Oh Venus!

Last night I dreamed I was a French tick.
I crept onto the clay,
found my way down your bodice,
sank my teeth into your bellybutton.
By the time anyone noticed,
I was the size of an olive.
No worry: Gil was there.
He plucked me off,
took me to the lab,
popped me open.
Nostrils wide, hairy and hungry,
he sniffed the red,
lifted a joyous eyebrow,
sampled you with the tip of his tongue.
The next time he hits a close ball,
betcha the boundary will bend outward.

Tiny Fat Dogs on a Lazy Man's Salary

The check-out lady acts like it's my fault
the scanner won't read the turkey's barcode.
"Have you tried bug spray?" I suggest.
She glares.
I smile.
I'm not going to eat the thing anyway.
It's for my two chihuahuas.
They'll stay full an entire week.
I glance at the turkey.
It looks like the rest of us:
Once you take the frocks and head off,
it's hard to tell one from another.
Could be why they're so cheap.

True Grits

While at work, er, I mean at the bus stop today, I tried to think of all the phrases I know containing the word "rice", and to replace "rice" with the word "grits". Here's what I came up with:

Condoleezza Grits, Grits-a-Roni, Sushi Grits, Chinese Grits, Grits Pudding, Fried Grits, Chicken-and-Grits, Grits University, Steamed Grits, Grits Paddy, Wild Grits, Basmati Grits, Anne Grits, Grits and Gravy, Long-Grain Grits, Mahatma Grits, Brown Grits, White Grits, Grits Noodles, Boiled Grits, Puffed Grits, Grits Porridge, Grits Gruel, Parboiled Grits, Minute Grits, Grits Terrace, Grits Plantation, Grits Shortage, Jasmine Grits, Saki Grits, Patna Grits, Black Beans and Grits, Pringles Grits, Grits Pilaf, Spanish Grits, Curried Grits, Creole Grits, Grits Cakes, Edgar Grits Burroughs, Jerry Grits, Grits Krispies...

And there are sure to be more. But I've gotta go back to work, er, get on the bus.

Two-Day Layover

New York leaves me wishing
for more hair on my face, palms, back
to soften the slap, the whips of Brooklyn,
the splash and acid of Lower Manhattan,
the clack whack clack as I travel over
the Williamsburg bridge
on the bottom of the J train.
It strips me to the bone, fries my flesh
no matter how many layers of silk I put on.
This wonderful city wasn't born for me.
It offers no paths
I can herd the cows down
at sunset.
Sure, SoHo has its golden heifers
dressed in jade, in pearls, its lily steers,
but the barns float twenty feet off the ground.
My cows just won't go there.
They beg back to Fort Worth.

scrubbacious

My fascination with low tech is still sailing forward. The latest object of admiration for me is the wash cloth. Yes, a simple household wash cloth, frequently stored on a bathroom shelf. Now there's an object that didn't have to wait for the advent of electricity to get invented.

Which leaves me to wonder, who did invent it and when did they do it? Must've been many millenia ago, perhaps even before we humans first ventured Out of Africa.

So assuming that humans have been around for at least 50,000 years, it is only natural that one of the first ones had an impulse to free themselves of weeks of grime and mud for some special occasion. So what did they use? A leaf (maybe even a fig leaf?)? A squirrel pelt? Or, if they lived near the beach, a freshly scavenged sponge?

Since we don't have any good records of those early years, maybe I should just zoom ahead to somewhere in Egypt around 5000 B.C. Given how inventive those folks were, I'm sure at least one of them must have devoted him- or herself to devising the perfect wash cloth for some finicky and fussy pharoah or pharoah's wife. And I assume that the cloth was made either out of papyrus or cotton or crocodile skin since there was an abundance of all of them down at the river.

Well, whoever first got the patent on wash cloths, I can only thank them. They are such useful things. And not only in the bathtub. They are also perfect for a lot of other tasks. Cleaning the window, wiping the dust off the TV, cleaning up the jar of jelly dropped on the floor, substituting as a handkerchief to blow your nose in, wet and cool to place on your forehead during a spat of nausea, stuffing closed the mice hole in the pantry wall, and so on and so on, the list is virtually endless. Just think what life would be like without them.

round round round x 100000000

High tech is wonderful, even very, very wonderful. I have become so addicted to it that my right hand automatically takes the shape of a mouse when I think about net surfing.

But high tech still has one formidable rival from the low tech world: the electric fan. Amazing how bearable a fan makes life when the weather is hot or the neighbor is loud. It cools down both your skin and your eardrums. Sleep is able to creep back in your bed. Sweat is able to beam up off your skin. And for so less money than a hard disk with keyboard and monitor.