Tuesday, June 30, 2009

it rains

A small girl with twisted brown hair and a face as clean and smooth as a fresh sprouted leaf sits kicking her feet against the plastic of the subway seat. Her limbs are brown and delicate, tiny hands fiddling with the ends of her pink shirt, her eyes turned upwards, pleading. “Mama I want my grapes” she says, tapping the bag that her mother holds. “Wait till you wash your hands,” her Mama says. “But Mama I want my grapes,” the girl repeats, a thin line forming in the crease of her brow. Tears well up in the corners of her eyes. One single drop falls.

Thunder clouds roll and writhe in the sky above the city. Everyone quickens their pace and pulls at their clothing in futile efforts to keep the outside out. A short man with a collared shirt stops abruptly as a taxi darts in front of him, and he turns to look at the heavens. The tops of buildings are tinged with a funny yellow grey and a look of fear seeps from his eyes into his face. The woman behind him sees this look, and turns herself. For forty-two blocks this domino chain of upward glances rolls, halting only when a dog is the next to receive the signal. He doesn’t need to look, he already knows.

Droplets begin to fall, slowly at first. A tired man who waits beneath the umbrella of his pretzel stand tries to count them at first. Soon, their speed increases – they begin to fall manically, frantically, desperately, in one massive race to reach the earth. Everyone runs for cover, except one man, who stands perfectly still in the assault from above, and waits. Each drop is like a revelation, each splash of water a perfect new idea, a brilliant song, a small poem. He feels history descending on his head, and as water dribbles off his nose he tries to catch the symphony that it encapsulates. His ribs heave against the heavy wet fabric of his shirt, and the die of his dark blue tie begins to run with the rain. His eyes are turned upward.

monday

Sitting on a damp picnic blanket with the night sky falling and the grass swaying gently and softly and quietly between feet. To the left, a girl with almond eyes and a boy with pinstriped pants lie face to face, nose to nose, stomach to stomach, a thousand other laughs and wine bottles and plastic wrapped sandwiches forgotten. Their bodies are topography, low rising bumps in the smooth quilt of the park, and in the last of the fierce orange light that peaks between buildings, legs and arms seem to glow. His finger moves slowly over the ridge of her shoulder blade, retracing a familiar path to the dip in her neck that is painted in shadows. It moves up to her chin, rests ever so slowly, then meanders to tuck her hair behind her ear. She laughs, her mind leaping, running circles around the park, her story so full of bright eyes and excitement that she doesn’t notice the mapping of her back, the concentric circles of adoration swirled in perfect succession in the valley between her shoulders.

Smoke billows out from a window high above the park, mothers hug their children closely, people enter and exit the subway, a girl peeks through the eye of a camera, the light falls lower, a black and white movie illuminates just the tip of the noses of all who have gathered. A symphony drifts from the corners of the grass and eases the crowd back onto elbows, sighing and opening their eyes like newborns. In the dark of a summer stillness, a hand continues to trace its circles, the world continues to trace its circles, and I, spinning and spinning and spinning, trace mine.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

purple plums

There was, occasionally, this matter of the Voice. Occasionally, because it wasn’t every day that she caught the V train home, and it wasn’t every day that the girl listened. But occasionally, through the fog of afternoon breath and the clatter of rat feet pattering along the subway rails, the Voice would appear.

The Voice was deep and solid, like a tree taken root in her eardrum. Often, when the voice rang out over the loudspeaker of the train, it sounded very masculine. However, on days when the rain fell at a particular angle and not even the children in strollers would smile, a feminine curve would attach itself to the ends of sentences. The girl liked to think that it was the Voice’s way of compensating for how terrible the world felt, but she didn’t want to assume.

The thing that made the voice the Voice was not the sound of it. That, she knew, would be easy enough to overlook a million rides in a row. What shook the girl out of her window reflection hypnosis, were the words. “Please take note of your limbs” the Voice would announce, smooth and confident, “don’t hold the doors of the subway open.” “Thank you for obeying all rules,” the voice would sing, “you will be arrested if you don’t.” “The next time you see a dog, whisper kind words in its ear” the voice would laugh, “and you’ll be happy forever.”

Strangely, comments like the latter never seemed to cause much of a stir. The men in suits and the women in heels didn’t bat an eyelash when the Voice told them to “make tables, not chairs” and they didn’t shake a hip when it told them to “dance until you forget how to walk.” At first, the girl was worried – she thought she was the only one who heard these things. Yet, perhaps the third or fourth time that the Voice bounced around the hurtling car, she caught a toothless man smiling and looking at his feet. The Voice had proclaimed that “there is no use in wearing socks if they don’t make you giggle,” and the girl noticed that there were stockings peeking out of the toothless man’s shoes that bore the face of Hillary Clinton. The girl smiled too.


There is, occasionally, this matter of the Voice.

Monday, June 15, 2009

wena

There is this laundry turning and tumbling in the blue of a warm wash hum, and similar to the urge to suck my thumb, I kind of want to spin into oblivion like my socks and underwear. Sometimes the city is far too big – big like a mattress that has to be carried upstairs, big like a secret that you’ve kept for twelve years, big like oppression and big like depression and big like overwhelming, lung impaling happiness. Perhaps I’m attracted to the cleaning going on in the other room because I can’t decide whether I’m washing or drying or just pie-in-the-skying and waiting for sleep while wishing there was so much more life before tomorrow.

I keep sitting on the subway (up down, E, V, down up) and staring at people – all these people, these infinite people with infinite lives and rashes and sores and secrets and memories and smells and voices and beauty and pain and sometimes, yes sometimes, fascinating faces. And then they catch me staring and they stare back and it feels like I’m looking into the eyes of a cheetah. I am prey. Tiny tiny prey. But I can’t help but look at you! I yell in my head. My eyes go back to my feet on the floor and the rivulets of rain/piss/coffee/juice/tears that always seem to slick the bottom layer of public spaces. It’s always too hot in the subway.

I’m missing a spoon and there is nothing more that I want right now than to have it back in my vicinity. It’s hard to scoop sleep out of the clouds with it gone.

Sometimes, when i'm peeling an orange, I cross my toes that there will be an apple inside. And sometimes, when I'm exiting the subway at 53rd and Lexington, I cross my eyes that I'll emerge into a real jungle instead of the urban one. And sometimes, when I'm walking through Washington Square Park, I cross my personality traits in hopes that I will levitate.

cheek to pillow.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

infinite minute

The Story of That Little Bird
He really couldn't sit still, that one, hopping about on his little orange feet, his feathers freckled brown on brown, head bobbing to touch the ground. You might say he looked inquisitive, but the truth of the matter is that he really wasn't thinking about much at all, except the movie he watched last night through a bedroom window (too much violence for his taste.)

The bird was outside a little cafe that styled itself "french." So far, the pickings were pretty slim - a gob of mashed banana that a baby had belched, three leaves of lettuce that flew off the plate of a woman who sneezed, and a slippery olive. He wasn't too worried though since he had eaten quite well that morning (muffin shops always produce crumbs.)

A shadow fell across the bird's back, and he twitched his head to look upwards. Ah, yes, a man was sitting down at the tiny wooden table under which the bird waited. He was tall and awkward, and the bird thought it a shame that the fellow had to scrunch his legs up when he sat. The man's head was free of hair, and a small pudge was growing around his middle (quite sizeable, the bird thought, but then he realized it might just be his perspective.)

A waitress in bright red shoes came to take the man's order. He was quick about it - just a something-salad sandwich with a cupcake on the side. The bird didn't quite hear exactly what it was, but he wasn't too picky. In less than a minute, the food was on the table.

Much to the bird's chagrin, the man was uniquely neat about his dining: precise in the motion of fork and knife, and especially in the path from plate to mouth. While chewing his lunch, the man though about a story he'd read in the morning paper. A little girl had found a diamond while digging in a sandbox in Central Park. The idea of a buried treasure made the man smile to himself (before becoming a florist he had harbored dreams of archeology) and when he did, a small crumb of his sandwich fell from his mouth.

Out of the corner of the bird's eye, he saw the morsel descending rapidly. It tumbled through the air in a yellow pasty blur and hit the gray sidewalk with a bounce. the bird hopped over and tucked in.

mmm...

suddenly he coughed - horrified. EGG! he screamed (it sounded like a chirp to the man). Oh heavens no.

cannibalism.

the bird vomited and flew away.