Young Hobgoblins, etc.

8/25

You were also a little young hobgoblin, a witchy young old lady. Living in a cabin we were, or…visiting. I remember my father saying something, it was like the inside of a cuckoo clock, a birdhouse, a jewel box, a little bit of science and some floor cleaner.

We drove by but could not get out- my friends from my my old town playing a tackling game in the field, Trent pulling somebody down in the mud, edge of the hill fields near K-College, in the fall when the mud starts to freeze.

Like holding. Like the rain brought the beginning of autumn. False-movie autumn (as it doesn’t exist in the desert, that yellow yellow light and spill and slosh of seasonal decay).

Like holding: little collections of bones. The brown insides of a cuckoo clock. The mouse bones in an owl pellet. Inside the owl’s house- two bodies in the belly of a crow- a town described as a black hole. handanklekneetooth clanking.


8/2?

Selling seashells, selling shoes? Making paintings: a house of popsicle sticks.
I snuck in a house through the window. A boy’s house?
Norman opened the door.
There was an old dog inside.
I was there for a surprise purpose.
It was out in the woods.
I showered in the shower with the window open.
The window was smaller than when I’d crawled though.
Small like the window of a bank/ like that house on 68th and Woodstock.
The woods were supposed to be the woods by the cabins up north.
But there were too many lakes and the lakes were full of fishermen.
Shallow fields of fisherman in matching aluminum boats, little buoys around them.
My grandfather stood to the side: tall, wistful.



8/21

Mom walking around the house.
Make-up in cases. My sister packing for somewhere.
There were bugs here, bigger than quarters, smaller than my palm,
an inch or so thick: beetle-turtles.
Black thorax with day-glo green side panels.
Their bodies tough and squishy.
We had a pet? A jar with a tarantula.
It did not look like a tarantula.
My sister packed make-up for me because I forgot.
The jar with the spider was really my kombucha.


8/20

Camp Wakeshma dance floor pavilion
moving in and out of dark houses
night flutter under house lights
smell of bugs/fire/arms-in-the-air
my grandmother’s three-season porch
the chair she calls “the davenport”
mice and opossum
little animals that we are
roasters, holders, gleaners.

Bananarama Mystery Beauty

My elementary school principal is sitting in the hallway wearing a matching purple and white 1970's old lady style blouse & slacks ensemble. She's hurt her ankle and is propping it up on the windowsill. I approach her, feeling very confused about my age. I can only approach her as a seven year old, yet I feel that I am at least in high school. I look down and see that I am holding a big stack of cassette tapes. Most of them are by the band "Bananarama." They are for some project going on down the hall. "Do you want to listen to them?" I ask.
"No," she says, politely eating a salad.
I think about the colors of her clothing. They remind me of the flourescent lights at k-mart.
I walk in the classroom. Sit down with Brittany?
I fall asleep at school. I must be in high school.
When I wake up I am laying out in a field between the junkyard and the handicapped school on the outskirts of Battle Creek (where T. used to live). Someone who is supposed to be z.w. is with me but I can tell it's not really him because this person seems gray and sort of round. "Oh, by the way," they say "do you know how beautiful you are?"
"I don't even know how I got here," I reply.