Mom made mine purple.
I wasn’t all
royal on anyone’s ass.
It was the 1970s,
a pretty color.
Tonight I’ll meet Yong for a
drink at the Mix.
Last night Otto and I
purchased a small artificial Christmas
tree. And a few
decorations. Including
a rooster and a turtle.
We are emblem-
atic, like violets.
So is my tongue
tonight. Or vaguely
so. Does this make my
tongue ironic or iconic?
“Tonight’s aperitif
will be Bedlam via [long
I] Bedknobs and
Broomsticks, as
read by Angela Lansbury
impersonating Dick Van Dyke (poor
Roddy McDowell). From
what faraway land
my purple blanket might have come (as I dreamed
all feminine, a routine my brother & I called
Grace & Odessa
(I, Odessa). Our bedboards
we dubbed “Springing Things” – from each of which
all things material could be conjured. Except one.
Mine couldn’t spring
a dishwasher and from poor
Grace’s, never a sewing machine materialized.
We kept ourselves awake through Carson, each night
a new episode. One
summer our other brother
played Grace’s husband.
Or, rather, Grace’s husband’s
body. He’d been
crushed by a wrecking crane. We
snuck out of bed for an hour that night to attend
the funeral. Somberly
perching ourselves in front of
the casket. A cedar
chest. My mother’s hope chest.
We’d learned to finagle it open without the key. Dunk
our heads in like ostriches and inhale a forest of cedar.
