Too many fled
Spillways mouths
Oceans swill
May flies
Swamped
Too many words
Enough
Said it all
Spoke too much
Tongue tied
Talons claws syllables
Ships set sail
Anchors aweigh
Adrift such flame
Molten metal
Scimitar swiftness
Swallows at dusk
A vernacular
Unspeeched
I've said it all
And then some
We've said too much
And then some
Gongs of regret
Soaking it in
The choir of silence
Rehearsing
a brown hare (liebre marrón)
dances
diaphanous (diáfano)
as willow wind (viento del sauce)
whispers
to Ganymede (Ganimdes)
perched on a silver birch (abedul plateado)
whose broad bean (haba)
of muted lavender (lavanda apagado)
waits
* I walked into a hardware store and randomly collected paint samples. Pratt & Lambert Paints calls the strips of paper Color Narrative (tm). Then I randomly chose from my deck of 7 and arranged the words as above, with 11 words of my own added.
That was a rumor of crocus
Creeping under the myrtle
A promissory note
In the key of hope
Aside the stale snow
Stubborn against melt
That was a robin
No doubt at all
Its singular song
Perched on a wire
Strung from Kyiv
To Kalamazoo
Its clementine breast
Battered and beating
That was sunlight
They say piercing
Cumulus and doubt
A miracle or mirage
They say mingling
Shadow and blaze
1. The Search: a biography of Leo Tolstoy -- Sara Newton Carroll
2. The Buddha in the Attic -- Julie Otsuka
3. Silverview -- John le Carré
4. Snow Angels -- Stewart O'Nan
5. The Blue Guitar -- John Banville
6. Great House -- Nicole Krauss
7. Glory -- Vladimir Nabokov
8. You Think It, I'll Say It -- Curtis Sittenfeld
9. Ethan Frome -- Edith Wharton
10. Life Without Children -- Roddy Doyle
11. Why Peacocks? an unlikely search for meaning in the world's most magnificent bird -- Sean Flynn
12. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos -- Dominic Smith
13. The Employees -- Olga Ravn, tr. by Martin Aitken
14. Wayward -- Dana Spiotta
15. Year of the Monkey -- Patti Smith
16. By Nightfall -- Michael Cunningham
17. Ocean State -- Stewart O'Nan
18. Time Is a Mother -- Ocean Vuong
19. Forest Dark -- Nicole Krauss
20. Gap Creek the story of a Marriage -- Robert Morgan
21. Leave the World Behind -- Rumaan Alam
22. The Vanishing Act of Esmé Lennox -- Maggie O'Farrell
23. The Lost Family: how DNA testingis upending who we are -- Libby Copeland
24. The Black Snow -- Paul Lynch
25. Elegy for April -- Benjamin Black
26. Learning to Talk -- Hilary Mantel
27. Something to Do with Paying Attention -- David Foster Wallace
28. Enon -- Paul Harding
29. Whereabouts -- Jhumpa Lahiri
30. Dreaming in Cuban -- Cristina Garcia
31. Unaccustomed Earth -- Jhumpa Lahiri
32. Ghost Light -- Joseph O'Connor
33. Eventide -- Kent Haruf
34. Noboy's Normal: how culture created the stigma of mental illness -- Roy Richard Grinker
35. The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri -- David Bajo
36. The Slap -- Christos Tsiolkas
37. The Comedian -- Joseph O'Connor
I start with a lie. That's too strong. A falsehood. How about a miscalculation? The year has not ended. That's a fact. We are not at year's end, not fully, not yet, not now. I start with the half life of a half truth. I start with a start, a stutter start. I stutter my strut of a start because I have nothing to say, nothing to say except to lament the rubble and ruins, the strewn limbs and blood rivers of Putin's nightmare backward lurch into history. To think that World War Two was over? And to honor, I can't find proper synonyms, the bravery, heroism, patriotism, valor of Ukraine, its people amidst the smoldering slaughter, that mother on a gurney outside the bombed maternity ward they later said she and the baby died, that image to remember, like the silent scream freeze-frame shot to the head in Saigon, or the white man brandishing the US flag against the restrained black man, the soiling of old glory, Stanley Forman, and so on, ad nauseam, till death do us unite. Even before year's end I want to flip the calendar, turn the page, close the books, hurry before there's more, hurry up, there's time, and that's both horrifying and hopeful is it not.
Freedom of Espresso scene, real life: She: a print dress, paisley to my eyes on a background of torquoise; open face, wide smaile; tall leggy; bright. Enter him: muscular, clean-shaven, taller, trim, Harley Davidson shirt but subtle. They sit at the table in front of me. Engaged. Riveted. his back was to me. She was animated, smiling the whole half hour or was it an hour. She had eyes for him. You can tell.
They left.
Me too.
I caught them in the parking lot. I accosted them.
You know, I just have to tell you both. You two look so happy. I saw you in there. So happy. You remind me of me and my girlfriend. People tell us all the time how happy we look. We are. Same with you two. You look so happy together.
Thank you. Oh wow.
Man.
Jeez.
They exchange glances.
Her face turns red, the verge of tears.
We're blessed. The Universe has blessed us, man.
But guess what? This is the first time we have met in person!
It's true. Really.
That's crazy. That's how it was with me and Faith. We knew each other fifty years ago and reconnected last year. It was instant chemistry. And now it's like we're apostles of love, apostles of happiness.
I can't believe this.
I'm Paul.
I'm J.
I'm M.
Hold it.
I went to my car and came back with a copy of On the Spectrum from Me to You.
Here. That's my story, our story. Enjoy.
I want to read it first.
She got into her SUV. She had parked right next to me. She rolled the window down. She was quite oversome by emotion.
I don't know what to do. I live in New Hampshire.
Don't worry about that. Go with your heart.
My apostolic blessing.
oh say can you see
a pox upon our land
a Pax Americana
no not never
oh my can you spy
a flag swirling
in the bed of a pickup
a rebeling with a cause
if hatred is so called
fear by any other name
as sordid and as sour
as the banner of the hour
this far north
this far gone
an uncivil war
a confederacy of none
a lunacy of race
and riot and roar
a sound and a fury
of democracy
out the door
