the pumpkin carriage
floats across wet cobblestone
a vision in white
as light rolls in bands
across its passenger's cheek
a play of presence
and absence. She has
a new corporeal style
a magic dress
what she lacks is
potently invisible
splendour manifest
ball guests assume that
her organizing principle
must be quite regal
including that prince
on whom the strategy works well
he is enchanted
But history’s cruel
royal blood and mop water
are never to mix
when boundaries fail
a bright princess in rags
is polluted indeed
Servant life’s rough but
Actually she’d liked the rats
They’d sung together
so Cinderella
though she looks resplendent
may not fit in well
she’ll look around
at the ladies of the court
carefully because
her dress suggests
a dream which she should try her
hardest to make real

“Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience"
"we do not have direct access"
"to anyone or anything’s pain"

"but our own;"
"and even just the principles"
"by which we can infer"

"that others experience pain"
"and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain"
"involve hard-core philosophy—"

"metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.”*

- From Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

David I've considered it and
I think she might laugh if she read
that a version of her
briny and spined
pint sized
now resides in the depths of my mind,
She might laugh
at my comparison of her
to a hideous sea spider

but it’s because, as you say,
one can neither comprehend the pain
of an exquisitely tactile lobster in a *** of boiling water,
nor walk a mile in it's eight lilliputian shoes

So I am left to wonder
what it might mean or not mean to her
in her armoured yet acute exoskeleton
to have quit school and
be back to her fathers house
on Prince Edward Island.
and what I'd want to tell her is:

They might try to butter you up,
bridle your anger with blue rubber bands,
Use their wooden spoons
to nudge your thrashing, clinging arms
back into the ***,

but as we know,
lobsters can live to be over one hundred years old
and grow to be over twenty pounds in size
which is very large for an aquatic insect
and they are marine crustaceans of the family Homaridae,
characterized by five pairs of jointed legs,
the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws

I know she knows how to use them.
Which reminds me of something else you said:
"Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it."
A feeling I can understand
Though I'm no more lobster
than she

She might laugh if she read this
at the flat little version of her
that lives in my mind.
She may laugh
at my comparison of her
to a hideous sea spider
but hear me out
it could be touching.

David Foster Wallace wrote:
“Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience
we do not have direct access
to anyone or anything’s pain but our own;
and even just the principles
by which we can infer that others experience pain
and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain
involve hard-core philosophy—
metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.”

"[Lobsters] do have an exquisite tactile sense,
one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs
that protrude through their carapace.
Although encased
in what seems a solid, impenetrable armour,
the lobster can receive stimuli and impressions from without
as readily as if it possessed a soft and delicate skin.”

and so

“We lift lobsters out of the bag
or whatever retail container they came home in
…whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen.
However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance,
it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water."

As much as I cannot comprehend the pain
of the exquisitely tactile lobster
in a *** of boiling water,
I wonder if I could
walk a mile in a lobster’s 8 minuscule shoes
and I wonder
what it might mean or not mean to her
with her armoured yet acute exoskeleton
to be back at home with her father.

They might try to butter you up
or snap elastic bands
around your oversized claws
and use a wooden spoon
to try and nudge your thrashing, clinging arms
back into the ***,
but remember:
lobsters can live to be over 100 years old
and grow to over 20 pounds in size
which is very large for an aquatic insect
and remember that they are marine crustaceans of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws.

And DFW famously said,

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

and he's not a lobster either

PRD: What did you think of the dinner?
PREY: I really don’t know how to answer that
PRD: Did you get new glasses?
PREY: I keep having this dream where I go to touch you and your whole body falls apart right in front of me. I'm screaming and screaming but then you somehow turn into a lake. I swim in it for ages and I wake up crying because even though it was a dream there is no way to make the feeling un-real

shuffling is heard. A drawer opens and closes

PREY: What are you going to do with that?
PRD: I’m going to shut you up
PREY: please please do

Wading in the blackening field
the bending, brittle stems threatening crackle and graze
needle and thread
june-grass
and pasture sage

Mnemosyne waits there in her sodden robes
near the depression
where the farmhouse once stood
still,
as I meet her there at the pit’s dreadful edge

and then they come,
the torrent of beasts,
spilling long-limbed from her arms in shameful profusion
at their ******* each the snarling lick of a wound
and all become a rapid, swollen crowd, yelping and squalling,
given hungrily to some grim and certain task
They nip at my ankles, my fingers,
my small florid lip

And I remember how,
month after month
the heart-shaped leaves of the split-leaf philodendrons
unraveled all asunder;
glossy and enormous
but eroded and porous before they were ever new,
yet I was sure the cleavage must serve some pure purpose,
because thats the way they all grew

First in the sun-room of the woman
who grafted them from the mother stalk
and then sold them on craigslist
they came then to the concrete apartment
with its twelve-foot ceilings
where the fan hushes them, now,
so they quite slightly rustle;
It’s breath must still be blowing on down
through the little holes

I am with you
here in this place
scanning with cool
and radiant eyes
Causing silver haired women
to pantomime
The Thing Thats Wrong With Us:
their heads shake
and their thumbs waggle in the air
like worms.

Our thumbs irk them,
patience wearing
thin as their lips.
They are so sad for us,
for our murderous stupidity.
They know
what is wrong:

because our empty carcasses
litter their living rooms
the busses they ride
the classes they teach
slumped
in the seats where we left them.

Heidegger said
that attention creates access to the world,
And we've crept away to the edge
dangling our attentions over the inviting precipice
like the sorcerer's apprentice
unsure
of how it all takes place
but certain
of it’s awesome power.
The well overflows
and we are swept away
as the women look on