Truth. Now get naked and swim.
Homefries
They drove to New York in a frenzied bomb to make it there by nine. Listening to a book on tape with the windows down, cruise control on the rented car, Pinky with her painted toes sticking out the window. She was driving. A story about the fall from grace; it is not a kerplunk. In fact, it’s barely perceptible. A young toddler’s death. Terrence Roadman had heard it before, or he read the book, he didn’t remember. He sat watching the drivers of other cars and trucks and vans as they swiftly passed. Three guys on the side of the road in Connecticut, with their heads hung low like the caught and despondent, their hands cuffed behind their backs, unsaddled motorcycles parked in a tidy row. The remarkable thing the five or six police cars, lights flashing, traffic slowed. Poor guys, nabbed guys, they must have been speeding, racing, offering a chasing for the excited cops. The weather steamy and oppressive; not the kind you would expect first weekend in May. Even in Montreal, the late spring their usual, men and women yearned for cold showers. The weekend a success, of sorts, depending on perception, and after the suffocation incident on Sunday, they awoke renewed at one in the afternoon. It was a slow rising. Pinky with her head on his shoulder. Terrence with his mouth open and a baseball cap over his eyes, a slumbering cowboy in a western his head propped against a tree a rattlesnake nearby, and somebody snapped a Polaroid. Later he placed the photo in his breast pocket. Certainly overdressed: doesn’t mean clothes too fine that means too many clothes, trousers instead of shorts, socks adding to the discomfort. They collected slowly, the playoffs on TV in the corner, and a younger brother and his high school buddy and a girlfriend. A call for breakfast or brunch and the drinking had been mighty. Terrence still stumbled and when the fumble was too great in the bathroom decided not to brush his teeth. He drank water and a handful of aspirin. Then the hoof in oppressive heat of too early and unannounced to the first bagel place. Closed for renovations. People all over without shirts, loungers at the outdoor cafe, on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes and probably conversing about the night before. Ice coffee now instead of what have you. They found a diner and set about sitting the way most of you do in diners. The waitress nice with a smile and an accent when she said ‘grapefruit’ with rolled Rs as from the Mediterranean. She had brown lips. Painted. Of course, Terrence asked for homefries and he’d been there before. The waitress, used to this next move, looked up at the grill to see if the pile was still there, the way they do things most places, and it was a green light and she wrote homefries on her slip. The rest of the table ordered them as well. The only variations between sunny-side or over-hard or French toast versus hotcakes they call them. The lady with the slip and pen in hand approached the table after a quick and said, “Sorry, no homefries.” Terrence eyes flashed the grill and the cook manning the grill, to where the waitress had tossed a glance, and then to the cook’s eyes and he said “man, this happened to me last time.” The grillman, with spatula and long knife, took extreme offense to the mouthing and in a yell jumped over the counter, his elbow the spinning fulcrum his hands indeed full, and in that flash stood over Terrence. He pointed the knife at our guy. He yelled “you have a problem with my grilling?” He waved the knife. The pancakes steamed melting butter. He began slamming the pancake plate with his spatula, over and again, shouting “No homefries! No homefries! No homefries!”
Deer teach the beauty of thorns. The rose says to the large quadruped, “I am beautiful, fuck you.” Eggplants succumb.
The Window Still
Three feet by four feet. Her bed in front directly, affords a view with slight angles, the only window in the room. Unfortunately, Tatata bedridden for fifteen years. Skating accident on her twenty-first birthday on an ice pond in Maine. “It was the way she came down,” all her brother could say. Refuses powered wheelchairs, will not visit the park for a warm sit near a bench, insists on remaining in that bed, in her room, poised in front of the window. Her view varies by a few degrees, depending on whether she slides to one side or the other. And whether the orderly rolled her or did not. Nurse never needs to raise her blinds - Tatata insists on keeping them open, for morning light and sunset, breathes distant stars, knows gliding crescent. She inhales the sun’s slide through seasons. In her room a world map, poems next to her bed, photograph of a young child robed in rough cloth standing on an expansive plain in Ethiopia, and a color shot Big Sur wave crashing, hazy cliffs descending from a lookout. She doesn’t mind any longer: At first she visualized suicide, what it would look like, how she would do it; athletic woman, wounded flower. She despised her room and window, bed and brother. Now she understands perspective, poeticizes her line of sight, heightened appreciation of simple. Many trawling the globe, fishing for themselves, for life understanding, miss the depth of her grasp. Their images among trampled California poppies don’t do, Grand Canyon’s north rim. Her reality a life framed; examines the changing painting; light evolving, defined by movement. The dove she catches in an instant, lands on telephone wire. And wind stirs the three trees in her sight, an oak, maple and large spruce, new, modifying, mutating. And on Day Seventy-One of any given year, possibly, her neighbor adjusts the ancient antenna on his roof. She watches the sleep and growth of years, every second’s canvas different from the previous, imprecise drift. There the neighbor patching his roof with tar: once last year twice already this. A strong gust yesterday knocked at her pane. Filled her blood, and she wrote a song. Rain this summer singular and around nine wet slammed her sash. The golden-orange moon of three in the morning; three-thirty; four-fifteen; light casting on her closet on her quilt on her verse. She sings lyrics captured last night; smiles how the hurried rarely convey. How many patterns in the swift fall of the shed autumn leaf? To know one thing is to know the world, she offers the visitor, and see that! See that? The hornet returns to its nest for another call. Ask her to describe a snowfall. She rests in her room with her window still.
Where Does Surf Pops Live?
The darkness had already fallen on the crowded theater, my feet were up on the banister in front of me, the two next to me broke out their fruit juice stash from a leather purse, the opening credits spit and the movie made by some French people and it opens on the tube in London, and it was dark in the theater, and people who came in late paused to allow their eyes to adjust, then they crawled backwards and frontwards toward the back and the front row. There was a pause in the civilian action. The theater door opened again, the hallway light beamed, and an old gentleman in an ancient gray cardigan walked slowly into the aisle. He did not pause. He did not hesitate in the darkness, with the air possessed by someone who has difficulty seeing at all times, and who has gotten used to dragging his body through the recesses of space and time. A Post Office line or a dark movie theater, no problem, same thing; a crosswalk a supermarket and that’s how it goes. The man shuffled. At least 85, easy. He stooped at the shoulders, relied on a cane, and moved slowly but without pause into the shadows. He wore a bright, sharp orange baseball cap, with some writing on the front. I didn’t catch the phrasing. The old man was alone. He had shuffled to see Swimming Pool at the avenue theater, the 7:15 showing. I forgot about the old man, ignored the stragglers still arriving, and settled into the film. Now it’s 10:12 and I still don’t get the picture. But don’t worry: I’ve yet to give it much thought. Just arrived home after following the old man slowly around town.
I assumed he lived in a nearby apartment building. There are several – at least eight – apartment complexes off Piedmont Avenue and off Broadway – that contain the old and sliding away, dinner hour and workout rooms. Oakland is a good place for old folks to live and die
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Morb Orring and His Twenty Two Dollars
Joyfully appreciating his reacquaintance with “A Perfect Day For Bananafish,” on a steady sunshine day at the office in San Francisco, his feet high and easy on his desk, the chair that leans backward and if you don’t watch it tips over, deciding that it was late enough in the afternoon not to field any more calls, the office empty except for the man and the machines, Morb Orring spent a brief, reflective moment acknowledging that he was lucky with his job. Baseball game on the radio. And if not baseball, jazz. It was four in the afternoon. He’d read by accident that there have been 27 days of rain out of 50 in Manhattan. A gloomy photograph on the internet of Madison Avenue, and a whiney caption that attempted to reveal the mood of New Yorkers. Morb had forgotten all about New York. It was a surprise, nearly a shock, that he should know or pay attention to how the weather was back east. “Perhaps I should phone my brother,” he thought, “and get his input.” Is it truly bleak? What’s it like to experience rain in May and June?
Morb would admit to you that he’d forgotten what June was like anyhow, what a summer was supposed to be, a tongue that can taste humidity.
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Sandrollick Millbrae Is Touched
Sandy’s younger brother Timothy ran upstairs with orange juice in his hand on a Sunday morning and engaged his usual taunting. Sandy sat up in bed, the newspaper still thick and folded and unread (snatched before her father could find it), reading a book. Her curtains were drawn and her window open to the cool, autumn air. The book was a collection of stories by Alice Munro. She started the one called “A Wilderness Station” and moved her way easily through half. It had yet to be revealed that the one killed his brother with an axe. Up till now Sandy still thought, with the rest of the world, that it was a tree branch falling. Working in the bush, were they. Sandy looked up at her brother, who stared at her with his large almond eyes. He desired to taunt her, but his look was for the moment curious. “What are you reading?” he asked.
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Catharine and the 40L
Catharine has two ears, one on either side of her head, and a mighty fine head it is. A drunk on Telegraph, near the bus stop in front of Carl’s Jr., after asking for her name, shouted, “Yeah, you Catharine the Great.” Whenever she saw this fellow two things would happen: she would attempt to avoid him, and he would shout his favorite phrase. The heavy drinkers the low on Telegraph use the benches at bus stops for seats and for beds and for panhandling prime locations. She drives her car to work on ordinary days. On inspired days she rides her bike. From Oakland to Berkeley every single darn day. Her brakes were making noises and so she brought the car in to those Chinese guys on MacArthur. She trusts them. Even though they don’t speak a word of English and she doesn’t know diddle about cars. She, like many of us, are as vulnerable as you can get when it comes to our automobiles and those men who fix them. They could tell me anything and I’d be, well, that’s that. Catharine the Great drove her car down to the Chinese guys this morning and already there was a two-on-two game going across the street, the grunts audible. Catharine in her hose and business skirt and pinstriped jacket dipped into the small room and left her keys with Arthur. This blonde woman in a bikini stood next to a kickstand motorcycle and the colors were fading on an old calendar. Catharine walked to the bus stop and stood there for the 40L. L means limited stops. She went to work without incident excitement mishap or curiosity and she worked harder than most of us. On the way home she reversed the process to retrieve her car it didn’t need new brakes it needed new engine mounts six hundred bucks. The bus was jammed to the point of bursting
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The Wallet
Before I tell you that I purchased the fine leather wallet in a mall somewhere near Boston, and prior to informing you about the nasty-assed velcro-and-nylon wallet that the fine leather one replaced, I must portray the ultimate and hard-edge reality that I am a sort of man who carries a wallet everyday of existence, no matter the outfit or the type of activity a certain day might render. This seven days a week, the back pocket of any pair of pants, the wallet resting against my ass in jeans, in khakis, in shorts, in loose shorts in shorts unfortunately too tight; it is a pair of fancy slacks for a suit worn at weddings or graduations or dinner at the best restaurant in the city, the wallet on my cheek for that lunch we had when my girl graduated from law school and her mother flew out from St. Louis and her aunt all the way from Europe: there was the asparagus soup and the best silver and china and my nice sport coat and my girl’s dress and her glowing visage of success, and there was a leather wallet, bulging with whatever, pressed both into my ass and into the cushion of the chair on which my ass rested. And all chairs forever. Since, I don’t know, eighth grade I’ve worn a wallet, like my father and my grandfather, on the right side of my ass, in any pair of pants. Once or twice, admittedly, I set the wallet in the sporty pocket of a suit coat’s inner slip, like a gentleman. Never do I leave home without it. And it’s never a case of carrying my identification with me – my papers, sir; I suppose merely the place where I keep my money. The vestibule, the carrier, for my money, this nice leather thing.
And I thought I was a man among men when I decided to replace the tattered velcro nylon thing that I’d received for a Christmas present when I was in the tenth grade. It was falling apart. Soiled and stained. The velcro strip, in fact, had loosened its ties to the wallet fabric and was hanging in a quite literal fashion by a thread. Yes, I’d always felt that the day upon which I ventured forth, with full specificity and determination, to buy a leather wallet marked the first day of my becoming a man. It is not the day, or time of night, when I lost my virginity, not attending the university, not successfully completing a hitchhiking journey from Boston to Los Angeles and back again, it was not my first real job, nothing and nothing of any of the above. No, the day I became a man was when I owned a leather wallet, a fine gentleman’s wallet, a pretty penny, too. For seven years I’d owned this leather wallet and for seven years I have officially been a man. No touching this man. Not with a pole of any length.
When the wallet is not resting in a pocket and pressing against the flesh of my ass, daily, it sleeps on the shelf above the coats and far above the shoe rack, next to a coffee mug that holds loose change and a set of keys.
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Peter Whimley's Little Man
On the page when Peter reads there labors a little man. Above each word of each line as Peter reads. This little man aids Peter in the process by dragging Peter’s cautious left eye after his right. Like towpath horses tugging a load on a barge up a canal. So the right eye flies by and reads happily and then it must linger at the end of the line. The right eye waits and the left eye hesitates on each word: “The – reason – why - the – seven – stars – are – no – more – than – seven – is – a – pretty – reason.” Right eye tapping its foot. Left eye, to its own interpretation, hurries. But it is slow. The little man tugs it along with thick hemp rope. Pull, hah, pull, hah. The left drags across the page and then joins the right eye at the end of the line. “Ready?” asks the right.
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