Monthly Archives: June 2008

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Heimlichkeiten

I
One green flower pasted to a burnt up overcoat mysteries the mottled gowns hung from the shower rod, freaks the daffodilies out, lucky girls get in the house. Easy to lose time, I gather my dolls, stare at my hands as you rake the thistledown like such silk, and by color I assemble them so that Bones will be the last one in, most beautiful in her cut out curtains, and underneath she is talking.

II
No playing “brides” in the house, only in the yard. If Everyone removes her redskin dress she will ruin it for the others, and then what? Sit in the corner so that everything is touching. One day we will be less mechanical and leave you.

III
We marionette. We only story. We terrible to soil, and come gather. We trouble up the yard, what’s a mother? how much longer?

Black Market

What else could I have done, but check into the Massacre Motel. Cheat the rubble collector out of old rage and oranges. Her last glass bracelet. As in the story that begins what is her name–and ends she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. Call me Berlin. Call me your Last Descenscion. I’ve been watching you for a long time stunned by the restlessness of the Black Market. Everything’s turning into something else. The soldier’s gold teeth slipping into your hands like wedding rings. Then slipping away. Even forgiveness, as I watch you trade our mattress for a miniature boxcar. Even its wheels turn. Because in this story, there is no little girl in the rocks whispering to her dog forever, forever. Even she wants sugar bread. Even she is dying for a gamble. Tomorrow her dog will wake up locked in a stranger’s trunk for a good laugh. I want to point its fear at you, or worse, among the devastated walls of this cheap metropolis, barter away everything you’ve ever called me: burnt string, broken ladder, violent one, until I am unrecognizable. Even to myself.

Sabrina Orah Mark

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What next, what next?

No move to New Haven. Published in the June issue of Autumn Sky. Tin House two-and-a-half weeks away. Joined a book club that alternates between decent fiction and shitty nonfiction. Considering enrolling in a depression study (free therapy and drugs?) Teaching. Still not really talking to my family. Trying to drink less and read more. What next?

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O I didn’t know from liminal space. Truly.

While I wait for J’s job in New Haven to fall or come through, I rearrange the really important bits of my life, trinkets on a chest of drawers. I tweak and tweak and tweak my Tin House manuscript, I write the occasional email to friends I am trying to keep in spite of myself, I look in my planner at the block of days that constitute my Northwest journey, I send submissions to a smattering of publications, I halfheartedly research grad school programs. I journal on paper.

It doesn’t feel wrong, to have reduced my life to the lowest common denominator–the pets and the love and the words–but sometime soon I want to see some real growth, some palpable dynamism, a conviction that I am doing something, to offset all the going somewhere in my life.

While I wait:

The Writing Life, Annie Dillard

Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The Model World, Michael Chabon

New York Magazine Jan-May 2008

NY Times Sunday Magazine (Particularly The Ethicist and The Way We Eat)

Vanity Fair August 2007-June 2008

Legitimate Dangers Anthology

Top Chef

Deadliest Catch

The Tudors

The L Word

Duotrope.com