“ You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson — she’s probably the top — Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.
I always choose one obnoxious book to read over the summer. This summer I vow to actually READ said book. Can’t decide between Ulysses, Anna Karenina, and The Idiot. Halp? I’m open to other suggestions.
“ If a girl ever drives four hours alone in the dark wipe of 3am to meet you
for brunch
if you can imagine her being too young to buy beer,
if she dances in the back without red lipstick watching your mouth
if she links a forefinger through your belt loop, follows you to a home
on a two-lane road over dead rocks and souls left to dry,
past red capes of dust fields,
if you pull over at the road’s split lip and she pulls over, too
if you sit by her pool, sick with no decent pool man, drinking wine
until your teeth are bleeding without apology,
if you continue to tell stories that have no song lyrics to legacy them,
if you tap you forehead twice against the side of her bed she won’t sleep on—
already spreading in the goodbye behind you—
she loves you I promise, though she won’t want to admit it.
“ (Things To Forget Him By)
1) Order your steak bloody, your whiskey, straight up.
2) Purchase sensible things you’ve needed for some time: ink cartridge, rain gear, vacuum-cleaner bags.
3) Picture him tasting the congealed frosting of wedding cake samples, talking to the blonde-tipped florist, checking his watch every fifth word.
4) Remember all the places his hands have (haven’t) been and all the places you wish his hands have (haven’t) been.
5) Take long baths.
6) Make dinner for the man you live with. Manage (a record) not the burn the sauce.
7) See him everywhere: hotel bars; the laughter of people on trains; the dopey, blanked-out eyes of the Krispy Kreme guy.
8) Floss.
9) Take to drinking sherry in the tub while leafing through women’s magazines. Learn to mulch, prevent rug burn, undo a zipper with your teeth.
10) Buy a rubber plant on sale. Manage (a record) to keep it alive for a month.
11) Recall, in the dark, the warmth of his mouth on your neck, the warmth of his neck on your mouth.
12) Picture him, again, the only way you know how: standing around the portico, fumbling with the lighter, his shoulders hunched against the wind and beyond him the water, always the water…
