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Light Bulb Terrarium
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Listening to Duran Duran
fanning bleach blondes a little Yoda of a day start with sunset dating Francesca Woodman's ghost my lullaby nightmare baby blue everything. What is that pottery oven called? a kiln, I'm in a kiln, figuring things out to smithereens bleep bloop the rain is dodging you right before the flamenco how the panna cotta moves with your spoon perfectly decent exposure have seconds a grill of more teeth. Fishing at Lake George arbors harboring black-blue monarchs false eyelashes in the wind a couple of smoldering cloves goth diamonds these two Lorde fans talking about kissing cool story trying all the perfumes at Sephora I just wanna ascend the boombox for a second. A lotion of connotation 100% organic my fly has been open since oysters you whisper so loud worried about my early thirties walk-ins some Matisse-like shapes it should make a click which moon phase are you falling asleep in the wrong skin I should've known you never use periods or wear hoodies zipped to the top post-Bikram. If you were basil you'd have gotten all crispy. |
Part 2 |
for Jaimie
1 Scenes from last week A girl drinking punch from a large bowl says, “I don’t know if I can commit to it...” CUT TO An upside down fish floating in a vase of flowers on the mantel. “Who did it?” a man asks, holding a Valentine’s Day card. CUT TO Me listening to Amen Dunes in bed, thinking, I will tell Jaimie this is what I was listening to on Spotify when I finally send the letter. CUT TO “If Gabby gets to, why can’t I?” a 15 year-old-girl asks, holding her boyfriend’s hand. Her dad looks to the camera. CUT TO (singing) “I don’t knock at no doors I am quietly shared I’m for people who know” CUT TO Two men having sex. “Wait, what about Gabby?” one asks. “You mean the fish? Just shut up,” the other one says. CUT TO The dad chugging a bowl of punch at a sixth-grade dance, the majority of it missing his mouth and ruining his suit. (This made it in from the bloopers.) CUT TO The universe: various planets, a satellite, a solar flare, two comets. One of the comets hums “Beauty school dropout.” CUT TO Me in a plaid shirt and a hoodie, drinking coffee (generic, from deli on Nassau and Kingsland, "John's Deli and Grocery"--it was too cold to go to Variety or Café Edna or Tar Pit and I wasn't really in the mood to feel inferior to a barista) and typing. 2 Part 1’s monologue It was difficult at times, waiting in the wings. But you gotta, you know, you gotta wait for your shot. At least there was lots of entertainment. There was this guy in a turquoise suit who had memorized all the lines to every SpongeBob SquarePants episode. There was a little girl catching fireflies. There was an elephant sitting upright. There was this boy we all called Fellini because he wouldn’t shut up about his dreams. He predicted the goldfish. Actually, a lot of people did. I mean who was feeding it? The dad? He’s busy having sex with Gabby’s boyfriend, you know? 3 Meanwhile Crickets CUT pastures CUT Florentine omelets CUT lonely angels CUT unannounced choreography CUT “that’s a hydrant…” PASTE “that’s a hydrant…” (sic) 4 I turn off the tv “I know it’s a hydrant,” I say. It is 27 degrees but Greenpoint is beautiful today, all visible breath and hats: Solid cotton beanies of red, gold, gray, aqua; hats with earflaps and Peruvian stitching, pom-poms of eggplant, pom-poms of fur, of mink, of beaver, of faux cous-cous-colored fur; hats fringed with leather, hats with black leather patches, patches with logos of intertwined S's, logos of elephants, logos of upturned crowns; hats embroidered with the word DOPE, with the D and O linked; embroidered with the word SUPREME wrapping around the head, cut off at the R; fair isle hats of rust, pewter, amber, ecru, pink melon, sea lavender; hats with little buttons, with braids; hats in the shapes of bunnies, pandas, dogs—one pale pink pig hat. Two guys on my block, hatless, are swinging a long black pole at a tree, knocking down these things that look like little orange cherries. They smell like barf. “What are those?” I ask. One of them squishes one between his fingers and a little nut pops out. “They taste like peanuts.” I am reading at least 6 books right now, I think, but not really reading any of them: Lia Purpura’s Rough Likeness, Carolyn Zaikowski’s A Child is Being Killed, Ariana Reines’ Mercury, and three Anselm Hollo collections which are open in various rooms in my apartment, plus some Reverdy poems I read online, and a Frank O’Hara line I can’t get out of my head, you think it is nice that a box of matches is purple and brown and called La Petite. Would Reverdy put this poem in a house or under the stars? I don’t know. Frank gives me the courage to be sentimental in a poem: he makes me cry very slowly as if the tears were somewhere in my abdomen, tears I’ve had for years but couldn’t digest because I’m too sentimental for digestion. I’m so glad I get to keep them for this long, Frank. La Petite. La Petite. I think it’s pretty that the goldfish died with the flowers. (They were puschkinia, blue and white.) 5 Selected responses Anonymous: “This is a bunch of bullshit.” The Universe: “I liked my costume, thanks.” The Goldfish: “Assumptions, assumptions.” Jaimie: ------------------------------------------------ Reverdy: “I don’t even know you. I’m in the vase, as well.” Part 1: “I said everything I had to say.” CUT TO: “Thanks for the work.” Me: "I like that shirt." Barista: "Oh, thanks, yeah, people keep saying that." Me: "Haha. Oh really? That's so funny. Where did you get it?" Barista: "Grand Street Bakery." Me: "That's cool that they're selling shirts at a bakery, I guess." Barista: "Oh, ha, no, it's a vintage shop." Me: "Ohhhhhh. That makes sense." One of the comets: “That song is out of my range.” Gabby: “There was something in the punch.” Dad: “Because Gabby is a free spirit.” The Man in the Turqoise Suit: "Then Mr. Krabs says: 'Mr Squidward! What the halibut is going on?'” Anonymous 2: “You know when you’re eating a Florentine omelet at Café Mogador (let’s go back, Jaimie! What was it really, eggs with stewed chickpeas? Or is that Prune?) and you’re worried about getting the spinach stuck in your teeth so then you stop talking at brunch for a little bit and you start listening to the crickets in your head and something opens while the other people keep talking something opens like a pasture and all of these lonely angels start populating this pasture and you look at your coffee but really you are looking past it and then the check comes and for some reason it reminds you of that time you got a ticket because you needed to pee so badly that you just double parked at a bus stop—or was it a hydrant—and one of your friends says “let’s just split it” and then the lonely angels scatter and the pasture condenses into a little nut and the upright elephant swallows it whole, saying, La Petite, La Petite?" Crickets: *crickets* 6., and so on The fireflies The fireflies spill out from random spots in the darkness. The girl, carrying a jar with one firefly in it, stops to scratch her nose, and then continues running. She opens the jar. “Bye-bye, Part 2,” she says. 7 Alternative ending Jaimie, I’m sorry I’ve been so late in responding. I really just wanted to say I’ve never seen a sunset so beautiful as the one you’ve written and I don’t know why there are so many chimneys in Paris but aren’t we lucky. -to keeping the postal system alive. As ever, Peter 8 Bloopers Instead of turning off the tv, I lower the volume. The crickets speak in perfect English. During the sex scene, the dad's cock-sock falls off. He laughs nervously. The man in the turquoise suit accidentally quotes Seinfeld: "These pretzels are making me thirsty." All of the fireflies fly into the girl's jar. (Actually, they prefer to be called lightning bugs or 'star-twits'). The bus comes before we can double park and we pee our pants! Just kidding. You run into a Duane Reade because you think it is a Starbucks and pee on the greeting cards. Jaimie never gets the letter. The envelope says: "return to sender." The goldfish is breathing audibly, like mouth-breathing, in the vase. The universe drops the comet singing "Beauty School Dropout" on the Florentine omelet's head and I pay the whole bill! Anonymous 2 and Anonymous exchange contact info. Later they have children together and name them. The black pole hits the elephant in the head (THWACK!) and a nut pops out. The lonely angels all dance together at the sixth grade dance. The coffee and I make eye contact. The postal system dies. Gabby slips on the cock-sock and accidentally says some of Part 1. Reverdy keeps giving everything away, even the unannounced choreography, and we have to light him on fire with La Petite matches! At the funeral, the puschkinia keep farting. Frank gives the Valentine's Day card to the bereaved. The tv eats the camera. Jaimie is the poet and the blank fills itself in. The blank is tea rose pink. The poem forgets to keep going. (This makes Reverdy and I giggle like schoolgirls for eternity. short eternities, eternities filled with plain midnight blue hats filled with stars.) 9 Credits Dad..................................................TED CRUZ Gabby..............................................MILEY The Universe..................................KANYE TV...................................................THE INTERNET The Letter.......................................A REALLY LONG TEXT The Girl...........................................COMPILED HOME VIDEO FOOTAGE OF DAKOTA FANNING The Goldfish..................................TAYLOR SWIFT The Puschkinia...............................THE KARDASHIANS Anonymous 2.................................FELLINI Perfect English..............................STEPHEN FRY The Lonely Angels.......................LITTLE MIX https://soundcloud.com/little-mix The Postal System........................CLINT EASTWOOD Part 1..............................................DANNY DEVITO The Florentine Omelet..................KALE AND DAIYA CHEESE OMELET (PART OF KALE NOW PLAYED BY RAINBOW CHARD) All Other Minor* Roles..................KANYE *in name only (note included at Kanye's request) |
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