I Like

One blog leads to the next. From Paul Guest to Mark Doty to Paul Lisicky. I’m addicted to this. I’m addicted to Facebook—the “book of faces,” as a friend calls it.

It’s clear that I’m afraid to start writing anything.

It’s clear that the semester has started. That I can’t move.

**

I like watching a man run his hands, one over the other, along a frayed rope he’s strung from the barn to the house. He’ll stay too long for a calf he can’t let die. I like that, too, even if it is just his hunger, his livelihood, his life in dirt. I know that the handkerchief, red and tied tight, can’t keep out the quartz—those tiny inescapable fragments, that desire to cough from the back of the throat. I like knowing that he’s taken too long getting to the storm cellar. A woman waits. A man walks blind save a rope.

**

Found poems from status updates? Michelle’s mean, Aubrey diagnoses, Ajani’s in his office, seemingly alone…

I’ve warned friends that this may be the only way I get a thing written this week. I can’t stop surfing, wasting time, finding any opportunity (even for 5 minutes between kid-pick-up times) to get in my jammy pants. Tenure. Sabbatical. These are words I like.

It’s a sad day in Lisaville when a blank word document is not her friend.

I ramble. I’m cinnamon, cumin, a bit of brown sugar. I’m a cheap red wine.

One kid pops popcorn. One kid peels a clementine.

**

The dirt falls and falls.