Photograph, December:

The shade of the pill-
Ow changes over months.
It begins relaxed,
Blue-grey, a cool hint
At blooming.

Her hands shake at the possibility
Of my body. She holds her apron
Like a shield but when I reach
Out I find a rope. I pull her
In and we are bound.

The first time we kiss she
Is a ghost and I am a gambler.
We dream about vacations.
I speak when there’s nothing
To be said.

Pillows inflame, puff out
A little and the sun sets
Her bed ablaze. I watch
But can’t speak. I grit
Down hard on this desire

But I don’t know how
To stifle it. To be in love and
Miserable is the same as
Being in love and joyous.
She teaches me the truth
By saying nothing.


ER

A "Birthday" Present:

I wish you satisfaction, but cannot
find a box big enough so it lays
all over my floor and sighs.
I wish you joy and
that's what this flapping
noise is about. Hundreds of
wings stir the air and will not
be gift-wrapped. I got you
poetry so sloppy and wet
so nubile it needs a nursemaid
and shackles.
I wish you wishes of all sizes--
pick them up while they are hot
and you are young
enough to waste them.
I wish you peace but don't know
how to leave you alone, tell me
how does a sailor leave the sea?
She doesn't: the depths so-far un-
touched but loved, its swells the biography
of her life, its whimseys keeps her afloat.

ER

2.

Our skin pressed
together makes raw
material for words.
You find graphite
between the sheets.
I examine it--
you do the accepting.

1.

I watch the light
travel down you
as though it asked
permission, and you
gracious, benevolent,
gave it, now a fugue
of slivers in your eyes.

Before I run off to work:

Blueberry
It's our password.
No logo in the sky.
We are going to spill.


ER

Do go on:

"There was one book I read not only at the right age, but on the right afternoon, in the right place, at the right angle. I read The Waves on an island, on a plotless day, when I was twenty-two years old, sitting on a terrace from which I could see in the distance the ocean, and the horizon where it met the sky and the changing light that played there as the sun climbed to its zenith and descended again while I thumbed the pages and my blood pressure washed up and down with the words. The Waves is not one of my favorite books. But my memory of reading it is. I was very silly when I was young. I have that to be thankful for."

-Mary Ruefle, from "Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World"

Yes, this is an interesting idea for me: having a favorite memory of reading a book, that might not necessarily be one of our favorite books. So often the experience of reading is tangled inextricably with the content of the text. So, I was trying to think of an experience of a book, which I loved, but the content of said book left something to be desired: Jack Kerouac's Satori in Paris.

Kerouac for me, like many young, red-blooded, hot-headed Americans, had seminal influence over me in my early twenties. On the Road, yes, I will get in this line, changed my life. It is my go-to read when my life is falling apart. It put me together, put me in a context, that of Ginsberg's "Angelheaded hipster searching for the starry dynamo," at exactly the right time, when I could appreciate being there. I love On the Road, and Kerouac, but did not love Satori in Paris, it was a sketch of a novel, one thin and lack-luster: after OTR and Dharma Bums, it falls frail. But the experience reading it was phenomenal because I took it with me to Paris.

I was 22 and "in love with my life" and I will hopefully always remember lying in bed, patio door ajar, sunny afternoon, sweet, unseasonably warm breeze toying with my feet, children running around in the playground below my window, hollering in French, did the air really smell like baguettes, or did I impose that? And I laid there for hours, read the whole book in (almost) one sitting. The book wasn't great, but that afternoon I felt alive in that great electric way we all feel from time to time, when we are in our early 20s or in another country or in love or writing a lot, or well, or well enough.

I showed you mine, now tell me yours: tell me about a time you read a book in which the experience was exhilarating, but the text was not the reason for the excitement:

And so:

Stranded

Our looking-in cultivates
Heroic moments.
In this column a thorny side
The other columns wait.
Apology is not the only
Missing piece—our histories
Unsettled. There are
Elixirs to consider.
Thumbs need hitching
If we’re gonna get out.

ER