Noon, January, Vermont, Twelve Degrees

Noon, January, Vermont, Twelve Degrees. Dog on steroids nosing his Elizabethan collar into everything, direly in need of a walk. A perfunctory lunch of organic CSA applesauce and an 8 oz. Swiss Colony ham(let) dating from Christmas of 2007. The first week of school, ever, for my two children and already they seem to be louder then they were. And they giggle about the word ass--as in, he fell on his ass on the sledding hill and not as in, what's the difference between a donkey and an ass?--and L, stretched thin with lack of sleep and these changes we've made, is swept with emotion and backs out of the room. The boy wakes giggling uncontrollably over dreams of Caillou, the cartoon character, falling into a swimming pool into which a dog from Clifford the Big Red Dog has shat (this was followed by dozens of small cartoon animals turning their asses--my word this time--in Caillou's direction). Then it's an hour of breakfasts and dressing and toothbrushing and dinosaurs I've never heard of, and tales of fighting Bionicles, and the theatrical re-staging of scenes from Star Wars films I have not seen--with Young Padawans and Hutlets--and then off to the school in time for Morning Circle, and goodbye. After which the briefest of pauses. Then the shopping--antidepressants, groceries, etc. Home to clear yesterday's 8 inches of snow; to call Lou, who owns the local Sears, to arrange for a dryer-swap. And this lunch, which now includes coffee and Grape Nuts, and how can I possibly escape a stomach ache later?

All of which, somehow, might explain why this poem had some resonance for me when I read it this morning in the New Yorker:

Alien vs. Predator

by Michael Robbins
January 12, 2009


Praise this world, Rilke says, the jerk.
We’d stay up all night. Every angel’s
berserk. Hell, if you slit monkeys
for a living, you’d pray to me, too.
I’m not so forgiving. I’m rubber, you’re glue.

That elk is such a dick. He’s a space tree
making a ski and a little foam chiropractor.
I set the controls, I pioneer
the seeding of the ionosphere.
I translate the Bible into velociraptor.

In front of Best Buy, the Tibetans are released,
but where’s the whale on stilts that we were promised?
I fight the comets, lick the moon,
pave its lonely streets.
The sandhill cranes make brains look easy.

I go by many names: Buju Banton,
Camel Light, the New York Times.
Point being, rickshaws in Scranton.
I have few legs. I sleep on meat.
I’d eat your bra—point being—in a heartbeat.

Originally appeared in the Jan. 12, 2009 New Yorker.
Subcribe here.

There's a potluck at the school tonight. Shit; I've got muffins to make.