“. . . polaroid air pulsing forward like liquid thrushings of an ultrasound’s fetus. . .” — from Lady’s pre-dawn word harvest this morning
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The key things I remember about the aftermath of the mid century are the corduroy of my fingerprints sweeping the gritty velvet of dust off Lemon Pledge polished matte walnut finishes. Always more dust to give Grandma something to manage – her dominion less CBS at night – through she watched it. Grandma had the knowhow of her threadbare cotton rags and dessicated cabinet. Lysol for the floor, vinegar on the window.
The sober face of the black and white kitchen clock – abstract mustachioed visage – faithfully ticking its whiskers onward – polaroid air pulsing forward like liquid thrushings of an ultrasound’s fetus – the quantum messiness of the analog pocketed into digital packets of forward progression.
Grandpa’s tobacco hand drank coffee stained depth from a milk glass mug and read The Plain Dealer on a white formica table. His bifocal’s rectangular reflections studied the steady black and white code of newsprint and levied a kingdom of well-considered judgement. Iron steamed condemnation over liars’ crinkly wrinkles and curated truth’s earnest linen.
Liars know better than to posture what they do light of the Waterford bowl of wax fruit, the New Deal and Boy Scouts, the Greatest Generation’s post-war sepia, the plight of the Jews, and our all-seeing God. The end point of the dialectic is obvious to all like the cauterized stamp of Grandpa’s cigarette butt.
The world in all its Dizzy Gillespie gleaminess had gone to bed into the blacks, browns, yellows, oranges and beiges of settled shag. The origami of Jazz from midnight pianos unfolded into the Rorshach bewilderness of a transcendent Klein painting. The balm I’d fallen into on a whim was somber ceiling plaster rosette watching. More dust, evidence of the real, on waxy patina of a striated ribbons of Better Home and Gardens plants, their assigned placements.
– Lady, 2.21.2022