Shoulder

Car pulled over on super 7.
Nobody in it. Nobody
around it. Nobody alone.

The drive home

The drive home made all the more slow by the broken antenna. One station all that comes in. I-95. Classic rock. "Two for Tuesday." Would've prayed to God to let the second Rush song be "Working Man" if I thought it would've helped. Instead I get "Subdivisions." Turn the volume down. Down, down, through the construction, route 7. Entering New Milford from the south, widened now to four lanes, can cruise along at 55, 60. Not bad. So they had to knock down some trees. Down, down, to the flashing lights, through the orange-and-white barrels, road workers in the overtime night. Down, down, this descent of autumn. That Williams could find, in his descent of winter, elation in his own underwear. Boxers or briefs, I don't suppose we know. I'll find elation when I shake this cough. My car is small amid the construction sea. No plate on the front. Faded light of the dash. Half a tank a gas. No stars. No moon. No sky.

Saw a blue moon

Saw a blue moon on the drive home. Course, it was blue because of the tinted part of the windshield I caught it through. Blue as the cover of a philosophy reader. Blue as the thought of "What are we to do?" Forty-eight things to do in this world: 1. Open a book store; 2. Eat a lobster in Maine; 3. Coin a phrase ("kiss a brick"); 4. Kiss the tomb of Oscar Wilde; 5. Listen to the cat pee in her litter box; 6. Clean the litter box; 7. Let one perception lead you to another; 8. Stay out of the way of oncoming traffic; 9. Drink a glass of water; 10. Clear your throat; 11. Drink more water; 12. Make yourself a midnight snack—sharp cheddar & pepperoni maybe; 13. Order Chinese; 14. Sing a song in your head and don't tell anyone; 15. Inhabit your lover anyhow; 16. Quote somebody famous ("Future references lead us nowhere," Elio Schneeman); 17. Realize the cat took a shit, too, and god it stinks; 18. Use "transubstantiation" in conversation; 19. Piss; 20. Make a "Piss Christ" print and display it over your toilet; 21. Create a controversial work of art using only the letter S; 22. Save your money in a pillow case in the closet; 23. Spend time with kids, teach them something; 24. Fuck in the cemetery; 25. Swat flies; 26. Lose yourself in a movie; 27. Hold a book to your chest; 28. Cop a feel, or better, feel a cop; 29. Consider what your last words could be; 30. Make a clock, keep it forever; 31. Challenge a stranger to a foot race at the mall; 32. Buy all your clothes from thrift stores; 33. Eat meat with your hands if you're going to eat it at all; 34. Think of forty-eight things to do and write them down; 35. Bet the house on the Cowboys to cover the spread; 36. Improvise a song while standing in the checkout line: sing it to the cashier with feeling; 37. Don't forget the war; 38. Stay up all night; 39. Wake up before sunrise; 40. Talk in your sleep; 41. Talk with the dead; 42. Feel your way through your place with the lights off; 43. Look for the lunar eclipse; 44. Research jobs where a person can be suspended with pay: get one of those jobs and get suspended; 45. Start a think-tank: don't tell anyone; 46. Pretend to have lost your voice for a day; 47. Scream as loud as you can and see if it isn't therapeutic; 48. Wash your face and hands and brush your teeth.

Bent into the night

Bent into the night, the yellow elbow of the hydraulic excavator catching a piece of streetlight. It's important to know who is singing on the radio, the name of the song, the kinds of trees passing in silhouette against the navy blue night. The song is a spiderweb I don't understand. The road lined with orange and white striped barrels. The white light up ahead, washing out the stars, is the sign of Mark Ford-Mercury. My mind is stuck on the excavator, that yellow elbow bent into the night. Slaps of dirt along its yellow boom and stick and bucket. Dirt-caked bucket like a hand of a dead man whose knuckles hang down to lightly rest on the ground. But that's not right. The elbow bent into the night is alive; a machine, a force of nature. Having dug into the earth, the bucket's a hand come to rest barely on a lover's shoulder. Hard as a look in the eyes, soft as the trace of a curve. If everything weren't a paradox, nothing would make sense. The traffic light ahead turning from yellow to red.

Morning of revisions

Morning of revisions and submissions. Morning of keeping the house clean for company. Morning of pros and cons of InDesign's paragraph composer. Morning of wasted words. At noon there's lunch, a garden salad and Boboli pizza with meatball and lots of garlic. Espresso chip ice cream for dessert. Vaughn will have strawberry shortcake later with her friend Lexa when she visits. I head out early for work. Vaughn insists I take something, she gives me a small green E magnet. I get in my Civic, put my supper bag down on the passenger seat, and set the E down in the small plastic tray under the emergency brake. Mini-van mamas must be the fastest drivers on the road. I wonder if they could all be married to Nascar papas. Probably Nascar papas wouldn't drive so fast. And it is a fast ride into work. Light traffic for a summer Friday. Pulling up onto the new bridge off of White Turkey Junction in Danbury, the clouds catch my eye. Clouds over and on other clouds like layers of white paint on a blue canvas. Against this mountainously cloudy sky a red balloon moving sideways more than up. Moving at a good clip, too. Moving while I'm stopped in my car at a red light. Alt rock lending a soothing crunching tune to the tiny mosquito banging against my driver-side window. Try to flick him dead with the back of my hand. Again. And again. Got him. Later at work J____ will be cleaning a graphic the publisher referred to as a mosquito, but for which the file name is wasp.tif. When she's done she stands up in her cubicle, turns around toward mine and asks if that's a wasp or a mosquito. After we joke a bit, I finish with "Look at that long body; it has to be a wasp. A mosquito's just dust with wings."

You pass a lot of flags

You pass a lot of flags on a ride into work through Fairfield County. I suppose it's that way in a lot of places in this country. At the corner of Ironworks and route 25 I notice an American flag slouching toward the ground. Limp and not proud. Curved stripes of lipstick red, so unlike lipstick nothing red in the world is less like lipstick. New York Yankees flags, it's that time of year. In winter they'll be Huskies flags. You used to see more novelty flags. Before 9/11. Golf flags, flowerpot flags, Hello Kitty flags. The world really wasn't much different then. The world here really wasn't much different then. Was a hell of a lot different in Iraq. Now it's almost all American flags. Remember some production editor at Morrow in the days after 9/11, she told our CSR how pushing back some due date was no problem, how they had different priorities now. Yeah, those priorities lasted a week. No one believed her when she told us. Could she really have believed it herself? Probably she was a mid-westerner who got a job in New York City out of college, probably she temporarily slipped back into who she was, or wanted to be, before becoming herself again. It's all so complicated. I've been wanting to read Alice Notley's In the Pines for a couple of weeks now. Since the last of the important edits were made. I mean, really, who cares about the Penguin Poets back ad? It's fluff to fill a signature. Some of her lines will stick in your eye, like "I am losing my because." Or, "The vending machine has lit up / to tell us it’s empty. / What did you think you ever had to sell me?" Or "Your eyes are like times / your eyes are like people / your eyes are like failures to see." Your eyes are like failures to see. Talk about putting the pedal to the metal. I don't put the pedal to the metal, but thinking about that line I notice I'm driving faster than I normally drive. Faster than I normally drive since becoming a dad. The person driving the mini-van behind me is an ass who wants to drive faster than my faster-driving speed. There's a red light up ahead. She should be happy we made the last one. Nothing on the radio but ads. It's a conspiracy. The first time I heard the Nirvana cover of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" it made me want to dig a hole for my soul like a dog digs a hole in the ground for his bone, made me want to believe for the first time in a long time that I had a soul, that there might be such a thing. I pull into the parking space and gather myself, my things, for work. As I step from my car I want to take off into the ground. Remembering Notley again: "I’m going to find your soul / I’m going to find your soul / / This is the oldest song."

Hunter green surface

Hunter green surface of the Housatonic River. Sun not so bright on the water for some reason on this clear day. Driving south on Grove Street. Look to the other side of the street, rows of trees, rows of heavy green shade. Some guy wants to build a couple-hundred condo units on the hillside. And a convenience store. And a restaurant on the river. Makes me want to hurl the fried turkey patties, eggs, roasted potatoes and carrots I had for lunch. Not "want to," of course. Is it a privilege to want? I turn left up onto Pumpkin Hill. Good god: when's the Suburban on my Civic ass going to realize I'm not driving through the little Subaru in front me? It makes the ride that it makes the ride that much makes the ride much longer into work. I get a kick when at the stop sign I turn right onto Ironworks and the Suburban speeds straight ahead on Long Meadow, right onto the Subaru's ass as if he really didn't see the Subaru the whole time. What an ass. Driving means a lot of ass. Jesus rode an ass. I remember in third—or was it fourth?—grade when me and my friends discovered the Bible used the word ass. We went around for weeks saying ass this and ass that because "it says ass in the Bible." Proto-South Park we were. Tuning out the priest and into our stupid joys. But there's nothing on the radio for most of the drive. I settle for The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter," for the last minute or so. KC's favorite Stones' song. I can never remember what mine is. It used to be "Paint It Black," but I outgrew that. "Sympathy for the Devil?" Maybe. I liked the Jane's cover a lot. Who knows? The ride started so promisingly with the hunter green surface of the Housatonic River surprisingly not shining. But even after I shook that Suburban from my Civic ass, I noticed nothing. What the heck did I think about? I take off my sunglasses, put on my eyeglasses, grab my supper bag, and head into work. "Hey" and "Hi" and "How's it going?" Computer booting up; I am shutting down.