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.

TAKE THIS AWAY I

don't want it,

she said,
and I knew
exactly what she meant
though it took me a while to
admit it. I'm out
of practice. 80 some years ago
I was the official interpreter
when the grownups couldn't understand
her baby talk.
She would talk to me & I would explain in English
what was on her mind. But a lifetime
of ignoring that connection has
let disappear.

When words on my screen are suddenly not on my screen any more
I say to my daughter, "it disappeared" and she will say
"it hasn't disappeared, you just can't see it now," and so
with this sisterness; it never went away, I just
didn't pay attention any more. I would have said
"and neither did she" but of course I don't know that. Maybe she knew
all along what I've been blind to. Anyway

I don't want to take it away; she's talking
about life, or her life, or any possible life she can
envision. She doesn't want a phone call from her sister
and she doesn't want eyedrops put in her eyes, she
squeezes them out so she has glaucoma now and I suppose
she doesn't really want that; I've heard it's very painful, but
she doesn't really want to see anything any more or try to
read anything. Well, Helen,

in crossword puzzles sisters
are nuns and we've never been
nuns but of sisters we both have none;
still I will call you, too late to help you if I ever could have
but not too late to save me
from despising myself. I'll call,
the way I never called when you could talk,
and I'll say hello and tell you
that I love you. Again. Today
when I said that what did you say?
And what did you mean? I don't
remember but maybe I will know
next time. And I wish you
a safe journey, I do not want to tell you
to rage; you're done with that. You
never wanted it and now
if you don't want it you won't
have to have it much longer.

I
don't want it either; I wish I knew
your secret.

Jagannath

Jagannath
looks over us
his white sun eyes
ablaze. He makes sure
no harm will come, he
scares off ill intent, we're
safe. I know at home
he would look out. There is some magic here
in Jagananth transported, turned around.

He looked out,
he looks in,
Jagananth
looking out and in; I sit
cheered in this home far from India
with its resident gods not worshipped but
recalled. I celebrate Yankee
Thanksgiving here
with turkey on the table and
Jagananth above. Hybrid vigor
and universal
white sun eyes. Apocalyptic
horses are not stopped in tracks; roughshod
they may gallop right across us where we sit
giving thanks, but
under these eyes we are safe from
panic and from
ourselves.

OTHER PEOPLE'S

kitchens inspire me to new heights
of rule-making: clean up as you go along,
never leave dishes in the sink, certain things
should never go in the dishwasher, even though
they can. And more. But somehow looking down from this
bench and pronouncing, I start to wonder
if I could ever follow any of these rules
at home. Well, of course, the one about
not putting certain things in the dishwasher - I
don't have a dishwasher so that's elementary. Then
the one about cleaning up as you go along. I actually
can't do that, not at home, not in other people's
kitchens, I think I will but finally I just
get too tired and don't even try,
which leads to breaking the one
about not leaving stuff in the sink,
too. And I don't have a job, not one
that takes my time away from me, I have
work, work that I can do while doing dishes or
even mopping the floor - or I could, I definitely could,
if it should happen that I ever
mopped the floor. I don't
have kids at home or anyone but myself at home
to take care of. And yet
I can't abide by these rules. So now my new rule is
do
whatever you do
and love it. That's all. If the dishes pile up,
love that. Vincent
saw herself in light of
a neighbor's rules: she rests
before she does her dishes,
she forgets
what she got from you. I do too; from now on
I'll think about who this makes me: A poet? Hardly. A fuckup?
No. Maybe
at core,
human, and aware
that I don't know everything. Oh that's
so hard to accept.