I go into restaurants to see if they have rats, that’s basically what I do. I’m like Sherlock Holmes but with rats for criminals. Yeah, cocaine… did you want some? What? How do I find the rats? Right, well, most of the time I start by wiping the floor with a finger, then I lick my finger and you can usually tell if a rat has been there; rat feces has a pretty singular taste, kind of like, I don’t know, it’s like fried chicken grease and sewer water… have you ever tasted guano? Bat droppings? Rats have a lighter flavor than guano—what? Right, next question then. Um, yeah, I do find rats a lot of the time. But, like, sometimes when I haven’t found one in awhile, I’ll just leave one there and—oh, I just carry one in my pocket with me, in a plastic bag. No, it doesn’t suffocate, it’s just a dead one, but my job gets so boring and ruining someone every once in a while is exciting.

http://palmsout.net/music/remixsunday/98/I%20Can%20Cook%20%28Miami%20Horror%20Remix%29.mp3

when I called, I asked the girl (grille delivery how may i help you?)
– Um, okay, Do you know what a heart attack is?
nothing from the other end.
–hello?
– is this a serious phone call?

it took me talking to her manager who immediately knew what the thing was to get my heart attack ordered. this was me Knowing I was old and that I had been gone from midd for too long. why do i order this thing when its even called the heart attack? i don’t know. it’s pretty awful. When the knock came, along with the food, I was in the middle of a story about the time I fell on my hip and how it’s not been the same since. I started telling it to the delivery girl who backed slowly out of the room once she’d got her money.

the point of telling you this was me wondering whether anyone else has an affinity for the heart attack (granted, you can’t eat this thing all the time. it’s reserved for special occassions like late nights with a few people around to help.), and also me wondering whether anyone would read this. I’m not sure why I’m so fond of the heart attack. everything just works so well together. Like the time on the farm when we had to borrow Jeff from next door’s tractor because ours was broken and we had to walk two miles in the snow to his house because you know in those days we only had horse and buggies and the horses couldn’t leav…

Here’s a poem called “Commerce” I wrote last j-term, but it has to do with food, so I’m sharing it here. You can also find it on my “This is Not Edible” page that I just created (look to the right part of the screen for the link) housing some other poems.

Commerce

What’s your name?
You asked.
Jodie, I said,
Though that was not my name.
We were in the supermarket
And I just wanted
To get to the produce section—
There was a great deal on melons—

You asked me for my
Phone number
And I said no,
But then you smiled,
And your eyes crinkled
Like cresent moons
In midnight country sky,
And I missed Vermont—
And, somehow,
Your eyes reminded me of it—

So I wrote down my number
On the back of an old receipt
Knowing that you wouldn’t be Vermont—
That you, a brown haired stranger
In Jordans and a green bomber
Never could be,
No matter how much I wished
On eyes.

You and I were from the city.
We grew up on sourdough bread and blacktop,
Riding BART,
And stuffing socks in our shoes
Because it was trendy.
We lived in houses
Connected to our neighbors’ houses
But we’d never met them—
We only heard them coughing at night
And singing in their showers the next morning.

You and I could never be
The country people I missed
And I knew that,
But I was a romantic
And I couldn’t deny your eyes—
So I gave you my number.
Oh, it was a stretch for sure,
Eyes? Eyes lied, and
Even as I handed you the liquor store
Reciept, my hand winced, and wished—
Not on eyes—
That it was attached to someone more reasonable.
But I looked in your eyes again
To make sure I could still see the moons,
To secure the grazing cows
And the long necked beers we nursed
Indoors on winter nights—
And I did.
You smiled and
I knew I was delusional,
But as I walked away
Towards 79 cents a pound
For honeydew
I hoped that you would call.

The next day you called,
But I didn’t answer.
I realized how silly I had been,
How you can never trust strangers you meet
In the city while buying melon,
How—logically– Vermont is contained within
It’s state boundaries,
And that wishing on eyes, even reincarnations of moons,
Is silly.

“Praise Them,” Li-Young Lee

The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter our
wihtout parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We’re the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn’t hear
what singing completes us?

hi people in my group from last week if any of you are reading this. I mentioned a poem called “Miracle Ice Cream” by Adrienne Rich, and in case anyone was curious, here’s a link to it on Poets.org

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15227