follies

She loosened the tie that held her dress wrapped tightly around her rib cage. The laces seemed to cut her in half, like a stage prop, like a beaming female assistant: one hand on hip, the other presenting whatever fool act was taking place beside her. Hip to rib cage ratio – what was the golden number? With the dress tied as tightly as it would go, she looked like a 50's pin-up. Rib cage, she thought, sounded like the painting nailed to the wall above her bed. A canary – or was it a parrot – with bright yellow feathers smashed by the door of its own cage, exploding like a confetti bomb. No one knew if it had been caught trying to escape and the door slammed shut in punishment – crushed bones and feathers in return for sought freedom. Or, if it had been mangled by a housecat thanks to a door left ajar by a vengeful domestic contessa – prized possession lost in a moment to one so sly as an orange Tabby called Bates.

Rib cage, she thought, sounded like a printed pillow she once saw at a fair in Aberdeen. Satin pillows stuffed with lavender and tattooed with phrases like “spoiled rotten” “spiteful and delightful”. But there was one pillow, orange as fire, with the black silhouette of a domed birdcage and a bird caught in the sliding door. Stay in the cage, she thought, why risk losing the coveted gift of flight? Even a bird behind bars can hope for another chance to see the earth in ways a spotted deer or sleek cheetah cannot imagine. But a crushed bird--wings broken by desire for elevation and velocity—is reduced to ornament. Safely ensconced in routine and blessed with provincial seeds, her heart and lungs were content to retire all hope of escape. 

morada

november first.

drawers holding the dead are stacked in hollow white walls. orange and purple petals fall in bunches -- liberal handfuls of paper petals cascading from the wall tops. black porous edges line the white concrete walls like singed doilies, heaven and hell, a crustaceous erosion as if the walls had risen from the sea. death is arranged neatly in rows and call numbers, labeled with five, six, sometimes seven names denoting kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.

mort. mortimer. moribund. morbid. mortal. mortuary.

the dish of the day is a purple pudding: colada morada. making it at home is bad luck. one must wait to be invited to share a glass and spoon with neighbors, where the orphan pudding lacks any known origin but exists, just the same, for the deserving.

quietude. reverence. sunday best. no fun-size butterfingers or porch brujas fueled by duracel. in ecuador, death inspires superstition, more drugstore marias on the the dashboard. white walls and snowing petals, drawers containing abandoned ships.

 

remedy

for every evil under the sun

there is a remedy, or there is none.

if there be one, seek til you find it

if there be none, never mind it.

mother goose

caldera

blue stone embellishment -- makes my ring finger press random keys, under its weight...heavy o, accidental p...sapphire typos.

i learned my lesson long ago: jello fruit cups are prelude to a false takeoff.

the pants are like chaps, only more ladylike.

songs from the 90s about blue things or by blue-themed bands.

at 32, she kicked the bucket -- four months after discovering melanoma in her neck, riding around on her lymph nodes. i picture pond gorgons latching onto flimy lymph rafts, taking them hostage, fangs piercing bleeding bottom lips. she was on song 19 of her debut album when, like a doomed canary, she couldn't make a sound.

the lolly pop notion of a rustic fishing lodge, five mysterious players, and one ancient secret too far-fetched for fiction ... with red adirondack chairs and my morning coffee by the river...i let it stay there for now.

words sewn together -- wordwhore -- pen for hire.

pink jello is particularly bad.

hot springs in the caldera region -- what did we find that couldn't possibly have lived in the black sand crab cooker? the dairy cows' jacuzzi?

 

paris

Last night, I went to Paris. I was chasing my sister through the streets around dusk, and her boyfriend was scattering diamonds like breadcrumbs along the cobblestone streets, across lamp lit bridges, bats hovering overhead. She laughed, grabbing handfuls of pebbles and diamonds, and stuffing her pockets. I followed along behind, kicking through the dust with my toe, wondering how many of them were real. The streets grew darker. Firelight from the city lamps glowed in their black metal cages. We followed him, collecting diamonds, clawing like kids at the taffy entrails of a piñata.

His hands were drained, all the diamonds scattered across a bridge over the Seine. We thought that was the end, the game was over – but then, we saw him toss a silver cuff that landed heavily in the black gravel. An oval amethyst gleamed in its center, bolstered by turquoise stones set into the metal. Our eyes locked on the ring at the end of a thin silver chain set between the amethyst and the turquoise -- a pink half-moon diamond, fresh as lemon wedge, reflecting the moonlight.

ride

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