#8 metatoast

            A ticking toaster oven timer tells her nothing of the way he’s staring at that screen again. Lit up green again. Ticket ticky ticket ticky. It only signifies burning. Black, charring ends. The dial is stuck and so it really times nothing. Only ticks, only sticks in its one times nothing place. In its one times nothing space she rhymes and the toaster times. Times out ticks to savory licks that she’s waiting for ticks.

            He reads aloud now. Poems of tape and foil and marbles and work. I like these poems she says and goes about the business of eating around the blackened raisins until there’s nothing left but the blackened raisins and then she eats those, too. They’re warm and brown and blackish. Still sweet.

            The poem wasn’t done. Now it’s about pina coladas. yEE haw!!! Bacon. VCR manual. Frozen metal. That’s the end of that poem. Now. The reason for toast is butter. And crunch. No matter what, butter and crunch can save her from the burnt air. There was a poem about burnt toast once. And a presentation in a classroom and a workshop. The people said they knew about burnt. About toast and the making of. The teacher drew a picture of toast on the paper and didn’t like the onomatopoeia. There were too many knives sounds and no one wants that or even gets it. Get rid of it. Get rid of knives. The kitchen is a dangerous place.

            In the end there are crumbs in the catch burning over and over again so no matter if you stand and wait and watch the damn thing browning it will still smell black. Why is black a smell to be afraid of? She couldn’t remember, but she knew she didn’t want it anyway. There was a time for remembering but it isn’t now. Now was a time for smelling and being. On fire. But toast is no moth and no matter how you go about it, it will never die. Now he’s making clicking noises at the screen. They come out in bursts of thought like drum fills. It’s something he’s remembering with hovered fingers over keys and her own keys click in response. Why, they chat at each other across the room! Who are you typing to he says. You honey she says. You’re typing to me? Mhm. This is love she thinks and wishes she could make the toast right. But that was the last slice and it was the heel, too. Which is sometimes better. After a while the butter on her lips begins to sour. After a while the matter in the clicks begins to hour.

            Hour after hour until hunger returns and a radio somewhere distant reports the national higher average and car engines whine off without them and neighbors pull in and doors bang and soap dispenses. In the end there has to be closure that brings a smell to meaning. So when the cars go by and the doors bang and you’re writing to me I can make sense of this so I don’t have to scrape it off the roof of one of my dreams later and sprinkle it on breakfast toast. She likes raisin toast the best because it feels like home. Maybe it’s the cinnamon that warms her. In the middle of the night she sometimes can’t remember where she is and she’s holding up a pure white cat like proof of who she is like an emblem of pedigree or artistry or filigree or shadow. The white cat is real, much more real than the white of this screen, this scene, this is what I mean. Put this back in until it is done, without the timer; don’t watch it. Burn. 

Meta Sexercise - #8 (Christie)

There is a knock on the door.

“Pizza Delivery.” The deep, muffled voice rouses the young woman, sitting on the edge of a large, tightly made bed. She is a bottle blonde with slender calves and a tasteful D cup. She might have just stepped from the bath, though her hair is wrapped carefully on top of her head in a loose knot and her mascara is perfect. The robe that she wears is sheer and purple, revealing a black bra and panties.

The door is unlocked and she has no trouble swinging it open to reveal a tall man wearing khaki shorts, a baseball cap and a windbreaker, all three articles emblazoned with a fat slice of pepperoni pizza. He is, inexplicably, barefoot. “You ordered an extra large, extra sausage?”

The blonde titters and lets her manicured hand rest on the top of the box the deliveryman is holding. “Thank God you’re here—I’m starving,” she says, bending her knees and bobbing in emphasis. There is a no exchange of money. There are no paper plates or packets of red pepper flakes. The blonde lifts the lid of the pizza box and pulls out a slice, dripping with melted cheese and fat chunks of onion.

But aren’t we thinking of her breath now? How sexy is cheese dribbling down even the most perfect of chins? Perhaps for college students. Food fetishists?

The deliveryman hands the woman a huge bouquet of red roses.

Too obvious.

The deliveryman hands the woman crystal vase filled with yellow roses. “You must not be short on secret admirers,” he says as she turns to place the vase on the table next to the bed. He steps into the room and closes the door, causing the woman to turn sharply, her dark veil of hair sent spinning around her shoulders.

“I’m sorry, did you need something else?” she asks, one hand perched professionally on her towel-swathed hip.

“I thought you might like some company—special occasion?” He points to the flowers.

“They are from my boyfriend,” she says, pulling one of the long stems out of the bunch and brushing the yellow petals along her top lip. “It’s our anniversary.”

“Lucky man,” he says, stepping toward the bed to take the flower from the dark-haired woman. “You must be busy getting ready for him.”

This is taking too long.

The deliveryman glances around the room, noticing the redhead’s flight attendant uniform hanging over the closet door and a dainty piece of rolling luggage next to the bed. As he moves to hand her the vase of white roses, he pretends to slip and pours water down the front of his pants. “Oh god, what an idiot,” he says.

The water has made a suggestive stain from his navel to the bottom hem of his khaki shorts. “Better takes those wet things off,” the woman says, artfully pulling a pencil out of her loose chignon and whipping her head from side to side. She kneels in front of him, pulling the shorts down his broad thighs, revealing his cock: pink and perky.

Is the cock really what we want to see here? Let’s face it, this guy is unremarkable in looks, the cock, average to above average in size, as silken as a well worn glove. Even the erection is underwhelming. We’ve seen this before.

The redhead slowly unbuttons the blonde’s jean skirt as she feigns distress. “My boss is gonna kill me,” she says, not seeming to notice that she is now standing in only her pink dotted panties. “Oh who cares, I hate this job. Do you know how many perverts send flowers to themselves just so they can stare at my ass?” The question goes unanswered. The blonde has now noticed that the redhead’s apple green dressing robe has slipped to the floor. She is now busy unbuttoning the blonde’s blouse, pushing it off her shoulders. “Oh,” the blonde says, her pink mouth delicate and glossed.

Two gorgeous women: the experienced sexpot seduces the frilly ingénue, who forgets to take of her striped socks before she is spread eagle on that bed, the red head between her legs. I’m bored.

“Are you ready?” A slight, brown-haired woman stares into the camera for a moment before turning toward another woman, also brunette, sitting on the edge of a futon. They smile at each other, laugh softly, a little nervously, and slide closer together, their thighs bare against the paisley print of the futon cover. There is no music played over this clip, and we can hear a fan somewhere in the room, oscillating. They spend a few minutes smoothing the skin on the tops of their hands, collar bones, brushing their messy, fashionable haircuts out of each other's eyes. They are similar in looks—delicate but sensibly beautiful, both wearing bikini cut underwear in solid colors and white undershirts. They are unfettered by socks or plot lines.

When they kiss, someone off camera begins to deliver quiet direction to the women, which they slowly, artfully incorporate into the scene. The voice is low and sexless, but not disinterested.

“The sun is shining,” it says. “And you have no place to be.”

Door-to-door Husband (Exercise #8)

The man at the door speaks Russian. He can cook and sing and play the guitar and (he claims) keeps things neat, would clean up after her if she'd like. He is not classically handsome, but he holds his face tilted to the left a bit, his eyebrow seeming to sag a bit with its weight. She likes his eyes anyway, the dark brown of them and how she can hardly make out where the pupils begin and end.

“This is what I'm saying,” he says. “We'll start out slow, like you're supposed to do. I'll ask you to a movie first maybe. We'll go out to dinner first – wherever you want. You'll find that I'm witty and actually pretty interesting and eventually, it will lead to more.”

“How do I know you won't leave me?”

“Oh, at the end of the night, I'll tell you I had a good time, and you'll say you did too, and I'll kiss you on the cheek, or maybe even on the lips if you seem up for it. Then you'll agonize for days when I don't call you again right away.”

“But how do I know you will call again?”

“I'll call again. I'll just be waiting a bit so I don't seem to anxious, you know, like people do.”

“And then what?”

“And then we'll go out again, and again, and again, and we'll start calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend and holding hands in public. We'll start planning our life together. You'll say you want two kids–“

“Three.”

“You'll say you want three kids; I'll say just one. We'll fight it out playfully and eventually you'll win, because how could I resist those dimples?”

“But how do I know you won't leave me?”

“I'll ask you to marry me. It'll be very romantic. Somewhere where we can be alone. Maybe I'll pack a picnic and we'll go to the park and watch the sunset and then, right before the streetlights click on, I'll ask you. And you'll say–“

“No.”

“What? No, you say yes.”

“Listen....” She shifts her weight from one side to the other. “What's your name?”

“Hal.”

“Hal. Listen, Hal. What did you knock on my door for? What are you asking me right now?”

“I'm just asking that you'll go out with me, that you'll marry me. I'm just asking that you'll spend your whole life with me. That you'll let me be your servant and treat you like a queen for as long as we live. That you'll–“

“Hal,” she holds out her hand to stop him and he grabs it to kiss it. “Hal!” She pulls it away, takes a deep breath, tries again: “Hal, people don't really do that.”

“Of course people do. People get married all the time!”

“Yes, Hal, people get married. But real people don't just pick a random door and propose to the first girl who opens it.”

“But you're beautiful!” It comes out as a bit of screeching.

“I might need to see my psychiatrist.”

And then she shuts the door.

Exercise #8

Picking up his cup of coffee, drips of overflow fall to the table. He sits staring into his black Moleskine. Moving the cup over a page, he imprints the silhouette of his mug onto the page. There was nothing else there, so there might as well be a coffee stain. The café is walled with mirrors. He picks up his cigarette and rubs ash into the page for good measure. Now, if not for an absence of words, he could be writing. To the people watching him from across the room, he is clearly writing. His hair looks disheveled, his pants are worn and he’s scribbling something into that notebook.

Perhaps that’s me watching in the corner.

He listens to the flap of espresso grounds funneled into portafilters, the soft ting that always accompanies a good tamping. Water steams, eschewing out first the bitter, then the crème. A wand screeches milk of various fat contents into volume and fluff, but the best sound comes from the fattest of milks. A deep, thoughtful gurgling full of substance and flavor. He can smell the flavor. Milk just before it’s burnt.

He puts his headphones in, takes them out several times over. When he takes them out it is with purpose. Like maybe he heard someone call his name through a song in his ear-buds. He looks around, scrunches his face as if an idea were being worked through the wrinkles. He sniffs the air and smiles to himself. Is that lavender he smells? Perhaps it’s just jasmine.

He stomps his foot along to the tamping of espresso trying to get rid of an itch without taking off his shoe. But for a doodle of a cube with a stick figure in the center, the page is empty. Not even he knows what this means. He just needed some ink on the page to go along with the ink mark on his fingers. He looks at the clock above the door. He looks again. How long before he is allowed to leave? How long before he considers his work done? His leg twitches to the rhythm of seconds bouncing off rain.

He steps outside, looks back at the café. The smell of maples bars released from the pounding of rain on dirt. A sweetness he’s unsure of.

#8 Meta-Fiction (Liz)

Here’s a story: it’s about a little girl in the woods. She’s got a stick. She’s got a machete. Right now in this story she is nine, she is stuck in the story, or she is made in it, and now there are many options –

There is a lot of green – it smells like wood-mold, like this girl’s childhood, and it is a pleasant smell to her – background. Wet ground – mud between her toes. The girl brushes aside huckleberry bushes and ferns – green, green, sturdy stick in her hand, machete flapping on her leg – the stream makes little sounds ahead, water on rocks, brown sand – break in the green. The girl is heading for the bridge above the stream; she turns before the stream, grabs an upturned root with her free hand – the bridge is a downed tree and it’s enormous, 15 feet above the stream and the root structure now upturned and functioning as ladder to this small, feral girl, the root structure, it is two stories high, as if it were a building, and to the girl these structures are buildings. There is a porch – one of the roots is horizontal and wide, and it is this girl’s porch. On other days she sits there and eats huckleberries.

Today she climbs over the roots and onto the log itself, the bridge, she calls it the highway –

This little girl she has darting eyes, like an animal. Scanning from the high ground. Looking for – anything, dark things, kindred things. All around, bird song. Calls.

She leaves the stick against the ladder-mess of roots.

The little girl runs along the log although it is high and the surface is uneven but her feet have felt this bark thousands of times and her bare feet so long out of shoes grip like hands. Her mother, what does her mother think? I know, I know. I want children someday but I think of this girl’s mother and this girl and I am frightened. I don’t know what to do with this creature, with the fact of this creature, except hold her away, and change her –

Halfway along the highway the log beneath her feet touches up against a log still growing, upright, maple tree, living branches almost at her face, and now this girl stops short because there is an owl. And an owl for this girl is a reverent thing. She – halts, sudden, grips her toes harder, clenching bark. Her toes slide a little on wet moss, and her arms go out, like wings, to balance, her eyes go wide, eyes on the owl, eyes locked on the owl –

The girl looks at the owl’s eyes even though the owl has a mouse, even though it might make more sense to look at the mouse – but then the mouse moves. Squirming, in the beak - going to die.

The girl, she sees this and her eyes move but she doesn’t move. She watches the owl, her heart hammers and she sees the wild thing, a thrill and a discomfort, and black thing she doesn’t want to see inside because she sees the owl and in this black unnamed way without words she sees the ways that she does not belong here, in this forest, but worse and further down she sees the ways that she does.

And she is still, and she is quiet, and her machete lays still as the little girl observes.

This is what she should have done.

Exercise #7

Ludwig hastily scratched notes on the paper with his pen, dipping and redipping in the black ink, leaning over his work. Then he set the pen in its stand again, turned back to the piano, and played the chords he had written. Not quite right, not quite right. He picked up the pen and scratched out the last two notes, leaned back over the piano. The ivory keys were cool under his fingers, and he had had to throw on another sweater. Fall was coming, but he hadn't yet started the fire crackling. The wind outside rustled the leaves in the trees, but he couldn't hear them. He barely heard their sounds when the windows were open, and now that they were shut, he heard nothing from outside at all. A clock ticked on the wall.

On a good day, he would be surrounded by silence. Today his work was accompanied by a persistent, high-pitched ring.

He pushed his fingers down on the piano, trying again the progression of chords. He thought that's what he needed – the tension of augmentation – but he was having trouble making out the higher notes. He pushed them harder, harder, harder, as his frustration rose, and the low notes echoed, but the high notes, the twist of augmentation he knew was there, he could not make out. He stopped. He slammed his ring finger against the high F.

There it was. Faintly. He hit it harder. Again, and again, and again, he hit it, trying to distinguish the sound of the F through the sound of the ringing, which he judged to be D, slightly sharper than normal.

It wasn't clear. He stood up, nearly knocking the ink from the table beside him, paced the room and ran his fingers through his hair.

How could he continue like this? The one thing he needs is to be able to compose and with each day that goes by he finds it harder and harder.

On his desk sit cones, instruments that are supposed to help him hear better. Stick them in your ear when people are talking to you, his doctors say. But how does it help his composing? His playing? How does he hold a cone to his ear while he plays?

It keeps getting worse. They cannot tell him how long it will be or even why it is happening.
He looks out the window and watches a bird as it sits in the tree, opening and closing its beak. All he hears is that sharp D. He cannot take it. He grabs his hair to have something to grab onto.

Exercise 7: Angelina:Gaga's Alter- ego

The dry heat radiated of the stage walls. The floor was covered in what seemed like a dry seat, flowing and pouring over the stage and consuming the audience in a haze that produce an imagery seen. August in Chicago. Lollapalooza, again. Angelina sat on the back of the stage kicking the base as she swung her legs back and forth. The fans were there waiting beyond the curtain sipping beer, wine—booze and pot.

Two years earlier Angelina had just been part of a small performance on a side stage in the middle of the day. Back then before Lady Gaga was the IT name, an icon of the 21st century, Angelina had just been another small artists lucky enough to be performing at Lolla. She pulled a bottle to her mouth devouring the contents and throwing it toward the ground in the back. Her blond her streamed down her shoulders like a golden rocket taking off to find a home planet. The sun had started to frame the stage and the fans kept piling in. The hills to the sides of the stage beyond the VIP oasis’s were crowded with people and families trying to get a glimpse of Lady Gaga. She was dressed in a small silvery swimsuit and had red dripping down her face and neck. It was a statement about culture. About how women are subvert, but it was clouded. She was neither man nor women so had transcended gender into a sexless identity. Inside she was still Angeline, a girl from a small town in everyday America.

She got up and walked around the back of the stage. She stepped into the centerpiece the ragged fire- circle she’d raise from. Her legs folded over each other and she slumped forward in it hollowed out, shriveled and cold. It was going to be a long night the booze and the pot in the crowd swirled floating onto the stage. She was lost in a hazy, in the summer of 2008 setting up her own stage with little assistance from anyone else. she had come from nothing and become the symbol of a generation. A generation that seemed ilea defined lost in wars, money and sex. There was little left and people grew ever more bored. She was a sign of something.

Darrel Winfield - The Marlboro Man

Darrel's heart swelled. The day was hot and the dust hung, all of it staggered towards late afternoon. Men took pulls from flasks, perspiring. From the stands around the rodeo ring plumes of smoke billowed up toward the sky, laid out wide like the breadth of a cowboy's arms and just to breathe that air, that California air, was enough to seize Darrel's tongue. Darrel's father sat in the seat next to him and carried his Sunday-drunk respectably, gently sipping from his flask without shame.

A man in the center of the ring chased a floundering, sickly looking calf on a stocky stallion with a mottled coloring and a certain texture of mange, but Darrel's young eyes were thirsty. In Oklahoma he lay in bed in early evening and held his ear to the thin wall and listened as Robert, his oldest brother, listened to the radio – Challenge of the Yukon and The Lone Ranger, the tales of men of the west – the buxom women, the stagecoach robberies and rushes for gold – and through that wall the vibrations of the radio voice he could smell the till of the earth.

The man in the rodeo ring roped the calf. The lariat slid around the head and down to the neck. Darrel stood up in his seat and his father clutched the arm of the chair. The calf maneuvered it's spindle-thin front legs through the loop, but was unable to clear it's hind legs. The lariat clipped the hind legs, taut like a trip wire, like something out of The Shadow, and the calf tumbled, face and legs and nose and skull grinding to a halt in the dusty grit of the ring's floor.

“You see that Papa?” Darrel screamed. “That was quick, couldn't have been more than twenty seconds, wouldn't you say Papa?”

His father took a pouch from his shirt's breast pocket and rolled tobacco into a paper. “You stay here, son,” his father said, and he stood and stretched swinging his arms wide. As his father walked away he stumbled and fell to a knee on the stairs. Then he was gone.

Today was Darrel's birthday. There was no better place to spend his birthday than here, he thought. His father had woke him before dawn that day with a start. It was cold, early enough in the summer that the nights were cold enough to chill but not cold enough to warrant keeping a fire all night. His brothers and sisters at home would be jealous that Darrel had been to the rodeo. Beryl would probably leave shavings and splinters in his dinner as she was prone to do when jealous and Robert might wrestle him to the ground until he squealed, sometimes forcing a finger down his throat till he coughed and spat.

But Robert hardly knew about the world of rodeo – not like Darrel. In his free time after church on Sundays Darrel walked five miles to Valentine's farm and he taught him how to rope cattle and even explained to him many of the rules of rodeo.

Darrel wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a handkerchief. He looked around for his father. He had been gone for some time. Nearly an hour had passed and people had begun filing out of the stands, full of rancor and vitriol. Darrel stood and waited for a moment, then headed out to look for his father. He wandered up the stairs and surveyed the area, with no sign of his father. He walked back down the stairs, each step heavy with the ornament of his just-cleaned boots and the chaffing of his over-starched jeans, the bumbling stiffness of his birthday decorum. Near the ring men hollered in busy work, clearing the ring of debris and transporting cattle, and the handling of money.

Darrel, still searching for his father, walked around the ring, staring over his shoulder towards the stands, becoming worried as the sun settled towards the horizon. He stumbled and fell forward into something. He turned his gaze upward to the face beneath the too-wide brim of the ten gallon hat.

The man was a giant, a monolith. His jaw was set so strong and his hair was brown like rich dirt, California dirt, not the desolate dirt of Oklahoma, not like the dirt that Darrel's father had mixed with their own shit desperate for something, some act of providence. This man had hair thick and trimmed and brown like that California dirt and breathed like California air.

“Where you trying to go, cowboy?” the man asked.

#7 Samsara

            On this night she parted the mirrored surface with a smooth blade rippling the lake into one hundred and eight low waking strokes. She liked to glide across as noiselessly as the stars and lock her gaze upon the silvery willow arced over the dock; she focused on the other side. Draped in robes of green and gold brocade, the switch of her paddle billowed cool air through her sleeves that wafted up through the neck lifting hair from the frame of her face with each stroke. The soft rush of a distant falls murmured beneath the whistle and chirp of frogs. This night was sweet with jasmine, gardenia, and hyacinth. And in the last darkened hours before dawn, Tara began to hum.

            Nearing the edge, she withdrew her paddle and placed it at the bottom of the boat. Coasting toward the dock the boat slowed sending the closed buds of indigo utpala lotus blossoms spinning on their pads as she passed. Then the glass surface of the water began to tremble, each reflected star twinkled faster until the vibrating images broke into rippling, then rumbling; then rocking, the boat threw its paddle at her feet. She, acting fast, plunged the paddle into the lake to steady the small craft against the sudden tumult of waves. Voices cried out against the disturbance. Every frog, bird, beast and bug let loose a shrill wailing that deepened the rumbling growl of the earth in its quake. The boat in the mish mash of waves retreated from the dock. Tara stood fast at the stern with her oar ruddering for balance until she made her way back to the wooden seat to paddle madly amidst the waves for the dock. Receding quickly away from lands edge, the water pulled and pulled at the boat until she was once again back at the lake’s middle. Her shoulders and arms burned so hot with pain she could paddle no more and she was sucked to the stream that fed the lake into the sea.

            Tara turned the bow with the direction of the flow and headed into what had become river rapids of lake draining full force into forest. As the lake emptied, the water lifted her high among the branches; the only way to keep the boat from splintering into a trillion shards against the huge trunks of cedar and kiawe was to paddle, hard. Tree-top sweepers full of nests, webs and monkeys reached across her gushing path as Tara beat her way through the watery maze of canopy racing the river to the end of its riddle. The wind propelled her as much as the suck of the sea and then she saw it. Looming, colossal, impossible—the empty shoreline reef of what had always been the ocean. She rode the waters just as far as she could until the water drained over crags of ocean floor. The small boat sat balanced between two arms of coral. She waited. Nothing made a peep. In the absence there was only the silent reaching of tentacles in empty tide pools for water that wasn’t there. Then sunrise, sirens, screaming.

            When the sea returned it was not the giant wall she had expected, not the cresting emerald chariot of Poseidon but an enormous, angry, roaring spill as if the heavens had taken a mighty breath of air that pulled the oceans up with them and, exhaling, released the contents of the sea in a chaotic mixture of roiling jellyfish, crabs, coral, sands, and cold. As the frothing liquid wrath spread out before her, she glanced back at the coast to see throngs of o-shaped mouths agape with awe and she remembered what her father had seen on the day she was born: he saw the pains involved at birth. He saw old age, sickness, and death. He saw suffering. Here were these same beings still suffering because they lacked what they wanted, because they were burdened by things. She saw them seeking love but creating death, and she saw them trying to avoid suffering but running headlong into it. Her father, Avalokiteshvara, had dedicated the whole of himself to liberating all beings from the sufferings of existence, and since he saw there remained uncountable suffering beings, he had begun to weep. His tears flowed down, and kept flowing until they had created a vast lake. Then out of this lake—the liquid incarnation of Avalokiteshvara’s compassion—arose a blue utpala lotus, and on this lotus appeared a 16-year-old girl in the form of a goddess. This was Tara.

            Back over the stern of her boat, Tara saw the rubber-necked bodies on the banks finally turn their backs to run. The buildings of the indelible city so stern in their landscape would soon meet with the deluge of a power that would vent its spleen with an eerie equanimity. The purge and melt of the rising gush would pour in, around, over, through, into windows, doors, ears, mouths, eyes. The waters would strike fires, terrors, mirrors and blows. Some would escape most would not. When the torrent overtook her, the boat shot up and out from under her feet and Tara went spiraling into the flood. In the whorl her limbs were freed from their robes. The strong morning sun shone deep through the cold jade wave and Tara opened her eyes to green. She spread her arms wide riding the manic currents collecting houses and temples, factories and schools, swing-sets and slides, shopping baskets and cars. She washed up to the surface with streetlights and tangles of wires still surging with volts like fragments of laundry in spin cycle only to be sucked below in the agitated jumble of trees, bodies, and bicycles. Fierce in her assemblage, she saw everything, everything, everything join the savage deliverance of tsunami. 

#7 Bill Nye the Science Guy (Liz)

Bill was walking down the sidewalk. There was ivy everywhere – he was in Switzerland on a business visit. He had a cheese factory to film. He was in the village of Kerzers and there was just one cheese factory, which made sense because Kerzers was tiny, just a couple thousand people but you never could tell with the Swiss. Bill was tired, tired in that he was sleepy deprived and tired in his body, it hurt, airplane sore – Sherry – that was his wife – kept nagging him about these airplane muscle exercises, stretches – she modeled them every time they were about to get in the car to drive to the airport, every time and he was always felt irritated and said okay, okay, okay, impatient noises to get her to stop – but now he missed Sherry and he was sore. Bill stopped at a chain link fence – there was a little pond inside the chain link fence and a bunch of ducks inside, a little plank half-submerged, ducks sitting on it and a couple swimming – Bill put a hand on the fence and stretched his legs. He held his shoe to his back and leaned back – stretching his thigh. Watching the ducks.

He forgot about the stretch and forgot he was holding his foot – he watched the duck on the plank. It was walking, on the plank, toward the water – there were two ducks in its way and the walking duck and each of the sitting ducks snapped at each other; the walking duck bobbed back and forth, head shooting forward, beak open to snap – Bill watched the walking duck wade and then fling itself into the water – swimming, snapped. Bill watched the ripples, he couldn’t help it; it was second-nature now – physics demonstrations were everywhere. He wondered for a second if they should film the ducks. Stupid – just a tiny grimy duck pond in a Swiss village. Bill looked at the ducks again. The walking-now-swimming duck was quacking still and the two sitting ducks on the ramp twitched their wings, fluffling out little patches of feathers along their sides – Bill watched them through the chain link and wished for the thousandth time (not really the thousandth, Bill thought, and that thought frustrated him too) – he wished that he could look at something cool or pretty and not think about how to capture it on film. He wished he could just enjoy it. Bill always got this anxiety, thinking about how to film something – how to film a duck – which way was right? Which way? Was it worth it? Options! No!

Bill didn’t actually think those words but he felt an approximation of them, all at once, overwhelming, and then he breathed out and remembered he was stretching, he realized how tight his fingers held the chain link and relaxed them and it hurt, and then, awkwardly, because his balance was lost in his tense muscles, he released his leg – put his loafer on the sidewalk. Grabbed the fence again, loose fingers, getting his balance back.

Bill had a dinner appointment that night with a family in the village – an American aerospace engineer and his family, a wife, two small kids. Bill was tired, and thought about how difficult it would be to stay polite, to do the kind of conscious, normal conversation expected at dinner tables, that would be expected by the wife – but no, Bill thought: she was married to the engineer, she was probably used to it. Science talk. But then he remembered how eager the engineer had been, on the phone – he remembered the edge to his enthusiasm – ha, Bill thought, not really seeing the ducks this time, thinking of the word: desperation. Bill saw the ducks now, and then turned his head and looked around, the very narrow streets, the very old, very neat, immaculately kept white double-layer ivy-covered houses – he remembered the outdoor market he’d seen that morning, the image coming to him, the bucktoothed boy selling him bacon-covered flatbreads… He remembered how his loafer was still covered in horse droppings from the street. He remembered the carriage, two horses, carrying cases of bunny cages, little boxes with several bunnies in them each, ahead of them that morning as he and his producer and their Swiss contact walked away from the market – Where are they going, Bill had asked, and the Swiss contact had told him that the bunnies were going to be eaten. Meat. And Bill remembered that this family, the engineer and his wife and children, had been here in the village for two years.

Exercise 7: Lady

In a tiny loft on the 3^rd floor of a quaint townhouse-like apartment building, a young woman stands in front of her window looking down at the street that she has known to be a quiet one. Cars were small and compact enough that they are all parallel parked right behind one another. The stairs that lead to the main entryway of the buildings, on a typical day, would only feel the footsteps of its occupants leaving the building in the morning and returning later on in the evening. This is not a street where one would find a party or any worthy recognition of events.

Except for on this day.

The young woman of only 19 years of age backs away from the window as she caught sight of the crowd that has slowly been gathering. She looks around her tiny loft and walks over to the kitchen that she shares with her roommates. In her mind, she wonders if she is doing the right thing by making a decision that she somewhat understands. Love is love after all. Last night, when she asked him if he loves her, his reply was “But, of course. Whatever love means.” She recalled merely giggling like a school girl at his response and she decided it was his way of showing his affection and love for her by shrugging it off. She reminded herself that she must let go of such simple minded and ridiculous moments.

She looks at her watch and realizes that she is running late to her work. It’s not every day that she runs into such situations. She is usually quite prompt at all of her appointments and maintains this repertoire with the school where she is a teacher’s assistant for a kindergarten class. She adores the children she works with and they find her lovely. She feels that such time spent with them will someday give her all the knowledge that she will need to have children of her own. She realizes just then that when she does have her children, they will not be hers at all. They will belong to a realm. She shook off such thoughts and tells herself that her children will be hers.. and his, of course.

She looks at her telephone and decides to call the one person that would at least expect her phone call. After a ring and a half, the she hears the receiver pick-up.

“Oh my darling pig! Where have you been?”

“Hello, Mum. I just wanted to say hello, that’s all.”

“Hello?!? Is that all? I’ve had the telly on all morning!”

“Alright, Mum. I must be going now. I will phone you soon.”

She quietly places the phone back down and realizes that calling her Mum was the last thing she should have done. She glances at the window and contemplates whether to walk over and peak once more. She decides that the best way to do this without giving the crowd a sense of her walking towards the window is to get on all fours and slowly crawl. She begins to crawl ever so quietly as if every little inch of movement would trigger a reaction from the world outside of her loft. She begins to stifle a giggle picturing how his family would be quite appalled to find her on all floors crawling anywhere. As she reaches the window, she can hear them yelling and she’s not quite sure if they were yelling at her or at each other. What is with these people, anyway? Have they no work that they must get to? An article to write about the world? She stops crawling and realizes the ridiculousness of it all. She glances once more at her watch and realizes she really must be going.

Just then her telephone rings. She stands up and runs to answer.

“Miss, I’ll be down here to walk you to the school. You have 10 minutes, Miss.”

“Yes, sure. Would you be walking with me then, sir?”

“I’ll be walking behind you, Miss. Please hurry soon.”

She hangs the phone and bites her lower lip. An indication of a growing anxiety that she is feeling crawl through her skin. She decides that she cannot stay in her loft forever and really, she must get to the children at the school. They would be quite upset if she does not show up today.

She walks into her bedroom to grab her purse. She glances at the mirror and notices that at least she was thinking to put on something demure today. She pats her short hair and slides on a bit of goo on her lips. She smiles to herself and is satisfied that the reflection imitates just the same.

One step at a time, she thinks to herself. It’s just a crowd of people out there and it isn’t such a big deal as they are all making it out to be. Love is love after all and who is the world to judge such thing.

She walks down her building stairs and she recognizes the man who just minutes earlier called her as a reminder.

“Hello, Miss. Are you ready to walk to your school?”

“Why, yes, of course, why would I not be?”

“Pardon my intrusion, Miss. But you must realize that after you walk out your building door today, your life will not be same as it was.”

“Of course, it will be! This is my life, after all. Shall we proceed?”

She takes a deep breath.

He opens the door and as soon as he does enormous lights beams at her from all directions. There are words being yelled that she could not understand and she can feel his arms holding on to her elbow leading her away and through the crowd. Loud noises along with the clicking and the lights confuses her sense of direction and all she could feel is his hand on her elbow as she holds on to her purse that she realizes she is hugging close to her body.

She soon begins to understand the clouded voices and the words emanating from them. They are calling her to look at them and to say something. Why are they calling her that? No one has called her that, ever. What a ridiculous way to acknowledge someone in the streets. She did not respond. Those that knew her quite well fully understood that she will never respond to being called Lady Di.

Exercise 6

Keiler's Kettle

It is the tea kettle in him. Today, as heard in his recitation of a poem by Phillip Schultz about San Franc(isss)sco, yesterday, a poem called...One can't write this without making it sound like a crude rendition of a Mexican accent. But you know---the whistle of a friend who's had an ashtray slot half-circled out his front teeth by a bureau edge, or the wheeze in Me, Myself, and Irene right before Jim Carey tells Renee Zellweger her face is pursed as if sucking on a lemon. So exact--exact---he thought. He thought, this is adequation, the old Cisco peripheried by tug boats,

---which toot, ---but the afternoon, the little scraggler in overalls, hands behind his bag, cheeks inflated, big-eyed, toying with a blade of grass and growing lungs.

Who's out there keeping track of Ss? Scrabble players. Where's the scrabble player musicians---this is the problem---with ears. The old poets. The old audiences. Specialty. I'll call for a Rennaissance---no---too many dopes, "Mister Keilers," Minnesotans. Loyalty's out a mouth, like too much, too too much.

He whistled down the stairs, uninterrupted, raising eyebrows at those heading up to walk the impeccable carpet, making sure not to let any of their brooms' bristles fall onto the rug. He was clean, they knew it. Unions.

It was muggy outside and pressed your breath against your face, walking into your lunch. Thai, today, Wendy…Wendy. Anyways, there was no one walking. There never was. He went in to record just after midnight and did the week's bits in one sitting. It was Billy Collins birthday today. He liked the guy. A little cheese, but his biggest critics had nothing to show for their snubs. Longfellow's too. Whitman's on Wednesday. Millay's on Friday. Good poets, he chose good poets. Prairie Home was out in Wild Wood, they'd leave on Friday. New England and the Midwest. He would ask why and pretend he didn't, hoping there'd be another answer. This is why people keep showing up to Romeo and Juliet, he thought, hoping she'd wake up in time. Maybe this had to do with California, maybe he was Californian. He surely was. These Minnesotans, they sat by the radio. This was good, or did it mean you were stupid. But that was good too. Harmless. Not true. Out of contact. Better.

Every time he thought of an S poem he wrote it down. This is how they became S poems, poems listed, one per line, three pages front and back in the middle of a standard composition notebook. He had S poems to last him until January, to perfect the high sssss---with perfect teeth---imagine that! He saw these sssssswweees like one does birds too quick to be caught in turn: just snow: elegant fireworks, the silent, draping willow ones that keep the sky crinkling a heliotrope long after the smoke clears. This was the beauty of a disintegrating steam.

He was a patron of AM radio. Tax deductible. He thought more than he listened, he had an obligation to at least ignore it. Material. When the air conditioner kicked up in his car he got a little chill under his armpits that mixed with the tingle of listening to his daughter's message. Twenty-seven years and his little girl could still save him from the world. No one did sentimental better than he did, rich, a slight whistle, esophagul grain blurring his well-kept hair, a refurbished farm illumed in indirect sun: Mr. Keiler. Daddy, still.

What things were small enough? It wasn't the thing, he thought, it was what the ear, the eye, hand, had to do---the vulnerability that followed exertion, exhaustion, the frilling of things edges between will and lagging equilibrium. This is why he read other people's poems, sang other people's songs: the small retracts and serves the edgeless---he syncopated the small----contemporary poets needed him. Not Billy Collins. Eliot. Though he liked Eliot with a bit of whistle.

No one knew he ate McDonald's. A number 4. Yes, could he have some barbeque sauce if they would. It was there in the sauce. Maybe it was the sieve of microphones catching the steam, the sifters blackening. Yes, like rain, like rain, not too much, just enough to give it the look of endurance, the creosote of long lived in homes: Cisco peripheried with tug boats. They needed to see it the way he did, hear it before seeing it as he did, then what needed to would manifest.

"Mister Keiler!?!"

Oh no: Minnesotans. He didn't respond, he drove forward a yellow arrow and paused. He didn't know if he was in the mood to be 'Mr. Keiler.' He wanted to devour and blow across a blade of grass. But he continued to the window, rolling up his window to thwart the autograph, or worse, the picture. The girl was well lip-sticked, a brick color. He couldn't count the colors in her hair, just those streaks that composed the rainbow between her hat and ear.

"Are you Garrison Keiler?"

"Yes. Yes, I am."

"I knew it was you."

"Thank you, it is kind of you to listen."

He heard a voice whispering out of sight, hissing. There was probably spit hitting her neck. Ask him. A laugh.

Holding his bag, graying with grease: "Could you smile for me?"

"I would prefer to stay out of pictures for the time being. You know---the soul---like the Kiwanis tell us--"

"I don't want to take your picture. I just want to see your teeth."

He hesitated, unprepared to be used in this way, stretching his face, bringing his brows down and his lips up. She was surprisingly blunt, not a single like. He didn't smile at her, he thought it was funny and turned to share the compliment.

She turned her head to the faceless voice. "He has all his teeth. This guy bet me the mop job that you were missing a front tooth. Thanks Mr. Keiler. Have a good night. Saturday."