From Somewhere Else

You're pulled over for texting, and launch into a diatribe on the correct use of sans-serif fonts, trying to explain that you're not from here, the land of barleycorned, quick-fix heretics, hog-wild tramplers of community gardens, flippant proselytizers of otherworldly elixirs as well as down-to-earth pharmaceuticals; that you are in fact from somewhere else, from somewhere along the macadam to enlightenment, the way littered with impediments and withering voicemails itching to be free. You try to explain that the overnight at Lord Weary's Castle was a mistake, a misstep, a singular disappointment, and that there's nothing wrong with buying into the psychodrama of the Method, that it is in fact the only proven, money-back-guaranteed way the pieces will fit, tattered but neat but so what, highlighting the proposition that cataloging the colors of Why is busy work for newhires naive enough to try to impress top brass with double-blinds. Sustain the effort? Pshaw! How-tos from a nobody in some backwater.

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Catechism

You begin to compile a catechism
on the inevitability of change
having been blown away by the wind farm
the blades out-of-sync
shadowing the land
carrying pilgrims though a labyrinth of time
whimsically, as if nothing else mattered,
and, for that matter, nothing else did.
She’s bankrolling his latest venture.
So that’s that, and that.
Wrap up your bleating heart
return to the batting cage
practice your swing.
The expert's 10,000 hours, yes?
Of course, even those in the nosebleed section
will be able to read your face
time-stamped with now.
There have been others, gesticulating, pupils dilated,
lines out-of-focus, shedding intimacies.

Who made us?
God made us.

Why did God make us?
God made us to show forth His goodness and to share
with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.

What must we do to gain the happiness of heaven?
To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and
serve God in this world.

You drag your feet through a maze of trials
leaving a trail of bread crumbs.
You know this, and you trust this?
Do not fall victim to distraction.
Wait a moment. Let me read your file.
Falls victim to distraction.
Happenstance.
Pointing and flushing.
Characteristic of the breed.
But do you believe in change?
And second chances?
Fear eats the soul.
A 1974 West German film.
Regurgitating an anthem will take you to the next checkpoint,
an affair of the heart
as comforting as down.
You can see the light at the end.
It's there, trust me.
Again? Give me a moment, will you please?

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison

Wait!

They've left off an ending

a wrapping-up

the closure that we're told we all hope for
that we all need

and that (we naively believe)

will tidy-up the guest room

and allow the would-be guest to return
along dwindling roads

to homegrowns
and otherworldly pleasures.

And so your intimidations -
the hunchback of your nightmares -

will continue to knock at the back door

at three AM

awakening you

to dig among the flower beds

for shards of the flower pots

from your childhood makebelieves
when sandcastles appeared like anthills
and images of candy canes lined your dreams.

And the benevolent accommodations?

None, only misinterpretations of twilight

leaving you wobbling along the path

to the gingerbread house

now overgrown with should-haves.

Lily Cole

Woman XXII

I sample the flavors of her 33 1/3 angularity.
Her tight typeface
wallpapers my memory
stopping me mid-sentence.
My iPad takes the wheel.

Marine Vacth

Woman XXI

She writes me into
her short story:
a walk-on
with one line
from Wittgenstein:
What is thinkable is possible.
I blow it.

Joyce Tenneson

Retrospective

We live to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

          - Anaїs Nin

Everything obscured. Obliterated.
Layered over, as Hockney says.
Matthew Brady moving the dead
instead of the cameras, circa Civil War.
Manipulating the image.
Making it more.
We talked about which movies we like.
Really. And so the drama:
Call me Ishmael and all that
through however many chapters
until the Rachel appears, and finds you clinging
to drowned Queequeg's coffin.
But what of the reliability of retrospection?
The eyewitnesses' embellishments.
Unintentional yet instrumental.
How you enter the frame and alter it?
Enter the room and the conversations change?
You're not surprised, are you?
The Doobie Brothers' Long Train Running
and you on lunch break from the bureaucracy
with a reference librarian
and they're doing a sound check
and people are beginning to segue
into the weekend.
He said. She said. Muddied.
Wait. Let's run through that again.
Warmify it this time, please.
Manipulate the image.
Move the dead.
Later, comparing notes
for the retrospective report
due Monday morning on your boss's desk.

Francesca Woodman