suddenly sun, a break in wind. i can stand on the sidewalk in thin sweater, light a cigarette first try. spring: i almost failed to notice you save the shortened workday. eight hours, six, four. mimosas on the front porch, m’s quick kiss in the kitchen; i loose my footing. outside, even the daisies make my skin look pale. beneath an oak tree, i spread a tattered blanket, spread my skirt perfect O. here kitty kitty. the cat passes without acknowledging my presence. such a browned afternoon; already darkness coming at its edges. 6 p.m.: a scotch to bring in the sunset. a couch, feet propped, t.v. off. i open the blinds. the fucking heat lightening. m. smells my hair when i sit down. how easily i’ve slipped into this domestica. a kiss, prepared dish. i wink when i leave for work in the morning & wait, wait all day till i can come home again.

Interviewer: Are you a religious person even if only from a distance?
Christa Wolf: No, if you mean a church religion.
Interviewer: Never tried to be, not even in times of crisis?
Christa Wolf: Oh yes, one tries.

(from: interview in 2005)

on a bright day i sweep all obligations away. first, the responsibility of our bodies. m. wakes early. the heater puffs great gusts of steam, though, its nearly seventy out. sweat; my hand, beneath the sheets, our heat, a surprise. second, i burn breakfast. unpenetratable smoke. open the window & outside, children from the community center clap, sing hymns in hebrew Toda al’ kol’ ma shebarata Toda al’ ma sheli natata. third, off from work. i print to-do lists, cross nothing off. can’t bear the laundry mat, bank tellers in subdued colors will that be all, miss hall?these small indulgences. all afternoon, the couch & sun. at dusk, fuck it. let’s go walk. the dirt along the riverbank is wet. the grass glistens. from our dry spot, i roll a cigarette using lispector’s stream of life as my flat surface. to count time is merely a hypothesis. i hear her brushing her hair as i read this, hear her do all sorts of daily activities i can’t quite imagine beyond the text. it will never begin & it will never end. on a bright day watch as i sweep everything away.

I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon
Stephen Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
"It is futile," I said,
"You can never - "

"You lie," he cried,
And ran on.

you realize she’s so made that it’s as if at any moment, at her own whim, her body could cease to live, could just thin out around her and disappear from sight, and that it’s in this threat that she sleeps, exposes herself to your view.

--m. duras

Our obituary writer is an extreme, pedantic gossip. He gets things wrong, but he gets them in detail. I had just started working at the paper. He thought I was an alcoholic; he told it to a man on night rewrite, who told it to all the people in the newsroom, who told it to the people at the culture desk. It is not so troubling to be thought an alcoholic; still, I preferred not. When he asked me out to lunch, I gladly went. His parents are from Poland. His name is Standish Hawthorne Smith. We went to a Greek restaurant. When we sat down, he held my hand. He asked whether Will has his divorce. I did not know quite what to say. I asked about his work. He smiled. He asked what I would like to drink. Nothing I thought. Then I remembered that nothing would be the order of an alcoholic on the wagon. My normal Scotch and water would not do. I asked for an ouzo. No alcoholic in his right mind, I thought, would have an ouzo. I had two. Standish walked me home. He said he wrote, and read, a lot of poetry. When we got to my door, he asked whether he might use the phone. He made three phone calls, going to the kitchen now and then, to poor himself another vodka. I sat in the living room, with a glass of wine. I had altogether lost my sense of purpose in the situation. After his hour or two of phone calls, he came to the living room. “Do you know,” he said, “three things are said to be true of every Polish houseguest. First, he raids your icebox. Then he reads your mail. Then he fires the maid.” He walked to a window, pulled the curtains, asked whether I would like him to fire the maid. He finally read some poetry instead. Anyway, Will’s gone.

--Renata Adler
(from Speedboat)

could scream all evening & not change a thing. i love when the details seem set, in place, then, a lose thread. oh unravel me baby. fuck me flatly when im drowsydeadout & cannot defend. finals & moving out, so stressed i don't know. packed all afternoon. a maze of boxes lines the room; the cats race them for fun. water was cut off around one. wearing a skirt simplifies the act of peeing in the backyard. four times already. wish i could just sit & scratch my own back, yknow, relax. beer & cigarette. on the front porch, my feet propped up, watching the neighbors watching me through the shade trees.

if i paid attention i would have stopped. walked into the other room, sat facing the wall. the overlooked details say everything: his head turned towards a friend, whispering; her raised hand in mock exclamation well, hot damn!, glaring my direction. given the chance i’ll talk all evening. mouth hung, cranking up & down with mechanical precision. riding horses, dr. pepper lipgloss, i hate girls who pretend not to care about. talking like this, i could forget everything. close my eyes & see the room empty. the windows open themselves, wind wheezes through. a stream of syllables only i can wade overcomes the room.

Soulstorm
Clarice Lispector

     Ah, had I but known, I wouldn’t have come into this world, ah, had I but known, I wouldn’t have come into this world. Madness is neighbor to the cruelest prudence. I swallow madness because it calmly leads me to hallucinations. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down, Jill kissed his crown, and they lived happy-unhappy ever after. The chair is an object to me. It is useless while I look at it. Tell me, please, what time it is, so I’ll know I’m alive at that time. Creativity is unleashed by a germ and I don’t have that germ today, but I do have an incipient madness which in itself is a valid creation. I have nothing more to do with the validity of things. I am free or lost. I’m going to tell you a secret: life is lethal. We maintain the secret because in utter silence, each of us, as we face ourselves, because to do so is convenient and doing otherwise would make each moment lethal. The object chair has always interested me. I look at this one, which is old, bought at an antique shop, and empire chair; one couldn’t imagine a greater simplicity of line contrasting with the seat of red felt. I love objects in proportion to how little they love me. But if I don’t understand what I’m writing, the fault isn’t mine. I have to speak, for speaking saves. But I don’t have a single word to say. I am gagged by words already spoken. What does one person say to another? How about “how’s it going?” If the madness of honesty worked, what would people say to one another? The worst of it is what a person would say to himself, yet that would be his salvation, even if honesty is determined on a conscious level while the terror of honesty comes from the part it plays in the vast unconscious that links me to the world and to the creative unconscious of the world. Today is a day for starry sky, at least so promises this sad afternoon that a human word could save.
     I open my eyes wide, but it does no good: I merely see. But the secret, that I neither see nor feel. The record player is broken, and to live without music is to betray the human condition, which is surrounded by music. Besides, music is an abstraction of thought, I’m speaking of Bach, Vivaldi, Handel. I can only write if I am free, uncensored, otherwise I succumb. I look at the Empire chair, and this time it is as if it too had looked and seen me. The future is mine as long as I live. In the future there will be more time to live and, higgledy-piggledy, to write. In the future one will say: had I but known, I wouldn’t have come into this world. Marli de Oliveira, I don’t write to you because I only know how to be intimate. In fact, all I can do, whatever the circumstances, is be intimate: that’s why I’m even more silent. Everything that never got done, will it one day get done? The future technology threatens to destroy all that is human in man, but technology does not touch madness; and it is there that the human in man takes refuge. I see the flowers in the vase: they are beautiful and yellow. But my cook says: what ugly flowers. Just because it is difficult to understand and love what is spontaneous and Franciscan. To understand the difficult is no advantage, but to love what is easy to love is a great step upward on the human ladder. How many lies I am forced to tell. But with myself I don’t want to be forced to lie. Otherwise what remains to me? Truth is the final residue of all things, and in my unconscious is the same truth as that of the world. The moon, as Paul Eluard would say, is éclatante de silence. I don’t know if the Moon will show at all today, since it is already late and I don’t see it anywhere in the sky. Once I looked up at the night sky, circumscribing it with my head tilted back, and I become dizzy from the many stars that appear in the county, for the country sky is clear. There is no logic, if one were to think a bit about it, in the perfectly balanced illogicity of nature. Nor in that of human nature either. What would the world be like, the cosmos, if man did not exist? If I could always write as I am writing now, I would be in the midst of a tempestade de cerebro, a “brainstorm” Who might have invented the chair? Someone who loved himself? He therefore invented a greater comfort for his body. Then centuries passed and no one really paid attention any more to a chair, for using it is simply automatic. You have to have courage to stir up a brainstorm: you never know what may come to frighten us. The sacred monster died: in its place a solitary girl was born. I understand, of course, that I will have to stop, not for lack of words, but because such things, and above all those things I’ve only thought and not written down, usually don’t make it into print.

(from Where You Were at Night, 1974. Translated by Alexis Levitin)

new orleans

a slowing, steadying of pace. i look ahead with straight-face. try to be good, turn to you with that straight-face, almost blank; no tear streaked cheeks or hands raised, waving violently. i’ve slowed to this predictable gait. watch as i move through the room: arms hung, hips tucked, legs a forward motion without the indulgence of skipping or side stepping. a clear path. i move only to arrive somewhere, not to stir the air around my body or yours. stir us into a frenzy ending finally in bed, backs turned cold, thinking could go on like this forever. i must keep in time, the slightest falter could have me rushing forward again.

mostly sitting, eating raw green beans split at the seam. in bed i pull muscles reaching for a glass of water, cigarette, pen. try ten times to write a letter to andrew. ten more times tracing & retracing illegible print to be sent to a man in tennessee whose name is josh or jon or here is a picture of me & my wife. i dont look at the pictures. i dont reread the emails once they’re on their way when they are on their way which is rare. how to say today i did when i missed the train, in my sleeplessness haze, waltzed into class late, to the glare of an assistant professor you look glazed. leave & smoke in the tunnel with the parking attendant who thinks my name is evelyn. the letters dont get sent. i pet the cat till she smells like my hand.

ive been in a bad mood for two weeks. to celebrate i bought a party dress. black shot silk, straight to the knee. wearing it, no one should be surprised if i act like a bitch.

this morning, smoking on the porch naked beneath my coat, a woman approached wanting to know about the house for sale. my daughter wants to live here. i mentioned the leaky faucets, poor insulation, windows that refuse to open. when she asked about the neighborhood, though, i didn’t know what to say. this was not the conversation i wanted to have smoking on the porch, naked beneath my coat.

in developmental psych, we talk a lot about prenatal care. the dangers of cigarettes, alcohol, inconclusive evidence re: weed. basically, researchers agree any smoke is negative. i raise my hand sincerely wondering vaporizers, cookies, brownies? to which the teach corners me after class something you wish to tell me, elizabeth? as if not skipping class was already not difficult enough.

alone all day at school, all night at home. m's been away eight days & im too proud to call friends or accept my roommate's invitations you can watch that out here instead of on my tiny t.v. in bed. this afternoon i got irrationally angry at the goth girl sitting next to me on the bus who kept telling her father how wonderful everything, everything is. then i got irrationally angry at s. whenever i arrive at her apartment, im surprised to find five, ten other people present; i rather be alone than discuss politics with her backwaters republicans. to calm myself after the ride, i made a sandwich with an unreasonable amount of cheese & watched sex & the city.

in other news, i waste a lot of time trying to sleep.

i quit my job at target because i cried. at ten am, my manager calls to discuss the incident. the incident: i made a mistake, three to be exact the entire extent of my employment. for starters, yr hair is often dirty, you infuriate the other employees by reading constantly; plus, as far as i’m concerned, you hardly live up to yr personal potential which bothers us all. us all is never specified. i begin to cry, mumble yeah an unidentifiable amount of times. yeah is all you have to say? i ask to be let go, fired even. the shame of facing her or any other disgruntled staff looms over my next shift. the shame intensified by crying. & when she says im willing to give you another shot if yr willing to step it up i sob okay then hang up. twenty minutes later i call the studio sorry pam i dont think ill ever improve. tomorrow, i return my nametag & keys.