oh, move. oh, everything smelling like autumn in the land of cowboys and flannel and bunnies. a river runs through it, through me. through the wheat-framed sky at the back of my mind.

oh, forthcoming tryst in massachusetts with that filmmaker and his nor’-easterly swimming holes.

oh, driving up through every goddamn city on the east coast and then west across all the purple mountains in all their purple majesty.

oh, typewriter for whom i must order a ribbon: get ready to hit the road.

on friday i drank too much of the free punch and rubbed up against all the wrong boys, and on saturday morning everyone kept finding me in a heap on this or that bench, unable to speak and rubbing my lips with the piece of bread i couldn’t eat. i was still in the emerald green slip i had worn as part of my costume the night before, except that hung-over, i moved more like water than ever. i remember stretching out on the hard bench in the back alley to the tune of our ramshackle wind chime fleet, green silk spilling over my legs and towards the ground while the sun warmed my dirt-darkened feet.

and today, sunday, i celebrated the end of saturday by doing all of my favorite things: slept ’til 1, listened to the rain through my open window, wrote a bit, read that amy hempel story about the crazy lady, went to carolina thrift to examine every single item, enjoyed a lovely, lyrical banjo experience at the coffee shop, and spoke to no one until 7:30 pm.

sweet, sweet silence.

and nighttime biscuits from a can for the final sunday treat.

i don’t know why we all insist on operating by the semester. perhaps we can’t manage any larger chunk of time, can’t conceive of something like a calendar year, all of us post-grads floating through ramshackle neighborhoods and communes and moving our couches out from under our roommates when they least suspect it. yes, that’s it: the calendar year is a vast, gray expanse which conjures checking accounts and intentional pregnancies, and we are not prepared to reckon with it, maybe never will.

tonight’s update from my washington told of the rising numbers of baby bunnies. they should be a playable size by the time i arrive.

for now i am happy to wait for the day when my roommate returns for his small belongings which have been strewn everywhere as if by hurricane, so that if i have nowhere to light, i can at least spend my last couple weeks in this town padding through empty rooms.

i am happy also, for now, to float somewhere in the space between a new elsewhere friend’s admission that he was “failing classes because he was staying up all night to sew robots,” and my grandmother’s afternoon musing: “Let’s see…it was somethin’ about the livermush…”

this sunday night at 9:30 pm on the back stoop it is spicy, meatless tacos and cricket hum. or cicada. one forgets the difference in the passing of winter. i am reading a book, finally. a book of poems, of one enormous poem, maybe: judy jordan’s 50-cent coffee and a quarter to dance. it comes rightly recommended by a friend, and i say rightly because i haven’t been able to read in weeks, but this one is dark and hungry and i can touch books again, at least for now.

guess where i do not have to go tomorrow: to my job with the federal government. guess why: on friday, i quit.

i am thinking of my cast list of men and the way the street lamp yellows my neighbor’s weathered fence. banjo man is out on his stoop now, actually keeping it down this time, and it’s a pleasant, tinny melody he brings to the night.

quote of the day from my brother, who lately sleeps on a folded wool blanket on my bedroom floor: “it’s like reading a dime-store western,” he said. and no matter what “it” refers to in that sentence. it’s enough that anything in his life, in mine, in ours, is like reading a dime-store western. can’t that please be enough?

the tate street maintenance men, to my brother: “y’all seen any snakes around here?”

my brother, just this moment: “RIGHT NOW. google image wild strawberries!”
me: “why?”
my brother: “i’ll be right back.”

1. any of various small sea birds of the family Hydrobatidae, having dark plumage with paler underparts; also called storm petrel.
2. one who brings discord or strife, or appears at the onset of trouble.

all i want is a creative partner in crime, and i nearly had one just then. one that i really fancied, despite all the difficulties.

it’s a part-time position. maybe even temporary. i don’t ask for much: just produce with me. tell stories. record stories. make mischief in the creek and on the street. i just can’t be alone with all my thoughts anymore, even when they’re good ones.

i was not supposed to talk about my fox feelings on here.

today was a day for smelling washington. it was in the trees, in the grey sky, in my unwashed sweater. in washington, among scientists and farmers, i held up bushels of whimsy on my own. now here, though i am surrounded by artists, it feels like an unattended one-man show.