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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.


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