Baby lets go down south. Where things run backwards.
Backwards, baby? What could you mean?
I mean backwards, baby, upside down. Below the equator things go reverse.
What things? The clocks? Does time move different down there?
Well sure, baby, time moves differently down there. But no, that’s not what I’m talking about. No, no, the clocks don’t go backwards, but the toilet water does.
Toilet bowls, baby?
Yeah, baby! The water goes the other way, like a counter-clockwise tornado!
Oh yeah? Well what about the real tornadoes?
Yes, baby. Those too. It’s the gravity, baby. Its switched in reverse.
Well, I can’t wait to see that, baby. Do you think we’ll make it in time?
That all depends, baby. That depends on your baby, baby.
My baby? But isn’t he our baby? I mean you made him, too, baby. You got up on top of me that night in October.
Sure, sure, baby. Our baby. It depends on our baby.
If our baby comes out big and healthy then we’ll go south? Then we’ll see the reverse tornadoes? The reverse toilets?
Sure, baby. The south is calling.
You can hear it?
Sure baby. Its sayin’ something like a palindrome.
A palindrome, baby?
Yeah, you know, where the word is the same backwards and forwards. Like Hannah.
My name! I am a palindrome!
Yes, baby. You are the same, backwards and forwards.
So the South is calling my name?
Yes, baby, that’s what I said.
Well we’ve got to listen to it, don’t we, baby?
Well that depends on the baby, baby.
But everything depends on the baby! I want to be free from this baby, baby. I want to listen to the palindrome! I want to go
South!
We are South, baby. We’re south of Tennessee.
But Tennessee isn’t a palindrome!
That’s not the point, baby. A palindrome is Never odd or even.
Well I’m not odd. Do you think I’m odd, baby?
Sometimes, love. But odd’s better than even, don’t you think?
Let’s ask the south.
South! What’s better, odd or even?
What did the South say back?
The south said a palindrome. Do geese see God?
If geese see God then by God that’s odd.
But it would be even, too, don’t you think. If we can see God then so should the geese.
I don’t know about you, baby, but I sure can’t see any God. All I see is my big fat belly down South of my face.
Soon it will be a baby, baby. A beautiful, awful baby. An oxymoron baby.
An oxymoron, baby?
Yeah, like when two things contradict each other. Like we’ll love our baby but we’ll hate our baby. Things that reverse each other.
Like South and North?
Well not exactly, baby. More like an odd, even person. Something that doesn’t make sense.
Do I make sense, baby?
Not often, baby. I’d say you are an odd even person.
I’d like to go South, baby. Does that make sense? Or is that an oxymoron, too?
Yes, baby. Let’s go South together. Lets bring our baby into a reverse gravity world, a world where time moves like a
palindrome rather than an oxymoron.
Yes, baby. That makes sense. Like my name. Where time moves like my name.
Gods Of Community Loving
At the beginning there was the wedding with the fire dancer. She was as twisted as a snake, spitting fire up into the oak tree, spitting game at the male wedding goers via her hips and eyes. There were shrimp dancing in my stomach. And avocado licked clean from its skin, smooth moves. It was a rich time for all of us. We were even acting like shrimp, swimming around dancing pink and rosy. I humped the sous chef in front of my family, laughed wildly. It was October and the date for my departure was coming. But first I’d make duck raviolis at Angelo’s blacksmith forge that had the fig tree growing out the ceiling. He had a boar in the freezer. The sous chef was there and we were all rectangling around these long tables made from plywood playing guitar. We were celebrating being alive and the sous chef was the god of community loving. I stared at him and told him Let’s be community lovers but he didn’t want to. Then my airplane left and the sky around the plane was as thin as my blood after I saw the magazine in the airport with his picture in it, eating goat cheese with Alice Water’s daughter. When your heart turns into a gazelle because of Elle Magazine. You are a female. You have a female memory. Then you’re flying with your women friends, who are just unhelpful abstractions of yourself. The seats in the airplane are blue, the color of boys rooms, a place for swimming and exploring. I got yellow walls but many girls got pink which was as sweet and pathetic as dead shrimp dipped in sauce which the community loves to death, forgetting easily about the environmental implications of nets out to sea.
In Mexico, other people married each other. The theme was Zapotec Chic and you should have been there, wearing your Guayabera cha cha cha. There was a ceremony that included rose petals of all colors. Orange petals fell from the sky onto the bride and groom! These husbands and wives were rich. We all felt rich at that wedding. My sequins were uncontrollable. The groom made a pass at my sequins. The bride yelled at him in a drunk way. The groom was fat and bald but he was still in charge. Marriage is a human thing but not natural. I humped a guy from Harvard in the rental house on Calle Matamoros, naturally. Shrimps were on the brain. Female shrimp lay one million eggs. When the eggs hatch they feed on sticky yolk and then do a metamorphosis. The Harvard guy should have done a metamorphosis of some kind in order to look more like the sous chef from earlier in the month. I wanted to live on the sea floor with that sous chef. I remembered him. It was only one time but I remembered him with my memory. So I do have a brain, no stupid shrimp, see? See me behaving in a very pragmatic way. See me behaving like I’ve landed on land.
There was the bus out to the coast filled with crying chickens. Chickens lay one egg at a time, I think. The bus reeked of chicken sex. At the beach there were shrimp quesadillas under a thatched roof. I only cared about shrimp in those days. When we slept in the hammocks we looked like shrimps. When we swam in the water at midnight we looked like shrimps. When we were consumed by men we looked like shrimps. Jorge kissed me under the full moon. He didn’t hold a moon candle to the sous chef. He didn’t even matter. We are all made of matter which means it doesn’t matter. Phytoplankton, decapod crustaceans, confusing our estuaries with our ovaries and our salt water living for being sad. In Mexico I was as translucent as a you know what. That sea creature with the bent back. That little thing that migrates to open waters when mature. But forgive me for being so spineless. It’s just that in the magazine the sous chef looked so happy with his goat cheese, but in real life he didn’t even want to be in love. I could have cooked him up something real nice. I could have been his personal feeding frenzy. What if we ate wild boar together. What if we played surf and turf. What if I could move my hips like fire snakes. Would that do it. Would he let me be his sous sous chef, press the pasta for the ravioli as thin as the sun blanket, remove basil from the stalks like babies? I am always the one to swim away, go up into the sky with plastic wings, and the man is in charge of the blue room, he is doing the inside exploring, the brain work and the wood work, chopping, cutting, preparing, denying, feeding the community, perhaps tilling the land, perhaps farming the shrimp, perhaps marrying another one of us, another human no gills no open water freedom, yes guilt about her see-through body, yes a marriage clause, yes a million handy eggs.
In Mexico, other people married each other. The theme was Zapotec Chic and you should have been there, wearing your Guayabera cha cha cha. There was a ceremony that included rose petals of all colors. Orange petals fell from the sky onto the bride and groom! These husbands and wives were rich. We all felt rich at that wedding. My sequins were uncontrollable. The groom made a pass at my sequins. The bride yelled at him in a drunk way. The groom was fat and bald but he was still in charge. Marriage is a human thing but not natural. I humped a guy from Harvard in the rental house on Calle Matamoros, naturally. Shrimps were on the brain. Female shrimp lay one million eggs. When the eggs hatch they feed on sticky yolk and then do a metamorphosis. The Harvard guy should have done a metamorphosis of some kind in order to look more like the sous chef from earlier in the month. I wanted to live on the sea floor with that sous chef. I remembered him. It was only one time but I remembered him with my memory. So I do have a brain, no stupid shrimp, see? See me behaving in a very pragmatic way. See me behaving like I’ve landed on land.
There was the bus out to the coast filled with crying chickens. Chickens lay one egg at a time, I think. The bus reeked of chicken sex. At the beach there were shrimp quesadillas under a thatched roof. I only cared about shrimp in those days. When we slept in the hammocks we looked like shrimps. When we swam in the water at midnight we looked like shrimps. When we were consumed by men we looked like shrimps. Jorge kissed me under the full moon. He didn’t hold a moon candle to the sous chef. He didn’t even matter. We are all made of matter which means it doesn’t matter. Phytoplankton, decapod crustaceans, confusing our estuaries with our ovaries and our salt water living for being sad. In Mexico I was as translucent as a you know what. That sea creature with the bent back. That little thing that migrates to open waters when mature. But forgive me for being so spineless. It’s just that in the magazine the sous chef looked so happy with his goat cheese, but in real life he didn’t even want to be in love. I could have cooked him up something real nice. I could have been his personal feeding frenzy. What if we ate wild boar together. What if we played surf and turf. What if I could move my hips like fire snakes. Would that do it. Would he let me be his sous sous chef, press the pasta for the ravioli as thin as the sun blanket, remove basil from the stalks like babies? I am always the one to swim away, go up into the sky with plastic wings, and the man is in charge of the blue room, he is doing the inside exploring, the brain work and the wood work, chopping, cutting, preparing, denying, feeding the community, perhaps tilling the land, perhaps farming the shrimp, perhaps marrying another one of us, another human no gills no open water freedom, yes guilt about her see-through body, yes a marriage clause, yes a million handy eggs.
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
