“Invisible rivulets running brokenly make the low land of the estate sing.”
THE ISLAND Etching (Camden, Maine) paired with balsa bookmark by Andrea McDonnell
Postmarked Detriot, MI; date illegible
Does it seem a little strange to anyone else that all the letters I receive from ostensibly different “friends” are penned on the same Wonderwoman stationary?
Postmarked Everett, WA, 22 June 2009.
Chronicle Books Wonderwoman Card, altered to include map of Northfield, MN by Sarah Dimick
Postmarked 23 May 2009
Amalfi watermarked stationary sealed with Nametag sticker embellished with my sentiments exactly by Andrea McDonnell
Postmark Illegible
Cotton and fur
The clothes told a story of leisure, comfort, luxury…
As in a sophisticated advertisement, but closer examination revealed
citizens were advertising themselves!
Jon and I rode through the hush of the Hamptons
on our bicycles, slowly, but our sweat made us invisible,
our filthiness protected us from danger…
only having two wheels, we were invulnerable as a fox
down close to the very ditch that runs alongside the street…
And yet our vantage was that of the sky. We saw the roots
of women’s hair, men’s capped bald-spots;
we passed the walking dunes, which changed formation
in the wind; there was treasure buried there; back-hair,
leg-hair, and eyebrows like trace metal filings
perceptible where they couldn’t help growing back.
Even as we followed the road’s every move, I had the feeling
we shouldn’t have been able to see any of this
but like a magnet, our imaginations called
all these snapshots and the sea
down to its powerful drain…
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you, he said, preparing food for Franz and pacing around the house, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, living in ignorance is almost like living in bliss.
And then I said: how can you call yourself a Marxist, Jacinto, how can you call yourself a poet, when you say things like that? Do you plan to make revolution with cliches? And Jacinto answered that frankly there was no way he was planning to make revolution anymore, but that if some night he happened to be in the mood, then making it with cliches and the lyrics of sappy love songs wouldn’t be such a bad idea, and he also said that it was as if I was the one who’d gotten lost in Nicaragua, I was so upset.
”