Well, Are You?

The grin-faced pistachios look up at me from the bowl.

Are you looking at me? I say. You looking at me?

But the dumb pistachios just keep on grinning.

You’re nuts, I say. Nuts !

Writing School

I was in writing school again.

The teacher, Mr. Wiles, was tall and totemic.

He was disparaging a writer that was currently in the ascendant.

‘His prose is loose and lumpen’, he said. ‘It clumps along the hallway of sentences like Lurch in The Adams Family’

*pic courtesy of Wikipedia

You Looking at Me ?

Those rocks deflect you

from the red-backs

in your mind that crawled off your brush

onto the canvas that morning:

those Ned Kelly heads

staring at me

from the foot of the quarry:

you looking at me, I say.

You looking at me?

I’m the only one here.

Then I come and get you

and those stolid blocks of stone

with eye slits

wallop your imagination.

the ones you’re committing

to canvas so people can stare at them from the walls

of a gallery.

A Move towards Empathy

 

 

“You’re like Lee Chandler,” she said.

“Who?”

“Lee Chandler, the guy Casey Affleck plays in ‘Manchester by the Sea.’”

 

Jackson liked that film but he did not like Lee Chandler, the way he closed himself off from people.

 

“That saddens me.”

“That you’re like Lee Chandler or that I mentioned it?”

“Both.”

“The reason I brought it up is that I asked you if you’d like to see Anne perform and you said you’d give it a miss though I made it clear I’d like you to go.”

“I know. I’ve thought it over and would like to go see her perform.”

“Because you want to or because you’re afraid of being compared to Lee Chandler?”

“Both.”

 

It was a little late, Jackson admitted. It would have been better if he’d said so straight off but at least it was a move towards empathy. She would have to give him that.