A Connecticut Poem

What did I do to deserve Connecticut?
Stevens moved here in 1916 when he was thirty-six
as I am now. It would be another seven years
before Harmonium appeared. He worked
in Hartford, an insurance man dutifully behind his desk
all day. I work in Danbury, a one-time typesetter
who now sees his work offshored to Chennai all day.
This isn’t going anywhere is it? I require help—
what about the sycamores, the maples, the oaks?
What about the robins returning each spring?
What about the nutmeg? What the hell can you make
with that anyway? I’d rather have the saffron
my grandma Keeney (né Messina) brought back with her
from Italy. She was alive then, so long ago
I was taking classes at Central Connecticut State
and wondering where all of the poetry was
as my American Lit class skipped Pound, Williams,
Stevens, Eliot, Frost, and Crane. No Olson, no Creeley,
no Ashbery or O’Hara, no Ginsberg, no Kerouac.
No Langston Hughes, Lorine Neidecker, Sylvia Plath,
nothing but a hasty reading of "Diving into the Wreck"
on the last day of class. I used the last two pages
of the final exam blue book to list the professor’s wrongs
(the same prof who went on for a good ten minutes
about exiguous, used to describe someone’s nose
in Daisy Miller; thinking it meant “large,”
he explained the Latin route, ex-, meaning “out of”—
being the thoughtful guy that I am, I didn’t correct him
in front of the class, but simply mentioned it afterwards)
for my troubles, which I thought honestly worth
a few extra points, even if some of what I wrote probably
rankled him but hey I was being timed remember,
I saw my grade knocked down to an A minus.
Connecticut is like that, whether you get to drive
to work through the cavernous shade and gentle hills
of Litchfield County or live in the traffic on I-95
but KC needs to get some files off our computer now
which she will bring with her today to the high school
where she’ll be getting her classroom ready
so I’ll be stopping here. We found a dead mouse
in our house this morning and I need to figure out what to do.

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."

With a slight little push

With a slight little push of her plate, Vaughn leaves the table for the living room. Climbs onto the sofa, kneels, tucks her head down close to her knees, and rests her hands over her head. "Nobody loves me or likes me, I guess." This is her thing to say these days whenever she's disappointed. KC continues to feed Dash, I keep eating my leftover tuna casserole, having finished off my few pieces of leftover chicken. Vaughn wouldn't eat her leftover chicken, she wanted tuna casserole, which KC explained is going to be her supper, and so now Vaughn's on the sofa—now leaning on the top of her head, little butt sticking up in the air, peaking at us upside down through her legs as she sings, "Nobody loves me or likes me, I guess. / I'll have to do everything for myself." She repeats this dozens of times. KC and I trying not to laugh. Finally she offers some variations, such as "I'll have to do everything for myself, I guess, / because Daddy doesn't love me or like me / and because Mommy doesn't love me or like me." Oh, how could something like that not warm your heart? Finally I tell her that excusing herself and singing on the couch is a good response to disappointment, much better than pouting, whining, pushing, biting. Yeah, she's a fierce one. We invite her back to the table. She'll eat some of the chicken and have some casserole. If I were a confessional poet, I would be escaping this mundane domesticity via alcohol or amphetamines or sleeping with prostitutes, and KC would be an adulteress or an agoraphobic home-shoppig addict. But no, all I have is about a gig-and-a-half of worthless frankenverse that thoroughly avoids my biggest confession, which I guess is that every weekday I go to a job I can't stand and every day I do nothing to change that. What a waste of time to be thinking all this when I should be enjoying the moment. Suddenly everyone's on their way out of the house. Them on their way to Nana and Papa's and me on my way to work. It's a slow half-hour ride into work, the alt rock on XCI is a soothing soundtrack, leaves me drowsy as I take off my sunglasses, put on my eyeglasses, pocket my wallet and head into the office. Eight and a half hours later I step out of the office. Last night I had been struck by how the wet green ground, usually a mess of ugly broad-leafed weeds, along with the fluorescent office light shining out the tall windows seemed to conspire to make the perfect field turf. With everything that lay to the sides of the thin strip of bright green blocked out, it almost seemed like a place to lie down. To sink down. To be covered over. An easy erasing of self. Painless. But tonight nothing stands out. It's right into the Civic. Right onto the road, and the next road, and the highway, and the long state road that leads to my long road. XCI's "Folk the System" show is on. There's a woman fluttering her hands across a guitar, with and against her Billie Holiday-influenced voice. It's a sad song I can't quite judge. Makes me realize I'll always be a sentimentalist at heart. I note the "always." The language I can't escape. But when I do—
 

Found Egg Brain

Nothing breaks up the drudgery of a too-long workday like finding out you hold the winning Powerball ticket. But the next best thing is looking down at your desk and projecting artistic value onto some random piece of text.

       gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB)
       goddamn      but god damn you
       good night
       (have) gotten
       guerrilla
       gun hand (actual hand)

This from the publisher's style sheet to Tom Clancy's Power Plays, #8: Wild Card. And, wow, does it look like a real thriller.

  *  *  *

Not that I should be complaining about my job. KC went in today to earn some summer dollars (doing administrative tasks I guess) at the high school where she works. What an atmosphere. They even provide the construction helmets which are required when walking in the halls. Although, signs warning not to use the bacteria contaminated water seem to have been only randomly placed. Well, at least, school doesn't start for three or four weeks.

  *  *  *

Hell, here's a scrambled egg using the Clancy style sheet that so amused me today. ("This is my brain. This is my brain on alienated labor.") Let's call this piece "Femme For Real Fatale."

café
calloused
naive
night vision

sizable
whiskey
voice mail
oughtta (dialogue only)

heat=seaking
axe
hooves
seigneur

off balance
backseat
bandolier
blonde (fem n)

machine gun
awhile      meaning "for a whie"
the Sunglasses
okay