Untitled Series (No.16)

Brown mushrooms,

Fresh and in a paper bag from the market,

Deepening ditches and stretched out afternoons.

Sesame oil,

This is the first bottle I’ve had that doesn’t smell rancid,

Old books and new fellows, coffee and feeling just enough like a yuppie to be respected (but not too much like a suit, this cafe /is/ a nonprofit collective afterall).

Rice noodles,

I don’t know why they package them in sets of three, the third dried puck always goes stale,

Remembering to freeze discount meat the second you get home and crackling speakers (courtesy of Charles Mingus).

April gives promises she couldn’t possibly uphold, with May and June lighting firecrackers and dispensing muddy and damp heat like a broken burger lamp in a musty McDonalds.

But April tries.

Cilantro,

I can manage to regrow green onions and lettuce but cilantro is a whole different ballpark,

Little tea sandwiches for your first birthday party, when “princess” was a viable career path.

Onion,

Still more effective than movies at making me cry,

The smell of burning leaves in the bio-fires of sunny Saturday property management.

Hot sauce,

Necessary.

That little orange ring around your mouth, which is surely a stain and definitely not a weakness to spicy Thai food.

This year I’d rather sit idle, crafting handiwork or home projects, I’d not like a gift, I’d like a longer spring.

A spring glistening,

Caking yellow rain boots and dampening the recently darned jeans that have come uncuffed.

A spring filled with water from the fridge, without ice. With old men zeroing the training wheels of his next generation of women, laughing and playing up and down country roads.