A WOMAN I KNOW

has plenty of brains
and beauty that will never cease
knocking everyone's socks off
and she goes around acting the moron
with men, I suppose because of the usual
supposition that men
don't like women with brains, but they do! They do!
Real men do. But there are men
who don't mind them as long as they play dumb
and that's the kind she finds. She listens to the
chauvinistic stories they tell her as if she could not
think for herself. I'm afraid if this goes on long
enough it will become true. And as far as I can see
this will be fine with her.

Who would want
to hang around such men? Women find
men to sleep with, men to dance with, men
to converse with, without turning themselves into
morons. So I started thinking, "What are her
core values?" and it struck me that perhaps following the
teachings of her first lover, she became a
mammonite. It's sad, too; mammonites never
get to enjoy what money can buy for them (a study of which
would reveal their core values); it's the money, the mere
symbol, they go after, not the thing itself. As for me,
I love to spend money but I don't like to work
for it, but though I spend whatever is given me I
would be just as happy without it, I'm
funny that way. And they
are money that way. I think
my happiest years were those I spent trying to figure out
how to stretch a borrowed three dollars to cover
dinner for two and how
to pay it back. Working. I don't like to
work but I like
having a little coming in and making it
do me, while all the while wishing
for more. Oh, it's a lie, that I
don't like working, I do, I love it. Even
sitting at a desk alI day had its
moments but remembering to bring the
promised coffee and making change while taking orders
- that was joy. I don't remember ever thinking
"Oh, how I wish I were happy" when I had
hardly any money. Now I have enough and don't
even have to work for it any more and
wish that all the time.

THAT DAMNED CHRISTINA

That Damned Christina

disappeared my nuts. I'm going

to kill her. Perfectly good nuts
ziplocked away
without the slightest attraction for ants.
I remember her
standing over there saying something about
how she hated ants and I
agreed with her, never dreaming she would
throw my nuts out. She is nuts and if I could I would
throw her out. Never mind, I'm going back to
Fonda this very day and get more nuts and
this time I will put a big sign on them saying
DO NOT DISTURB. ON PAIN OF DEATH,
DO NOT
MOVE THESE NUTS FROM THIS SPOT.

I used to have belongings that I thought
were mine - a doll, a rattle, a yo-yo I couldn't
work - that I learned were not mine by having them
disappeared by my mother, the boss of
the universe. Christina is not
my mother and she is not the boss of
anything in this house but she acts as if
she were both. I think I will just
tell her the next time she comes, "Christina,
if you move my nuts or anything of mine
from where it is to somewhere else where I will not
know to look for it - if you do that, Christina, I
will kill you. On the spot. In cold blood. And your
children will go hungry and I will go to
prison I know but that doesn't matter because I am
not long for this world now anyhow and I will die happy knowing
you can never again hide my snacks.

THE ONE I LOST

The One I Lost

There's a huge alabaster bathtub in the
living room right next to the couch but I'm
not there I'm in the cafeteria reading a poem
to the orphans.  Adults, all.  It's called
"The One I Lost" and it's about the
baby I gave up for adoption.  No one
seems to be listening but I don't mind, I just
read on and on about having this baby and giving it
away and when I pause for a moment to
catch my breath a man in the back looks up and says
"You read very well."  What a compliment.

NESTLE

Nestle

It's hard for me to figure out
why well-informed people with brains,
some of whom are so sensitive that they
cannot bear to hear stories of hurt children,
cheerfully buy and use products manufactured by
Nestle, a corporation whose profits accrue
from hurting children. Okay, okay I won't
tell you how long it takes a baby to die of
starvation after having been fed formula
until its parents run out of money, at which time
its mother has no milk. But can't you, in turn, at least
ban the perpetrators of this horror from your own
kitchen?

Lobster

I wanted a lobster dinner (we had been
talking about Maine) but instead I got chips and
hummus and some leftover
chicken soup.  So now at least I'd like to have some
tres leches cake but no, all there is is some
ice cream, vanilla and a little bit of
mango.  I don't know about that.  I think I'll try
some hot maple syrup, not on the ice cream but on
some of the yogurt that's in there.  No cookies of
course but still, it might do the trick (I'd like to
forget about food for a while; there are
other things in the world).  So far I've taken
all my pills on time so maybe I can just
kick back with a book (I got a couple of good ones in
large print at the library) and go to sleep.  When I
wake up my daughter will be home and I will
beg for a lobster dinner.  Or for a walk on the
cold, foamy rocks of the Maine
beach in my
bare tough feet.  That ought to do it.  Lobster
can wait; it's not
extinct yet.  I like to think about the days when
not so many grandfathers ago
lobster was so plentiful it was illegal to
provide an all-lobster diet to one's servants because
it was bad for their health; they needed
vegetables.  Even I
need vegetables once in a while; some
okra, for instance, right now.  Oh well,
I had the chicken soup, that had
some carrots in it I
think and potatoes too.  Potatoes today, lobster and
okra tomorrow.  But Sunday?  Tres leches
cake for sure.

LOOKING

LOOKING

I've been walking around the house for a while, holding
on to the classy Costco walker Marina got for me, looking
for my walker.  Now having found it right in my hands, I'm
looking for my mind;  I wonder where it is.  Probably
in my cunt where it mostly resides making snap
judgments I follow devoutly.  Any
minute now I am going to get dressed so that
if anyone goes anywhere they can take me
to the store, to more than one store I hope;
I want to buy origami paper and all manner of
wonderful edibles - chips, hummus, kefir
cheese and pears and other cheese, oh
I am going to eat.  Eat.  Eat.  It's
hard to remember when only a
few days ago I had no
appetite.  How did you
lose so much weight, Dona wanted to know, and I
felt so sorry to have to tell her the secret:  I lost my
appetite.  But for her I have recommended that she
take up the clarinet, the clarinet, the
clarinet goes doodle doodle doodle det,
yes and if she wants I will take it up too; I
haven't tried to play a musical
instrument since, hm, well, not for
many lifetimes but I might do it now not that I
would be able to play well but that I might
get a sound I would enjoy from it; I
don't want to try to play trumpet, that
was my sister's thing; I'd like
to play something that uses what
wind I may have left and
makes it
stronger.  Meanwhile, though,
I do like to whistle.  While I
work and while I don't do
anything.  And remember my
grandfather reminding me
that whistling girls and
crowing hens were said to be condemned to
bad ends.  I have not met my bad end yet but
I've sure had a lot of fun
whistling, especially since I knew that
Grandpa though saying that really
loved to hear
my whistling.  When he said it he was
quoting his own grandparents too which made it
a long connection - somehow the beauty of
girls going right on whistling despite the
dire predictions made it all
almost sacred.  I wonder
if Sappho whistled.  She never
says so but I'll bet she
did.  I saw a bust of her once in the old
Getty, a bust by a contemporary, and she
did look like a
whistler.

What's Wrong

What's wrong
with a cup of hot chocolate at
three o'clock in the
morning?  Nothing.  Maybe this signals
the start of a new life.  I'm already
thinking about breakfast and it won't be
steel-cut oats either; we have some
yogurt and Cafe Fanny granola and
health is just around the corner; I can
taste it in the chocolate.  Health, appetite, days spent
walking in the wind.  Tomorrow
begins at 3 o'clock right now and I'm already -
look - breathing deeply and I'm not
wheezing.  On the cup
that holds the healing drink I see
The Cat in the Hat and I think he sees
me and wishes me well.  The Cat
doesn't know about Flit (the first
Geisel  subject to meet
my eye, on car cards in the subway before he became
Seuss).  Flit
vanquished flies, at least
temporarily,  The Cat
vanquishes even
Mother, any
old time.  Hot
chocolate vanquishes melancholy and furnishes
food for thought:  how come
though full of caffeine, it
sedates?  And how would hot
chocolate be without sugar?  Don't I just love
that idea?  Yes.  Meanwhile I'm dreaming away
about Wednesday evenings at Miss Kettell's, after
an hour or so with her enormous
doll house, waiting
for the cocoa to cool and skimming off the
skin.  And sometimes,
a pretty child, sitting still in her
living room for hours while she and her
companions sketched my face.  I wish I
had some of their sketches now, how sad to think
of that pretty girl gone forever.  She never showed
her true self in the family snapshots but some of those old ladies
I could tell knew just how I
felt.