Pill popping pilferers often do not
even realize that they are pilferers,
that they have been pilfering. One
of them might come home of an
evening to discover a series of
baubles in her pockets, some twenty
dollar bills and a baby’s pacifier,
and she’s pretty sure she hasn’t been
to one of those Union Square eng-
agement ring / fancy gemstone stores
(“I was hanging in Oakland with
friends last night, right?” she mum-
bles to herself). She knows without
a doubt that she’s been flat broke for
months now and is still surprised by
Jackson’s gigantic head, even though
deep down she knows this is not a recent
development in paper money. Bobble-
headed presidents and statesmen and
women (she wonders for a moment
and then decides no on stateswomen)
and famous inventors (like most of us in
this country, she took American History
and has probably therefore yet to
catch up with the reality, or surreal-
ity, of the things she knows most to
be tried and true). She remembers
that Ed gave her money a few days
ago for a bottle of rum (airport sized,
plastic, so $5 was the grand sum) but
has no idea how she has now been
jinxed with such an inevitably joyous
but also downright scary, in that
utter lack of remembering way.
And she’d been through similarly
frenzied pocket discoveries where,
in the end, that initial excitement
had been entirely erased. Nope, any
joy from what she’d found in the
bulging depths of her hand-pockets,
it was not pretty, and she winced at
the thought. And as for the baby pacifier,
she placed it immediately in her mouth and
began sucking it loudly, tiny little droplets
coming from her eyes. And she hadn’t
even bothered to wipe the nubbin clean.
