Robin is smacking her gums at a hand mirror. She hunches over, back to us, in the middle of her room. Her smurf sized body curves like the shell of a snail. The popping is loud, quick, and jarring.
“La, la, la, la,” smack, “la.”
Beside her my overturned purse spills tape, lipstick, pennies and an orange across the carpet.
I look at Robert. "What is she doing?" I mouth.
"I don’t know," he mouths back, hoisting his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead.
“Yes madame cheri, yes! I WILL take the black sood pumps.” She rams her small fists together. “I won’t pay what you ask!”
I cover my mouth with my left hand, Robert’s with my right.
“And no, no I will not have any- what’s that? I need to do that? If I must.”
She seizes the tape and wrenches a clear strand from its reel. “If I must,” she repeats. She smoothes the tape over her upper lip, using her finger to flatten the air bubbles.
“Sho be it,” she mutters, and with a valiant stroke she rips it off.
Her shriek makes us duck and grab each other's arms.
random excerpt from a story of mine, about the price beauty exacts.
my sister's 21st birthday on sunday!
Friday, June 5, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
wide awake.
sometimes I sit at work and I stare at the computer with my tongue hanging out and all the blahness plugs my ears with cotton and this makes me feel as though I am swimming underwater with weights on and then I think:
yayayayayyayaayyyayayyayaayayyaya two more months to go!!!!
I can't wait to start the adventure.
hope you all have big hopes and dreams with which you can sporadically self-resuscitate!
sweetlife::::
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
miked.
last night my phone rang at one am. i thought it might be jackie, the 561 area code, so i picked up. low and behold it was mike kurtz, my neighbor and classmate from preschool to grade 12 - I have been avoiding his calls since december.
this is why:
Me: Hello?
Mike: ROBIN!
Me: Mike. You finally got me to pick up the phone. Who's number is this?
Mike: Irrelevant, McIntosh. What's up.
Me: Nothing.
Mike: I was just thinking about the time Blake, you and I were sitting on the trampoline, remember that?
Me: Yes.
Mike: And Blake told you that you came in somewhere between a pixie and a troll.
Me: He smelled like beef cubes!
Mike: And remember when you egged my house and I got in huge trouble and you told me to tell my Mom you were making cookies? As an excuse?
Me: I was wise beyond my years.
Mike: Remember our secret spot behind the fire station?
Me: that was MY spot asshole.
Mike: Remember when you told Gabe you didn't want to date him anymore and he tried to drown himself in the pool? Cold hearted, Robin, cold hearted.
Me: REMEMBER YOU USED TO MAKE ME BIKE AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITH A ROPE TIED AROUND MY WAIST? AND YOU USED TO WEAR ROLLERSKATES AND MAKE ME DRAG YOU?? REMEMBER THAT? HUH? REMEMBER THAT?!!
.... silence.
this is why:
Me: Hello?
Mike: ROBIN!
Me: Mike. You finally got me to pick up the phone. Who's number is this?
Mike: Irrelevant, McIntosh. What's up.
Me: Nothing.
Mike: I was just thinking about the time Blake, you and I were sitting on the trampoline, remember that?
Me: Yes.
Mike: And Blake told you that you came in somewhere between a pixie and a troll.
Me: He smelled like beef cubes!
Mike: And remember when you egged my house and I got in huge trouble and you told me to tell my Mom you were making cookies? As an excuse?
Me: I was wise beyond my years.
Mike: Remember our secret spot behind the fire station?
Me: that was MY spot asshole.
Mike: Remember when you told Gabe you didn't want to date him anymore and he tried to drown himself in the pool? Cold hearted, Robin, cold hearted.
Me: REMEMBER YOU USED TO MAKE ME BIKE AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD WITH A ROPE TIED AROUND MY WAIST? AND YOU USED TO WEAR ROLLERSKATES AND MAKE ME DRAG YOU?? REMEMBER THAT? HUH? REMEMBER THAT?!!
.... silence.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Me and My Lass, We Are a Poem
We tangle our hair in the moon,
then she coughs and I have no net
to catch the cough so I make her hot tea
with honey. I call her my coughing alarm clock,
but she's warmer and smoother than our oven
for waltzing with.
When we travel in our covered wagon,
she's in the bathtub splashing her way
across the prairie, singing Bo Diddley songs.
Any drops she spills
the prairie dogs lick them up.
That's the kind of poem she is.
When we lie down in the earth,
we'll need coffins with holes bored
through their sides: we'll each have
one arm hanging out
so I can take hold of her
hand, even while we're in the dirt.
Some nights our bed floats through
the bedroom wall. We're on our bellies
laughing and rowing with one arm.
When we get tired, the stars
make nice pillows for our heads.
The wind is what wakes me,
blowing so hard I watch my love's skin
flake off: a whole storm of her
flutters away from me until all that's left
inside her is a tired old woman
holding her spine like a candle.
taken from We Bed Down into Water, by John Rybicki
poem about his wife, dying of cancer.
then she coughs and I have no net
to catch the cough so I make her hot tea
with honey. I call her my coughing alarm clock,
but she's warmer and smoother than our oven
for waltzing with.
When we travel in our covered wagon,
she's in the bathtub splashing her way
across the prairie, singing Bo Diddley songs.
Any drops she spills
the prairie dogs lick them up.
That's the kind of poem she is.
When we lie down in the earth,
we'll need coffins with holes bored
through their sides: we'll each have
one arm hanging out
so I can take hold of her
hand, even while we're in the dirt.
Some nights our bed floats through
the bedroom wall. We're on our bellies
laughing and rowing with one arm.
When we get tired, the stars
make nice pillows for our heads.
The wind is what wakes me,
blowing so hard I watch my love's skin
flake off: a whole storm of her
flutters away from me until all that's left
inside her is a tired old woman
holding her spine like a candle.
taken from We Bed Down into Water, by John Rybicki
poem about his wife, dying of cancer.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
In which she discusses her past-present-future on Friday, May 22nd, 2009.
Currently I stand in the airport, where DCD imagined I would be. He said, “I picture you waiting in the terminal reading a magazine, maybe surrounded by family.” I imagined him sucking a cigarette in the corner of a press room, drumming his fingers against a sheaf of papers. So I guess I imagined where he was, and he imagined where I am: here.
When I enter the security line I am told to remove my flats. I stand five foot seven in socks, no wider than the security guard’s thigh. Our heads are the same size. Three nights from now DCD will tell me his head is bigger than mine, but I will disagree. His hair is bigger width-wise, mine is bigger depth-wise.
Standing in socks in the airport is degrading. No more degradation than I fed myself two Christmases ago. I went to the bar across from gate four, twenty feet from where I stand. I ordered a double gin and tonic. I spilled the glass and I spilled the bowl of nuts, timber-timber, one after another. I asked the bartender for a napkin. I gulped twice, I swiped twice and the deed was done. The party was either over or just starting, but who knows these things in the moment?
I wish Dave Jones were here with me now. We could be watched by the people watchers. I am sitting cross-legged in front of the gate four window. I stare at the tarmac and I yearn for asphalt. I would like Dave Jones to hold my hand as we walk to the grass stripe cleaving the concrete. I would look in his eyes and see planes fly out of his ears. Maybe he could press his ear to my chest and listen to my heart beat and pound and ring and jump.
I review my past and future in light of this feeling. "You are ignorant of what you do," I say - letting the words find places in my mouth.
When I enter the security line I am told to remove my flats. I stand five foot seven in socks, no wider than the security guard’s thigh. Our heads are the same size. Three nights from now DCD will tell me his head is bigger than mine, but I will disagree. His hair is bigger width-wise, mine is bigger depth-wise.
Standing in socks in the airport is degrading. No more degradation than I fed myself two Christmases ago. I went to the bar across from gate four, twenty feet from where I stand. I ordered a double gin and tonic. I spilled the glass and I spilled the bowl of nuts, timber-timber, one after another. I asked the bartender for a napkin. I gulped twice, I swiped twice and the deed was done. The party was either over or just starting, but who knows these things in the moment?
I wish Dave Jones were here with me now. We could be watched by the people watchers. I am sitting cross-legged in front of the gate four window. I stare at the tarmac and I yearn for asphalt. I would like Dave Jones to hold my hand as we walk to the grass stripe cleaving the concrete. I would look in his eyes and see planes fly out of his ears. Maybe he could press his ear to my chest and listen to my heart beat and pound and ring and jump.
I review my past and future in light of this feeling. "You are ignorant of what you do," I say - letting the words find places in my mouth.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
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