October 2011
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The Paleontologist’s Blind Date
You have such lovely bones, he says, holding my face in his hands, and although I can almost feel the stone and the sand sifting away, his fingers like the softest of brushes, I realize after this touch he would know me years from now, even in the dark, even without my skin. Thank you, I smile— then I close the door and never call him again.
Philip Memmer
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“Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the...”
– Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist
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Night Images
Late in the cold night wakened, and heard wind, And lay with eyes closed and silent, knowing These words how bodiless they are, this darkness Empty under my roof and the panes rattling Roughed by wind. And so lay and imagined Somewhere far off black seas heavy-shouldered Plunging on sand and the ebb off-streaming and Thunder forever. So lying bethought me, friend, What traffic...
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“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in...”
– Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist
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Slant
If the angle of an eye is all, the slant of hope, the slant of dreaming, according to each life, what is the light of this city, light of Lady Liberty, possessor of the most famous armpit in the world, light of the lovers on Chinese soap operas, throwing BBQ’d ducks at each other with that live-it-up-while-you’re-young, Woo Me kind...
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“The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion...”
– Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist
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Billet-Doux
She reads by the light of a guttering candle and likes the feel of each page’s gilt edge as she lifts it slightly at the corner, readying herself to turn it. If the wind whips the sycamore branches outside her window, if her nightgowned shoulders shudder once from a sudden chill, so much the better, and the book must tell of children toiling for bread and pennies in a textile mill, or tender...
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“The boy felt jealous of the freedom of the wind, and saw that he could have the...”
– Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist
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Superstition
My cat washes with her left paw, there will be another war. For I have observed that whenever she washes with her left paw international tension grows considerably. How can she possibly keep her eye on all the five continents? Could it be that in her pupils that Pythia now resides who has the power to predict the whole of history without a full-stop or comma? It’s enough to make me howl when I...
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“Maybe she didn’t even remember him. He was sure that it made no difference...”
– Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist
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Running Away Together
It will be an island on strings well out to sea and austere bobbing as if at anchor green with enormous fir trees formal as telephone poles. We will arrive there slowly hand over hand without oars. Last out, you will snip the fragile umbilicus white as a beansprout that sewed us into our diaries. We will be two bleached hermits at home in our patches and tears. We will butter the sun...
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