Egg Head Chronicals Installment the First

First off,
You have to understand that when I say egg head, I mean egg head.
He is an egg in red tennis shoes.
And the egg has been hollowed out, his first wife blew the yoke down the drain,
And replaced said yoke with baby vomit.
The shell of an egg containing baby vomit in red shoes.
That is the person we're dealing with.
And when I say first wife, I mean mother.
Because he was a nudist in the eighties,
So, they are one in the same of course.

Just wanted to paint that picture before we get too far into this.

Volley Ball Time,
Skin & Toast

It's funny.

Kind a funny how sometimes all you need for music is the Damen bus stopping and starting every twenty five minutes outside your open window. I imagine myself in leggings, working for a newspaper, long, straight black hair, red plastic glasses that take up half my face. I'm 24. I used to take ballet. I grew up in Virginia. I have a baby grey hound. My mother invented the Thesaurus. I've been to Rome. I didn't like it.

(Music, bagpipes)

My real mother will be 70 this August. I've lost track of whether or not the east coast hates her. It's easy for me to forget that they've fostered some sort of routine with her the past 14 years. They have that luxury of time. I'm sixteen when it comes to my mother, and probably the rest of the east coast. I seem to have separated three major events from around that time, and crowned them all as the last time I saw her. Even though I know I've seen her at least a dozen times since. Even shared a bed with her, pretended to be asleep while she kissed my hand--drama queen. One; sixteenth birthday on Longwood Drive, fried chicken and ice cream cake. Two; checking her into the nursing home, stopping for chicken nuggets. Three; visiting her with Debby, brought a cranberry muffin from Java. Debby cried. She was clearly much better, and that ironically, as usual, made a huge mess of things.

But, the Damen bus runs northbound, or southbound, nothing in between. So, we don't really have to worry about any of that right now. And as much as I'd like to rescue a grey hound, I would never risk upsetting matchbox's bladder.

Would You Rather

Stand up for something you believe in, or repeat the 4th grade?
Eat a delicious piece of peperoni pizza, or repeat the Holocaust?
Hang a poster on the wall, or grow a breast between your but cheeks?
Be Mormon, or Amish?
Change the taste of cum to your favorite Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor, or be immune to hangovers?
Be forced into the nunnery, or be vegan?
Only know how to play the guitar, or cry tears of poo every time you're in public?
Find a pubic hair in your burrito, or find out you were adopted?

~This is like the best game. Road trip!

Always

Makes me feel better.
And usually has little candies
In the front pocket of his back pack.

Yes Virginia There Is A Grad School.

It's bittersweet to leave my company, but sometimes artists work alone, sometimes they leave their vibrant communities and hammer out some letters behind their names. Sometimes they become obsessed with their own ability and shimmy down the table legs. Tired of eating out of other poet's hands, resting on the neighborhood lore, the line around the block, the lucky price of admission. Those people aren't standing in the cold for ol' skin toast, not really, they're there for the clothes line, and the clock, which used to be an honor until the rights and properties turned out to be finely printed on the bald head of the ham burglar's bastard son.

Dear East Coast Half Number Two,

It happened. It's all true. I've been dying to call you. But, we're too far apart in age. And I don't think I actually have your phone number. It wouldn't make sense, I got the Internet on my ninth birthday, I can type with my thumbs. I wish we were fifteen months apart and I could spell it all out in traces of my fingertips across your back while we're supposed to be asleep, sleeping soundly on the floor of the one room school house because she forgot to pick us up that day.

I hate him.

I don't know where to start. The beginning? The red shoes?

There are six copies of King Lear in my dining room, and I can't imagine being without any one of them, not for a second.

I feel sorry, I see that I clearly hit a nerve, I feel sorry about that. I also feel like my nerve was hit first, and I'm reacting too, and the joke's on me because I'm the one wandering into bookstores in the middle of the day like an Alzheimer's patient wondering what I was looking for and why there are snakes on the wall.

I'm all muscle memory, excited, and sentimental, and broken, thankfully busted, because I need a new look. Put me on the g-mail pintrest timeline-- time to grow out the bangs already.

I'm lumping things together, I can find the delete key in the dark, but I always have to look for the plus sign.

+++

I would say there are three major things going on right now inside this coconut of a shell. I have officially separated them into three different proteins.

Which is good because it's one thing to fry bacon for dinner, but a completely different thing to accidentally eat an entire package of ham while you're frying the bacon, because you're thinking so hard you have no control over your hands.

I think I will write about these things clearly. In parts. Starting tomorrow I will try to start at the beginning. Part one of many.

++++++++So very happy to be going back to school in the fall. School for me is more about personal triumph in the face of adversity than it is about getting a real job. That said, I intend to put my Master's to use, and get the hell out of waitressing. The plates are so hot.

Going to Grad school has everything to do with me and nothing to do with egg head. That said, I've had enough. I'm going to let him win so that I can take a shower, turn the faucet all the way to the left and piss my brains out.

I got an assistantship. That's the best part. I get to work closely with a smart, nice, silver haired guy who's written lots of books. Plus a huge break in tuition, and a nice stipend.

Sigh.

More later.

Promise.

Maybe if we have time tonight we can roll down the windows and blast the Teagan and Sarah all the way to the DQ. I feel like indulging.

Love,

#4

Female Circumcision Suspended in Liberia

I love you all so much.

Skin & Toast & Progress

EMMA

Dear Kurt,

I think we should live on Damen Avenue for the rest of our lives. Why? Because Emma Casey lives somewhere around Damen Avenue. Emma Casey. Somewhere South Of Foster and West of Ravenswood. I think. She told me the exact location one time, in passing, casually. Emma Casey. Blunt bangs and really good taste in music. She goes to school in New York, a junior, I think, Sarah Lawrence? 21 years old? She lives in New York, but she grew up right around here, and this is where her home is. And she makes all her own clothes. And we know her because she volunteers at the Neo-Futurarium. And we know her father because her father taught at Cherubs, which is where we met. And fell in love. Emma Casey comes home to Ravenswood every winter, and every spring, this is her home.

I grew up on 10909 S. Longwood Dr, Apt #3, Chicago, IL 60643. You grew up on 10002 Forest Grove Dr., Silver Spring, MD 20902. I sent all your letters to Forest Grove Dr, even when you were away at college. Sturdy people lived in your home, the letters were always saved for you. You always had a home. Every spring, and every winter, piles of paper waiting for you, set aside for you.

My situation, my home, was a little different. Soft, always taking new shape. A different set of numbers in the upper left hand corner. Your letters were gold to me. Kept in a locked drawer ten million leagues below, because I just never knew.

One time I got to the end of a hallway in my Longwood Dr. apartment. And even before the walls opened up into bedroom I knew something was wrong. My older sister was sitting in the rocking chair that framed the yellow lace curtains. She was bleary eyed and reading the holy bible. She looked at me, looked at her, blinked twice, and then asked me if I wanted a moment alone. I didn’t. I got ready for school. There were boxes under that bed. And not one ounce of any shred of any fiber can speak to the whereabouts of those long rectangular boxes. Those black shoes, that set of baby teeth. We didn’t last the summer.

I’m not domestic, I don’t need a pitcher of ice tea baking on my patio. I certainly don’t want a pie cooling on my bay window. But, I would like to be myself and you a set of sturdy people. Sturdy enough to keep things, important things in piles, in clear plastic containers, arranged and ordered for the sake of someone special. Oh, let me just give you their address, that way I’ll definitely get it next time I’m home.

We were together seven years before we were married, and that entire time, whenever I asked you where you kept my letters, you said the same thing, not sure, think they all burned in a fire, most of the stuff in the attic was ruined by either fire, or water damage. I didn’t believe you. Someone had to be keeping them in a locked drawer ten million leagues below. Safe.

And then suddenly, just this past Christmas, our first Christmas as next of kin, there they were, in the mail, all stuffed into one large puffy envelope. Thought you guys would want to have these, love mom. She knew exactly where they were the entire time.

We are two sturdy people stacking the years up, and up. Keeping track, and staying put. So for the rest of her life, whenever she visits home, and decides to bike east to the theatre, or north to that cafe. She can look up at our window, and say, I know them.

Love Always, Your biggest fan, & newly wed, Jessica Anne