Straight To The Horizon

Ritual

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:36:00 +0000

When I was small and biddable, I would wake up before my mother, and scamper downstairs to the kitchen to plug in her ancient percolator coffeepot. The night before, my mother would have filled the tall, battered aluminum pot with water, and I would have tried to aim the long center arm into its hole, and balance the metal coffee basket on it, carefully filling the basket with grounds but usually spilling a few into the water. Our coffeepot was from another time, ready to go without pressing any buttons or flipping any switches. Its simple, thin-prong plug was flimsy even in my small hand. In the morning, I would plug it into the wall of our military whitewashed kitchen, and wait for the early morning's long shadows to fill with quiet light. After the coffee began to burble up into the glass knob top and the pale air to fill with its sharp, sweet tang, I would balance my mother's favorite coffee mug, a small cup with skim milk, a napkin and spoon on an old tray. The mug read "i luv u mommy" painted as if by a childish hand, purchased in one of the million Japanese tchochski shops around the Navy base.

After the coffee finished brewing, I would carefully pour it into my mother's coffeepot. I would carry it up to her and crawl into bed next to her, and she would tell me what a wonderful child I was, drink her coffee, and cuddle with me. It was our ritual, and coffee has always smelled like home to me.

I hated the taste of it, though, couldn't stand the bitterness. College, the only real age of discovery for my generation, taught me to tolerate coffee, to depend on it, and finally to love it. As every young wannabe does in her freshman year, I spent most of my time and money at the campus coffeeshop, and eventually got sick of $4.75 sugar explosion "drinks." Also, the cool kids drank coffee. Slowly, deliberately, I weaned myself off the ridiculous dessert drinks, moving from dark chocolate mochas to vanilla lattes. I drank lattes for months, although I couldn't quite get behind the bitterness of cappuccinos. Summer rolled around, and I drank iced coffee with half and half, and eventually, I grew to love the taste of freshly roasted and ground coffee, hot, in a mug I could wrap my hands around while I stared out the window like the tortured young artiste thinking Great Thoughts as I imagined I must be.

Finally I could taste the difference between good and mediocre coffee, understand the love affair America has with its coffee. The drink of the revolution, coffeehouses were signs of rebellion. Fuck your snobby British tea! we cried. No pansy drinks for Americans, with itty bitty sandwiches and pinkies flagging the air. We'll drink it in a MUG.

I borrowed a one-cup coffee maker when I moved to DC for a semester, and hopped from foot to foot while it brewed, waiting to grab it and dash to the subway, usually late. It was there, self-destructively sleeping five hours a night, that I developed a caffeine addiction. I threw back a cup every morning, then another once I got to work (horrid, bitter, corporate stuff), or I went through the morning glazed and irritable.

Back in Williamsburg, I found myself in a relationship with another coffee drinker. He wasn't the addict I was, but he spent most nights at my place, and enjoyed his cup in the morning, so I bought a cute little Mr. Coffee, exactly enough for one good mug each. He drank his coffee black; I took a little milk. I've always thought men should drink black coffee; privately I am scornful of men who regularly order caramel macchiatos, whatever the hell that's actually supposed to be. The first time I served the boyfriend coffee, proudly bearing my fresh brew out to the living room, he sipped carefully, and grinned. "Ah, you've passed the final test," he said, winking. "You make a great cup of coffee."

It's a symphony of freshly ground beans, filtered water, and a clean pot. You'd be amazed how terrible rancid coffee oils can make an otherwise perfect cup.

Running late as I tend to do, I ran out of time to make breakfast and coffee. Most mornings, the boyfriend would end up making coffee while I showered, leaving it on the dresser in his sweet way. I would drink half of it, and pour the rest into a travel mug to drink in the passenger seat of his battered red pickup truck.

I still use the black little Mr. Coffee, brewing four, five pots when my friends gather for Sunday morning brunch, one half for my travel mug to go most mornings, or a full pot when I manage to steal enough time to sit down to breakfast during the week. I still like to sit and watch out the window like a tortured artiste thinking Great Thoughts, slowly pulling myself from sleep, my hands around one of my favorite mugs. Aside from the caffeine, an undeniably welcome hit, the luxury of sipping a cup of coffee prepares me for the day. This ritual gives me time to order my thoughts, plan my strategies, and muster enough energy to stride headlong into life, giving all I've got. Sometimes in the quiet mornings I even dip into a poem, and the words will swim through my mind for the rest of the morning.

Sometimes the coffee gets cold while I sit, so I pour more from the warm pot and fill back up the cup, finally gulping it down when I realize I'm about to be late. I should really just get to bed earlier.

306 South Boundary Street

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:04:00 +0000

My house has four walls of red brick, a sagging roof, and dissolving wooden floors. Three concrete steps lead to a white front door that swells and sticks from March to November, and the thin black railing on the porch flakes red rust onto my palm. I love this house.

I drag my heavy dining room chairs onto the porch late at night and blow smoke into the black outside world, scribbling across heavy spiral notebooks or thumbing through rich poetry anthologies. I dive into personal literary criticism, and wonder whether lofty nighttime ideas will have anything of value in them in the light of day.

Regardless of value, every dark midnight sinks into the house, and I sometimes push aside a chair to find piles of these nights cluttering a corner. At other times, I'll catch the echoes of last week’s argument, or the sniffling, stifled sobs of Tuesday morning. At nine PM, my room will suddenly smell like the flowers left on my pillow a month ago.

When the house is still, the faucets turned off, the night birds quiet and the morning birds not yet awake, I hear the house breathing. The walls breathe in my carbon dioxide and discarded movements: a dropped pencil, and the soft clatter is absorbed into the walls. Nothing escapes. The walls hear everything, the windows see everything, silent witness and constant companion to the minutia of life.

Washing up at the sink, a soft plea or a gaggle of laughter will drift past, and I'll turn, startled. “I don’t know that voice-" I think. But then, I’ve only lived here for two years, and this house has been creaking and settling into its foundations for well over thirty years, a lifetime and a half for me.

Phrases, soaked into the drywall, drip out into a puddle under the table. Whispers, glances, and lazily tossed nods rise up from the floor. The house breathes in my life, and exhales the scent of long-burned dinners, dirty laundry, fresh soap, love-making, a neglected parakeet, a fir Christmas tree, and spilled red wine. How much of my life has fallen between the cracks of these floorboards, never to be seen again? How much have I forgotten?

I press bits of my life onto paper, picking the delicate strands of events I want to save and smoothing them onto pages with strong, blue ink, but the house does not discriminate so favorably. Eventually, I'll have too many memories squeezed onto the shelves to fit my books, and dusty ideas will spill out of my closet whenever I open the door, and I'll have to move. Despite my summer walls and tiled kitchen, I know this house can’t hold me. It’s missing something vital.

The daily conflicts of human lives imprint the house with the seasons, but it continues essentially unchanged. The house persists, silent, never forgetting. Thankfully, when I fill my sedan and drive away, my own memories will bleach and fade in the sun, like clothes I've left flapping on the clothesline out back.

Poem 2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:28:00 +0000

Like piss left unflushed and forgotten,
Color and stench polluting a porcelain morning,
Your letter in the bottom drawer.

On Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:27:00 +0000

Bent over my desk
I hardly hear his step.
His hands ease the knot
In my shoulders.

Bathrobe Boy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:55:00 +0000

Andrew rides around the campus on his shiny blue beachcruiser bicycle, circling in parking lots and pedaling aimlessly up and down the brick paths. He calls his bicycle his Rocket, and attached silver streamers to its wide handlebars so that they fly out like shining wings.

I played chess with him once, on a white and black marble chessboard. Half the pieces’ heads had been broken off and glued back on crookedly, so it was difficult to tell which piece was which. Andrew lifted his bishop to take out my rook and put it back down with a crash.

“Do you ever feel really, really bad telling someone no?” he asked, squinting as if looking at me through a pane of thick glass.
“Well, sometimes,” I answered. “I like making people happy.”
“But like, to the point where you-” he stopped, stammered, clutching at words in the air, “like I feel bad even taking your piece, even trying to win, cause if you lost you’d feel bad and get angry at me.”
“Andrew.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him to face me. “If you let me win, I will know, and then I will be very angry.”
“Oh, um,” he sighed. “Well, ok.”

In the fall and early spring, Andrew wears a tattered white bathrobe over his jeans and teehsirt. He says it's very comfortable, and keeps him warm. At night he's easy to spot, a glowing white Templar in the chill blue dusk, gliding across the ground in hot pursuit of a holy adventure or peering behind lamp posts for the bright jewels of chivalry. In daylight, the sunshine peeks through the many tiny rips and holes in the terry robe, and the mud streaks the bottom hem, but he doesn’t seem to notice. His eyes pass through the mundane lawns and brick buildings of the campus and fix on something beyond, a place with Shakespearian eloquence and gritty Kerouacian night adventures.

Every morning, he sweeps into the Daily Grind coffeehouse and buys a scone, and sometimes a cup of coffee, beaming under tousled, dirty blond hair. The planes of his body are firm and graceful, each connecting smoothly to the other, and his jaw is strong under clear blue eyes. He knows girls like the way he looks, but striding to the counter, his bathrobe flapping behind him, he grins crookedly, at this moment completely un-self-conscious. His entire attention focuses on the joy of the coffeehouse, shoving the aromas of coffee and scones into his nostrils, moving to the rhythm of indie bass lines, and lighting up at the smile I have for him. At the counter, he stops, and poses, pitching his voice low like a cartoon superhero. “And what do we have today?” he demands.

Andrew reads at a corner table for an hour, buried in his book, oblivious to the flux and tide of the coffeehouse. When he leaves, he usually forgets his book and inevitably barrels back into the shop five minutes later, his bathrobe flying behind him, his eyes wild. When I hand him the book, bemused, he straightens and bows, saying, “Why thank you, madame! So pleased!” before dashing to class.

He likes bananas, and banana flavored things, and even has a scone named after him at the Daily Grind. BATHROBE BOY’S FAVORITE BANANA SCONES! the sign advertises. The coffeehouse doesn’t bake them very often, but there’s some today. Andrew will be pleased.

Apology

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:45:00 +0000

Satisfied little river, wet between our toes,
Hushed to mirror the world roof, which
Cradling us with atmospheric arms
Swallowed red meteors to dazzle our eyes.
She stilled our tongues, understanding everything
(and you did not kiss me,
though your facebones deepened in grey starlight)
While I scattered sand on the floor of your car.

That Time of the Month OR Miss Cindy's Revenge

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:44:00 +0000

Miss Cindy endured the most crippling cramps
Each month right before the full moon.
Said, “I’m bloaty and cranky and achy, it’s awful,
and I need some chocolate -and soon!”

But Johnny her co-worker, hated such talk.
“You dis-gust-ing female!” he said.
“All you do is complain, your work is inane,
it’s probably why you’re unwed!”

“Women can’t work! They belong in the home!
They have babies and bleed all the time!
It’s just one more reason,” he added while grinning,
“The kitchen is where I keep mine!”

Cindy was thrown, her mouth hung wide open,
“You chauvinist asshole!” she cried.
“I’d like to see you bleed for five days and live.
Or try giving birth -THERE’s a ride!”

“You’re wimpy, pathetic, I’m stronger,” said John.
But Cindy was pissed off -and how!
So she grabbed some scissors and slit Johnny’s gut,
Said, “Who’s whining about bleeding now?”

Vignette II

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:41:00 +0000

She looks down to see his hairs dotting her skin, startlingly black against her pale arms and belly. She rubs her arm, dislodging the thick dark hair caught in her own downy, translucent arm hairs. She'll make up the bed with fresh sheets and wake up in the morning to finds his dark hairs sticking to her, even after washing the sheets two, three, four times. She rubs her body with the navy blue towel that used to be his, and slowly smoothes every drop of water from her thighs, her arms, her breasts, and her ass, finally draping the towel around her shoulders like a cape. She leans over to wipe the mirror dry with a fold of the towel, and examines her cheeks in he mirror. The baseboard heat is drying out her skin, and by tomorrow morning, she'll find tiny dry patches of skin flaking off around her nose, but the shower has left her face smooth and flushed. She takes a deep breath of warm, moist air of the bathroom, scented with citrus, wraps the towel more tightly around her, and slips into the hallway towards the bedroom. Her new lover’s hair is prematurely shot with distinguished grey, and his chest is smooth across heavy muscles, but he doesn’t seem to notice the foreign hairs on her linens. She is grateful for his ignorance, or his tactful silence. Whichever it is, she’ll take it. She couldn’t get rid of the hairs if she wanted to.