It’s Sunday morning.
I planted Brenda’s Meyer lemon
yesterday. Today, I am supposed to build
wire panels to fence in her hay-bale garden.
The free-range chickens are always looking for
an opening, and the way it’s jury-rigged now
isn’t adequate. I’ll do it, because Brenda gets so much
enjoyment out of working in the yard, and we must accommodate
her garden and her livestock. But I have arthritis in my hands.
I can’t make a fist. Building things is hard for me. Stapling
chicken-wire to wooden frames. Maybe it will rain, and I’ll get
a pass. Maybe I won’t have to do it until next weekend.
The wire she has now works if she latches it securely,
but it’s awkward to get in and pick greens and then lock up
after herself. The wire tries to grab her. There’s just a length
of coiled-up hog-wire in there, uncoiled, and it wants to spring back
on her and scratch her eye out. It’s always something. I want to buy
a newspaper and look at the Help Wanted ads. I am feeling
antsy about my unemployment status. My lack of income.
I am blazing away at a book of poems, which no one wants.
I might as well be masturbating. Aunt Jesse was a sad case.
A hunger-artist. Pitiful He stalked city pigeons and killed them
and ate them. City pigeons are filthier than country pigeons.
He cut his own throat with a broken beer bottle.
I guess he wasn’t bullshitting.
He never stood a chance.
The big kids in the jail, the school yard,
the mental hospital, all wanted to pick on him.
He had a hangdog mien that made you want to kick him.
I felt bad when I heard he’d offed himself. I guess
it never got any better. Never got easier.
I’m sorry, man. I know you enjoyed
your stay with us. Brief as it was.
I had my own demons to do battle with.
I was failing by degrees myself. There in The Cottage.
Jesse said colored town in
It did. We were right there in the midst of the resentment.
With white privilege, lording it over the peasants. The hoi polloi.
No wonder they resented me. I was an artist. I told the world
to kiss my natural white ass in Macy’s window. I was an artist
at home on the edge of historic colored town. Where else would
my house be? Jimmy
Buffett doesn’t live in