mama, snowblowing

Nose dripping, mouth resolute, mama’s preferred weapon in the war with the city plow is her snowblower, which she shoves through massive drifts, launching comets of snow to the tops of trees.

Blowing snow is a spiritual commitment for mama, the end of her driveway the battlefront of an ongoing war. Tiny bones in her ears are primed to register vibrations of the plow before mama can spot the beast make the corner, dropping its jaw and depositing snow that was never mama’s at mama’s feet.

When the bones in her ears signal danger, mama prays for strength. She shakes snow from her hood, stomps her boot like a bull, and eyes the red shovel, her other weapon. Armed with a snowblower and a shovel, mama will never surrender.

Today’s driver has an unkempt beard in need of a trim, probably a fascist, probably a man who holds pints of beer instead of his children, mama thinks, snippity snip. The Van Halen blasting through his cabin is familiar enough to cause mama - for a second - to forget that he is Enemy. But mama shakes it off.

Dangerous, music.

The snow is bright and whipping all around mama, burning her cheeks and validating her fury. Her nostrils are rimed, hands clawed to the blower. The plow is gone. Things are quiet.

The most vulnerable are sometimes the most violent, mama says aloud, choking the snowblower and grabbing the plastic shovel by the neck, positioning into ox guard before she attacks the fresh pile with rapture.

When under attack, mama knows sometimes the best fuck you is to thrive.

Those People

Wind-driven rain followed by a steep drop in temps caused the food in the feeder to freeze, so through a crack in the window she aimed her hair dryer and shouted, “For the titmice and juncos!” before releasing an arrow of high heat into the heart of frozen seed, this courageous Karen with contoured cheeks doing God’s work, suddenly ecstatic with a download of truth, a revelation so instant and powerful it threatened to explode her moisturized decolletage, and upright she shot with understanding that the worst addiction suffered was not to oxy or benzos, not to sugar or Big Macs, or to sloth, but to blame.

Trinity

Omnipresent, I explained to my daughter, who asked about the word, is most often used when talking about the Christian concept of God. It describes a presence that is everywhere, always. Like violence, I think bitterly, keeping that thorn of thought to myself.

Omniscient? That’s the belief that a god knows everything, I say, waggling my fingers around my head and then up and down, to which she snottily responds, So, like how you check my phone?

Yes, and no, I laugh, reaching to pull her close, but she shrinks away.

While we’re on the subject, I say, there’s a third word, omnipotent, meaning all-powerful.

I steel myself for her response, but she surprises me: So, like how the bullies run the school?

The Benefits of Being an Asshole

Is it just me, or does it seem that if there’s a character in a movie who’s consistently nice, you might start to suspect their motives, or begin to wonder if they’re a kiss-ass at heart, but when the archetypal mean ol’ bastard shows an iota of tenderness, it can move you to tears? For instance, the Grinch is a cold-blooded fucker, cruel behavior spewing from a heart two times too small, but how we love him instantly and unconditionally when he is suddenly good!

And what about the belief that if you ask for forgiveness before reaching the pearly gates, the angel in charge of vetting sinners from saints will not list the number of times you failed to check your sources before posting the type of garbage that cleaves relationships, destroys Thanksgivings, and acts like kerosene to a country’s blazing addiction to moral panic, and so the angel in charge of Afterlife Placement will not send you to purgatory, or to the place where you’re forced to do handstands in a steaming lake of hot, liquid shit while a devil with defined pecs flicks his leather whip, but to the 75 degree weather of heaven, where you will float around on a cloud and reunite with people who never liked you but have to deal with you since you asked for forgiveness, alongside Jeffrey Dahmer, who also asked for forgiveness, and where things are so copacetic that no one ever brings up the irony of the growing pile of unbaptized, heathen babies?

And how about the fact that in this country, you can be the president and such a pulsing sphincter that people are moved to jab into their dead lawns campaign signs that say Fuck Your Feelings and fly flags that reimagine a jowly old man with skin like a circus peanut as Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo, gripping a bazooka with shredded arms, inspiring nervous laughter in anyone who understands this doesn’t come from a place of inanity, but deadly seriousness?

I can remember the moment when I realized photos of skeletal dogs could move people with little money to donate what little money they had, or compel them to do sacrificial things, like sell plasma or stay up late knitting scarves in order to help send north a bunch of watery-eyed puppies on The Kill List, to the safety of a rescue based out of some generous person’s home, like my friend’s father who was a dedicated lover of all furry things, who would never shut up about how mistreated animals are beyond fault for their behavior, that science shows their aggression or withdrawal is strictly circumstantial, how a warm home and gentle guidance can shape them into loving pets - and oh, how they deserve this! - but then, in the same breath, eviscerate a bleary-eyed panhandler to a minivan’s backseat tittering with children, lecturing their young hearts about lack of character, the sin of sloth, the blight of handouts, modeling equal doses of self-righteousness and disgust, glossing over the fact that a sharp-boned stranger is the human equivalent to the dog chained to the fence, underfed and unloved, and what a miracle it is that their mother, who is sitting in the passenger seat and scowling at a man succumbing to lack of food and frigid weather, recently donated $100 of hard-earned money so that two puppies with parvo could be given IVs, making her a goddamn saint.

I was still a kid when I realized most good songs are about conniving cheats, absent fathers, dead horses, elusive pussy, bathtub gin, dank weed, and fist fights, taking careful note that there were no songs about sharing a pencil or picking up dog shit, no songs about resisting road rage or refusing vicious gossip, so what I am saying is that there is no solid argument for being a good person, so go ahead and say the spiteful thing, embrace that inner bitch gaggin’ to create drama, but don’t forget to ask the sky for forgiveness for behaviors you have no intent to change, and if you’d like to move an audience to tears, include in your lifelong commitment to dickishness a fleeting moment of humanity, then kick back and watch your callousness be replaced with the legacy of how you stopped being a motherfucker for 10 seconds in order to bless us with basic decency.

In His Image

“If God made you a male, that wasn’t a mistake, and if God made you a female, that wasn’t a mistake, and people who argue against this are insulting the perfect Creator,” said the frosted blonde who uses Invisalign to straighten her teeth, stilettos to lengthen her calves, Ambien to help her sleep, contacts to assist her vision, filler to plump her lips, and IVF to conceive her now 19 year old son who once wore a patch to align the strabismic eye he does not regularly gouge after lusting after hot bitches in the dining hall.

All I Am is a Mom

I noticed the majority of your poems are about being a wife

and a mother said a man who reads my poetry

oh yes, I write what I know, I said, silently annoyed

            with his feedback since that is where his feedback ended 

and it occurred to me last Saturday when sitting 

           on the unswept patio of my favorite dive 

with 5 other buzzed middle-aged women

who were talking over each other and almost squabbing

but not really since we were all saying the same thing 

          but in that big and rowdy way of trying

to be heard in a loud conversation full of feels 

in fact one guy came and left

saying turkeys clucking

         but the thing we were clucking about 

the thing over which we were sharing drink and smoke about

         was the never-ending topic of our children  

how to best love them and how to best navigate 

         a world that accepts some and not others 

a world whose evil shifts like sand beneath your feet

          a world that will critique you 

for talking too much about your children

          a world that will critique you 

for not talking enough about your children 

          for being too uptight for being untethered

and what are your priorities, anyway, woman 

         are they in that pack of smokes 

do they rest at the bottom of that bottle 

and why are you here should you not be

at home prettily tending to all the tending to

        and as dusk settles in our hair

and the sound of women gabbing is carried on the wind 

        those that hear it and think turkeys clucking  

do not understand this is how we have a hand 

        in controlling the circulation of love 

this is how we keep our necks off of the chopping block 

       and when the night is over we sink into the passenger seat 

and smile at our bright knives newly sharpened

       before tucking them away

near the gum the tampons the diapers the meds

the many keys attached to a single ring

Hyssop

At some point in my early 40s, I woke up one Saturday morning, pulled on my robe, and realized that I had to make my bed before heading to the kitchen for coffee. You’re officially anal, I noted wryly, yanking wrinkles from the fitted sheet of my king-sized bed. It was a distinct mark in an otherwise gradual transition; the older I got - and as responsibility proliferated - so increased my need for a fastidious home, until one day I couldn’t leave my bedroom if the sheets were mussed.

It was also around this time I realized sharing a bed with my husband was a form of domestic stupidity. We’d wake each other through the night and start the morning irrationally annoyed with one other. My husband agreed that though we’d receive some pearl-clutching around splitting the marital bed, there was no good reason to continue sharing one. He took nicely to his own double, unworried the yellow orb of his reading lamp would keep anyone awake, his snoring now contained within the walls of his own room.

Alone in my bed, gloriously unbothered, I began dreaming again. The most memorable, a house on a hill made entirely of purple flowers, its surface bristling with bees. I woke from the dream elated, positive it symbolized the imminent gifts of unbroken rest. As I made my bed, the first lines of a poem sprouted, pushing through the sleep-tilled plot of my forehead, and I furiously scribbled them down. At this rate, I’d have a collection within weeks, ready for editing. Your Muse is proper sleep, I realized, inexplicably ashamed.

A few weeks later, my daughter crawled into bed with me, terrorized by a nightmare involving a gymnasium of children thirsty for blood, her grubby toes probing for pockets of warmth behind my knees. I pulled her close and she wrapped her arms around my neck, falling asleep after a burble of unintelligible words and a single, great sob. The next morning, I stared at her placid face, the air in my bedroom marbled with early morning chill. If I wanted my dreams back, I’d have to kick her out. As if she could hear my thoughts, she grimaced in her sleep and reached a hand out, her face smoothing into stillness once it landed atop my ribcage.

We’d co-slept for much of her life, and getting her back into her bedroom after a stint in my bed was always a challenge. Though I never got quality rest in her company, having her close gave me a primitive sense of comfort, especially in the violet hours of the night when the anxious specters of the daylight hours began their haunts and mysterious noises proliferated in the dark. My daughter, on the other hand, slept deeply and vividly in my bed, a princess protected by a dragon who would immolate any threat, no matter how small. She raced through her dreams, full of strange vocalizations and spastic limbs, reminding me of a sleeping dog at a warm hearth, yipping and moaning, chasing a rabbit down the length of a stone wall.

Hyssop overtook every single one of your garden beds, my husband observed a few weeks later, after she’d crawled into my bed. He was staring into the backyard while his coffee brewed, his blue eyes lit like lamps, cheeks fresh as peonies.

I rubbed my eyelids and squinted at the flower beds.

I can’t bring myself to pull it, I said, yawning. The bees love it.

Noah

Among the many gods that clamor for attention, I’m most amused by the god of my youth, the violent one from The Old Testicle who tolerates human scourge for only so long before scouring surfaces.

I remember the moment I learned that the ark was separated by stakes to prevent breeding. Ever seen a pig’s penis - corkscrewed and pink, it’s a nice reminder that there is more than one reason to gouge your eyes.

*

Yesterday, over breakfast, when my daughter accused my husband of being strict, he recounted the story of Noah.

“Consider having a dad like that guy,” he said, “Who opened the floodgates of heaven when he’d had enough, and erased everything in one giant, genocidal wave.”

I kicked him under the table and he laughs, wolfishly.

“You know who was spared,” he says, leaning in. “Noah. Favored for his piety.”

I interrupt him to share a fact I’ve been holding in for days.

“Emotional tears have a different chemical makeup than reflex tears,” I tell my daughter, “so onion tears aren’t the same as sad ones.”

My daughter gives us the side eye, leaves the table to retrieve her bag, and is out the door in a huff.

*

Later that night, under a fat August moon, in the raft of my California king, I recall an old Jewish myth: Moments before you are born, an angel whispers the entirety of your life into the soft apricot of your ear, then swiftly slaps you across the face. Instantly, your memory is erased, and you are born naked and screaming.

A midnight - the devil’s hour - I’m woken by my daughter, sobbing at the edge of my bed. She’s been spooked by a nightmare.

I pull her on board, my belly against her back, dovetail slats of gopher wood, cover us in pine pitch.

“You are safe and you are loved,” I whisper into her drowsy ear.

She won’t remember this, I think, moments before I’m submerged by an enormous wave of sleep.

*

In the morning, sunlight illuminates the lids of her eyes, where lacrimal glands produce waters that spill over when a god is forlorn or irate.

The morning light wakes her.

She pops up, duly buoyant.

Deadpool

Deadpool1776, a middle-aged Evangelical from Indiana who loves Jesus even more than Marvel and the 2nd Amendment, tweets his support of Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law, then follows by tweeting his approval of banning Junie B. Jones from public libraries, since young minds are easily poisoned by characters like this 6 year old entitled brat (who complains for an entire book about having to ride a smelly bus to school, uses poor grammar, and constantly challenges authority) and satisfied, takes a long pull from his blue raspberry vape, draws a pair of skeleton blinds, and switches to private mode on his phone where he searches pornhub for hairy daddy cuckolded by uncut twink, but frustrated with the material served - he’s seen it all - settles on white women holding in farts.

The Impenitent’s Prayer

Forgive us for not banning books,

forgive us for stocking libraries with characters long excluded from yellowed tomes,

forgive us for girls who kiss girls under diamond skies,

forgive us the limbless and patched, crones and queers, survivors of fat and conversion camps,

forgive us our pierced majoras, magenta carpet and drapes, voluptuously pregnant men,

forgive us our herculean tales of finding joy in a world that would rather erase us,

forgive us our trypophobia and Takis, our selfies and Jibbitz, our twerking and TikTok pickles,

forgive us our unquestioning support of teens who wear kitty ears and lick clean their paws during math class, filling bento boxes with kibble and using litter boxes in school bathrooms where they cover their dung with, wait - what the fuck,

forgive us for pointing out that your source is garbage, for our disgust when we click the link to find a vile antisemitic screed in purple text,

forgive us our horror when we learn the weight loss supplements are sold by a Bible-thumping platinum blonde with nine children and a closet full of golly dolls,

forgive us our emails with preferred pronouns, for cross-disciplinary consensus that the planet is flooding and burning,

forgive us for turning jollies to jelly, for choosing rainbows over steeples, for insisting on the basics of consent,

forgive us our eye roll when we hear about how better it was and how men were men and women were women and people did not suck off the teat and holidays were Christian and no one had to worry about guns that slaughter entire classrooms of children,

forgive us our unionized strippers, neuroatypicals, vegan hotdogs, chosen families, Zoom therapists, paper straws, butt plugs and fidget spinners,

forgive us for Cardi B.,

forgive us for pointing out during the Thanksgiving triple-header that when compared to the NFL, sadomasochistic sex involves less force and fewer injuries, but in the 1960s the court ruled football players were sane whereas masochists were not,

but most of all, forgive us that wild pulse of freedom when we witness your shame of us and no longer share it.

3rd Tier Concerns

If I’m in a coma for 2 years, shouldn’t I worry about why I’m in the coma rather than worry about someone trimming my nose hairs, but do you think someone would trim my nose hairs? What about those white hairs that sprout randomly near the jawline - the translucent, wiry ones? Could those translucent, wiry hairs be used to make a toothbrush? For a dog? Do you know our vet recommended we brush our dog’s teeth? What the fuck? As if.

If I let a single chin hair grow an inch long and then I coated it with bacon fat before planting it, what are the chances that it grows into a giant savory hair?

If I let my hands get dry enough, do you think I could use them to make cricket sounds?

If a man thought that these kinds of hypotheticals made a woman sound vulgar and therefore unattractive, is that man basically a green banana wearing a toupee of raccoon pubes? Should you date him because he’s super cute and he’ll get over it?

Has anyone ever surgically un-gummied their weenus? Would it look cool pierced? Would a chain look cool from the right earlobe to the right weenus? 

If you’re not dealing with excruciating neuropathy but you’re resistant to clipping your toenails, does that mean you’re an ogre? What if you don’t have neuropathy, you don’t clip your toenails, and you live under a bridge?

Do you wonder, when your heart skips a beat, if it was hopping over something, like dog shit on a sidewalk? Or gingerly stepping over one of those squirrels that’s grimacing and bleeding from the mouth and everyone says aww must have gotten electrocuted when crossing from one telephone pole to another. Do you think that’s even what happened?

If you rub yourself down with oil and lay in a tanning booth, do you ever picture an oven set to broil? A 30 lb turkey? Does it make you hungry, if you think of that? What would be the stuffing?

When you hug someone, have you ever accidentally absorbed them? Did you smell different after?

When your eye twitches, do you think your eyelid is dreaming of chasing a rabbit?

When your stomach growls, do you talk back in its language? Have you ever said to your stomach grbbbbwrrbbgghh dunno ttbbbb, maybe later? What did it say back? Did it make you laugh?

Do you think people purposefully avoid naming their patellas?

If coffee makes your breath bad, what do you think your breath does to the coffee?

Just curious.

Rules for Hosting

for Esmé

1. The word host has a few meanings, one being an animal or plant on or in which a parasite lives.

2. A host is also the portion of bread used for Holy Communion in Christian churches. In this sense, the word host comes from the Latin word hostis meaning victim, but eventually came to signify sacrifice. The host is the consecrated bread of the Eucharist - the Body of the Risen One - now alive among us, surrendered to us as food and drink. 

You take and eat the host.

3. The word host is also a person who receives or entertains other people as guests. Women often host in their homes, especially during holidays that are also religious observances. During these times, an appetite for stories of sacrifice and forgiveness is only matched by an appetite for meat pie. 

4. If someone tells you that you are “the most gracious host” more than 4 times in your life, something is wrong. At any point, if someone calls you a saint, things are not going well for you. Stop smiling for a week. Scream into the void. Reassess.

5. Deep cleaning and carefully reorganizing a home in order to provide a place for tipsy revelers to crowd the kitchen where they’ll shout to be heard over shouting and stuff their face with food is as rewarding as it sounds. 

6. Too salty, too sweet, too extravagant, too meager. It’s difficult to please one person, never mind forty. Forget the playlist. Unclench your jaw. But never ever let your teeth become stained with wine. Wine-stained teeth show you have no class. How dare you indulge yourself while everyone else indulges themselves.

7. Always clean the toilet. Don’t be the only one who cleans the toilet. You will be the only one who cleans the toilet. 

8. Hosting is 55 percent broken conversations, 10 percent digging for utensils, 15 percent scraping uneaten food into the trash, 15 percent hoping no child concusses their still-soft skull on any of the hundreds of sharp edges that define a home, and 5 percent hiding in the bathroom with your phone.

9. If someone has never hosted a large gathering, they will always offer feedback on how it can be done better.

10. Consider changing your name one week before you host, so when someone calls for a refill to the bowl of mixed nuts you will not heed their call, as they will not have called you by name, Lozrufenspog.

11. When you find the partially chewed bolus of food tucked between the corner of the sill and the blinds, do not ask yourself Who would do this? because it’s always a child or the very elderly. It’s also always the children and the very elderly who urinate on seats, agitate the dog, and become dangerously dehydrated.

12. Good guests make a French exit because they understand that no one wants to say goodbye to forty fucking people.

13. The light yellow couch is light yellow. It was a mistake, but it’s the only thing that makes you happy. Protect it with your life.

14. Your husband will help. He’ll do anything you ask. Of course he will! But truthfully, you’re a demanding bitch. Your needs are incessant. Calm down. Though you forget nothing on your 6 foot scroll of preparatory tasks, be gentle when he forgets one thing on his list of two, yet manages to learn an Christian hymn from the 4th century on his ukulele that brings everyone to tears when he plays it, and stay calm when you hear a guest refer to him as “an eccentric.”

15. Hosting a holiday party illustrates the insidiousness of invisible labor. Sure, there will be enveloping hugs and loud laughter. Your guests will tumble into bed full-bellied, ruddy-cheeked, satisfied. But at the end of the night, after wiping down the tables, after snapping shut the dishwasher for the 3rd time in under six hours, you will drink the dregs of wine from three different bottles and stare beyond the dark window and conjure Bob Cratchit, then you will pack up your car and drive into the night never to be seen again. 

16. Kidding, I’d never do that to you, Esmé. You’re the only parasite I’ve ever wanted to host. 

17. Playing hostess is a rigged game that many women play even after they discover it’s engineered against them.  It’s unfulfilling and demanding and expensive. I trust you’ll find more interesting ways to spend your time than assiduously tending the needs of festive ingrates who’d prefer you do your job without complaint so that they can carry on pretending the abundant provisions have appeared miraculously. 

You take and eat the host.

madonna

who dat, i asked, after a friend sent me a recent picture of madonna, shame on you she said it's madonna who took away our shame, stop shaming

i didn't recognize her, i texted back with an exclamation point, and still don't even though now i know it's her, and thanks a lot now I feel a little sad about it and also shame about my feeling of shock and by the way why did you text her picture are you trolling me

of course not and never feel shame about how you feel we can't control that and don't shame women for doing what makes them happy you know better especially in this culture and in this time

but she looks anaphylactic i text back and now i have a friend who is insisting that i should feel shame about the way i feel but the funny thing is we both still love madonna who took away the shame that we went and recreated from nothing worth talking about

Local, Organic, Artisanal White People

  ~ This is the way of all things ~

Penis Feather: With a decade of experience under his big leather belt, and using only two primitive tools -  organic hands and jojoba oil - you can relax into Penis Feather’s unchecked and entitled exploration of the issues you’ve stored in your tissues. Euphoria, like bewilderment. 5D. Trauma-uninformed care.

Soul Jelly: Soul Jelly’s ability to predict the future and read the past is unmatched. Past life regression proves she was related to Nostradamus. Suspicious of mainstream media; encourages her clients to do their own research. On YouTube. Works exclusively from her home office. Does not work with those with allergies to cats, as her house is overrun with them. Consent form must be signed in blood or faeces.

Guru Shiitake: An exclusive, 2-hour individualized energetic treatment at a price tag that proves its worth. Includes alarming nutritional advice and endless bootstrap stories of his personal recovery from a self-limiting childhood illness. 62 years old, has four children under the age of six, and has been to India multiple times to guide spiritual retreats with groups of all-female acolytes. Works arms but not legs at the gym. Uses a flip phone. Anti-woke wokeness. Masters are made, not born.

Candy Bum: A shimmering team of lashed, glowy, 20-somethings that pamper clients with citrus peels, eyebrow lamination, and yoni steams after malign energy has been exorcized using sonic echolocation emitted from a crystal double-helixed EQ2 handheld wand that can also improve cellulite. Client leave their the Candy Bum sanctuary with dripping root chakras and a chemical burns, profoundly broke. Please note: If you’re vaxx’d, please refrain from scheduling here - staff are female, fertile, and they’d like to stay that way. Legumes not allowed on the premise.

Sxx8: Synergy, fasting, and travel come together in this healing space of connection and manifestation. Beachfront retreats offered to those who complete the Five Levels of Consciousness & Relentless Recruitment, and whom the cult leader considers most pleasing to look at. Please know it’s okay to crave authority - we all do! Ascend with us. Break free from the scourge of feminist thought. We know your worth. Do you? 

Shiva Laura Smith: Welcome, Goddesses! Offers private sessions in which she arhythmically hits a ceremonial drum and identifies animal guides. Entryway has a framed picture of her at a traditional Fijian kava ceremony; unclear whether she was invited. Has been fined twice for breaking the eagle feather law, which she thinks is silly. Occasionally wears a bindi that makes her blue eyes pop. Entirely ignorant of the appropriative underpinnings of every aspect of her practice, but loud and rich and free of boundaries, so loads of fun. Clientele mostly exhausted moms looking to escape their kids. Roommate from freshman year in college had brown skin - doesn’t see color. Idolizes Gwyneth Paltrow, the moon, and scented candles.

KimQi: Pays staff poorly and provides a needed service to a working class community. An absolute nidus of misinformation as well as a savvy entrepreneur who is just asking questions. When challenged, claims she feels unsafe. Sniffs out and targets vulnerable clientele who are lonely and desperate for connection, convincing them to join her in peddling garbage supplements. Profits from sales flow to the top of a pyramid, where KimQi sits in lotus, manifesting wealth. Addicted to colonics.

Mamasaurus: Blogger. Believes that boys will be boys, and those boys can be grain-free and vulnerable to polio. Paleo muffin gatekeeper, advocate of a firm gender binary, and assiduous monetizer of social media presence, all while managing a 3,000 square foot farmhouse and 4 acres of land on her own because her ex is a goddamn bonobo who couldn’t keep his blessed rod of life behind his hemp boxers. Riddled with unspoken resentments because positivity is power. Successful Amazon affiliate; biggest seller a proprietary blend of flower essences for unblocking the throat chakra. Hypertensive, but only when exposed to public radio.

Reinhardt Weinerschlapp, PhD: Boomer. Obsessed with iridology, as well as the collapse of the nuclear family, which he attributes to women wearing shoes. Has written three published essays on the madness of inoculation. Sessions with Weinerschlapp are limited to Monday mornings, as he is busy working on his first book, How Science Destroyed Medicine. Thirty minutes healing sessions are $500. Payments must be made a month in advance - his time is valuable - and will not be reimbursed no matter the circumstances, including sudden death. Recommended nutraceuticals are filled with sawdust, white-labeled, and marked up 400 percent. Staunchly opposed to prescription medicine, though if homeopathy fails to clear modern miasms such as the insistence that variables such as race, sex, and class can negatively affect health outcomes, will consider a two-week course of molly, which he procures from his very hot niece. Budding day trader with loads of capital to play around with. Blood boy in Finland.

Tips On Keeping Your Head From Exploding

When you’re trying on a sweater at Marden’s and it’s an adult size medium and you get stuck in it because the neck is sized for a toddler and you’re claustrophobic so you jerk about and a sudden web of electricity spreads across your back and you know immediately that you’ve fucked something up trying to escape the sweater that is trying to kill you and when you try to raise your arms your body says freeze and you’re ready to drop to the floor and roll under the door into public shaking with ignominy and begging forgiveness but suddenly in your head as clear as a bell is the voice of your friend Robin who once warned with the seriousness of a March sky the dangers of freezing up in the fist of pain because freezing will only make you more frozen and the antidote to freezing is moving so you get your ass up from the dressing room bench and halve yourself at the navel and drop into rag doll and let your spine decompress while your levator spasms like a dreaming dog and eventually you can remove the sweater that is trying to kill you and you place it on its hanger and politely hand it to the woman who works the dressing room and now you’re in your car crying from all the stuff that is trying to strangle you and you remember that not-crying is another way to freeze until you get so cold that a tiny bump to the noggin explodes your ice-head into a fractal of pink crystals but this is not the case for you today because the tears are warm and loose.

When you’re attending an event and your niece shows up and you haven’t seen her for too long because of stupid adult things and stupid adult shame and she aims her brown gaze at you and her irises are two holes thumbed into rich loam waiting for seed and she blinks with confidence because she knows her worth and she holds you locked within her bright disappointment well then you brace yourself and open the garage door to your soul and dump the trashcan on the cement floor and sort through what’s real and what’s imaginary and then you close the garage door and offer her a seat in your lap that she refuses but instead she sits very close and within a few minutes her hand creeps into yours and you are both exquisitely aware that there is an entire table of sugary confections at this event but maybe it’s best to avoid it because there’s no sneezeguard and so many dripping children but then she looks at you and you look at her and yolo so the two of you walk up to the table and you snag a mini cannoli and a chocolate round thing filled with chocolate stuff and your belly is full of sweetness and your head thaws like frozen cookie dough on a warm countertop and it no longer feels like hot pie spattering with cherries the kind in the thick red sauce that bubble and splash the inside of an oven like a crime scene while caramelizing the air.

One way to keep your head from exploding when your friend calls you and she is drunk and suicidal is to tell that friend if she kills herself you will kill yourself too and you will find her in whatever circle of hell she’s landed and eternally chase her with a sharpened stick so that her death will not be the end to her suffering and then after threatening your friend who is threatening herself you will stay up with her all night providing endless distraction until you can tell she’s too tired to murder who you love and then you will call her in the morning when she’s sober and remind her to look for a therapist as well as seashells and casually bring up that you’ve spanned many centuries as friends and you’ve always loved her and there is no difference from how the two of you were in 2403 BC except now there is TikTok instead of clay tablets and you are both laughing and a bit sloppy with oxytocin and though you know her heart has been minced and glued together and minced again you tell her that a bedroom wall spattered with blood and a gun dropped to the floor will douse the pilot light of your heart forever it will destroy it with freezer burn and you’re not fucking around and she best throw out the bottle of Jack or you’ll fight her but you’d rather give her a long hug and play with the dog then wash your hands and chop onions and she says okay okay you love me okay and you do love her you do.

If you’d like your head to stay whole and not explode into bits when walking with your mother who loves you with an intensity that stuns perfect strangers but cannot stop talking about all the ways the world will end you can ask her to hold your glove so you can take a picture of dew on a spider web or say whoa look at the shades of brown in that pasture of goldenrod and point out the tumor-shaped galls that provide homes for the larvae that the chickadees eat through the winter and when your mother offers a challenge and says there is something even more beautiful and points to a frozen puddle to be cracked with the tip of a duck boot in the deep quiet of February and then she talks about the birds who eat daily from the feeder outside her kitchen window you relinquish the game and your patience is a larva nestled deep within a gall that your mom can pick and eat like a chickadee and you can dissolve into her belly and fly with her through the miracle that is mother and tree.

One way to stay sane and not slam your head against the soapstone countertop when your daughter is yelling at you because she dislikes how her hair looks after sleeping for ten hours and you’re staying calm in order to model emotional regulation but inside your guts are spattering like hot cherries and threatening to caramelize the air is to take a coffee mug in your hand and pretend there is a special juice in the mug that is red and berrylike and will allow you to bounce over houses fly over entire lawns and rivers and with a single sip lighten into freedom because this red juice is a heart blood elixir and now you can bounce upstairs and calmly demand she stop being rude and once she chills the eff out go fix her pony with the special comb that doesn’t snag the baby hairs that still edge her forehead and don’t you dare be mean to your husband once the bus picks her up but instead give him a sip of the red berrylike juice and tell him you will have sex with him mid-air as you are bouncing over the city where you grew up and are still learning to love and everyone will say oh look a spy balloon and they will run to get their binoculars and guns but some just their guns and you will almost get shot which makes the sex more exciting yahoo and those who had the smarts to grab binoculars will see your husband and you stuck together sailing over houses in a pornographic way and someone with a very powerful camera will film it and you and your husband will be YouTube sensations and then you can retire early and buy a beach home and you will not allow your head to spatter like a cherry from guilt because you’ve won the lottery of free time and luxury and instead you will accept it and enjoy it and sprawl across the sand and your head will bob with the sea because you kept it from exploding and this is how you do it.

another bootstrap murder

“You look tired, hon.”

“Yeah, I’m not feeling great. Spring allergies.”

“I have spring and fall allergies. Hard to think straight when your face is dripping, I take fexofenadine and something my naturopath gave me, expensive, but worth it, though this week I ran out and I haven’t had a chance to refill because last week, I lost my cat, Marmalade, who I’ve had since she was a kitten,15 years I had her, I loved that cat like a parent loves a child, probably more, and you know what, I couldn’t believe this, she died exactly 7 days after the anniversary of losing my husband to a rare flesh-eating bacteria, the poor man suffered like you wouldn’t believe, and the doctors, the doctors, they just threw their hands up and watched him die because these days, they’re only it for the money, everyone’s in it for the money, moneymoneymoney, not me, I was a teacher for 35 years and I was there for those kids, I don’t care who they were, what they looked like, black, white, green, purple, rich, poor, and now, just look at them, these modern kids couldn’t care less if there was a mannequin standing in front of them, all they care about is their phones, they don’t go outside, they don’t see the sun, they don’t talk to each other, they just sit and stare at their screens and eat junk food and do the tik tok and you wonder why there are all these school shootings, these kids are half mad from staring at their phones and playing video games, terribly violent games, fake games that look real as life, and the whole point is to kill kill kill, what do you think that does to their brain, in some you have to even kill police, on purpose, can you imagine that, it wasn’t like that when I was a kid, we respected authority, we had to work, we had to help around the house, we had to be polite at the dinner table, we had to shovel hay until our hands blistered, I had one friend, Frank Carter, who lost his arm up to his elbow to a brush mower, poor guy, but he did okay for himself, left farming for Wall Street and now he’s rolling in the dough, in fact, he called me last week to invite me to his daughter’s graduation, med school, surgeon, she’s incredible, not a lazy bone in her body, unusual, that one, and that reminds me - Ma’am? Ma’am?! Are you okay?! Ma’am, you’re bleeding! Someone, call 911! No, no, I don’t know, sir, we were just chatting and her eyes rolled back and she started bleeding from her ears and she collapsed, spring allergies, she said, poor woman, I have spring allergies, spring and fall and I’ll tell you what, I suffer, boy oh boy do I suffer, but I’ve never collapsed like that, never.”

Intermittent Fasting

I’m thinking about a Facebook post about intermittent fasting while slicing English cheddar for a towering ham sandwich.

4 days a week, posts a Friend, I only eat during a 6 hour window. Combined with regular infrared saunas and a weekly coffee enema, I’ve never felt better, or more optimized.

I went to grade school with her long ago. In 5th grade, she wore boat shoes with socks, excelled at floor hockey, used marker to list the names of the boys she loved.

Now, there’s a picture of her in a weight room looking cadaverous but smiling, eyes shining with wolfy hunger, each rib countable. A filter has been applied to her teeth. Between her lips, a solid block of sparkling ivory.

Bitchily, I picture a different scene: Blood dripping from pointed canines, eyes the color of sulfur, tail flagged, mange. (I know her husband.)

You too can thrive! she advertises in cursive pink across the flat canvas of her abdomen. PM me for packages and special rates.

Fucking crazy, I think ungenerously, annoyed that my sandwich suddenly seems indulgent, the punishing art of calorie restriction ubiquitous, glamorized, shaming my honey baked ham from the screen of my phone. 

Lawd Jesus, I’d starve! one woman quips to everyone’s delight. She follows her comment with a selfie, a jar of fun-sized candy cradled in the crook of her arm.

The fasting woman responds: Lol! I eat clean when I’m not fasting. And I’m never hungry when I fast. 😉

There’s a collective roll of the eye. A wave of collective shame. We suddenly feel our asses in our chairs, gingerly finger the rolls of our neck, crave Mountain Dew.

I toss a crumbling piece of cheddar in my mouth, the alchemy of fat and salt opening the sluice of dopamine.

Cheeeeeeeese.

*

My friend, Anna, improvises charcuterie when I visit. We kick back in old lawn chairs, rest our feet on the wide cedar planks of the garden bed, and share hunks of marbled salami cut with a pruning knife wiped clean on the leg of her jeans.

Try this, she says, and pops a ground cherry from its paper husk. It glows yellow in my palm, tastes sour and tropical. Check it out, she says, rubbing leaves of Korean mint between her thumb and forefinger, filling the air with the scent of licorice before mashing it between her teeth.

I crack the tab of a skunky IPA, 16oz split between two mugs brimming with foam, the back of our necks reddening in the sun. Chickens aerate the soil, gobble the scratch we toss in front of them. Tiny dinosaurs, Anna remarks, and wonders if we’d run from them if they were suddenly the size of trucks.

We identify wildflowers, walk for the sake of walking, talk about mothering, our fathers, fathering. We eyeball traffic, count how many people drive by while staring at their phones. We talk about our ongoing affairs with various technologies.

I tell Anna about my daughter’s favorite book, a story about Baba Yaga, a witch of Slavic lore famous for her repulsive nose. Her hut stands on stilts made of chicken legs, and her black cat salivates while she cooks up children she’s stolen from warm, safe homes.

Anna snorts, matches this with her son’s favorite book - a Russian tale about a nose that flees a man’s face and makes a life of its own. Noshe! her toddler requests, nauseating her every time she arrives at the part of the story where the nose is discovered in a loaf of sourdough.

We talk about men’s noses, how beguiling they can be. We talk about disappointment, bird behavior, the five flavors, our hatred of the winter wind. 

Back inside, Anna clears a spot on the kitchen table and shares a pop-up book she’s made by hand, each snip of her scissors dimensionally dizzying, terrifically precise. 

We eat olives, bread, share another beer. When it’s time to leave Anna gives me a hug. I drive home, neck warm.

*

I turn off my phone. 

In addition to English cheddar, I add romaine, stone ground mustard, salted tomato, bacon. It’s three stories and tilts to the left.

I take a bite.

What washes over me can only be called sandwich joy.

First Person Dream

You were vexed with your father this morning because he woke you from a dream in which you were a flying werewolf. Dada woke me from the best dream, you cry, yanking the comforter over your head.

I peel the covers back and kiss your forehead, and in a gentle, singsong voice, ask, Well, do you think you could draw this werewolf for me?

My question is apparently enraging.

Your feet tantrum, sending the comforter boiling, but there’s ten extra pounds of winter blanket and you can’t sustain the weight. Your torso bursts forth, green eyes glowing, cheeks flaming pink.

Mama! you snap, your entire body vibrating, It was a first person dream. I can’t DRAW myself because I can’t SEE myself, duh!

I open the blinds. Swallow laughter.

Well, damn, I say. How was the tree canopy?

You howl with indignation and retract into the covers. I tiptoe to the foot of the bed, lift the corner, find a toe and give a gentle tug. You shriek like you’ve been stabbed in the kidney.  

I zip out of the room before you can burst from your den, down the stairs, slippers suspended over gleaming cherry. In the kitchen, your father sits at the table, a playlist called Christmas Jazz offering merciless tidings. He’s timed it perfectly. My favorite mug is full of freshly pressed coffee, still steaming.

I hover at the counter, near the dishwasher, prepare oatmeal with maple syrup, cinnamon, extra cream. I can track the path of your feet above my head, the opening and closing of the bathroom’s pocket door, the drawers of your pine dresser slapping shut as you choose your flamboyance for the day. Joy surges up my neck when you start down the stairs.

You stop at the bottom step. Scowling.

I can’t help it. Laughter shoots from every hole in my face.

You’re such a pain in the ass sometimes, I say, my arms reaching past your shoulders, your forehead tucked against my chest, my nose in your hair. And I’m the luckiest mom in the world.

You let me kiss your flaming biscuits ten times, each side, and eat your oatmeal while sitting in my lap, the canopy of trees stretching green and for forever.

thirst thirst thirst

As I age, and my spirit gentles, I find that I think differently about what's attractive and what's not. Lately, what arouses me is bearded white dudes driving oversized, gas-guzzling trucks, just LAYING on their horns, like, just putting their strong calloused palms on the center of that steering wheel and PRESSING IN with all their might and letting the dragon they ride - I mean, their truck - release those loud sounds of emergency that can stop a heart, and aiming that terrifying sound right at a little Corolla, a stupid little grey Corolla with its hazards on, with some dumb chick helping some old bitch out of the passenger seat, man, when I see that, I'm like, YEAH BIG BOY YOU TELL EM, your mama loves you and NOW I LOVE YOU MORE you furious hypertensive giant, look how you scare everyone within a mile, look how you frightened that teenager on the corner trying to cross the street, cuz no one gets in your way, do they, and OH YES, you just keep blowing that horn and shaking that angry fist and tempting me, keep it up and I'm gonna use that weird step stool thing attached to those big trucks and I'm gonna climb right into that passenger seat and I'm gonna grab your wild mane and turn your head to me and I'm gonna reach real slow and I'm gonna use my thumb and forefinger and I'm gonna pluck a pacifier from my purse and I'm just gonna STICK IT right in your mouth, YOU LIKE THAT DON'T YOU! boy, I'm straight gaggin,’ what's a bitch to do but thirst thirst thirst.