this is brilliant (of course i always seem to say this)

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Alix Olson -- 8 x 10

i pass a sign on the post that says: stuff monkey lost and i can picture some sad face as she twists with empty arms. and i understand cause i remember the day you followed me home and in a fit of innocence i took you in. you were a passionate skeptic with a dimpled smile, you framed yourself so well, you were a perfect 8 x 10.

and now i am alphabetizing my correspondence, for some reason, and i’m guessing it’s just meaning keeping track of who i’ve been. and in one of my piles you’ve suddenly just popped up ... and it says you’re crying « uncle » but i was never out to pin you down. but I’m sputtering, i’m stuttering, yours words still blush me for a moment now. so i stick you in the back of my stacks, right where i follow your face. in a brown box scribbled, scrawled in black : things to fix some day. wrapped in a tissue paper in the attic of my mind. you and me were like a bad home movie where the whites are sour green. and the family hovers over some buttered popcorn to fill in the details of each scene. and the tape stocked in my brain sticks together and it feels so small and undignified of me to try and remember you. jogging in circles around the gas pump in september, racing back to the car. giddy and spent. kissing. kissing hard in front of the skinny full service attendant frowning. and your arms are an August full of fire wood, a wild flower tucked like a cigarette behind your ear. you're some boy-girl fifties moviestar, in my feature now appearing, or weeping on my collarbone and pounding on my chest, my half-broken heroine, my restless 8 x 10.

and i guess our station's changed, our volume's faded and all i know is that we left different than we came into this. these lifetimes chose the ones who will educate us and i guess that's how is always is. that's how it always is.

i pass a sign on the post that says: stuff monkey lost and i can picture some sad face as she twists with empty arms. and i understand 'cause i remember the day you followed me home.