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."