Bent Syllogism
There was a pattern to the way the mythical beasts flew over the dreary town, but we were too dreary to understand it. The psychologist, too, was in touch with extraterrestrials, but she had to stand on the spire of a church and wear 3-D glasses to see them. The dog eats a branch. Mice eat my slippers. In my socks, I slip on the spiraled peel of an apple, which reminds me of my grandmother and then of all the ways we have failed, privately, in our homes. If Amy loves you, then Alice will bake a pie. But Alice didn’t bake a pie. Therefore, moot point, no pie, no love, nothing. They say advanced math is like music but music isn’t like advanced math—true— and yet all third graders in Miss Mathews’ class must learn to play the recorder. If a tree falls and you are alone in the forest, perhaps there is a gingerbread house nearby. The children have formed a circle in the clearing. Because of the sadness surrounding us I perform a ballet routine. The birds twitter in the trees and the ghost of Bambi’s mother arrives, dragging a bunch of cans behind her. The children understand this metaphor. They dance around in a lively Pagan ritual. I have been away for some time. I don’t speak this language anymore. Please teach me.
Botanical Garden
Of course there’s a rose named Martha Stewart. A dog with feet delicate as paintbrushes tiptoes through the Japanese tea garden. An after-hospital calm reaches its bony fingers around my throat and tugs. I see the cacti. I touch them. You blockhead, they say. Yes, I know. I’ve lived on the edge of an abyss that doesn’t even exist. Now here I am watching a caretaker push a quadriplegic’s nose into a rosebush. An infant in a stroller cries. Her mother bends into her like a prayer. Across town, Happy Hour is just lifting its feet to tap Billie Joel into the ground. I know, I’ve waited for it. Next door in the café old men eat scones and talk about Iraq. The women at the next table also talk about Iraq. The children, too, playing in the corner— they don’t know it, but they’re talking about Iraq. The sun is setting. Martha Stewart opens up her petals like a cup of tea in the jungle. The delicate dog takes a delicate piss. The quadriplegic smells Martha Stewart. I smell her. A line starts. Even the infant wants a go.
History Lesson
The dogs look at me with suspicion. They smell the lingering sympathy of the recently bereft. I close my eyes and grandma walks into the room with a bowl of sucker candies. Isaac Newton is on the lam again, she says. The boy has Asperger’s. In our fairytale I stroke his hair on a beautiful bluff overlooking the Mississippi. We watch the maidens doing wash below us, singing their sad songs. This is how I feel in Newton’s world: alone in a crowd of blind people chatting. The trained dogs circle me like sharks. They know my secret. Later I ask Isaac why we must always meet at these blind people parties. I can’t be found out, he says. He is very hypochondriacal. I could never tell my grandmother about our relationship. Instead I take a pineapple sucker candy. That’s my favorite, too, she says, and opens the blinds to let the sun in.