half way

in my sickness, i am making my way through Aase Berg's With Deer. it is either the worst time or the best time to read this book. it is infectious. or is it intoxicating? or does she cast such a net, such a spell as to make the reader intoxicated with the resulting infection?

i get a few poems in and have to stop. later, i write write write and the same fat maggots present themselves but their color has changed and maybe their shape... so then... not quite the same.

always crawl closer to the people, the writers, the artists you admire.

there is a Buddhist saying that goes like this: when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.

i'm no Buddhist but i know a smart cookie when i see one... and i know when a good teacher appears.

they are all around me these days. good teachers. everywhere and i am lost inside wonder and feeling completely undeserving.

yes, you.





level







i can only take her cells in doses. sharp acrid insistence. she scratches at my face and i wait for the "i'm sorry" but all i do is wait. i turn a page. i feed on the next cell. i install her breath in my swelling in my feigning eager mouth. red and pink and capped in silver. shame under the tongue and shame between the teeth and shame below the gum line and shame inside that great grey mass between the ears. a dog hung low. head on the floor. that sorrow. that beg. and i crouch now, i go low, level with the sad dog eye, pooling brown and spilling blue and sucking at the acrid breath. sucking at the cells and the pages and the lists of things that go on and on,

still,

without remorse.







angela simione, 2010