My day has been beats of modulated movement. A progression of chords moving to a harmonic close–a sense of resolution. Cadence. Maybe it’s the dandruff weather in the city today, but I miss college. At school, I never had to abide bad weather; underground tunnels weaved through streets, beneath buildings, like something out of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. I tunneled to class, then broke through, up stairs, and sat buried in a coat, glutting a lecture, observing the plump flakes float, hanging in the air like smoke. I absorbed time until it was severed with a bell. Everyone can be culled.

Now that I’m out longer than I was in, my brain is beginning to limp. My photography and writing classes help, but I need to feed on some philosophy or literary theory. I need a deep pore cleaner for my literary brain. Something with the word super or extra in it.

There is a remedy for this of course. Poetry. Kicking back with some Anne Sexton or Sharon Olds is the perfect night. I’m beginning to think I’m really a loser. The past few nights, all I’ve done is gone home to write fiction, to jot down lists of lines with edge. I need some help. Sexton and Olds are my collaborative muse. Ladies, you’re gorgeous.

I remember
–Anne Sexton–

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
no color — no more than
the sand was a color and
we had worn our bare feet
bare since the twentieth
of June and there were times
we forgot to wind up your
alarm clock and some nights
we took our gin warm and neat
from old jelly glasses while
the sun blew out of sight
like a red picture hat and
one day I tied my hair back
with a ribbon and you said
that I looked almost like
a puritan lady and what
I remember best is that
the door to your room was
the door to mine.