My very educated mother just served us noodles.

Venetia Phair,

88 and coated in Rose Milk folds, I've read you don't care much for the ongoing debate.

But I feel that the 11 year old namer would - the precocious student of classical mythology, who put her thumb all at once on the “P” and “L” of the discoverer's initials and the invisible Roman God of the Underworld, to land on "Pluto".

The future teacher who received a five pound reward in return for her efforts (worth less and less).

And now your planet is reduced to dwarf planet status.

Do you suppose this Pluto, eleven years your junior, watches your attenuation with similar submission?

What Gertrude Told Alice

This is what Alice said...
<<>>
2:22 AM
Notice she said the hero would arrive "just when you're needed host." Host, not most. Thus, the hero is the host. And not the kind you taste with the drop of wine in the church you don't attend. For the only church is the temple of the body which in the flesh is not immortal unless the flesh is transformed into paint on a canvas, or words on parchment, and the story is told of the hero and the virgin, Sir Launcelot who used his lance every chance he got. I'm quoting someone. I'm always quoting someone. But whom?
Can it be?

You'll never know if you don't know now

I guess I still agree with myself though a night or two of insomnia raises the possibility that "they" are using the VCR in the bedroom to film themselves in order to review the action later or to leave as a clue for the police in case some red-blooded s & m gets out of hand and the survivor is the killer and the victim is the voyeur. OK, your job is to make a sentence using the words prison, police car, luck, nails, and the color of her nail polish in the same anti-nostalgic sentence. But you know me, Alice. I always liked being the lost of the Mohicans.

Eat when hungry

Did you know about the VCR in the bedroom test?
Yeah, well, I didn't.

In working on writing the foreword to the second anthology for No Tell Motel (online) I've been deep in sex/slut/raunch/whore/pretty girl sucky stuff. Loving it, don't get me wrong -- Molly's always been one to drive slow with an eye toward the sticky. But there seem to be a few small pockets of generally well-known naughty vulgarities that are completely lost on me. It's disturbing.

Like discovering I've been eating water on my cereal while the rest of the world is blithely enjoying bowls of creamy slurpy drinky it up yum yum lick it lap it up milky cereal. Why didn't anyone tell me about the milk? And believe me, I've fucking eaten plenty of cereal, people. I've had boxes. I've eaten it dry and wet and sugary and good for me and cause it tasted good and late at night just because I was hungry and in the morning before going to teach because it filled my belly and with marshmallows and with flakes and nuts and point is: I know about it.

So here I am, a veritable expert when it comes to all things sexy and vulgar and in the midst of putting this to paper for the sake of the book, a friend who I'm talking to about porn asks me if I routinely perform the "VCR Test". I get quiet -- hoping she'll fill in her own blank (something I could have gone on about for days).

You know, she says. The VCR in the BEDROOM?
Huh? I still don't get it.
Porn, she says.

I get it. Finally. I had never suspected that all those TV/VCR combo's I've half noticed in friend's bedrooms or (good god) in my own parent's bedroom were not being used to play favorite old tapes of "Yentl" while the room's occupants innocently drifted off to sleep. I'm imagining an old Dexter Shoe box neatly lined with old favorites: Cavernous Cunts, Deep Throating Dildos, Pumping Irene, Four Foxy Ladies -- stuffed under the bed or hidden under the LL Bean sweaters in the bottom drawer, saved for "special" nights. Those tapes - small sparks/damp paper/ wet matches -- are they really sustaining whole fucking relationships? I wouldn't build a Kleenex bridge, stiff with cum, on that foundation. What happened to creativity? Does anyone remember imagination?

So I'm chalking it up to those-- "special" nights. Molly Arden is not the sort to limit herself to just one or two "specials". And, if I had to rely on this setup, my box would never get put away (oh, the fun I could have with that one) and my VCR would have to be on some sort of cart with wheels. I suppose if someone was making me choose between not eating or eating something frozen out of a box, I'd choose the boxed dinner only if I was really, really hungry. But goddamn I'd have to be hungry and something would have to be seriously wrong with the my hands, and the power would have to be shut off and we'd probably have to be out of batteries and any tuberous vegetables.

The change in the weather will keep us together

From a notebook:

Last night yes I did.
Last night no we did not.
Did not we what?
Produce a kid.
Off the ball tear the lid.
Aces are trumps yet hearts you bid.
Of this nuisance must we get rid.
Leave the rot for what time forgot.
Leave the time for what we did not.
Leave the crime and thanks a lot.
I prefer weather that's hot.
You prefer the weather that's better.
I prefer to write you a love letter.
See you later, love. Wear a sweater.

What's New: A Sonnet by Molly

If it is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
Go to the Iowa [stet] Jima memorial and see
The flowers that someone named She
Described as beauteous to me.

I wanted to be sure to reach you
Because Anne Porter's poems are true.
I read the Wall Street Journal and caught the flu
After you were bitch-slapped by who?

Stars, I have seen them all.
But that was years before the mall.
It was the day autumn turned into fall.
Julius Caesar plus Jesus Christ equals Gaul plus Paul

So I quickly packed a few things (scarlet lipstick)
And made you pack your artifical dick.

You were Right about the Hair.

Streisand holiday classics jacuzzi haze and Jezebel sandwich
Nordic lodge bear skin hook rug prison soap pussy's with teeth
winging phone eggs over hard bananas and cream pie.

Three bags up three flights
for three nights.
The weight of the luggage
was pills and poison,
infrastructure.

Mon dieu, verde monte.

Honey Bun

Calling to say goodnight from here
I'm hard at work and misssing you dear.
No one ever writes me a line
to say goodnight or even find
out if I'm lonely, good, or bad.
So goodnight kisses gangster style
pucker up for the eigth avenue mile.
Little Molly's fingers working
and everybody else is lurking.

Because I don't know you

Who would think that Molly would have anything left to say by Friday- especially a Friday so covered in deadlines and boredom? All week was small scraps of desire - time, information, new car/shoes/eyes, inspiration, and tiny bits of fulfillment. But here it is, late Friday and there are still things left to say.

Since forever Molly is the sort of woman who has always gotten what she wants. And I don't mean just material things. When I was a gangly-kneed 9 year old, I'd write the score I wanted to get on the back of a spelling test before even looking at it. Invariably, I'd meet or beat that score. I knew the first time I heard Mr. Hall read at a small church in Wilmont, NH that I could get him to invite me back to his house, let me cook him dinner and within a few months time, move into his house and lounge on the sofa each morning over coffee and baseball scores read aloud out of the local paper. It turns out I didn't end up needing to -- the Tufts summer program offered housing -- but it was the offer that counted.

The process of procurement is as complex as the process for writing a poem. It's a sidelong glance at what I want - never an overt grab for the ball. A true indication of craving risks exposure (at best) or denial (I'd have to guess it would be horrible). Even the glance can transform what is coveted. It's like catching a woman looking at herself in a rear view mirror at a stop sign, applying lip gloss and appreciating herself as if she's the only being alive. If she sees you watching, the purse gets snapped shut, the mirror flicked closed and she's back to humming Lionel Ritchie tunes and mental-listing her day. But if you're careful about how you watch, you can steal a whole show from those few minutes she spends with the mirror.

To what end all this? A box of trinkets? A book? An old desk filled with foreign words whose every meaning I know? Maybe it's the poetry. Maybe it's about seeing. Maybe because it feels good and alive.

May Swenson's poem gets at it a little better than I am right now. Here's the last part that I'm thinking of especially:

"Because I Don't Know You"

...Did it pierce you
there, my look of hunger, like a hook?
I wanted only a sniff, a tongue-tip's
taste, a moment's bath in your rare
warmth. That last night, trading
goodbyes, when we kissed-or you did, me-
my hand took your nape, plunged under
the thick spill of your hair. Then
I stepped into the dark, out of the light
of the party, the screen door's yellow
square sliding smaller and smaller behind
me. You've become a dream of ripe
raspberries, in summer country: deep, dark
red lips, clean, gleaming generous smile.
Who owns you? I don't know. I'll hide you
away in my dream file. Stay there. Don't
change. I don't know you-and had better
not. Because I don't know you, I love you.
-May Swenson

Opinions Please

The Peep-Toe Pump
(And by this, of course I'm referring to the shoe...)

Yea or nae? What say you?
And can I wear it in winter?
(did I mention that we've already seen flakes
up here? and by flakes I mean snow...)

Vic Y sent a poem to Molly

Here's to you, Victor Y. Thank you for sharing your poem. MA

<<
Do tell
about No Tell. . .

There's a wall
and not a wail
I was tall
and on your tail
Did we ball
or did we bail?

So sail
don't sell
don't fail
do fall

& do tell
about No Tell
>>

Odysseus

(Preparation for Epic Journey)
Packing:

• Hero
• Wax
• Rope
• Heat
• Freshman (incl. various accoutrements)

I'm drinking tea - hot and milky. Book open, bridged between my two thighs. I lean in to mark notes and feel my shirt slide forward too. Remembering my first time reading it in ninth grade and all the good parts explained away by Mrs. Hardink. That year I ate a Suzie Q for the first time and didn't know that a wisp of cream on a lip was sexy. But I heard the boy next to me whisper it.