This poem was found written on a paper bag by Richard Brautigan in a laundromat in San Francisco. The author is unknown.
By accident, you put
Your money in my
Machine (34)
By accident, I put
My money in another machine (36)
On purpose, I put
Your clothes in the
Empty machine full
Of water and no
Clothes.
It was lonely.
Taken from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
This post is composed of many things; (another) grey day in Rome, an afternoon listening to SP's Adore on repeat and repeat, switching over to Enya, wearing pyjamas until midday, packing my bags for the overnight ferry to Corsica, dreaming of home.
Its skin stretched tight across
itself as though it were being torn at by cat claws; wrinkled and pitted date
and prune, and fur clinging to the follicles like the bristles of an old
doormat, sparse and balding. The solid body, a sculpture, stone or Styrofoam where
a soft bellygut ought to be. Teeth; little pegs on a battered washing line.
A series of black-and-white
photographs. One with mouth spread wide, unbelievably wide, an umbrella devouring
an ostrich egg. Another. Mustached man with a peaked felt hat, dusty overalls,
checkered flannie rolled loosely about the elbows. It is clear that he smelled
like pouch tobacco. He is crouching, propped up by a Winchester. There’s a happy
dog at his heel, tongue lapping and lagging. And there’s a body slung across
his lap like a worn-out lover, chin cupped in one knuckled hand. But it isn’t
limp like a woman. Its legs stick out, straight out, like pairs of wooden
canes. There’s a little hand reaching into the frame to hold up the striped tail.
Almost comical. I look back at the eyes, that aren’t eyes, but carefully shaped
marbles.
I hear a child start to wail. “S’alright
son,” says his father. “They aren’t dead. Their real bodies are over behind the
wall there. They’ve gotta do it that way to keep the foxes out, see.” A
snuffle.
“There, there. Shall we go for an
icecream?”
A knotted-together village wrapped like silk scarves around
a hill, burying itself into it, beavers in the dark, legs kicking. Little worm
holes wriggle from the sun. Smoke rises from beneath the village wall; the
gypsy camp, planted in the rubble. Fridge doors, wooden cupboards, the kind of stuff
that disappears when you chuck it over a ledge.
Olive trees spread out over the fields like ball bearings.
They look like one of those pins-and-needle masks that you get at quirky gift
stores, the ones you press your face into and the imprint sticks out the other
side, the tiny rods soft and cool against your face like curtain tassels. Like
curtain tassels, that you can tip upside down and make a doll out of, a blank
mannequin face with the swishy hair of a mermaid. Curtain-tassel hair like
submerging my head in the bath and feeling the curls collapse between my
fingers, rocking and swaying to some anonymous wave. Olive trees spread out over the fields like ball bearings.
