Over those fat extensions are we?

While trying to shed some holiday pound the image of Natalie out of my skull I must say that the winter stress is mounting pink tights to my eye balls and down loading epic amounts of feel goods and short stacks/And I actually caught myself thinking/Why did I agree to this again?/Shouldn't I be splashing around in the show?/Do I even miss the show?

I get tired of all the contracts and dots. I think about babies named Olive and puppies named Charles. I wash dishes for hours and try to make sense of things. I see myself as possibly more tired then I actually am. I press on my happy trail and drool on my cheeks.

I pour myself something and pride myself on the copy of Howl I keep on the window sill along with the Yoko instructions and sea salt. I dream of san fran and contemplate Zola.

I don't remember all the things I have to do, but assure myself that I'm doing most of them to the best of my FAS. I erase a lot. The floor is charcoal. I panic already. About everything. I cling to his leather coat and worry that he's cold. I try not to step on dead cats on the way to the bus at 3am in the fucking 3am.

I wash my feet in jelly fish puss cause Jesus patented the hole water thing. My left arm is considerably larger then the right from lifting gallons of milk.

But, the smell of the evergreen candle and the taste of ginger makes me easy and smoked, a Reuben on the streets of France at a writers retreat for Christian liberal women with adopted children and surviving cats.

Thank you for your pity, it feels later then it is, flip the pod and disregard,

Skin and Toast

How did I get here?

How did I find this pattern of the moon to be so desired?

How did I wake up warm?

How did I break that ice against that rock?

How did I sign up for things like Net Flix and McSweeney?

How did pack the teeth that the BoyGirls knocked out?

How did I get to the place where I thought it was actually a good idea to entertain the questions I usually find great satisfaction in mocking.

It's dry in here.

At least it's not cold.

I can't be cold.

I also can't open with it.

But, I will seep it in.

I was born in February.

I'm sure it was cold.

I'm sure it was biting.

I'm sure there were lungs falling from the sky.

Hot beating lungs swaddled in rice patties and turnips.

Pure pockets of air.

Blanched and boiled in angel gas and titian robes.

Golden chords of type O blood tied around suction cups like leashes on greyhounds.

I wonder.

I stand very still on the bed in the cold and try to go back as far as I can.

Usually stop at twelve for a glass of strawberry quick and a fluffernutter on white.

I am a white girl.

Connan cracker white.

I am lower lower class with thousands and thousands of quarters in a Delia's shoe box.

That once contained the platform shoes I was going to wear to prom.

But, ended up borrowing some brick red clog looking things from the girl in the dorm next to me.

I can't believe I went to prom.

I rode in a limo with two girls I barely knew.

They offered.

I needed a ride.

Picked me up on the corner of Dearborn and Goethe.

Sat outside with the smokers and the jokers.

Exceedingly uneventful and ugly was I in my banded head and above the knee silk.

Angela looked at her thinnest.

Michelle paints apples on walls.

I would have latched on to that harder then a Spanish test in the spring

Awakening.

I'm not on a diet, I'm just cutting out sodium. That would have bought me a good two months. Easy.

Good thing it's cold. If you know what I mean.

Audrey Hepburn is a whoar. Those girls in their dorms, they nail her Tiffany ass to their ceilings and their lunch pales. And forget about the impossible body standards that tone deaf ballerina immigrates down to her Twiggy Moss row. ----She's leaning out of that car window perspiring what? Sweetness and light? That's all I get. All I see is an eye lash batting waif. A chicken waffle material fad.

It's possible I'm ignorant. Or a little gay. Or just plain raw and irritated in my winter eczema.

But, I'll blast my Ani Difranco, read my KATHERINE Hepburn biographies, fold my flannel shirts, donate my clogs, wash off my mascara, and hang my Julie Andrew posters with pride.

Like Mondo, she was robbed.

Emily Dickinson was short. Everybody was back then. I'd fit right in. I'd take her to prom and hold her tight. And later that night we'd confess to each other that we're actually not gay. We're just writing letters to someone far away who has no idea. And then we'll cry a little and kiss each other's eye lids, and sniff each other's necks. Like dinosaurs. We'll fall asleep shivering on the sand.

I hope where ever she is she's waking up to him.

Like me,

Skin and Toast

Check.

Reading

Anne

Lamott

Imperfect

Birds

Had

Sassy

Eggs

Toured

Papered

Mic

Scratched

lacquered

Scalp

Opened

Digital

Camera

Brushed

Powdered

Sugar

Gave

Some

Remarks

Peeled

Eyes

Away

Took

In

A

Skunk

Shaved

Down

The

Middle

Waned

Through

My

Trunk

Had

Pleasant

Cakes

Dropped

A

Necklace

Down

A

Well

That

Was

Fair

For

Food.

He said there was a baby carriage down on Noyes street. But, nobody was pushing it. Then the lens shattered in his hand. And I thought to myself, Marie, everything is lost. Nowhere to go but south. Because who wants to live North of Evanston? I mean, really? This time of year?

I look better on whisky then I do on paper.

And I am now officially obsessed with Zola Jesus. Really came on quick. Love when that happens.

Remember when you were able to stand naked in a river in Maine, and the reflection staring back at you was more then acceptable. Borderline beautiful. Now if you could just get to the point where sitting naked on the closed lid of the toilette, with the folds of your flesh winking back at you, with the dimples of your sides squinting up at you--where that was border line stunning. We would be so rich. Because you're moisturizing after your shower to the drown of NPR, and you have to stop for Arizona, and all you can think about is how hard it is to stay small. And all you ever complain about is wanting to be like the big girls. And you know exactly what it's like to be nine years. That's about the age that you stopped.

Shame in Peace,

Skin and Toast

Thoughts On Tours

Thoughts and wheels and waters and lines on roads on tours.

Snag the front seat for a fritter and a chat.

Like when the fictional real life comic turned sit com protagonist takes her family in a van to the mountains.

Because the voice over lady had a baby so they had to do a flash back episode.

No matter how hungry or slow or spent or drained or high on small bags of chips we get,

Tours are always

In a word

Fun

Peanut shells on the floor fun

Even sometimes thrilling

Like a sharpie on a tank top.

But, exhausting, like a three day hang over without the comfort of your own coffee pot or toaster oven, like a grown up birthday party Indian styled around floor cushions and white wines, suddenly embarrassed over the navy blue corduroys you've had since ninth grade.

Who cares, I'll never see these people again.

Like the time I went to the temple with the fakes, mortified over my home perm, but relaxed over the dark grapes in plastic cups. I couldn't wear a short sleeved cream colored sweater from the Gap if you paid me.

But, sure, it's fun to count the similarities and the architectures of the lives we've been assigned.

I can hear my 1996 CD alarm clock going off between the sheets of my brass pronged day bed and packaged panties, Ladies and Gentlemen; Simon, and Garfunkel!

Oh, salt water, oh, school yard, oh, my.

Saved and shaved from coast to hood to space ship rain fallen lightly.

Come she will.

You know you'd be crazy to leave this life, this company of crush.

Unless, of course, dare I say, an even better came to pass with the clouds that stick to your frigid carrot stained air in cheesy jazzed fables about prints in the sand.

And when a whole row gets up to leave your dramatic monologue about your mother so that they can make it to their lips in time for the middle of the night.

Who cares?

I got a pan of maybe every thing's not gray anymore with my name on it.

And it's the life you imagined you were signing up for.

Because for the two to twenty one days you are away, you have one job to do, and enough money for a sandwich and a museum membership.

Even more strange then seeing your name in print is seeing the titles of your plays in print.

Even better then seeing your mother's silhouette appear for an instant between the curtains and the voms, spouting something important about a down stage chair into a head set and a wink; is the vacant eyes of six hundred twang talkers. We have come down with a hard case of the pleases to likes what I do's no matter the snow, fog, line, lot, counts, or really confusing wine spirit state rules.

Anyway, resolve should be small this year for a change, a Sunday audience, like, drink more water, and don't be a stranger.

Always do your best,

Skin and Toast