The woman sitting in the tilted wooden chair with turquoise flecks
thinks of herself as a girl still
silly, delusion, blanched tea cup made on some retreat 10 years ago
a chip in the lip, smell of falafel in the air
her mother made these things
with her ringed fingers chilled, no central heating
sunlight wan in basement flat, scarcity
before yellow paint and
an inside washer.
Thinks of herself as a girl still
silly, delusion, rolling aniseed balls in her mouth, boys said; “I like your big lips”
in a way that was sticky and ugly, she climbed
higher in the tree, the sound of someone crying
a street over, when she dialed her grandmother
the crossed-line in French, a woman lamenting
her husband cheated, listening rapt
distracted by the crossed-line like a Telenovela
old porn mags fluttered beneath the tree
caught on pavement curb like
seaweed.
Thinks of herself as a girl still
silly, delusion, her hair had been cut and dyed black, she wore a thriftstore Sari
GenY boots, Garbage played as he poured liquor into his eyes
the tab of acid flickering on his forked tongue, he said: Stay still it won’t
take long, the sting of the needle, ink entering her pores
it will be with me forever, she thought, chewing hangnail
the girl behind her had a pierced navel, she played
with a collection of bangles on her wrists covering
scars, the tattooist changes ink cartridges, clicking
turning the volume up, tinted windows misting
her home printer seems
perennially on the fritz
it only prints regret, blurred photos.
Thinks of herself as a girl still
silly, delusion, there she is, half in focus, half out
falling between lines, crushing dismissal
a soliloquy, poignant in repose, old lyrics
eating too much butter on cheap toast
unfilled emptiness, neon bulbs, toilet chains
the damp vigor of eternity, brittle before dawn
faces glistening with salt and light, thin mattresses
lost year, beach somewhere, Winter, they are bracing
against the cold, that year it didn’t let up, nobody had
enough spare change to call
home.
I fell into, not a rabbit hole, but a time warp to a different world when spare change to call home was a question for boys and girls.
There’s something powerful about the imperfect character of the past.
And this poem captures it, that “imperfect character of the past”. — I love that phrase – so true.
“The Imperfect Character Of The Past” strikes me as a great title for something.
Stark disintegration
Happy birthday dearest Bob 🎂🎉🎂🎉🎂🥳🥳🎉🎂🥳🎂🎉🥳🎉🎂🥳🎂🥳🥳🥳🎂
Thank You <3
It is a joy to celebrate a lovely man
Right? I think it speaks to the – otherwise hard to describe – feeling of the past and how it isn’t accurate, but isn’t entirely wrong either.
Funny to think one day nobody will have had this experience! I have a fondness for obsolete things and those imperfections that at the time may have been annoying but are now rarefied?
Indeed. I can think of a few significant events in my life that involved a pay phone, for instance. Or, my then father-in-law and my grandmother (who grew up in nearby neighborhoods) remembering things like horse drawn beer wagons and such. Even the pager that ruled my on-call life just 20 years ago is now a museum item.
It does, the seemingly carved in stone but ever changing and being reinterpreted story of our lives in our memory.
<3
Oh my goodness, it’s brilliant and funny to be old enough to remember redundancies and have passionate stories around them. I know what you mean. I had a pager, I was too young for it to be work related as by the time I was at work they were bringing out mobile phones, but I did have one as a teen – like many did – I saved up for it with my weekend jobs and thought it was incredible, now of course it seems absurd, cumbersome. I recall leaving messages for people passionately through the medium of the operator. I often thought how romantic that was but for the poor operator it must have been maddening.
I imagine that now the moderators and watchdogs of the various social media platforms are now in that maddening position with the messages of teenagers, especially those going in and out of romance, real and imagined.