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Interests: Alfons Mucha, Archibald Leach, big words, Bob Hicok, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Masaryk, cheese, clarity, dark chocolate, David Byrne, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Adams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Fred Rogers, garlic, Gaudi, Gertrude Stein, ginger, Gustav Klimt, Iva Pekarkova, Jane Austen, Jaromir Nohavica, Jeanette Winterson, Josef Skvorecky, Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Just a Minute, Kate Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, laughing until it hurts, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, little kids singing, Lloyd Alexander, mandarin oranges, making lists, Margaret Atwood, Miss Manners, New Yorker, Paul Simon, performance, P.G. Wodehouse, poetry, Rebecca Solnit, Rob Brezsny, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Creeley, salt, Salvador Dali, secrets, silence, Star Trek, Stephen Dunn, Talking Heads, Terry Gilliam, things that stain, This American Life, Tom Waits, T.S. Eliot, vegetable juice, veiled cultural references, vinegar, water, wine, W.H. Auden

cup your hands

This cup with its damage. Knocked down, swept off the table; it was
probably an accident. I don’t remember the noise it made when it fell, when it
shattered, though I know how it sounded because I hear it in the silence when I
can’t sleep. The frowny mouth open in its "oh no" shock and the cup falls,
bounces, and then kkkksssssh.
 
The only cup I had, the only vessel, coffee and tea and juice oh my love.
Damaged and irreplaceable. I set the pieces out and numbered,
accounted. Step one, step two, and glue and glue. Pieces of the handle never to
be seen again but I glued what I could and held it together. The glue dried. It
held water. I wrap my hands around it now and it feels like more of a gift for
having nearly lost it, hold it tight, precious.
 
You who want to talk about how it broke and when; you who want to talk
about why I used the glue I did; you who wonder why I didn’t throw it out; you
who think I could learn pottery and make a new cup; you who, yoo-hoo. You call me
and I can hear you but I am disinclined to listen, with my hands around my cup,
its lacework of cracks are a map of my history now, and the steam rises from the
tea in a beautiful cloud through which I imagine I can see the future.
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