Necessity has the face of a dog...

Tivoli

This plot was once a whaling town, you said, was filled
with men who dared to erect upon the shore
(where clots of skin and teeth and tears have built)
their village: a row of fences, windows, doors.
Perhaps a woman trembled and surveyed the long gray
shamed carcasses, blood like thick ribbons of sorrow,
hauled up to Straatsburg to be split and splayed,
tainting the rising river, the silt and stones of tomorrow.
She knows, of course, that the great desolate tail
churns the bones of Mohawk maidens at the river’s crest,
like a man’s love in her body, like a dry nail
chafing against the walls of her womb, rusting in her breasts.
And you, with your seaman’s lilt, would describe
the journey to higher ground, a home split in two,
bereaving the bedroom and the fondness inside,
leaving slanted doorways and lingering fumes of glue.
Three hundred years later, I live at this lofty address.
I live with the painted-over cracks and the leaning stairs,
unseen from the outside, hidden by morning glories and a dress
of May lilacs. But when I pull open the door it is there--
the penitent stench of adhesive. You are gone, but I am still bleeding.
It fills my shoes and I guide my breath,
the ghost of a corpse-stained river lost in my belly, needing
a way to reach over the crevasse of wrath.
They tell me this will pass, that my body will forget,
But my heart is hooked and stiffened, like the whale I never met.


This was supposed to be a sonnet, but then I forgot the rules of a sonnet and then I remembered that I always sucked at sonnets and then I remembered that I always sucked at poetry and then I remembered that I don’t care if I suck because I like writing sucky poetry.

So now that I finally convinced myself that this GS thing was the right thing to do, it’s all I want. I don’t want to send out any more applications or spend another minute of my precious time parked in front of the computer going blind at the SC Job Bank site. I could take some shitty paying job at Starbucks or somewhere like that (or maybe driving a truck for B and F) and sleep easy until August.

But here I am, just waiting, and working myself up about it. “I dropped the application at the front office on Monday…they haven’t called me….surely they should have called me by now….or did they already give it to someone else….what if I made some awful typo on my cover letter…why haven’t they called me…what if it got put under a stack of papers and is forever lost…” I hate this! And so I’m grumpy. I stare at my phone and check my email twenty times a day. I’m still sending out resumes but my heart’s not in it, and it really is a complete waste of my time. Do you know that I have sent out probably 40 applications since I have been home and have been contacted only three times. What the hell! Manners, people, basic manners! Just a little email that says “Thank you for your application. Unfortunately, we don’t want you.” I’m a big girl. I’m not gonna cry (well, I might cry, but it has nothing to do with your stupid company).

I should just be grateful that I’m not back in NYC. It was the same story there, only I was lonely, scared, and paying a monstrosity in rent. I'm so relieved to be out of there, but part of me is a little homesick. Sometimes I miss the independence, the anonymity...answering to no one in the world. And I miss "things to do." There are only a limited number of activities to occupy my time here. I'm working on Stevie's book (I'll post later), going to the Y, gardening, reading, writing, sending off resumes until I get frustrated, playing with Ialli until my chin and forearms start breaking out into hives. At night, I can go out with friends, but the days get long and boring. I'm not even sleeping very late. I wake up around 8am feeling nauseous and have to stand up and walk around. I guess it's a good habit to get into, but it makes for a long morning. And I don't want to watch TV. I have a very short attention span these days.


Here's the things I can be in Pickens County now that I am grown up and edjumacated:

Termite Technician -those termites sure are technical

Estimator- I imagine estimating how many marbles are in a jar day after day could get old.

Truck Driver- I really need to be a truck driver. They make 1000 dollars a week. But I don't know if I could pee in a bottle, at least not while driving.

Bakery Product Manager -gotta watch out for those bakery products, they need a little outside management to keep them in line

Journeyman- a noble occupation and each day is different.

Spinner- I'm good at spinning. Just yesterday I spinned around in the computer chair until I felt like I was going to be sick.

Planner- I'm also very good at planning, only it seems like my plans haven't been working out so well these days.

Inmate Labor Foreman- does this mean I get to sing sea-shanties while the inmates lay down railroads?

Fabricator- now this is something I could be really great at. I didn't know you got paid to lie.

I think I would like to either be a journeywoman or a fabricator. They sound nice. Although I think maybe you'd eventually get tired of journeying and fabricating things.