Dango

Five Minutes in the House Alone

Going off to the pool
She recalls the first time she wore the swimsuit
it was a terribly hot summer afternoon
and she ran to her room afterwards, sobbing
the boys had made a cruel joke about it in the pool
it was the first and last time she wore it, her hands
touch the edges of the fading picture

A trip to Grand Canyon, laughing the whole way
from Bakersfield, making it in the hot dry summer
and setting up the tent with
a hundred other one-off campers
their neighbors peeling price stickers
from their newly bought sleeping bags and pads,
making faces as the shutter clicked
over the open chasm front and center

Quicker now, birthdays, graduations in succession
days at the beach and faces lost in the crowd,
time flying past until pictures came fewer
and finally no faces at all around
Anne Mullinax, quiet, retired
turns and wheels back to the kitchen
and puts the water to boil
for the second cup this hour
hears the crash of the junk mail through the door slot
and the tick of the the clock, quiet and dependable
pours a little water out into the pot with the
houseplant that curves safe and still
as the cats stretch in the sun on the wooded floor
and one meows softly and scatches to be let out.

(this was written for the `phonebook challenge` in which you pick a random name from the phonebook and write about him or her. Yet I couldn`t help writing about a real person and place.)

the long stairs

Im going down the long stairs, from the green and sequestered hills that lead to the grey of Oakland flats, heading to the bus top that is a ticket to the conivial college funkiness of Telegraph, where there are a thousand records to leaf through, rare Hendrix and the street stalls of semi-reformed hippies who have resigned themselves to the realities of streetside performance vending

Im going to lose myself in the dark basement of Laval`s thick slice pizza, one dollar a slice, a perfect counterpart to the dark sweetness of root beer and 25 cent arcade games, going to spend long afternoons leafing the racks of shiny comics, Batman, Mr. Monster and Mage, feeling the wood smelling dankness of the Berkeley summer sun, staying well clear of People`s Park, relic of the days of student activism, now given to bums and dealers

Going to walk the musty staircase of Moes, leafing used books on subjects near and abtruse, get a feeling finally that I should be on the bus perusing my new comics, looking forward to the old lp I bought for $6.50, a rare treasure of `70 death-premonition Hendrix. Going to walk the long stairs to a world of trees, deer, racoons and exploding yuppy neighbors.