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.