Regina

The sun sets out the window and the skyline lights up, the flag on the rooftop across the way wiggles in the wind and the Washington monument is an enormous sentry, just to the left. Take a step back, and a black and white photo of it sits against the wall, portrait and subject looking at each other through a pane of glass.

    Calvert mews, Guilford hops around on his three legs.

    Regina is heating up the soup in the kitchen.

    She shows me pictures on her digital camera of things she’s seen looking down into the park, says she used to snap shots at one bench all day long- caught all different people and things in one tiny frame. It’ll be a book or a blog that Regina calls, “I just live here!”

    We watch a documentary:  The Battle of Chernobyl

    I met her at a mixer for Baltimore real estate agents and lenders.

    She sends me emails with subject lines like “New Nuclear Reactor in Our Backyard.”

My First Poetry Reading Review where I acted like a Journalist, sort of

I just came across this, something I turned in for a class, and think it is funny, and not to get all journal-y, but I think it is amusing to see where I used to be. Look how silly and grandiose I am! Invoking quantum physics! Look how much better (I think) my prose gets when I'm not consciously trying to be a reporter- did I lose something by thinking about careers? Am I now just trying to notice things that I'm supposed to notice, rather than the periodic table on the wall, and the voices wandering in from the hallway? Why can't poetry from my notes make it to the final draft?

Sometime in 2008

Here's a character: Old gray haired woman with the antique-looking brown leather fanny pack on her front, beneath a loose blue jean collared shirt. This is at the gourmet catered lunch on the third floor, Hillel, during the Lavy colloquium, where I was working, shmoozing, but mainly stealing food.

Anyways she says, “Needless to say, I received the first rejection letter... because I had a BS in BS- and I'm not shitting you!” By the way she was (is?) a civil engineer for Baltimore city, waste water stuff. Hardly a BS in BS if you ask me (but maybe in shit). From College Park. The rejection was about being on the space shuttle some time back and I admired her attempt at nailing fantasy because she dreamed hopeless astronaut dreams but wasn't hopeless, tried at least. She's a self-proclaimed science fiction enthusiast.

She talked about working for the city municipality, good hours 8:30 to 4:30, good for having kids. She talked about the division of the workplace- half white men and half women/minorities because one boss thought hiring women and minorities would ensure loyalty and the other guy took whoever applied (White men, presumably). This woman, reminiscing – old people do like to talk about the past, don't they? Or just to youngsters, did I awaken some part of her brain that was a little dusty?- there were “more characters in those days”. The German-Irishman who would paint his beard green for St. Patty's every year, and (was this the same guy?) the one who smoked cigars constantly at his desk (“you can't smoke in the office nowadays”) then threw them in the trash, lighting it on fire. “Of course the Jew at the desk next to him kept a fire extinguisher!”

Renegade Sightings

The Renegade, he’s been missing for a while. Well we haven’t heard from him, at least.

We first sight him in the distance, standing out in a soggy field where some kids are kicking a ball around. It’s reckless of him, we think, standing out in the middle of commotion, swirling dirt and spit and limbs. Nice hustle, we hear him shout. What is he, some kind of soccer coach?

Our sandals are squishing uncomfortably, getting muck between our toes and up our calves, as we try to find the path of least sink. And the Renegade, he looks so calm. It’s a wonder he left no prints, in those boots.

The second time we see the Renegade, he’s at Giant buying bananas and frozen pizza. We know because we get in line behind him and watch him check out. He smiles, and we don’t know what to say exactly, we are still trying to figure it out when he picks up his bags and turns to us, behind him, says, Here, and hands us the printout coupons off his receipt. $1 off Ziplock bags- in our cart. Hey thanks! (More enthusiastic than necessary). No problem. We can see Daisy through the glass, outside the store. She waves, surely at the Renegade. When we get outside, they are gone. We buy lemonade from girl scouts who are camped under the strip mall awning.

In the night, there is racing up and down the streets, and sirens and yelling outside our window. In the moment before we get up, we imagine the scene. The Renegade must already be there. He must be rolling up, sorting things out. Like Batman, a vigilante, we romanticize him in our half-sleep.

We walk to the window, look down into the sidewalk. Voices are raised, angry, somewhere, and tires screech. There is nothing to see but red and blue strobe way down at the bottom of the hill. A cat looks up at us and streetlight or starlight is reflecting in its eyes, but we see embers. We look up and down for the tell-tale trail of cigarette smoke, look for a long time until the police car pulls away, so certain he was there. We never thought of going outside ourselves, just fall asleep to the sounds of distant chaos.

Daisy pulls up in the alley, breathless, and the Renegade jumps in without waiting for her to come to a stop. Hi Beautiful, the tires smoke, they disappear, and the night rushes back to fill in the space.

Some Options, Here

Vomit Buddy
I'll be your vomit buddy
We can pick bushes side by side
or share an alley wall

Lover
I'll be your lover
We can pool our resources
or make something out of nothing

Roommate
I'll be your roommate
We can each pay half
or decide to be lovers

Autobiographer
I'll be your autobiographer
We can impersonate each other
or just trade lives

A Lie about Postmodern Cookies

(There was a plate of hybrid cookies- like Oreo chunks in the chocolate chip, etc- at lunch today and a guy said "Those cookies are so postmodern.")

Postmodern cookies.
a little joke I
laugh at and
then I want to
throw up want
these cookies
to be in a bar or
a field,
burned in a
bonfire, uneaten
destroyed
cooked-
made by throwing flour
and sugar in
fistfuls, baking in
hellfire
a vicious oven.
and this all needs
edit edit edit (ing)
that's all and I'm
so
so
(or/and maybe I'm just
delirious with hunger
for the hybrid cookies?
I'ts ambiguous.)
I'll stuff my face.
One day I'll claw
out of here.
One day oreos will
do it for me.

West Virginia