Seattle (cont'd)

Susan showed me an album Molly made
of pictures from Mom's 85th birthday party
and family reunion. Jennifer and Balder came,
and Owen, Jean, and Ella Blue, the great granddaughter.
Not the only grandchild. Andrew and David both have kids.
Uncle Van and Aunt Connie. Jan and Geneva. Robbie.
That was a memorable occasion, in part because we knew
there wouldn't be a 90th. People wrote inscriptions in the book.
Brenda vowed to make a fresh coconut cake on Christmas morning.

Somebody asked Buddy Baker about the difference
between a sprint track and the Daytona 500, and he said,
"A race car, you run it on the ragged edge," where there are,
necessarily, equipment failures, crashes, spectacular breakdowns,
lapses in concentration, like Evel Knievel at Caesar's Palace,
every weekend, errors in judgment, failed reflexes. A cunt hair away
from the Snapping Pussy of Doom. The Grim Reaper. The Salmon Mousse.
A shortage of after-dinner mints in Bangladesh. In my book I make fun of
tsunami relief, because the only industry they have is child sex-slave tourism,
and orphans are a windfall crop, a gift from providence, an export.

I turned the coffee machine on. I think.
A Krupp Dominator. Susan set it up.
Last night, on automatic. It's beautiful
outside, on the patio. Bill got in, inebriated.
He only drinks when his Mama dies, like me.
Or he's on vacation. Like me. When Susan told him
I was rich and famous on the worldwide web
and at zine fests, he said, "It's about time
he became the Rush Limbaugh of something."
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Everybody is the Rush Limbaugh of something--
What? Who died?--somewhere. If only for Andy Warhol's
famous 15 minutes. I'm going deaf from caffeine, alcohol,
and earwax build-up. I said, "What? Who died?" but they were
talking about something else. They said I sounded like Grandma Cason.
I forget the work for "ringing in the ears."
I forget the word for "not able to remember."

Craziness runs in families, like alcoholism.
The Cason Streak. Pop and Mike Long plotting to
build an electric shock machine in Mike's garage
and get some of the money going to the state hospital
for the criminally insane in Hollywood. Send you to Chattahoochee
was a fearsome threat, in my youth. Or the reform school in Marianna.
Once Mike saw a man at the bar at the Sail Inn rolling cigarettes
and asked him where he learned to do it. The man told him he learned at
the state mental hospital. "God damn, that's where I learned," Mike said.
They started reminiscing about axe murderers and serial rapists they had known.
The bar cleared out, except for them. Old Home Week. Schizophrenia
was called dementia praecox, back then. It was incurable. Now Robbie has it.
He won't stay on his medication.

Ginny tended bar at the Sail Inn once.
A summer job, an upscale joint. Not like the place
in Blue Velvet where Dean Stockwell sang "Candy-Colored Clown"
into a drop-cord light. That's where Bill and I drank. The Saunders Brothers.
The Hall Brothers. Ned, Fred, and Ted. Slap you side the head. Go home and go to bed.

I'm out here on the patio, writing poems,
and saying, "Ned, Fred, and Ted, slap you side
the head, go home and go to bed," aloud.
I fall out laughing. Take-out Chinese, Olympia cherries from
a roadside stand, and more ales, lagers, and stouts microbreweries
than you can shake a stick at. Lee Marvin playing Hickey in The Iceman Cometh.
No, that was Kay's Place, down by the railroad tracks. Where a 16 oz schooler
of Ballantine beer was 16¢. 15¢ for the beer and a penny for the governor.
The fearful symmetry.

Bill wants to take me blue-water fishing
out of West Port, Washington, where a 16 oz can of beer
is a dollar in a working-person bar he knows. I don't want to go.
I'm old. Seedy and stove-up. I can't fish. I only get drunk when my Mama dies,
or I'm headliner at a book release party and ULA read-off. The Saunders Brothers.
Brigands and pirates. We'd be like the winos in Cannery Row, the fishing trip
in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Take off for The Territory ahead of the rest.

Tim's cascade-style Sea Salt & Vinegar
potato chips and Emerald Valley Kitchen
organic salsa are ingredients I cannot get
in Panama City. I can get two avocados,
juice of one Persian lime, four cloves of garlic,
chopped fine, salt and pepper, to make a guacamole
without additives that will make your eyes puffy
in the mornings. Serve with Alaskan Amber alt-style beer.

Mom's pastor advised us on the traditional ways a memorial service
might go, and we sketched out a tentative agenda. I volunteered to deliver
a eulogy. Susan will recite a prayer she found in the family bible. We can't decide
whose hand it's in, my mother's or my father's. Virginia will read a passage of scripture
important to my mom. Two members of the choir will provide music as accompanist
and singer. The pastor will emcee, say a prayer, and lead the congregation in some bit
of ritual they will find reassuring, and familiar. No hair-tearing, no breast-beating,
no caterwauling, no ululation. No screaming Banshees outside the door. No tits
and no veteran's preference. No tickee, no washee. Mom died when she did to keep us
from having to make two trips out here instead of one. Always accommodating.
Thinking of others.