I walk down the hall with my secret two hundred dollar shoes, high-water jeans from 8th grade, little white ankle socks. The walls are big cement blocks painted a blurry grey. Day after day I walk along the cold plastic-esque floor, and chatty rude people bump into me, happy careless people don’t notice me, silly caring people smile at me. Sometimes I am dressed outrageously and people give me funny looks. I’ve worn feather boas, kitten ears, flower wreaths, fishnet stockings, neckties, slips, all manner of thrift-store dresses, designer silks, glitter, charcoal, acrylic paint, clay, scarves of every color, cashmere, calm, curls, and all the rest down these blank corridors. Then sometimes I wear the same pair of old jeans for two weeks and don’t wear make-up for a month. It is all the same, and maybe a part of my artifice, my old catchword. I always wanted this, my website, to be called “Art and Artifice.” Always the most fitting thing. Still, for a girl who can neither sing nor dance, I hold my own surprisingly well among the birds of the world. And yet.
“Is she angry at you?” he asked.
“She’s always angry at me,” I replied. And she might as well be anyone, might as well even be myself. My self.
- - -
Upon my entrance into real life, I shall wear yellow, suck up my shame, and breathe freely the lighter air. I say these things with stars in my eyes and water (salty as sushi, alliteration, simile ) dripping along where my cheekbones could be. I cannot decide how it is that I should feel, again, yes, again. I wonder still if I have lost my faith in thought, yet my emotions blur around, and I am left wondering down empty streets at three AM, a mail-order bride in disquise, an adult in sheep’s clothing, always a cherry. It is a curse that my life should always be about me, I am inclined to call auditions for a new protagonist. I would chose a pretty sex-worker, they are most easily glorified. We’ll not postulate about selling flowers on street corners, we’ll not magnify my metaphors tonight, and yet I imagine
1 “kitty”. sixteen, 5′ 11″, white, prostitute.
2 ducking always the touch of must and shall,
3 whose slippery body is Death’s littlest pal,
4 skilled in quick softness. Unspontaneous. cute.
5 the signal perfume of whose unrepute
6 focusses in the sweet slow animal
7 bottomless eyes importantly banal,
8 Kitty. a whore. Sixteen
you corking brute
9 amused from time to time by clever drolls
10 fearsomely who do keep their sunday flower.
11 The babybreasted broad “kitty” twice eight
12 –beer nothing, the lady’ll have a whiskey-sour–
13 whose least amazing smile is the most great
14 common divisor of unequal souls. (e. e. cummings)
Skilled in quick softness. I want to say such things. I am, afterall, all wanting and hardly flesh. I was 5′11″ once, but then I became 5′10″, and some said I didn’t look tall in my photographs, and I say curse my photographs. They called me Kitty when I was thirteen. I will live only in Oriental mindsets, and my rooms will all be empty. Resolution #5.
- - -
When the music murged from Christian contemporary to elevator classical, the juvenile giggles from the back seats of the van faded away to murmurism, fragmentated run-on flutter misplaced in notes. The sounds must be connected before they are decipherably meaningless, I sat writing words in a scrambled script, jolted serifs concocted of friction, the wheels against cement, blue-grey interstate, with those green signs by and by. I wanted always a large book of my text, my script, smooth and long, just so I could admire the letters I had written over days and days, paying little attention to the words. I am all parts, smallness, interested only in cells, neither the kidney nor the heart can hold my attention. In the van, I had cramps, but they were not so severe, and almost comforting, a tight hug, honest, sincere.
- - -
Notes:
- a story without words
- include more bone / breasts
- also - the sex-based fitness plans
- wait to be acknowledged
- parenchyma, the judge, plegma, varenka
- Roth IRA
- Melville! dammit.
- 221
- LSAT
- dividend
- goodness….
- cherry, lemon, lime, grape, strawberry, raspberry, apple, orange, pineapple
- concept mapping: proton, energy, gene
- - -
A complaint: The deer outside the door to my room here at “the lodge” (Red Top Mountain) do not make up for the fact that the bathroom is overwhite, the water pressure a joke attempted red-faced by that mockery of a shower massager. And I must say, I really must say, that gift-wrapping one’s soap is really quite too much. Having to deal with soggy white paper on top of everything else, in the tiny hope-to-be-hygenic shower I can barely sit down in. And I must sit down, this body, not electric, not electronic, longs to sit and to be rained on.
In my favorite, stands a nude woman with a Parisian look about her, defined cheekbones, and a slight feather-lace draped around her neck. One could say it were a boa, one of the most delicate variety - and yet, boas are harsh and remind one of cheap prostitutes, Las Vegas showgirls, drag queens, but no, not whores like Kitty, Kitty wouldn’t wear a boa. The woman in the photo is so far from all that, but her eyes say “I know.” A shadow mimics the outline of her torso, soft curves, thin skin. Her name, too, is mine, spelled more simply. She is not Kitty but Catherine, more classical, more elegant. I feel almost a mockery of what she is, Catherine, in black and white, beautiful beside and open window, nude and calm. Perfectly captured. Completely had.
- - -
answered correctly:
2 questions - name the opera from brief description
3 questions - common organisms used in genetic research
fractals!
Sappho
Plato
Scott O’Dell
Lindberg
Pascal’s wager
House of Seven Gables, House of Mirth, House on Mango Street
Ang Lee
Starry Night
Andrew Wyeth
Darius I
King Lear
Narnia
et cetera