daa-stoy-ev-skee
attending a party (even the most diminutive) at the temporary dwindle of a global pandemic gives one an irresolute sense of how to be present—how to remember the laws of interaction and countenance; we are desperate creatures with a deep poverty in our beings that can bear astounding need for community —and i’m standing glum yet thankful in a golden-soft kitchen like the revenant of a past-life—kept to myself though content of it and reminding myself to be responsive, and thinking here we are: the lot of us—hovering about as the nebulous puffs of smoke we are; vagabonds in the supreme emptiness—urging with fellow shapes and shadows, reminding myself that we are God’s prodigal obsession; transients in this life that is a dream He is dreaming in His head.
such reminders help for a brief moment—
a moment as brief as we are in a God-dream,
but so does a kindly mix of gin and juice.
{enter Jerry}
short-lived as it all is i hear Jerry cross-examine some poor girl by the mini-bar— i tell her in my head not to answer but of course she doesn’t snag a clue:
“I haven’t read Joyce.”
“What have you, then?”
“Dos…dostefesky.”
“It’s daa-stoy-ev-skee.”
(a real maverick amid modern lit, Jerry only
fucks with the past)
and i could save her but then i’d risk a complex myself; and there’s no prophylactic in the history of medical research to mitigate a conversation with Jerry other than dying an early death, or yielding to what is—i presume when confabbing with him—also an early death.
forever at-bat:
it’s not this,
it’s that—
“How’d he go? Covid?
“Naw, chewin’ the fat.”
Cover photo by Bernadetta Watts
