Amazing

Dear Allen,

I see the best minds of MY generation sinking under churches under earth quakes of kitties and all white backgammons. I see lives of peace and problems sinking fast like the golf course of adultery they fed us at bedtime. I see the slave songs once haunting and saving now mumbled with caution cause she's bubbled and sheltered and forbidden to shout. I see teachers offended and presidents up short in the creek that dries in the Mohawks of sitcoms and shortened attention. And the tears from the quake that's forgotten so very so very so soon. And the two dollars it cost them to purchase this mocha could have bought them a coat to keep out the sand, the incest, the lies. They all lied like freshman to a nation never mourning, never resting, never pausing to lessen the blows of the things of the guns of the clearance the syndrome the cannon the crayons the privates the lectures and cheeses. I see cuff links on loafers on prostitutes of other tongues so who cares that they're eight, that they're soft sculled, that they're mine and they're his and they're tired and ready for a hot glass of air fare. I see lifetimes of prescriptions exploding the heart valves the phone sex the talk shows the prophets. I see that I don't see I'm sorry I'm not I'm not I'm knot. I'm crying. I'm Julia. I lived on a street with a bench and a light.

~Just Skin today, need a trader joe's run

Ah, the joys of over extension

Dear Doctors and Lawyers,

You must be so tired! I know I am, and I'm just the girl who sweeps and mops the floor you stand on while you order your triple grande non fat latte. Awe, you look so cute in your scrubs. There is a point after every one's gone home-- And the supervisor's in the back counting the tills-- I'm talking about 11:15pm--When the Motown cranks up a notch-- magically-- cause we're not allowed to lay a finger on that precious hear music dot com contraption-- When I catch my reflection in the dove grey mop water, and think, well, here we are.

And suddenly it's noon thirty the next day, and my heart is still racing with lines that are dead and gone and buried.

And then it's suddenly five in the noon after. And I just cranked out two two minute plays about something incredibly life alteringlly abstracted.

And at some point I have to read the second half of Beloved.

If only I had a morning. If I could just have an uninterrupted morning. Something with bike paths and turtle doves.

Anyway, I'll stop complaining on account of the emergency siren I just heard mount the driveway of someone I'll never know.

You save, I'll inspire, we'll meet in the middle,

Skin and Toast

List

Dear Skin and Toast,

Things that have/yet to be:

Bath

Carrear

Health

Pledge

Connect

Tone

Publish

Move

Sigh

Mourn

Grieve

Read

Pick

Forgive

Quench

Stand naked in a river

Best friend

True bliss

Soft baked

Covered Bridge

Pride

Pass

Through

This

Time

and

Time

Again.

All Best,

Skin and Toast

Humming Bird In A Coffee Shop

Dear Sweet Honey,

I don't know how long I was in that incubator.

I could ask Linda.

She'd give me an answer,

But,

As they say,

You just never know.

You never know with her.

But, I do know for certain that I lived in a small box.

Plastic.

I remember Linda saying that John's wedding ring fit around my wrist.

C'mon!

Really?!

And why were you throwing gold rings around?

You're not supposed to take those off ya know!

Anyway. I swear I sometimes remember being in that box. My limbs get numb, and it hurts to breath. Not pain. Just pressure. Like I have to penetrate a wall with my nose before I get the air in my lungs. I swear I can feel all those tubes in my face. My blood is ice. Sometimes the cold weather flashes it back. And sometimes stress.

And I remember laying there listening to the beep beeps.

And I say to my self,

Just breath,

That's all you have to do,

Cancel the rest of your plans for today,

And just lie still,

Even if you have to get in the shower to loosen the mucus,

Just breath,

In,

And out.

Like a needle stabbing a quilt.

All you have to do is in,

And out.

Press that silver air down,

As far,

As it can possibly go.

However long it takes.

Like the mattress we blow up for out of town guests.

One pump at a time.

Not two or three at a time.

Pump it way down town until it starts stacking and looping up on to its self.

And you can walk.

Slowly.

With pockets deep enough for house keys and inhalers.

Ribs.

Veins.

Strings of light.

Webbed in reason.

Just be.

Here.

Skin and toast.

When Life Hands You Puffy Pants Wrapped In Bacon.....

Dear Fish Friends,

Did that just happen?

It didn't begin or end in the steam room with good friend Myrtle sharing bikini secrets, unless it did. Which it might have.

Maybe the whole entire night took place in the steam room with Myrtle.

Maybe I was time traveling through past life regression salads.

Maybe the Tralfamadorians inhabited my body for twelve hours.

Maybe that just happened a little, on a smaller scale, but my drink was ruffied so it all seems colossal. Wait. Actually it would be the other way around, if my drink was ruffied. The world would be large, and I very small, like a low to the ground barn animal.

Oh!

The guy from North Carolina on business with his video camera services! His secret cameras in the ceilings of doggy day cares.

Now I remember!

Fillet Mignon wrapped in bacon!

Lemonade crushed up into vodka country times!

Hotel just seconds away from the one mile of magnificent shopping!

Japanese movies projected on to the ceiling!

On a week night.

With a Las Vegas salad bar.

Spit out into the corporate morning.

Meat

On

Apple pie

Fried in

Meat

Wrapped in

Meat!

Only the best for us,

Sprawled out like dogs across that king size.

If you count your blessings

You get dizzy and have to dip back into the pool

My heart,

Skin and Toast and Sleep

Difference between heroin feces and americano feces

Dear vagina man,

I want to start out by saying that I don't hate you. I don't want you to die. I don't want your parents to crash into the carbon monoxide walls of your country. I don't want anybody to get hurt. I don't want this to continue. I want good things, happy days with puppies and fire trucks. I want soft pretzels and bowls of melted cheese as yellow as those Georgia tulips that symbolize your namesake. I want pictures of smooth hands on the front of economy sized granola bar cardboard containers. I want to catch a fish after 62 hours in my stepfather's canoe only to release it back into the six pack marsh because I'm just that sad. Sensitive. Kind hearted.

Let me start out by saying that you must have had a really hard time meeting your boyfriend over the Internet, and that's all I'm going to say about your personnel life.

Let me start out by saying that I have to remove myself from this situation before the snakes crawl out of our pipes. Before the scar on my back comes back to life and shakes apples to the forbidden ground we walk on. It's going to be OK Vagina Man. You can unlock your face bones. I don't want to see you suffer. I know what kind of job I have. I take the trash out over black ice and white frosting. I get nine dollars an hour. I wipe shit off the walls. I unclog the porcelain with my gloved hand. I give back to society. I'm a team player. I'm also a very busy person.

So, let me just start off by saying that it's not even worth it Vagina Man. We are America. And America is a 22 bus ride with reduced and less frequent hours. The games are coming to TV Vagina Man. It's a game, a play, a day, an hour. It's not a hard. It's not an explode. It's rarely even a care. It's certainly not a freak, or an out. We're not going to bullet point every disagreement down to the banana and the hooded sweat shirt. We're going to go to Vancouver. It's a large place, we can co-exist there peacefully without ever having to look at one another.

I'm glad we didn't have this talk. I feel better. Get back out there Vagina Man, I'll set these wheels in step. You can relax you twisted sheep girl.

Sincerely,

Bob of planet relax the hell up out of my rice milk

blankets

Dear Weekend,

When friend boy visits his sister in sand country last Friday to Sunday, I find myself doing strange things, like forgetting to take the pins out of my hair before I go to bed, or putting the fork back in the silverware drawer after I've just used it to scrape out the cat food. Or forgetting to add water to the ramen before I press start on the microwave oven. Or getting lost on my way to the Kimball brown line. Or running my nose all night. Or getting really defensive for no reason. Or sleeping through the alarm. Or compiling strange lists of things I don't want to do before I'm thirty, Like;

Get a breast reduction.

Get a pilot's license.

Go to law school.

Tattoo the inside of my mouth.

Back pack across Iowa.

Get new headshots.

Hang glide.

Lose weight.

Die alone.

But, then the tides come out of the caves and light the houses with friendly dragons inside. That's my favorite thing about friend boy. He always comes home.

Your pal,

Chicago

We all know that something is eternal.

Dear Emily,

I think it was Sunday that Ernestine rode her bike home from the theatre,

and I said to Ernestine,

that's my goal for the summer,

a bike.

But, this is not the summer.

Ernestine has been pedaling for quite some time,

she has lights,

and wind resistance.

Ernestine doesn't bat a super bowl at biking in this Chicago gateway to the arctic tundra.

One has to work one's self up to that level of ball sack.

I've always been afraid of cars.

I do drive them from time to time,

but, I'm terrified of dyeing.

Not at all looking forward to my place in the third at.

I think it was the Tuesday before when I was suddenly propelled to write a Jackson Pollock play.

And not having all that much of a previous Pollock knowledge, spent an embarrassing amount of time on the U Tube, before emphatically declaring my Undying love for the standing up artist.

The play did not get in.

Then, I know it was this past Monday,

that Justin the other one passed,

off the road,

through the base of two trees,

at approximately ten in the morn,

away at the age of twenty and seven.

Rest.

Wrote an abstracted poem play about it the next morning,

it did not get in.

Probably for the best.

When you eat spicy chili out of paper cups every day with some one for X amount of time,

when you watch him get high in your pit stained acting college unitard, dangling your feet off the edge of your loft made from scraps from the shop,

finally giving in to the shot guns and air drums, and ridiculous sharpies christening those shop scraps with storybook long handed graffiti,

and then when you listen to him rant and moan about how desperately he has to bang your roommate now, right now, even if she's locked up down the hall all cuddled up tight with the manager from Apple Bee's and a copy of Tartuffee.

When just for one semester he happens to share the same break in the day with you,

and you find yourself friends with the shiniest gosling in the bunch,

running errands and complaining,

laughing often about the tattooed German flag he's in the process of removing from his entire left calf,

or was it the right?

When you haven't thought about him since he landed that actual sit com-moved to LA-got even shinier-momma so proud-paying-job.

When he's suddenly gone to the end of act three,

With the kitchen behind him,

and the rain falling up.

When you read in the obituary that he had suddenly, in the past four years been inspired by Jackson Pollock, and his art is hanging in galleries all over this country and the next.

When something this young earns a seat with Mrs. Soams,

They become immortal,

or something.

I know he was really close to his Mother. In that way, you know?

I met her once.

That smile. That three bean chili from the trident cafe. That look to the side. What a gentle man. Emily, could you show him around? He wont like being new in that place.

Your Neighbor,

Rebecca Gibbs