Skip to main content

Look See


Some names are set aside and reincarnated. I choose names because of how they feel on the tongue. The backs of my teeth. The soft palate on the roof of my mouth. Gina is one of those names. G is English breakfast tea, I an innocent mare. N is the camel’s back, A a sultry pear. The best pears are golden. Pears collaborate with being verbs. Pears simply are. Like shattered foil and miniature sketches, pears cannot be undone.  My mother put pears in a crystal bowl on the island in the kitchen, surrounded by lava, surrounded by prepositional phrases. If I do not step on the correct tiles my feet dissolve in lava and I must count to twenty before moving again. This is the rule. The pears are there now when I come down for breakfast. They gaze at me through their tiny pear eyes because I am not a pear. If I was a pear, I’d be golden. I wonder about sensations of the pears. I wonder how many senses they have. They must have “thinking.” That is one. They must also have “feeling,” in a physical sense. The bottom pear must feel the others pressing down upon him. Oh my. I leap up, tenderly plucking pears from my mother’s crystal bowl, laying them gently on a cotton swab. Why do I have so many pears? Ooo. I know I know I know. Because they remind me of origami penguins and I must have friends like those. Friends one is able to create and burn slightly over a candle until their fins are golden glowing. Also, I can eat pears. I cannot eat origami penguins. Mother reminded me. Mother said, “A bowl of fruit on the kitchen table will make you a better person.”

For my day job I lay bricks. I memorize Eliot’s poems and recite them while I’m working, but other blokes are not so cheerful. Not cheerful at all. I despise one fellow. He is a snark. So I call him Snark. Because I like the name. Because the name fits, because I wish I could line up origami penguins on his kitchen table. Savage origami penguins. Cannibals.  

Snark is a boring fellow. He never actually wronged me, I just picked on Snark to be my enemy because I didn’t have an enemy and I must have a mortal enemy. Nemesis. Adversary.  I am sure that Snark doesn’t have a bowl of fruit on his kitchen table. I wonder if Snark even has a mother to put a bowl of fruit on his kitchen table. Recently I began sketching on my own miniature sketches. Mother ordered me to put things on my walls. I will create a frame of three portraits. “Pair in Tree.” “Pair in Bowl.” “Pair on tongue.” “Pair on Tongue” is a particular favorite.

See, I make enemies because I desire them. Like lovers. Taffeta. Coffee from the Congo. Fancy things.

A true reflection would be nice. People are so phony. I learned this when I read “The Catcher in the Rye.” I knew about phoniness before. How could I not know? Knowledge of phoniness is similar to knowledge of the forms. Knowledge through recollection. Now I know more phoniness than I want and wherever I turn there it is, caving in like a chocolate soufflĂ©. Perhaps I am to be a Bundt cake maker. But instead I am a brick layer, because I studied to be a musician. Because I smell like a musician. Because my studies flopped like chocolate soufflĂ©. Because coffee from the Congo smells better than it tastes.

I snuck into Snark’s house today with my bowl of pears.  A gift. Believe me, I was going to place my pears on the kitchen table and leave, but I got quite caught up in the shape of the ceiling. Walls met other walls from on high. A box shape blobbed out of the ceiling. Not that I really cared. I just wanted a look see. Really caring is a foreign idea. If I really cared I could accomplish so much. What is that on Snark’s table? A bowl of apples? What a phony.

So I stole his apples.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which is why they have sailed

I. It’s strange for Claudia, who has never been boating before, to live in a boat. Its name is Arden.             “Why do we live in a boat if we never go boating anywhere?” Claudia once asked her father. Her parents are both short, so at least they fit under the snug roof. Claudia won’t be short, but for now she is. “Bah,” Her father says, “We’re always going somewhere. Just think of Attila the Hun.” She always thought that comment did not make sense. He flips an egg on the stove, “Just use your imagination.” If you walk by you can see how charming the Arden is—look at that little window with Claudia’s father frying eggs. Look at his kind face with his curly, white-haired head too-big-for-a-hat. He is moving back and forth in a kind kitchen, with a miniature flowerpot on the windowsill. These are clay flowers—they keep on living even if they have been forgotten (except that Claudia broke one of the pedals recently, on accident, and turned the miniature flowers so the wo
Post a Comment
Read more

There aren't any servals in the zoo.

Have you met my older sister Kayla? She’s short with light eyes, and she’s full of wisdom. “When you sit down to do something, you’ve just got to do it,” she says, with determination. She’s a stubborn one. At some point she decided to have a garden of petunias and pansies, and she did it, didn’t she? They bloomed up all purple and velvety. We like to sit out there with the flowers and have tea. You can count on Kayla to say what she’s thinking. “There are demons inside of you,” she says at our tea party today. One of the things she likes to do is to scare me. Isn’t that what older sisters are for? To take away a bit of childish wonder. Kayla will sometimes linger in the dark hallway by the bathroom and one time I was walking to the bathroom and just saw her body there and slowly felt her to see if she were real, and she said “boo!” What a terror. Older sisters are the worst. “I believe you,” I say, about the demons. I feel the demons inside of me sometimes, eating porridge f
Post a Comment
Read more

Pulitzer

I. I am reading a children’s book called Hamish and Trieta , in which Hamish is a cow and Trieta is a bird. These two become fast friends. Good pals. Buddies. Sometimes the bird sits upon the cow’s back. Often the cow wishes he might sit upon the bird’s back, but of course this is impossible. The poor darling bird simply flits away, c hirping, chirping, always chirping, full of nonsense, not explaining. They fall apart, like many others in this fickle universe. Separated. I close Hamish and Trieta . What a hideous story. I was seduced by its whimsical cover, entranced by its gilded pages. Mother bought it for me ages ago from some downtown bookstore with cerulean walls.  Pulitzer, declares the cover, in golden script. I do not understand what a Pulitzer is and I do not particularly care.             I am a child, yet I know that horrid things do not deserve Pulitzer awards. Rage, like vomit, pools in my throat. The tip of my jaw is numb. I chew on my rage as if it is
1 comment
Read more