Navy blue skirt and crisp white blouse,
over-priced boat shoes and cream hair like feathers.
Marina, with polka-dotted purse and flirtatious disposition
enters the news room with a head unoccupied by news.

And the teacher speaks of floods--
that’s news to her.
And one student brings up debt--
that’s news to her.
One more comment ‘bout the Knights
she’ll say, “ain’t that something,”
well isn’t that something, by jove.

Pets her brown tan,
observes healthy fingernails
and strolls on down the hall.
Mild, sweet, unaware of the news
Marina thinks,
“But who owns the newest car?”

After almost 5 years of hanging out,
all I know is that I am kind and sympathetic.
Not jaded,
but I wish I wore glasses.

Ice melted and the lemon soaked up the
deep plush juices of cranberries.
The smell of you was newly showered,
damp and warm
still looking slightly *****.

Water bottles, made of plastic
were slowly shifted in an Eastern ocean.
The separateness of their position from land
reminded me of us.

Dark brown ceramic ash trays smoked.
Lounging, we read the backs of LPS and
talked thoughtlessly about genius.
Jean shorts sagged and lost their body,
but still we felt pretty.

A really loving melody, Joni Mitchell,
played from downstairs.
Upstairs, a pillow between my legs and
background semi-trucks on the turnpike.
And picking up the smell of you, faraway and happy.

A sting of wakefulness and
gross masculinity too near.
The preternatural state of half-dream, half-a-wakefulness.

An expensive fan blew through the room
along with the air conditioner
turned on 54.
The room was chilly and a full bed was
packed with three bodies.

A careless sleepiness ascended from the sleepers.
Already awake, sitting upright, and staring
at a wall I wonder on the night before.

Significant wrong has been done in the past 48 hours.
Not to anyone in particular, anyone except the self.

In a dream I was asked to be dismissed
from the prestigious group I belonged to at the
university.
Somehow,
they had discovered by true personality.
I begged and pleaded to continue attending the meetings
and receiving the free merchandise.
They acted haughtily toward me.
They said they would still allow me to room in the same
dormitory as the other members but that was it.

In a second dream, a road was blocked by semi-trucks
that tote Ford trucks.
I tried to swerve around them in my parent's SUV,
but I missed the road entirely and my car slowly
dropped into a sewer ditch.
In my head, I thought, get your cell phone.
Luckily, I didn't.
Weight became semi-irrelevant in the water
and I could lift half of the car out of the ditch with my foot.
Only half though, because once it emerged from the water,
weight was relevant.
You know what I mean?
A woman I knew in grade-school pulled me out by my arm pits
and we called my mom.

I woke up and itched mercilessly at the poison ivy on my legs.
Weeks earlier, I had talked at length about how I wasn't allergic to poison ivy.
Weeks earlier, I had been going with two guys.
Now I was painfully lonely and painfully itchy.

Idiosyncrasies.
Convincing oneself that two very uncorrelated happenings,
phenomenons, even, are correlated.
See, like the dry skin around my mouth appeared the day we met.
It lasted throughout the summer and is clearing up, now.
Now that we are all clear.

Or, perhaps, there's been a mind-fog face-fog correlation sans
romantic relationship.
In that case, I've been blind.
Blind as a bat.
I mis-read, mistook, misinterpreted my own dry skin.

It's almost like,
at least it can be compared to the time when I went to the Urgent Care because there was a rash on my back and the doctor said it was shingles.
In some of the same breaths he also mentioned that usually only old people get it.
And, he said, he said people who are stressed, too.
And I said, "but I'm not stressed."

And then I thought, am I?

She said she couldn't describe how she felt.
Maybe it was like having stomachaches in the Panera bathroom
or ******* about the erred logistics in the directions  
or the echo of my *** on the toilet bowl.
It was probably more like asking a friend to explain the meaning of the phrase "social constructs."
It was more like that.