Gifts My Mother Refused

Ask: what atmosphere does your writing create? Doors too narrow to pass through are a response to what problem. No I will not be consistent, thank you very much.

A heron crossing Route Nine a little after seven a.m., just me and the long-haulers in this pretty corner of Massachusetts.

Shadows of clouds crossing far hills.

With what do we not interfere? One dreams of fucking in ways that create egalitarian outcomes for the world, and yet ends up in the very fantasy the non-egalitarian world inspired long before.

Plus signs.

What are we actually looking at? Mugs which - no longer able to hold coffee - instead hold pens. We have this understanding of Hawaii, we have this understanding of women.

Gifts my mother refused, seeing perhaps the way in which the giving arose in poorly-articulated ideas about gender and power, which confusion was shared, and not helped in any way by the refusal. 

Who sleeps in the basement, who hides in the hay loft getting high, reading Robert Bly poems.

I mean, consider how clumsily the idea of transference (of power through sexual desire) addresses the very real problem of unhappiness.

Let us go into the very heart of what we do not wish to go into. 

Grendel coming up from the swamp, sniffing around the fire, all of us wondering who is going to find their inner Beowulf first. I miss licking envelopes, putting my tongue on things has always been one of the great joys of my life.

Corrective norms of which we are unaware, operating in us.

Lies I tell because of lies I told because of lies I knew were lies and lacked the power to correct, long ago in a city known primarily for its famous executions.